Representation of letter position in spelling: Evidence from acquired dysgraphia

The graphemic representations that underlie spelling performance must encode not only the identities of the letters in a word, but also the positions of the letters. This study investigates how letter position information is represented. We present evidence from two dysgraphic individuals, CM and LSS, who perseverate letters when spelling: that is, letters from previous spelling responses intrude into subsequent responses. The perseverated letters appear more often than expected by chance in the same position in the previous and subsequent responses. We used these errors to address the question of how letter position is represented in spelling. In a series of analyses we determined how often the perseveration errors produced maintain position as defined by a number of alternative theories of letter position encoding proposed in the literature. The analyses provide strong evidence that the grapheme representations used in spelling encode letter position such that position is represented in a graded manner based on distance from both-edges of the word.     

Knowledge of counting principles: How relevant is order irrelevance?

Most children who are older than 6 years of age apply essential counting principles when they enumerate a set of objects. Essential principles include (a) one-to-one correspondence between items and count words, (b) stable order of the count words, and (c) cardinality—that the last number refers to numerosity. We found that the acquisition of a fourth principle, that the order in which items are counted is irrelevant, follows a different trajectory. The majority of 5- to 11-year-olds indicated that the order in which objects were counted was relevant, favoring a left-to-right, top-to-bottom order of counting. Only some 10- and 11-year-olds applied the principle of order irrelevance, and this knowledge was unrelated to their numeration skill. We conclude that the order irrelevance principle might not play an important role in the development of children’s conceptual knowledge of counting.     

Intergroup Contact Facilitates Physiological Recovery following Stressful Intergroup Interactions

A growing body of research has demonstrated the importance of intergroup contact in reducing fear, threat and anxiety in intergroup domains. Here we focus on the regulatory benefits of intergroup contact. We hypothesized that past intergroup contact would facilitate recovery from a stressful intergroup evaluation. White and Black participants completed a stressful evaluative task in the presence of two White or two Black interviewers while autonomic nervous system and hormonal responses were assessed. When examining how participants recovered after the stressful task, intergroup contact predicted faster physiological recovery for both autonomic and neuroendocrine reactivity. The importance of recovery from stress for physiological resilience in diverse contexts is discussed.     

Differential‐associative processing: A new strategy for learning highly‐similar concepts

For many students concepts like fluid and crystallized intelligence are difficult to learn because they have highly‐similar definitions that are easy to confuse. The challenge of learning these highly‐similar, yet often confused concepts is further complicated by the fact that students are tested on exams about differences between the concepts. In this theoretically‐motivated research we test a new strategy for learning highly‐similar pairs of concepts, called differential‐associative processing. The results revealed that performance on multiple‐choice questions was higher when students learned highly‐similar concepts using differential‐associative processing rather than a strategy of their own choice, text‐based elaboration, or identifying similarities and differences. The results also revealed that students spontaneously transferred differential‐associative processing to a neutral control condition. Taken as a whole, the present study supports differential‐associative processing as a useful strategy for learning similar concepts. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Improving visual short-term memory by sequencing the stimulus array

When multiple objects are presented briefly and simultaneously in a visual array, visual short-term memory (VSTM) can maintain only a limited number of these items. The present research report reveals that splitting the to-be-remembered items into two sequential arrays significantly increases VSTM performance relative to the simultaneous presentation of the same items. A memory benefit also emerges when the full object array is flashed twice (repeated) rather than being presented continuously for the same duration. Moreover, the sequential and repetition benefits are specifically pronounced for individuals with low performance for simultaneously presented items. Our results suggest that the conventional, simultaneous presentation mode may underestimate VSTM performance due to attentional limitations and/or competition between stimulus representations. In contrast, temporal segregation of the stimulus input may help participants maximize their performance and utilize their full VSTM capacity.     

Predictive validity of automatic self-associations for the onset of anxiety disorders

Negative self-cognitions are assumed to play an important role in the onset of anxiety disorders. Current dual-process models emphasize the relevance of differentiating between more automatic and more deliberate self-cognitions in this respect. Therefore, this study was designed to test the prognostic value of both deliberate and automatic self-anxious associations as a generic vulnerability factor for the onset of anxiety disorders between baseline and 2-year follow-up. To test the disorder specificity of negative self-associations, we also measured self-depressed associations. Self-report measures of depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, neuroticism, and fearful avoidance were included as covariates. Healthy controls (n=593), individuals who had depression (n=238), and individuals remitted from an anxiety disorder (n=448) were tested as part of the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety. Deliberate self-anxious associations predicted the onset of anxiety disorders in all groups. Automatic self-anxious associations showed predictive validity only in individuals remitted from an anxiety disorder or in currently depressed individuals. Although deliberate self-depressed associations were related to the onset of anxiety disorders as well, automatic self-depressed associations were not. In the (remitted) patient groups, only deliberate self-anxious associations showed independent predictive value for the onset of anxiety disorders together with self-reported fearful avoidance behavior. In the healthy controls, only a composite index of negative emotionality (depressive or anxiety symptoms and neuroticism) showed independent predictive validity. This study provides the first evidence that automatic and deliberate self-anxious associations have predictive value for the future onset of anxiety disorders.     

Repetition priming of face recognition

Three experiments investigating the priming of the recognition of familiar faces are reported. In Experiment 1, recognizing the face of a celebrity in an “Is this face familiar?” task was primed by exposure several minutes earlier to a different photograph of the same person, but not by exposure to the person's written name (a partial replication of Bruce and Valentine, 1985). In Experiment 2, recognizing the face of a personal acquaintance was again primed by recognizing a different photograph of their face, but not by recognizing the acquaintance from that person's body shape, clothes etc. Experiment 3 showed that maximum repetition priming is obtained from prior exposure to an identical photograph of a famous face, less from a similar photograph, and least (but still significant) from a dissimilar photograph.

We argue that repetition priming is a function of the degree of physical similarity between two stimuli and that lack of priming between different stimulus types (e.g., written names and faces, or bodies and faces) may be attributable to lack of physical similarity between prime and test stimuli. Repetition priming effects may be best explained by some form of “instance-based” model such as that proposed by McClelland and Rumelhart (1985).     

Personality, Social Networks, and Perceived Social Support among Alcoholics: A Structural Equation Analysis

ABSTRACT In this study we tested relations among personality characteristics, social network properties, and perceived social support both concurrently and prospectively. A sample of 294 men in treatment at a Department of Veterans Affairs Alcohol Treatment Unit was assessed during treatment and 3 months after discharge. Results of the cross-sectional structural equation analyses indicated that the personality characteristics of extraversion and neu-roticism were related to both social network properties and perceived social support. Characteristics of the alcoholic's social network were also related to perceived availability of support. Longitudinal analyses of perceived social support after treatment indicated that two social network properties (size of the network and the proportion of confidants) were predictive net of initial levels of social support. Extraversion and neuroticism were found to be indi-rectly related to perceived social support at Time 2 through their effects on social network properties and perceived social support during treatment. Implications of these findings for models of the nature and determinants of perceived social support are discussed.     

The Absence of Practice Effects on a Forced-Choice Temporal Order Judgment Task

The encoding of temporal order information improves with practice (Zacks, Hasher, Alba, Sanft, & Rose, 1984), but this improvement may be a result of task performance factors and may have little or nothing to do with encoding phenomena. In the present study, a forced-choice recency discrimination procedure was used to obviate the use of retrieval/performance strategies on the temporal order test. No improvement in temporal order judgments was observed.