Neutral details associated with emotional events are encoded: evidence from a cued recall paradigm

Enhanced emotional memory often comes at the cost of memory for surrounding background information. Narrowed-encoding theories suggest that this is due to narrowed attention for emotional information at encoding, leading to impaired encoding of background information. Recent work has suggested that an encoding-based theory may be insufficient. Here, we examined whether cued recall—instead of previously used recognition memory tasks—would reveal evidence that non-emotional information associated with emotional information was effectively encoded. Participants encoded positive, negative, or neutral objects on neutral backgrounds. At retrieval, they were given either the item or the background as a memory cue and were asked to recall the associated scene element. Counter to narrowed-encoding theories, emotional items were more likely than neutral items to trigger recall of the associated background. This finding suggests that there is a memory trace of this contextual information and that emotional cues may facilitate retrieval of this information.     

Object permanence in dogs: Invisible displacement in a rotation task

Dogs were tested for object permanence using an invisible displacement in which an object was hidden in one of two containers at either end of a beam and the beam was rotated. Consistent with earlier research, when the beam was rotated 180°, the dogs failed to find the object. However, when the beam was rotated only 90°, they were successful. Furthermore, when the dogs were led either 90° or 180° around the apparatus, they were also successful. In a control condition, when the dogs could not see the direction of the 90° rotation, they failed to find the object. The results suggest that the 180° rotation may produce an interfering context that can be reduced by rotating the apparatus only 90° or by changing the dogs’ perspective. Once the conflict is eliminated, dogs show evidence of object permanence that includes invisibly displaced objects.     

Childhood Emotional Abuse and Maladaptive Coping in Adults Seeking Treatment for Substance Use Disorder

Little is understood about distinct traumatic exposures and their relationship to later coping strategies. Adults receiving treatment for substance use were assessed for experiential avoidance and a range of traumatic exposures. Only childhood emotional abuse significantly predicted experiential avoidance.     

Forgiveness and Cohesion in Familial Perceptions of Alcohol Misuse

The authors examine the relationships between forgiveness, family cohesion, and alcohol. In Study 1 (N= 190), participants reported lower levels of trust and forgiveness for family members who misuse alcohol. In Study 2 (N= 141), the authors present a model demonstrating family cohesion and trait forgiveness related to state forgiveness of an alcohol‐misusing family member. State forgiveness was related to trust in that family member and, subsequently, higher levels of perceived misuser drinking refusal efficacy.     

Can Religion Promote Virtue?: A More Stringent Test of the Model of Relational Spirituality and Forgiveness

Rather than simply studying whether religious individuals are more forgiving than nonreligious individuals, recent research has focused on how religion may promote a more fluid and efficient forgiveness process. The present studies sought to strengthen evidence for a model of relational spirituality and forgiveness (Davis, Hook, & Worthington, 2008 Davis, D. E., Hook, J. N. and Worthington, E. 2008. Relational spirituality and forgiveness: The roles of attachment to God, religious coping, and viewing the transgression as a desecration. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 27: 293–301.  [Google Scholar]), given the reliance of prior studies on cross-sectional designs that did not control for hurtfulness of the offense. In Study 1, spiritual appraisals predicted unforgiveness, controlling for hurtfulness and other covariates. Furthermore, using structural equation modeling, empathy was found to partially mediate the relationship between spiritual appraisals and unforgiveness. In Study 2, participants (N = 123) completed a survey weekly for 6 weeks that included measures of relational spirituality and forgiveness. Appraisals of relational spirituality predicted subsequent unforgiveness, as well as the rate of decline in unforgiveness. Thus, using a more stringent test, we found additional evidence for the model.     

Researching HIV/AIDS,Education & Childhood in the African Context

This article offers a reflective review of 12 articles and 4 brief reports included in this special issue of the International Journal of Psychology in Africa with the theme, ‘HIV/AIDS, education and childhood in the African context’. Muthukrishna and Ramsuran (2007) have emphasised that the consequences of HIV/AIDS can be far-reaching for children and young people resulting in unequal life chances. It is thus fitting that this special issue should be edited by them in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, in the country (and province) with the highest levels of incidence of HIV/AIDS in Africa. In this article I offer a commentary on how the interpretive lenses of the authors who are located in various disciplines provide a theorised understanding of what shapes knowledge constructions in situated African contexts.     

