The influence of partial-match cues on event-based prospective memory

In event-based prospective memory tasks people form an intention to respond when an environmental cue signals that conditions are appropriate to fulfil an intended activity. In the ongoing activity the authors embedded partial-match cues that only partially, but not completely, satisfied the conditions required to make a prospective response. The consequence of encountering these partial-match cues was to increase responses to appropriate prospective memory cues encountered later. This outcome occurred both with semantic and orthographic cues, but only the former led to longer processing latencies of the partial-match cues. This asymmetry suggests that partial-match cues may not need to be processed consciously in order to benefit event-based prospective memory. A parametric manipulation of the number of partial-match cues resulted in numerically but not statistically better prospective memory. Consequently, partial-match cues may function as overt reminders of the intention to respond or they may serve to engage participants in self-initiated remindings of the intention.     

Identifying psychopathy subtypes on the basis of personality structure

The authors used model-based cluster analysis to identify subtypes of criminal psychopaths on the basis of differences in personality structure. Participants included 96 male prisoners diagnosed as psychopathic, using the Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R; R. D. Hare, 1991). Personality was assessed using the brief form of the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ-BF; C. J. Patrick, J. J. Curtin, and A. Tellegen, 2002). The best-fitting model yielded two clusters. Emotionally stable psychopaths were characterized by low Stress Reaction and high Agency. Aggressive psychopaths were characterized by high Negative Emotionality, low Constraint, and low Communion. These results suggest that psychopaths as defined by the PCL-R includes distinct subtypes, distinguishable in terms of personality structure, that may reflect different etiologies.     

Multisensory executive functioning

To better understand the prefrontal circuitry that putatively supports executive functions, such as those involved in switching tasks, we asked whether a current task set is open equally to receiving information from any sensory modality or if it is to some degree modality-specific. Subjects were presented with a sequence of digits to be classified as either odd/even or greater/less than five. The digits were either auditory or visual, with the modality varying randomly. Results demonstrated a reaction time (RT) cost associated with switching between tasks and also an unexpected cost of switching between modalities. When both modality and task switched, the two costs were greater than either of the costs alone, but significantly less than predicted simply by summing the two costs together (i.e., they were underadditive). These data indicate that the frontal mechanisms that allow for a switch in task are only partially modality-specific. Current theories of executive function must be adapted to account for this finding. We also suggest that the present paradigm is amenable to future research aimed at determining precisely how modalities are linked within a task set.     

Female laryngectomees' satisfaction with communication methods and speech-language pathology services

132 female laryngectomees responded to a questionnaire regarding satisfaction with their communication methods as postlaryngectomees and speech-language pathology services. Respondents were satisfied overall with their primary communication selection; however, most would like to try a method that produced a more feminine-sounding voice. 68% were satisfied with their speech-language pathology services.     

Interference to ongoing activities covaries with the characteristics of an event-based intention

Previous studies of event-based prospective memory have demonstrated that the character of an ongoing task can affect cue detection. By contrast, this study demonstrated that there is a reciprocal relationship insofar as cue-verification and response-retrieval processes interfered with making a response in the ongoing task. The amount of interference was determined by the type of intention, which was manipulated to affect the complexity of verification and retrospective response retrieval. These relationships were true even when the interference caused by cue detection was separated from a more general effect to ongoing-task performance caused by shifts in attentional allocation policies. The results have theoretical implications for models that attempt to specify the cognitive microstructure of event-based prospective memory.     

Specifying the relations between affect and heavy alcohol use among young adults

Current reformulations of the tension reduction hypothesis posit that only a subset of vulnerable individuals are at risk for drinking in response to negative affect. To further specify this model, this study examined the types of mood and social contexts under which affect and alcohol use are associated. Participants were 74 college students who completed repeated assessments of mood, alcohol use, friendship quality, and social support. A complex pattern of findings supported the moderating influences of gender, friendship factors, and the timing of behavior (i.e., weekends vs. weekdays) on the relation between affect and alcohol use. Young adults with less intimate and supportive friendships, as compared with their peers, showed risk for greater drinking following relative elevations in sadness and hostility. Such drinking episodes, in turn, predicted subsequent elevations in these same negative moods the following week. Gender differences in such a cyclical pattern of affect and alcohol use were found to vary across differing emotional experiences. Recommendations for a more refined theory of affect and alcohol use are discussed.     

False recognition occurs more frequently during source identification than during old-new recognition

A number of recent reports have investigated false memories using variants of the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. Because these false memories have been difficult to eliminate, this study investigated whether false recognition could be reduced by incorporating source-monitoring criteria into decision processes. Making claims about the manner in which items were learned should require more careful scrutiny of memories, and therefore false recognition should be minimized with source instructions as compared with old-new recognition instructions. In 3 experiments that varied the combination of sources, false recognition was increased rather than reduced by applying source-monitoring processes. The theoretical implications of these counterintuitive results are discussed in terms of the old-new detection component of source judgments.     

Isolation,not locality

There is a long tradition of preferring local theories to ones that posit lawful or causal influence at a spacetime distance. In this paper, we argue against this preference. We argue that nonlocality is scientifically unobjectionable and that nonlocal theories can be known. Scientists can gather evidence for them and confirm them in much the same way that they do for local theories. We think these observations point to a deeper constraint on scientific theorizing and experimentation: the (quasi-) isolation of causal or lawful influence. We argue that this requirement ought to replace the locality desideratum in science. We then explore the possibility that the order of explanation has been reversed: perhaps it is isolatable influence that determines what counts as local in the first place.     

Investigating whether maternal memory specificity is indirectly associated with child memory specificity through maternal reminiscing

Maternal reminiscing and remembering has a profound influence on the development of children’s autobiographical remembering skills. The current study investigated the relationships between maternal memory specificity, maternal reminiscing and child memory specificity. Participants consisted of 40 mother–child dyads. Children’s age ranged between 3.5 and 6 years. Mothers and children participated in individual assessments of autobiographical memory specificity. Dyads participated in a joint reminiscing task about three past emotional (happy, sad, stressful) events. A positive moderate association was found between maternal autobiographical memory specificity and child autobiographical memory specificity. Maternal autobiographical memory specificity was significantly correlated with mothers’ focus on the task, involvement and reciprocity, resolution of negative feelings, and structuring of narratives in the mother–child reminiscing task. Moderate positive associations were found between maternal focus and structuring and child memory specificity. There was no evidence to suggest maternal elaborative reminiscing style was significantly positively correlated with mother or child memory specificity. Finally, there was support for an indirect pathway between maternal memory specificity and child memory specificity through quality of support and guidance provided by the mother in maternal reminiscing. Theoretical and clinical implications are considered.