Effects of guided notes versus completed notes during lectures on college students' quiz performance

We compared the effects of guided lecture notes versus completed lecture notes on pre- to postlecture improvements in quiz performance across two sections of a college course. The results of a counterbalanced multielement design did not reveal consistent differences between the two note formats on students' mean quiz scores. However, fewer errors occurred on complex (analysis-level) quiz questions in the guided notes condition than in the completed notes condition.     

Prayer and Subjective Well-Being: An Examination of Six Different Types of Prayer

Participants (N = 430) were recruited online and completed a measure of six prayer types (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication, reception, and obligatory prayer). Measures of subjective well-being (self-esteem, optimism, meaning in life, satisfaction with life) were also administered. Three forms of prayer (adoration, thanksgiving, reception) had consistently positive relations with well-being measures, whereas the other three forms of prayer had negative or null relations with the well-being measures. The prayer types having positive effects appear to be less ego-focused, and more focused on God, whereas the negative types have an opposite nature. These results highlight the role of psychological meaning as a part of the process whereby prayer impacts psychological well-being.     

Hobbes and the Imitation of God

This note discusses the implications of an incorrect quotation that appeared in Ted H. Miller's article, 'Thomas Hobbes and the Constraints that Enable the Imitation of God', from Inquiry42.2 (1999). Although surely inadvertent, this error is significant because the author uses it to support the thesis that Hobbes envisions philosophers imitating God by creating order out of chaos. The correct quotation from Leviathandoes not support such a thesis, and the paragraph in Leviathanfrom which it is taken actually runs counter to it. The correct quotation, taken in its context, and a passage from De Corporecited by Professor Miller reveal that Hobbes encourages philosophers to imitate God by following the order of creation in contemplation. In other words, philosophers imitate God by imitating the creation.     

Overgeneral autobiographical memory in children of depressed mothers

The goal of this study was to examine overgeneral autobiographical memory in a population at-risk for depression (i.e., children of depressed mothers). We predicted that children of depressed mothers would display less-specific memories than children of non-depressed mothers and that these results would be observed among children with no prior history of depression themselves. Participants in this study were children (age 8–14; 50% girls, 83% Caucasian) of mothers with (n = 103) or without (n = 120) a history of major depressive disorder during the child's life. Mothers' and children's diagnoses were confirmed with a diagnostic interview, and children completed the Autobiographical Memory Test and a measure of depressive symptoms. We found that children of depressed mothers, compared to children of non-depressed mothers, recalled less-specific memories in response to negative cue words but not positive cue words. Importantly, these results were maintained even when we statistically controlled for the influence of children's current depressive symptom levels and excluded children with currently depressed mothers. These results suggest that overgeneral autobiographical memory for negative events may serve as a marker of depression risk among high-risk children with no prior depression history.     

Evaluating the Acceptability of Four Versions of a Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Program

Fifty-nine college students used a modified version of the Treatment Evaluation Inventory-Short Form to evaluate the acceptability of four versions of a sexual abuse prevention program for 10-year-old children. The four versions include an information-based training approach or a behavioral skills training (BST) approach with a focus on strangers or known individuals as perpetrators of sexual abuse. A significant effect was found for both training method and type of perpetrator, with information-based approaches involving strangers as perpetrators rated the most acceptable. These results suggest that college students were most comfortable with sexual abuse prevention training programs for 10-year-olds when the programs did not involve an active rehearsal component and when the program focused on abuse perpetrated by a stranger rather than a known individual.     

A test of the survival processing advantage in implicit and explicit memory tests

The present study was designed to investigate the survival processing effect (Nairne, Thompson, & Pandeirada, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 33, 263–273, 2007) in cued implicit and explicit memory tests. The survival effect has been well established in explicit free recall and recognition tests, but has not been evident in implicit memory tests or in cued explicit tests. In Experiment 1 of the present study, we tested implicit and explicit memory for words studied in survival, moving, or pleasantness contexts in stem completion tests. In Experiment 2, we further tested these effects in implicit and explicit category production tests. Across the two experiments, with four separate memory tasks that included a total of 525 subjects, no survival processing advantage was found, replicating the results from implicit tests reported by Tse and Altarriba (Memory & Cognition, 38, 1110–1121, 2010). Thus, although the survival effect appears to be quite robust in free recall and recognition tests, it has not been replicated in cued implicit and explicit memory tests. The similar results found for the implicit and explicit tests in the present study do not support encoding elaboration explanations of the survival processing effect.     

Excitation Transfer Effects Between Semantically Related and Temporally Adjacent Stimuli

Although excitation transfer theory has been supported in numerous contexts, questions remain regarding transfer of arousal between events that are semantically and temporally related. This article summarizes two studies exploring excitation transfer between such events: sequential plays from a college football game. Study 1 failed to support the theory, instead suggesting contrast effects between stimuli. A follow-up study, which altered the method and incorporated psychophysiological measures, demonstrated that arousal may transfer between semantically related, temporally adjacent events. We suggest implications for the theory vis-à-vis misattribution of arousal, as well as opportunities to expand the application of excitation transfer.