The impact of neuroticism upon married bipolar patients

The NEO Personality Inventory was given to 33 married patients with bipolar disorder. Consistent with previous findings, patients with bipolar disorder did not show an abnormal personality profile as a group. Extremely wide variation on all scales indicated that the group profile tells little about individual patients. Trait neuroticism robustly predicted psychiatric symptoms at entry to the study when assessed retrospectively for the two years prior to entry and when averaged over a year of treatment. Neuroticism also negatively predicted the self-confidence of the patients in this sample. The patients identified as outliers on neuroticism form a clinically difficult group for whom the distinction between Axes I and II appears to be less meaningful.     

The computer and eye processing pictures: The implementation of a raster graphics device

The process of solving visual analogies was examined using a digital video display and video-based eye tracker. The results indicated that increasing the complexity of an analogy by increasing the number of relations involved in the problem resulted primarily in increasing the time it takes to discover the mapping between the two members of the first pair. The display of the picture and the analysis of the eye fixations are described.     

Are pictures good for learning new vocabulary in a foreign language? Only if you think they are not

The current study explored whether new words in a foreign language are learned better from pictures than from native language translations. In both between-subjects and within-subject designs, Swahili words were not learned better from pictures than from English translations (Experiments 1-3). Judgments of learning revealed that participants exhibited greater overconfidence in their ability to recall a Swahili word from a picture than from a translation (Experiments 2-3), and Swahili words were also considered easier to process when paired with pictures rather than translations (Experiment 4). When this overconfidence bias was eliminated through retrieval practice (Experiment 2) and instructions warning participants to not be overconfident (Experiment 3), Swahili words were learned better from pictures than from translations. It appears, therefore, that pictures can facilitate learning of foreign language vocabulary--as long as participants are not too overconfident in the power of a picture to help them learn a new word.     

Book Review

This research reviews and analyzes case law related to private-school employment contracts. The cases deal with the validity of contracts and termination of employment in which the courts have been called upon to settle a variety of disputes between nonpublic schools and their employees. School administrators must be knowledgeable of the basic principals of contract law.     

The effects of interleaving versus blocking on foreign language pronunciation learning

Many studies have shown that students learn better when they are given repeated exposures to different concepts in a way that is shuffled or interleaved, rather than blocked (e.g., Rohrer Educational Psychology Review, 24, 355–367, 2012). The present study explored the effects of interleaving versus blocking on learning French pronunciations. Native English speakers learned several French words that conformed to specific pronunciation rules (e.g., the long “o” sound formed by the letter combination “eau,” as in bateau), and these rules were presented either in blocked fashion (bateau, carreau, fardeau . . . mouton, genou, verrou . . . tandis, verglas, admis) or in interleaved fashion (bateau, mouton, tandis, carreau, genou, verglas . . .). Blocking versus interleaving was manipulated within subjects (Experiments 1–3) or between subjects (Experiment 4), and participants’ pronunciation proficiency was later tested through multiple-choice tests (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) or a recall test (Experiment 3). In all experiments, blocking benefited the learning of pronunciations more than did interleaving, and this was true whether participants learned only 4 words per rule (Experiments 1–3) or 15 words per rule (Experiment 4). Theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Semantic information activated during retrieval contributes to later retention: Support for the mediator effectiveness hypothesis of the testing effect

Previous research has proposed that tests enhance retention more than do restudy opportunities because they promote the effectiveness of mediating information--that is, a word or concept that links a cue to a target (Pyc & Rawson, 2010). Although testing has been shown to promote retention of mediating information that participants were asked to generate, it is unknown what type of mediators are spontaneously activated during testing and how these contribute to later retention. In the current study, participants learned cue-target pairs through testing (e.g., Mother: _____) or restudying (e.g., Mother: Child) and were later tested on these items in addition to a never-before-presented item that was strongly associated with the cue (e.g., Father)--that is, the semantic mediator. Compared with participants who learned the items through restudying, those who learned the items through testing exhibited higher false alarm rates to semantic mediators on a final recognition test (Experiment 1) and were also more likely to recall the correct target from the semantic mediator on a final cued recall test (Experiment 2). These results support the mediator effectiveness hypothesis and demonstrate that semantically related information may be 1 type of natural mediator that is activated during testing.     

The Autopsy Imperative: Medicine, Law, and the Coronial Investigation

The central purpose of this paper is to address the tension between legal and medical discourses within the coronial system. Medical expertise, based largely upon internal autopsy, becomes positioned as providing the more important information, rather than the legal model which focuses on evidence gathering at the scene. This paper will examine the aspects of the history, philosophy and consequences of the processes by which the medical model gained its current dominance and will conclude that, while autopsies are necessary, they are also over-used in the coronial system.     

Training family therapy students in conceptual and observation skills relating to the therapeutic alliance: an evaluation

This paper describes a training intervention to develop students' conceptual and observation skills relating to the therapeutic alliance (TA) in family therapy. An evaluation methodology was developed and piloted. The knowledge and observation skills of family therapy students pre‐ and post‐training were assessed in comparison to a non‐intervention group of experienced clinicians. Students' mean scores on the knowledge measure improved significantly from 43 per cent to 74 per cent (p<0.001) and on the observation test from 43 per cent to 65 per cent, although this failed to reach statistical significance (p=0.08). There were no significant changes in the clinicians' scores over the same period. The clinicians' knowledge was higher initially, but the students had caught up after six months. In conclusion, training students in conceptual and observational skills relating to the therapeutic alliance may have a measurable effect. A ‘stepwise’ methodology for demonstrating the relationship between training in TA and outcomes for families is proposed.     

The effects of tests on learning and forgetting

In three experiments, we investigated whether memory tests enhance learning and reduce forgetting more than additional study opportunities do. Subjects learned obscure facts (Experiments 1 and 2) or Swahili-English word pairs (Experiment 3) by either completing a test with feedback (test/study) or receiving an additional study opportunity (study). Recall was tested after 5 min or 1, 2, 7, 14, or 42 days. We explored forgetting by means of an ANOVA and also by fitting a power function to the data. In all three experiments, testing enhanced overall recall more than restudying did. According to the power function, in two out of three experiments, testing also reduced forgetting more than restudying did, although this was not always the case according to the ANOVA. We discuss the implications of these results both for approaches to measuring forgetting and for the use of tests in promoting long-term retention. The stimuli used in these experiments may be found at www.psychonomic.org/archive.