Does the thought of death contribute to the memory benefit of encoding with a survival scenario?

Four studies tested whether the thought of death contributes to the survival processing advantage found in memory tests (i.e., the survival effect). In the first study, we replicated the “Dying To Remember” (DTR) effect identified by Burns and colleagues whereby activation of death thoughts led to better retention than an aversive control situation. In Study 2, we compared an ancestral survival scenario, a modern survival scenario and a “life-after-death” scenario. The modern survival scenario and the dying scenario led to higher levels of recall than the ancestral scenario. In Study 3, we used a more salient death-thought scenario in which people imagine themselves on death row. Results showed that the “death-row” scenario yielded a level of recall similar to that of the ancestral survival condition. We also collected ratings of death-related thoughts (Studies 3 and 4) and of survival-related and planning thoughts (Study 4). The ratings indicated that death-related thoughts were induced more by the dying scenarios than by the survival scenarios, whereas the reverse was observed for both survival-related and planning thoughts. The findings are discussed in the light of two contrasting views of the influence of mortality salience in the survival effect.     

Social learning across species: horses (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Equus caballus</Emphasis>) learn from humans by observation

This study examines whether horses can learn by observing humans, given that they identify individual humans and orientate on the focus of human attention. We tested 24 horses aged between 3 and 12. Twelve horses were tested on whether they would learn to open a feeding apparatus by observing a familiar person. The other 12 were controls and received exactly the same experimental procedure, but without a demonstration of how to operate the apparatus. More horses from the group with demonstration (8/12) reached the learning criterion of opening the feeder twenty times consecutively than horses from the control group (2/12), and younger horses seemed to reach the criterion more quickly. Horses not reaching the learning criteria approached the human experimenters more often than those that did. The results demonstrate that horses learn socially across species, in this case from humans.     

Ageing, remembering, and executive function

This study was designed to investigate the relationship between executive functions and the age-related decline in episodic memory through the states-of-awareness approach. Following the presentation of a word list, a group of younger adults and a group of older adults undertook a recognition test in which they classified their responses according to the Remember-Know-Guess procedure (Gardiner & Richardson-Klavehn, 2000). In order to operationalise the executive function hypothesis, we investigated three specific executive functions (updating, shifting, and inhibition of a prepotent response) described in Miyake et al.'s (2000) theoretical model, and a complex executive task. The results revealed that fewer "R" responses were made during the recognition test by the older than the younger group, whereas there was no difference between the groups in the number of "K" responses. In addition, correlations indicated that remembering depended on executive function measures, whereas knowing did not. The hierarchical regression analyses showed that controlling for executive function, and particularly for the 2-back test, largely removed the age-related variance in remembering. These findings support the notion that executive dysfunction, and specifically updating decline, plays a central role in age-related memory loss.     

Bicultural self‐defense in consumer contexts: Self‐protection motives are the basis for contrast versus assimilation to cultural cues

Studies of social judgment found that the way bicultural individuals respond to cultural cues depends on their cultural identity structure. Biculturals differ in the degree to which they represent their two cultural identities as integrated (vs. nonintegrated), which is assessed as high (vs. low) bicultural identity integration (BII), respectively. High BII individuals assimilate to cultural cues, yet low BII individuals contrast to these cues. The current studies reveal that this dynamic extends to consumer behavior and elucidate the underlying psychological mechanism. We found that high (low) BII individuals exhibit assimilation (contrast) responses to cultural cues in consumer information‐seeking and choice. Furthermore, the pattern occurs with both subliminal (study 1) and supraliminal (study 2) cultural primes, and is mediated by the experience of identity exclusion threat (study 2). Results suggest that the interactive effect of BII and cultural cues arises from nonconscious defense against the exclusion of a cultural identity. Implications for self‐protective processes, automatic behavior, and marketing are discussed.     

Animates are better remembered than inanimates: further evidence from word and picture stimuli

In three experiments, we showed that animate entities are remembered better than inanimate entities. Experiment 1 revealed better recall for words denoting animate than inanimate items. Experiment 2 replicated this finding with the use of pictures. In Experiment 3, we found better recognition for animate than for inanimate words. Importantly, we also found a higher recall rate of “remember” than of “know” responses for animates, whereas the recall rates were similar for the two types of responses for inanimate items. This finding suggests that animacy enhances not only the quantity but also the quality of memory traces, through the recall of contextual details of previous experiences (i.e., episodic memory). Finally, in Experiment 4, we tested whether the animacy effect was due to animate items being richer in terms of sensory features than inanimate items. The findings provide further evidence for the functionalist view of memory championed by Nairne and coworkers (Nairne, 2010; Nairne & Pandeirada, Cognitive Psychology, 61:1–22, 2010a, 2010b).     

An upside to bicultural identity conflict: Resisting groupthink in cultural ingroups

Bicultural individuals differ in the degree to which their cultural identities are integrated versus conflicting—Bicultural Identity Integration (BII). Studies of judgment find that biculturals with less integrated identities (low BIIs) tend to defy salient cultural norms, whereas those with highly integrated identities (high BIIs) conform. This study examined biculturals' judgment in a group decision-making context, focusing on individuals' reactions to consensus in cultural ingroups. Results showed that low (vs. high) BIIs are more likely to resist the group consensus when it is incorrect, but not when it is correct. These findings suggest that contrarian impulses of low BIIs can be channeled towards facilitating constructive conflict—resisting groupthink that results from cultural homogeneity. Implications for bicultural identity, motives, and organizational behavior are discussed.     

Observe: A multimedia course on the observational analysis of behavior

OBSERVE is a preliminary release of a multimedia course for teaching undergraduate and graduate students how and why to study behavior by direct observation. The instructional text and commentary and the self-test and examination materials are built around a series of exercises in which the student observes and categorizes film clips of the behavior of several different species in several different ways. Incorporation of elements from The Observer software for computer recording and video analysis implements fully computerized continuous recording. At present, the text, together with check sheets that the program generates, enables a comparison between one-zero, instantaneous, and continuous sampling of the same behavioral excerpts. Matrices are printed out for an exercise in calculating interobserver reliability. Another section supports carrying out and writing up a small observational project on human behavior in the field. Plans for the future development of OBSERVE are briefly described.