A family study of memory processes and their relations to cognitive test scores

Members of 118 families (456 individuals) who had been tested on several measures of cognitive ability were retested on the same battery in order to determine test-retest reliability. They then were administered the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale and tests of visual memory, auditory memory, and figure memory, as well as other measures not discussed herein. Intercorrelations of memory tasks were low to moderate. Factor analysis resulted in a four factor solution. The different factors appeared to represent auditory sequential memory (Factor I); visual memory, as measured psychometrically (Factor II); visual memory, as measured experimentally (Factor III); and figure memory (Factor IV). A second order factor analysis yielded two factors, one consisting of basically psychometric measures of memory and the other of measures of memory obtained in the experimental psychological tradition. Memory measures generally showed low to moderate positive correlations with scores on the cognitive test battery. Significant spouse correlations were found for 3 of the 11 measures of memory. Significant midparent-midchild regressions were found for 9 of the 11 memory measures.     

Do Prosecutors Use Interview Instructions or Build Rapport with Child Witnesses?

This study examined the quality of interview instructions and rapport-building provided by prosecutors to 168 children aged 5–12 years testifying in child sexual abuse cases, preceding explicit questions about abuse allegations. Prosecutors failed to effectively administer key interview instructions, build rapport, or rely on open-ended narrative producing prompts during this early stage of questioning. Moreover, prosecutors often directed children's attention to the defendant early in the testimony. The productivity of different types of wh- questions varied, with what/how questions focusing on actions being particularly productive. The lack of instructions, poor quality rapport-building, and closed-ended questioning suggest that children may not be adequately prepared during trial to provide lengthy and reliable reports to their full ability. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Instructions for Authors

Instructions for Authors

Instructions for Authors     

The role of familism in stress and coping processes among African American and White dementia caregivers: effects on mental and physical health.

OBJECTIVE: To explore how familism, burden, and coping styles mediate the relationships between ethnicity and the mental and physical health of caregivers. DESIGN: A probability sample of 65 White and 95 African Americans respondents caring for an older family member with dementia was used to test hypotheses from a sociocultural stress and coping model using path analysis. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Measures of caregivers' health included subjective health, self-reported diseases, blood pressure, and heart rate. Mental health measures included self-reported depression and psychological symptoms. RESULTS: Contrary to the hypothesis, familism had an adverse effect on outcomes and was related to low education levels rather than to African American ethnicity. A buffering effect of active coping between being African American and diastolic blood pressure was found even after controlling for levels of education. CONCLUSIONS: Findings supported a core stress and coping model in which more behavior problems of care recipients were associated with poorer mental health of caregivers via greater burden and more use of avoidant coping. Results also demonstrate that this core model can be extended to physical health.     

The role of causal models in multiple judgments under uncertainty

Two studies examined a novel prediction of the causal Bayes net approach to judgments under uncertainty, namely that causal knowledge affects the interpretation of statistical evidence obtained over multiple observations. Participants estimated the conditional probability of an uncertain event (breast cancer) given information about the base rate, hit rate (probability of a positive mammogram given cancer) and false positive rate (probability of a positive mammogram in the absence of cancer). Conditional probability estimates were made after observing one or two positive mammograms. Participants exhibited a causal stability effect: there was a smaller increase in estimates of the probability of cancer over multiple positive mammograms when a causal explanation of false positives was provided. This was the case when the judgments were made by different participants (Experiment 1) or by the same participants (Experiment 2). These results show that identical patterns of observed events can lead to different estimates of event probability depending on beliefs about the generative causes of the observations.