The effects of interference tasks on recency in the free recall of action events

Summary Lists of verbal instructions were read aloud and each was enacted either by the subject (SPTs) or by the experimenter (EPTs). In Experiment 1 free recall was made of lists of SPTs and EPTs either immediately after presentation, after an empty 20-s delay interval, or after a 20-s delay interval filled with backward counting. The recall of recency items was unaffected by the empty delay interval, but was somewhat reduced by the counting task. In Experiment 2 free recall was made of lists of SPTs and EPTs either immediately after presentation or after a delay that was filled with a single SPT or a single EPT, 20 s in length. The recency effect evident in the immediate-recall condition was virtually wiped out in the delay conditions, irrespective of whether the delay task matched those in the free-recall list or not. These results are discussed in terms of the mnemonic similarity of the two types of action event.     

Characteristics of social cognition in children with different symptom patterns

Clinically referred 6- to 12-year-old children as having Internalizing or Externalizing symptoms patterns on the Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist were compared on two social perspective taking tasks and three measures of personality. On the Chandler Social Perspective Taking Task and an interview assessing the conceptual understanding of friendship devised by Selman, social cognitive immaturity was more likely to be associated with Externalizing rather than Internalizing symptomatology, especially in boys. Both Internalizers and Externalizers maintained an expected developmental course on these measures, however, when compared to normative data. Greater maturity in the understanding of friendship was found among children who had higher self-esteem and a more internal locus of control and who used more adaptive coping strategies in stressful situations. Methodological issues in studies of psychopathology and social cognition are discussed along with the usefulness of assessing social cognitive maturity in clinical practice.     

Memory for medical history: Accuracy of recall

Medical diagnosis often depends on the ability of patients to recall and report their medical history. In this study 104 people kept health diaries for 3 months, recording the incidence, frequency, data, duration, and severity of health events (symptoms, illnesses, injuries, visits to health professionals, and medication). Memory for the events recorded was tested immediately after the diary-keeping period or at 1 month or 3 months later. Effects of age, gender, education, health status, anxiety, and retention interval were observed. With a free recall procedure only 47 per cent of health events were recalled. Following the free recall two different kinds of intervention were compared. Use of a recognition checklist yielded recall of 29 per cent of the forgotten events but with a cognitive interview procedure only 6 per cent of the forgotten items were retrieved.     

Adolescent sibling differences in suicidal symptoms: The role of parent-child relationships

This study examined concordance for symptoms of suicide among 178 pairs of adolescent siblings, and the association of youth and maternal reports of parenting with variation in suicide ideation both across families and between siblings. Crosstabulation analyses indicated a significant risk of suicide ideation among siblings of adolescents who had made suicide attempts, as well as a significant degree of concordance for suicide ideation among pairs of siblings. Regression analyses indicated that reported levels of maternal warmth and harsh discipline, especially youth reports, were associated with suicide ideation, and that sibling differences on these parenting indices were associated with differences in suicide ideation both across families as well as between siblings. However, sibling differences in reported parenting did not contribute to prediction of suicide ideation above the variance accounted for by the simple levels of parenting reported by adolescents.     

A method for evaluating the effectiveness of educational software

A method for executing a detailed evaluation of educational software is described. Several issues are discussed, including the use of an experimental setting versus a field study, and the design of assessment instruments suited to evaluation of educational software. The instruments include a test of remedial skills, a 103-item test of conceptual understanding, and a system for recording students’ use of the software. The method was used to evaluate ConStatS, a program for teaching conceptual understanding of probability and statistics. Preliminary results of the evaluation are presented.     

Role of the Leader in Therapy Groups Conducted With Illicit Drug Abusers: How Directive Does the Leader Have to Be?

A 17-hour marathon group was conducted in a residential treatment center established for inmates in a correctional setting in the southeastern United States. The Hill Interaction Matrix (HIM-G; Hill, 1965) was used to measure the types of leader activity and the types of member activity during portions of each hour of the group activity. It was found that when the group was most therapeutic, there was a relationship between the therapists' actions and behaviors and the types of issues that were discussed in the group. The results that were found do not agree with some of the established drug and alcohol abuse literature.     

Intra- and cross-dimensional visual search for single-feature targets

Cross-dimensional visual search for single-feature targets that differed from the distractors along two dimensions (color and orientation) was compared with intradimensional search for targets that differed from the distractors along a single dimension (either orientation or color). The design of the first three experiments differed from those of previous studies in that participants were required to respond differently to each of the targets. Experiments 1-3 were similar except that in Experiment 1, the distractors were homogeneous; in Experiment 2, two types of distractors were used in equal proportions; and in Experiment 3, two types of distractors were used but one of the distractors was a singleton. The findings, contrary to those of previous studies, revealed that cross-dimensional search is at least as efficient and for some targets even more efficient than intradimensional search. These results suggest that the details of stimulus-to-response mapping are essential in comparing intra- and cross-dimensional tasks. Experiment 4 used a priming design and did not support an explanation based on grouping processes. We outline an explanation for all the findings based on a recent cross-dimensional response selection model by Cohen and Shoup (1997).     

From parallel to serial processing: a computational study of visual search

A novel computational model of a preattentive system performing visual search is presented. The model processes displays of lines, reproduced from Wolfe, Friedman-Hill, Stewart, and O'Connell's (1992) and Treisman and Sato's (1990) visual-search experiments. The response times measured in these experiments suggest that some of the displays are searched serially, whereas others are scanned in parallel. Our neural network model operates in two phases. First, the visual displays are compressed via standard methods (principal component analysis), to overcome assumed biological capacity limitations. Second, the compressed representations are further processed to identify a target in the display. The model succeeds in fast detection of targets in experimentally labeled parallel displays, but fails with serial ones. Analysis of the compressed internal representations reveals that compressed parallel displays contain global information that enables instantaneous target detection. However, in representations of serial displays, this global information is obscure, and hence, a target detection system should resort to a serial, attentional scan of local features across the display. Our analysis provides a numerical criterion that is strongly correlated with the experimental response time slopes and enables us to reformulate Duncan and Humphreys's (1989) search surface, using precise quantitative measures. Our findings provide further insight into the important debate concerning the dichotomous versus continuous views of parallel/serial visual search.