Children as mediators of their own cognitive development: The case of learning science in kindergarten and first grade

As the United States experiences greater income inequality, more and more students experience an early science achievement gap. This study tested several competing theoretical models of early science achievement with a longitudinal sample of 14,624 children who were followed from kindergarten entry to the end of 1st grade. To understand why and when differences emerge among children, we adopted a theoretical approach to study early science achievement because theories, if they are accurate, appeal to the factors responsible for achievement differences. Results from a structural equation modeling analysis revealed a mediation-only model provided an excellent fit to the data that was minimally changed when some of the indirect pathways were dropped and several direct pathways were added. This finding suggests that children who are more advanced in their understanding of science topics, have more expertise, or have more working-memory capacity are likely to process the same classroom material more effectively and completely than their classmates who have a less advanced understanding, less expertise, or less working-memory capacity. From a theoretical perspective, these findings provide strong support for individual theories of conceptual knowledge, expertise, working memory, and motivational development, and they also demonstrate the value of a large-scale, longitudinal, and multivariate approach for understanding science achievement. Implications for developmental theory and educational policy are discussed.     

Examining the contributions of desirable difficulty and reminding to the spacing effect

Although substantial evidence indicates that spacing repeated study events with intervening material generally enhances memory performance relative to massing study events, the mechanism underlying this benefit is less clear. Two experiments examined the role of reminding difficulty during the acquisition of material in modulating final memory performance for spaced repetitions utilizing recognition (Experiment 1) and recall tests (Experiment 2). Specifically, participants studied a list of words presented one or two times separated by one or five items. On each trial participants reported whether the item had been previously presented (i.e., repetition detection judgment), and the response latency served as a proxy for reminding difficulty such that longer response latencies reflected more difficult reminding. A third experiment extended this paradigm with the inclusion of a massed condition and novel lag conditions (three and ten items). Results revealed significant lag effects in final test performance across experiments despite comparable repetition detection difficulty between lag conditions during acquisition. Moreover, results from within-participant point-biserial analyses and mediation analyses converged on overall performance measures in suggesting that repetition detection difficulty failed to modulate final test performance in the current paradigm. Discussion considers the implications of the current results for mechanisms proposed to underlie the benefits of spaced study and spaced retrieval practice.     

Student Healthcare Clinicians' Illness Narratives: Professional Identity Development and Relational Practice

ABSTRACT

In this qualitative, grounded theory study we examine how the intersection of self-reflection, illness narratives and perceived messages of professional identity inform care provided by medical, nursing, and medical family therapy students to patients and families. We discovered four common challenges students faced navigating personal experiences of illness and connecting to patients: 1) discrepancies between ideal and lived experiences, 2) challenges of healthcare work and culture, 3) navigating power and hierarchy, and 4) developing a shell of privacy. Discussion and implications include interdisciplinary training and collaboration and the unique role of medical family therapists in healthcare.     

Relational humility: conceptualizing and measuring humility as a personality judgment

The study of humility has progressed slowly due to measurement problems. We describe a model of relational humility that conceptualizes humility as a personality judgment. In this set of 5 studies, we developed the 16-item Relational Humility Scale (RHS) and offered initial evidence for the theoretical model. In Study 1 (N = 300), we developed the RHS and its subscales--Global Humility, Superiority, and Accurate View of Self. In Study 2, we confirmed the factor structure of the scale in an independent sample (N = 196). In Study 3, we provided initial evidence supporting construct validity using an experimental design (N = 200). In Study 4 (N = 150), we provided additional evidence of construct validity by examining the relationships between humility and empathy, forgiveness, and other virtues. In Study 5 (N = 163), we adduced evidence of discriminant and incremental validity of the RHS compared with the Honesty-Humility subscale of the HEXACO-PI (Lee & Ashton, 2004).