How focus at encoding affects children’s source monitoring

Retention of source information is enhanced by focus on speakers’ feelings about statements even though recognition is reduced for both adults and children. However, does any focus on another person lead to enhanced source monitoring, or is a particular kind of focus required? Does other-focus enhance source monitoring, or does self-focus detract from it? In Experiment 1, 4- and 6-year-olds watched two speakers make statements in a no-focus control or with focus directed on how they (or a speaker) felt about the statements or on perceptual features about themselves (or the speaker). Source monitoring decisions were enhanced by other-focus in both the perceptual and emotional conditions. However, the effect was larger for the emotional condition, and source monitoring exceeded no-focus controls only for this condition. Experiment 2 showed no effect of other-focus versus self-focus on source monitoring when questions were semantic.     

Manic-depressiveness and its correlates

Manic-depressiveness is the name here given to a hypothesized personality continuum that has, at one extreme, manic-depressive psychosis. A Manic-Depressiveness Scale is described, which comprises three scales, Manic Experience, Depressive Experience, and the sum of the two, since they are correlated. 250 undergraduate psychology students at the University of Adelaide and at Goldsmiths' College, London, were administered the Manic-Depressiveness Scale along with 12 measures including the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Revised). Scores on the total Manic-Depressiveness Scale tended (in order of size of association) to be correlated with Schizotypal Personality (and three subscales), Neuroticism, Magical Ideation, Mystical Experience, Belief in the Paranormal, absence of Social Na?veté, and Psychoticism. Manic Experience showed a pattern of relationships with the above variables broadly similar to that of Depressive Experience but included Creative Personality, while Depressive Experience included introversion. The relationship between manic-depressiveness and schizotypy is discussed.     

Field and observer viewpoint in remember-know memories of personal childhood events

This experiment examined the viewpoint and other phenomenal characteristics of childhood memories based on both personal recollections and self-knowledge. Participants were asked to provide examples of remember, know, and uncertain memories, and to rate each memory on a number of dimensions. Remembered events were generally viewed from a field perspective, while known-about events were generally viewed from an observer perspective. In line with earlier research, remembered events received the highest ratings for sensory and contextual detail, emotional content, and memory accuracy, while known-about events were given the lowest ratings. The results are discussed with reference to their possible implications for memory recovery or enhancement techniques that ask people to adopt a different viewpoint. Consideration is given as to whether a switch to a field perspective might encourage the acceptance of suggested details or events.     

When did Mrs Thatcher resign? The effects of ageing on the dating of public events

Two experiments investigated whether, in light of the commonly reported phenomenon of subjective time acceleration with age, there would be an effect of age on the dating of public events. In the first experiment covering the past seven years there was the suggestion of a decrease in forward telescoping with age, and in the second covering the period from 1977-89 this trend was continued, with the over-60s group now showing a tendency to date events too distantly. This effect is uncommon in dating studies and may offer evidence for the existence of time acceleration. An additional finding was that adults in the age range 35-50 years showed greater accuracy in dating events than did university students and adults over the age of 60.     

Temporal lobe lability in the highly transliminal mind

Transliminality is “a hypothesized tendency for psychological material to cross thresholds into or out of consciousness,” which has been proposed to derive from hyperconnectivity between temporal-limbic structures and sensory association cortices. Accordingly, it might be expected that transliminality would positively correlate with temporal lobe lability. To test this hypothesis, 135 undergraduate psychology students at an Australian and a British university completed the Revised Transliminality Scale (Lange et al., 2000) and the Personal Philosophy Inventory (Persinger, 1984a), a validated measure of temporal lobe lability. As predicted, scores on transliminality showed a strong association with the general temporal lobe scale (r=0.72), as well as moderate correlations with a number of other scalar variables and individual items. The findings are consistent with the idea that transliminality is related to more ungated processing related to temporal lobe functioning, and furthermore that temporal lobe phenomenology promotes transliminal experiences with mystical or religious overtones.     

Designing mouse behavioral tasks relevant to autistic-like behaviors

The importance of genetic factors in autism has prompted the development of mutant mouse models to advance our understanding of biological mechanisms underlying autistic behaviors. Mouse models of human neuropsychiatric diseases are designed to optimize (1) face validity, i.e., resemblance to the human symptoms; (2) construct validity, i.e., similarity to the underlying causes of the disease; and (3) predictive validity, i.e., expected responses to treatments that are effective in the human disease. There is a growing need for mouse behavioral tasks with all three types of validity for modeling the symptoms of autism. We are in the process of designing a set of tasks with face validity for the defining features of autism: deficits in appropriate reciprocal social interactions, deficits in verbal social communication, and high levels of ritualistic repetitive behaviors. Social approach is tested in an automated three-chambered apparatus that offers the subject a choice between a familiar environment, a novel environment, and a novel environment containing a stranger mouse. Preference for social novelty is tested in the same apparatus, with a choice between the start chamber, the chamber containing a familiar mouse, and the chamber containing a stranger mouse. Social communication is evaluated by measuring the ultrasonic distress vocalizations emitted by infant mouse pups and the parental response of retrieving the pup to the nest. Resistance to change in ritualistic repetitive behaviors is modeled by forcing a change in habit, including reversal of the spatial location of a reinforcer in a T-maze task and in the Morris water maze. Mouse behavioral tasks that may model additional features of autism are discussed, including tasks relevant to anxiety, seizures, sleep disturbances, and sensory hypersensitivity. Applications of these tests include (1) behavioral phenotyping of transgenic and knockout mice with mutations in genes relevant to autism, (2) characterization of mutant mice derived from random chemical mutagenesis, (3) DNA microarray analyses of genes in inbred strains of mice that differ in social interaction, social communication and resistance to change in habit, and (4) evaluation of proposed therapeutics for the treatment of autism.