Temporal precision and the capacity of auditory–verbal short-term memory

The capacity of serially ordered auditory–verbal short-term memory (AVSTM) is sensitive to the timing of the material to be stored, and both temporal processing and AVSTM capacity are implicated in the development of language. We developed a novel “rehearsal-probe” task to investigate the relationship between temporal precision and the capacity to remember serial order. Participants listened to a sub-span sequence of spoken digits and silently rehearsed the items and their timing during an unfilled retention interval. After an unpredictable delay, a tone prompted report of the item being rehearsed at that moment. An initial experiment showed cyclic distributions of item responses over time, with peaks preserving serial order and broad, overlapping tails. The spread of the response distributions increased with additional memory load and correlated negatively with participants’ auditory digit spans. A second study replicated the negative correlation and demonstrated its specificity to AVSTM by controlling for differences in visuo-spatial STM and nonverbal IQ. The results are consistent with the idea that a common resource underpins both the temporal precision and capacity of AVSTM. The rehearsal-probe task may provide a valuable tool for investigating links between temporal processing and AVSTM capacity in the context of speech and language abilities.     

Ecological momentary assessment of bulimia nervosa: Does dietary restriction predict binge eating?

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between caloric restriction (CR) and binge eating (BE) using ecological momentary assessment (EMA). Participants included 133 women with bulimia nervosa (BN) who completed an EMA protocol for 2 weeks. Logistic regression analyses tested whether CR increased the probability of BE episodes. The results revealed that the odds of BE increased on the day that restriction occurred as well as on the following day. In addition, both restriction and BE on one day predicted the likelihood of BE the subsequent day, but restriction for two days prior to the episode failed to add additional information for predicting BE. These findings support the cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) model of BN, suggesting that self-reported dietary restriction is predictive of subsequent BE episodes, and that reducing dietary restriction in treatment may lead to improvements in bulimic symptoms.     

Personality and strength-related attitude dimensions: Between and within-person relationships

Examined personality variables as predictors and moderators of strength-related attitude dimensions (SRAD) using multilevel modeling. Results revealed significant person-level variation in attitude importance, extremity, and ambivalence across attitude objects. Study 1 found the personality variable of need to evaluate (NE) predicted extremity across attitude objects, and finding meaning in life (ML) was predictive of importance across objects. Study 2 revealed that neuroticism and state anxiety were significant predictors of ambivalence across attitude objects. Finally, the NE, the Need for Cognition, and Openness to Experience each moderated the within-person relationship between extremity and ambivalence across objects, with higher values on the individual difference variables being related to stronger within-person relationships. Implications for research on attitude strength and the relationships between personality variables and attitudes are discussed.     

Dual-task processing in younger and older adults: similarities and differences revealed by fMRI

fMRI was used to explore age differences in the neural substrate of dual-task processing. Brain activations when there was a 100 ms SOA between tasks, and task overlap was high, were contrasted with activations when there was a 1000 ms SOA, and first task processing was largely complete before the second task began. Younger adults (M=21 yrs) showed activation in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and in parietal areas as well as in ventral medial frontal cortex and sub-lobar areas. Activations in older adults (M=71 yrs) did not differ significantly from younger adults except for higher activations in occipital and polar prefrontal cortex. The results were well fit by a model with two networks managing dual-task interference, a medial prefrontal network that detects changes in the stimulus situation and maps them to associated changes in the valence of response mappings and a lateral frontal-parietal network that initiates and carries out the shift from one task to the other. The additional activations in older adults as a group and the correlations of individual differences in activation with performance were consistent with recruitment within each of these networks. Alternative explanations such as hemispheric asymmetry reduction and reactive rather than proactive processing in older adults were not supported.     

A demonstration of dual-task performance without interference in some older adults

Highly efficient dual-task processing is demonstrated when reaction time to each of two tasks does not differ between the dual-task situation and the single-task situation. This has been demonstrated reliably in younger adults; nevertheless, the two extant studies of extensive dual-task training did not find evidence for it in any elderly adult. The origins of age-related differences after training were explored in a study in which the stimuli for the two tasks were perfectly redundant although two distinct responses were required. The dual-task situation thus greatly reduced the demands of stimulus categorization while still requiring two response selections and two response executions. After only limited training 8 of 8 younger adults and 5 of 8 older adults showed performance consistent with highly efficient processing. Three older adults failed to show this even after 12 training sessions. The results implicate stimulus categorization more than response selection as an important locus of inefficient dual-task processing, particularly for older adults.     

Social cognitive influences on Mexican Americans’ career choices across Holland’s themes

This study examined several propositions of social cognitive career theory ( [Lent et al., 1994] and [Lent et al., 2000]) with a sample of 393 Mexican American college students. It was hypothesized that person input (i.e., age) and background contextual variables (i.e., Anglo orientation, Mexican orientation, familism, instrumentality, and expressivity) would predict career self-efficacy across Holland’s (1997) six RIASEC types. In addition, we examined the proposed relations between career self-efficacy, career interests, and career choice goal across the six RIASEC areas. Our results indicated that (a) Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional career models were similar across gender and university affiliation groups, (b) gender differences were found in the Realistic career model, (c) institutional affiliation differences were found in the Investigative career model, and (d) the models were a good fit to the data. Implications for future vocational research and career interventions are discussed.     

A comparison of prompting methods to teach sight words to students with autism spectrum disorder

Time delay procedures are one of the most commonly used and effective strategies for teaching sight words to learners with disabilities. However, less is known about whether they are differentially effective and efficient with learners. This study compared the effectiveness and efficiency of progressive time delay and simultaneous prompting on sight word acquisition among three learners with autism spectrum disorder using an adapted alternating treatments design across word sets. For two participants, both procedures led to skill acquisition with no clear differences in efficiency. For the remaining participant, neither procedure was effective; therefore, the reading task was changed to a receptive one, and a stimulus fading intervention package was implemented.     

The role of money in the excitement of gambling

Many gamblers claim that gambling is intrinsically exciting, with money playing only a secondary role. To examine the effects of the expectancy of winning money, the authors randomly assigned 243 male college student gamblers to 1 of 6 experimental or 1 of 3 control conditions. Control participants either simply watched a videotaped horse race or they picked a horse, but without wagering; that horse later turned out to be either the winner of the race or the runner-up. Experimental participants wagered $1 on a horse for a chance of winning either USD 2, USD 7, or USD 15, with half winning and half losing their wagers. Wagering led to increased heart rates and subjective excitement as a function of the expected payoff and of winning as opposed to losing the wager. The study was replicated with 200 female college student gamblers with similar results. These findings support the notion that the excitement of gambling is tied to the expectancy of winning money.