False memory in aging: effects of emotional valence on word recognition accuracy

Memory is susceptible to distortions. Valence and increasing age are variables known to affect memory accuracy and may increase false alarm production. Interaction between these variables and their impact on false memory was investigated in 36 young (18-28 years) and 36 older (61-83 years) healthy adults. At study, participants viewed lists of neutral words orthographically related to negative, neutral, or positive critical lures (not presented). Memory for these words was subsequently tested with a remember-know procedure. At test, items included the words seen at study and their associated critical lures, as well as sets of orthographically related neutral words not seen at study and their associated unstudied lures. Positive valence was shown to have two opposite effects on older adults' discrimination of the lures: It improved correct rejection of unstudied lures but increased false memory for critical lures (i.e., lures associated with words studied previously). Thus, increased salience triggered by positive valence may disrupt memory accuracy in older adults when discriminating among similar events. These findings likely reflect a source memory deficit due to decreased efficiency in cognitive control processes with aging.     

Is a Worried Citizen a Good Citizen? Emotions,Political Information Seeking,and Learning via the Internet

In this study we explore the mediating role of emotions in the process of becoming a politically informed citizen. Contrary to previous studies, we expect that anger and anxiety will have much different effects on this process. We suspect the role of anxiety is somewhat unique even among negative emotions as mediator of the causal effect of political threats on information seeking and learning. In addition, we speculate that anxiety should improve the quality of information seeking, not just its quantity. In one experiment, we induce emotions directly and find that while anger, enthusiasm, and anxiety can lead people to claim they will pay attention to the campaign, anger actually depresses total information seeking. In a second experiment, we examine the impact of realistic political threats and find that exposure triggers several emotions but that only anxiety boosts information seeking and learning.     

Getting involved: Testing the effectiveness of a volunteering intervention on young adolescents' future intentions

Past research has identified a host of benefits associated with volunteering and community involvement, yet involvement appears to be on the decline in recent years. We tested the effectiveness of an intervention designed to encourage involvement. We provided young adolescents with information about volunteer opportunities, benefits and ways to overcome barriers to involvement. Adolescents who participated in the volunteering intervention reported greater involvement intentions than control participants. In addition, mediation analyses indicated that adolescents in the volunteering intervention based their self‐worth to a greater degree on virtuous behaviour, which in turn predicted their involvement intentions, especially in the helping domain. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Arousal, working memory, and conscious awareness in contingency learning

There are wide individual differences in the ability to detect a stimulus contingency embedded in a complex paradigm. The present study used a cognitive masking paradigm to better understand individual differences related to contingency learning. Participants were assessed on measures of electrodermal arousal and on working memory capacity before engaging in the contingency learning task. Contingency awareness was assessed both by trial-by-trial verbal reports obtained during the task and by a short post-task recognition questionnaire. Participants who became aware had fewer non-specific skin conductance responses and tended to score higher on a digit span assessment. Skin conductance level was not significantly lower in the aware group than in the unaware group. These findings are consistent with studies showing that lower arousal and greater cognitive processing capacity facilitate conscious perception of a greater breadth of information within a scene or a task.     

Outcomes and Findings of Program Evaluation for the Intensive Mental Health Program

We describe changes in adaptive functioning for children enrolled in the Intensive Mental Health Program (IMHP), an innovative model for serving children with the most severe forms of SED. Most children show marked improvements in multiple indicators of role performance and symptomatology. Although a high risk, high need group, most children attended school regularly and lived with a stable caregiver at discharge.     

Differential sensitivity of recent vs. remote memory traces to extinction in a water-maze task in rats

Extinction has mostly been studied in conditioning paradigms, more sparsely in spatial tasks, and never as a function of the age of a spatial memory. Using rats, we compared the time-course of extinction of a recent (5 days) vs. remote (25 days) spatial memory in a water maze, over three probe trials. When the trials were set 24h apart, performance in the remote memory group was significantly worse on the first probe trial and significantly better on the third probe trial, as compared to the recent memory group, thereby showing differences between cognitive operations underlying recent vs. remote memory extinction. In contrast, when trials were given consecutively, both groups showed a similar profile of extinction. Furthermore, in a room with overly-salient cues providing a strong remote memory trace, no difference between groups was observed when the spaced extinction paradigm was used. These results might be related to a balance between reconsolidation and extinction processes occurring after a first retrieval experience, of which the outcome may depend on the extinction protocol, and on the age and strength of a memory.     

Parenting and adolescent well-being in two European countries

The main and interactive effects of parental behavioral control and parental support on adolescent adjustment were examined with students ages 15-19 in Italy (N = 391, 59.1% male) and The Netherlands (N = 373, 45.3% male). In general, parental support was associated with better adjustment and parental control was associated with worse adjustment. However, parental control as well as age and sex moderated the effects of parental support on psychological discomfort and expectations of future success. Positive self-perceptions were less well predicted. Further, there were more moderated effects in the Dutch sample than in the Italian sample. Generalizability of the contributions of parenting behavior to adolescent adjustment outside of a North American context is discussed.     

Speed of word recognition and vocabulary knowledge in infancy predict cognitive and language outcomes in later childhood

The nature of predictive relations between early language and later cognitive function is a fundamental question in research on human cognition. In a longitudinal study assessing speed of language processing in infancy, Fernald, Perfors and Marchman (2006) found that reaction time at 25 months was strongly related to lexical and grammatical development over the second year. In this follow-up study, children originally tested as infants were assessed at 8 years on standardized tests of language, cognition, and working memory. Speed of spoken word recognition and vocabulary size at 25 months each accounted for unique variance in linguistic and cognitive skills at 8 years, effects that were attributable to strong relations between both infancy measures and working memory. These findings suggest that processing speed and early language skills are fundamental to intellectual functioning, and that language development is guided by learning and representational principles shared across cognitive and linguistic domains.     

Attributional Beliefs About the Controllability of Stigmatized Traits: Antecedents or Justifications of Prejudice?1

Correlational studies show that prejudiced people attribute stigmatized traits to controllable causes, and blame stigmatized groups for their own fate. Attribution theory argues that causal attributions cause prejudice, and that changes in attributional beliefs produce changes in attitudes. In contrast, the justification–suppression model describes attributions to controllable causes as justifications of pre‐existing prejudices. Study participants reported their attitudes toward 1 of 4 stigmatized groups, read information that manipulated their attributional beliefs, listed their thoughts, and reported their attitudes again. Supporting the suppression–justification model, initially prejudiced participants spontaneously produced more thoughts about the controllability of stigmatized identities. Refuting attribution theory, manipulating attributional beliefs had no effect on attitudes. Implications for applications of attribution theory to reduce prejudice are discussed.