Young Children's Reports of When Events Occurred: Do Event Type and Assessment Method Matter?

Studying young children's reporting about when various events occurred informs about the development of episodic memory and metacognition. In two experiments, 55 3‐ to 5‐year‐old children participated in two activity sessions, a week apart. During the activity sessions, they learned novel animal facts and body movements, and they coloured animal pictures and posed for body movement photos. Immediately after the second activity session, children were interviewed about when they experienced the various events. Overall, children were as accurate about learning events as physical events, but they were more accurate when asked temporal distance (e.g. ‘Which did you learn a longer time ago, “X” or “Y”?’) than temporal location questions (e.g. ‘Which did you learn before today, “X” or “Y”?’). The results suggest that young children's apparent difficulty recognizing new learning is not due to a rapid ‘remember‐to‐know shift’. Rather, the way we ask young children about when they experienced various events determines their accuracy. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Do all kids look alike? Evidence for an other-age effect in adults

The current study provides evidence for the existence of an other-age effect (OAE), analogous to the well-documented other-race effect. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrate that adults are better at recognizing adult faces compared with faces of newborns and children. Results from Experiment 3 indicate that the OAE obtained with child faces can be modulated by experience. Moreover, in each of the 3 experiments, differences in the magnitude of the observed face inversion effect for each age class of faces were taken to reflect a difference in the processing strategies used to recognize the faces of each age. Evidence from Experiment 3 indicates that these strategies can be tuned by experience. The data are discussed with reference to an experience-based framework for face recognition.     

"1-2-3": is there a temporal number line? Evidence from a serial comparison task

Evidence suggests that numbers are intimately related to space (Dehaene, Bossini, & Giraux, 1993; Hubbard, Piazza, Pinel, & Dehaene, 2005). Recently, Walsh (2003) suggested that numbers might also be closely related to time. To investigate this hypothesis we asked participants to compare two digits that were presented in a serial manner, i.e., one after another. Temporally ascending digit pairs (such as 2-3) were responded to faster than temporally descending pairs (3-2). This effect was, in turn, qualified by a local SNARC (spatial numerical association of response codes) effect and a local semantic congruity effect (SCE). Moreover, we observed a global numerical SCE only for temporally descending digit pairs. However, we did not observe a global SNARC effect, i.e., an interaction of numerical magnitude and the right/left response hand. We discuss our results in terms of overlearned forward-associations ("1-2-3") as formed by our ubiquitous cognitive routines to count off objects or events.     

The Costs of Silencing the Self and Divided Self in the Context of Physical Abuse,Racial/Ethnic Identity,and Medication Adherence in Women Living with HIV

Racial/ethnic minority status and physical abuse history are risk factors for higher mortality rates and lower adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART) in women living with HIV (WLWH) in the United States. The current study tested the hypotheses that minority status and physical abuse history might lead women to silence the self (minimize and hide thoughts and feelings in order to avoid relational conflict, loss, and/or abuse) as measured by the Silencing the Self Scale (STSS), and that STSS might mediate and moderate relationships of physical abuse and racial/ethnic minority status with ART adherence. Divided Self (DS; acting in ways inconsistent with inner thoughts and feelings), an STSS subscale, was targeted for study along with the total STSS score. Participants were 513 women from the U.S. Women’s Interagency HIV Study (M_age?=?46; 387, 75%, Black; 66, 13%, Hispanic; 60, 12%, White). Multiple logistic regressions indicated that across all racial/ethnic groups, physical abuse history related to higher DS and lower adherence. DS significantly mediated relationships between abuse and adherence. Compared to White women, Black women demonstrated worse ART adherence, but had lower total STSS. Racial/ethnic minority women and women with a physical abuse history who had higher DS had lower adherence than other groups. Results indicate that being a racial/ethnic minority or having a history of physical abuse may increase vulnerability to the deleterious effects of DS on ART adherence, findings that can help inform interventions to decrease health disparities in WLWH.

     

Are we assessing guilt correctly? An investigation of the psychometric properties of a prominent guilt measure

The construct of trait guilt has played an important role in psychological theory across many fields of psychology (e.g., as a diagnostic criterion in clinical psychology, as an individual difference in personality psychology, and as a motivational antecedent or emotional moderator in social and organizational psychology); however, the measurement of guilt has received comparatively limited attention in the literature. Specifically, existing measures have limited factor analytic support, limited evidence of convergent validity among the measures, and although the theoretical distinction between guilt and shame is well established, there is limited empirical support for the discriminant validity of these constructs as they are currently measured. The current study investigates the psychometric properties of the most commonly used measure of guilt, the Test of Self-Conscious Affect-3 (TOSCA-3; in: Tangney, The Test of Self Conscious Affect-3. George Mason University, Fairfax, 2000), in order to (a) examine the factor structure of the measure, (b) estimate the convergent validity of the measure with other guilt assessment instruments, and (c) examine the discriminant validity of guilt and shame. Results involving a sample of 1760 participants provide support for a multitrait-multimethod model and the discriminant validity of guilt and shame. However, limited evidence of convergent validity between the TOSCA-3 and the Revised Mosher Guilt Inventory (φ?=?.21) and the Trauma-Related Guilt Inventory (φ?=?.10) suggested the TOSCA-3 is not assessing guilt in the same manner as more contextualized measures of guilt, highlighting the importance of measurement choice for guilt researchers. Implications for the measurement of trait guilt are discussed.