Remembering Deese’s 1959 articles: The Zeitgeist, the sociology of science, and false memories

Two contemporaneous reports by J. Deese—one concerned with correct recall (1959a), the other with recall intrusions (1959b)-have differed dramatically in their citations to date. The differences represent an unusually compelling instance of the operation of the scientific Zeitgeist. The article dealing with correct recall was congruent with the Zeitgeist of memory research when it was published. Hence it flourished. Just the opposite was true of the article on intrusions, which by the mid 1970s had gone into eclipse. A markedly different Zeitgeist in the 1990s, however, led two investigators simultaneously and independently to adapt Deese’s intrusion method to the investigation of false memories.     

Embodied learning: Teaching sexuality and religion to a changing student body

Sexuality, more so than other subject areas, magnifies the embodied nature of teaching and learning as well as conspicuously silences open dialogue given its taboo status in many religious and theological contexts. Yet, student learning about sexuality that incorporates knowledge of and about religion, in particular, may greatly improve the public discourse about sexuality through our students as responsible citizens and as leaders in their chosen professions. To bridge this gap, through a year‐long collaboration, a group of professors and instructors with expertise and experience teaching sexuality and religion in a variety of disciplines and diverse institutional and religious contexts developed, tested, and refined classroom teaching strategies to shift from a content‐based “subject matter” to an embodied learning experience, resulting in perspective transformation as a primary student‐learning outcome. Findings in the form of “guiding questions,” encourage instructors to attend to contextual, experiential, and performative aspects of the classroom environment.     

Constructive Thought Strategies and Job Satisfaction: A Preliminary Examination

In order to examine the potential of constructive thought strategies for enhancing employee job satisfaction, an existing dispositional model of job satisfaction was expanded and tested. Structural equation modeling techniques indicated significant relationships among constructive thought strategies, dysfunctional thought processes, subjective well-being, and job satisfaction. In addition, two competing models were examined to test for the full or partial mediation of the effects of constructive thought strategies on job satisfaction. The implications of these findings for constructive thought strategy training interventions are discussed, along with directions for future research efforts.     

Motivations for Philanthropic Giving in the African American Church: Implications for Black College Fundraising

Since its inception, the Black church has been the center of African American fundraising and the single most effective fundraising mechanism for Blacks. The majority of African Americans are taught from a young age that they have an obligation to give to the church. According to Cheryl Hall-Russell, African Americans are experts at educating their prospective donors in the church setting. Both Hall-Russell and Emmett D. Carson suggest that a formalized structure, like that of the church could aid colleges and universities in their acquisition of African American contributions. Consequently, a study of the Black church and its African American congregants can be a vital source of information for those interested in improving the fundraising capabilities of Black colleges. Through historical inquiry and qualitative interviews with Black college alumni/church members, we explore these important issues.     

Family therapy and the notion of accountability: With reference to trends in individual psychotherapy

Family therapy both overseas and within Australia has seen a rapid rise in popularity and general acceptance as an important therapeutic intervention. Along with the growth in interest, however, has come an increased demand for accountability. The foundation stone for the accountability issue surrounds the questions of therapy efficacy. How effective is family therapy, and, indeed, if it is effective, what are the active elements or ingredients which facilitate positive client change? Three groups, in particular, have vested interests in questions relating to the effectiveness of family therapy: researchers, therapists, and consumers. Although both researchers and therapists, for a variety of reasons, have been concerned with the effectiveness of treatment for some time, it has only been relatively recently that there has been a concerted push from various sections of the consumer group, including administrators, legislators, and policy makers. The consumer group is now providing pressure on professionals as to what we have done, and are doing, to demonstrate that family therapy really “works.”     

Environmental Attention,Affect, and Altruism1

Three experiments were conducted concerning the effect of attention to positive or negative images of the physical environment on altruistic behavior: I. Some subjects listed and described aspects of their residential environments that were particularly pleasant while others described particularly unpleasant aspects. II. Subjects were exposed to slides of either attractive or unattractive outdoor environments. III. Subjects viewed slides of either attractive or unattractive environments while adopting an attentional set that focused only on positive or negative aspects of the slides. After these manipulations, subjects in each experiment encountered an ostensibly unrelated confederate who sought their assistance as a favor. Experiment I subjects who had thought about pleasant environments spent significantly more time helping than those who thought about unpleasant enviornments. Experiment II subjects who saw slides of attractive environments offered significantly more aid for a longer time period than subjects who saw slides of unattractive environments. Experiment III subjects who focused on positive aspects of attractive enviornments gave more help than subjects who focused on negative aspects of attractive environments, though overall differences were not significant. Attentional set produced no differential helping effects in subjects who had viewed unattractive environments. In all three experiments mood or affect was discussed as mediating the impact of environments on behavior.     

Availability and category-frequency estimation

Individuals judged how often examples of taxonomic categories had occurred in a study list. An availability hypothesis was tested--that frequency estimates are based on the retrieval of instances. Cued (by category names) recall of the examples served as an index of availability. The hypothesis was confirmed--there were strong positive correlations between frequency judgments and recall (with the influence of actual frequency removed)--given one or more of the following conditions: List instances were not categorized aloud as they were presented; frequency estimation was preceded by cued recall; frequency estimation was delayed by a week. Limitations on availability occurred under other conditions--notably, when individuals, during list presentation, named the categories to which items belonged and received feedback about their categorizations. Under these circumstances, correlations of frequency estimation and recall were often not significantly different from zero, and frequency judgments and recall sometimes reacted differently to changes in independent variables (e.g., frequency judgments of young and elderly subjects did not differ reliably, even though cued recall of young persons markedly exceeded that of elderly subjects).     

印度干细胞及遗传学研究的途径

在印度,科学家和政府对印度的基因组研究了干细胞研究充满了热情。而有关的伦理准则就显得尤为重要。印度在2000年颁布的准则是针对胎儿研究结果的保密性,以研究为目的而剩余的胚胎不能用于商业用途。辅助生殖技术应确保参与者的知情同意。保密性和遗传学秘密对遗传学研究是非常重要的。专家认为在干细胞与基因组研究领域中,伦理学及政府的阻碍并不是主要的负担,而主要的问题在于科技的发展与应用中的经济问题。同时,公众的积极参与也是非常重要的。     

How to stop and change a response: the role of goal activation in multitasking

Multitasking was studied in the stop-change paradigm, in which the response for a primary GO1 task had to be stopped and replaced by a response for a secondary GO2 task on some trials. In 2 experiments, the delay between the stop signal and the change signal was manipulated to determine which task goals (GO1, GO2, or STOP) were involved in performance and to determine whether the goals were activated in series or in parallel. As the delay increased, the probability of responding on stop trials changed very little, but GO2 task reaction times decreased substantially. Such effects are consistent with both a nondeterministic serial model (in which the GO1 goal is replaced by the STOP goal, which is subsequently replaced by the GO2 goal) and a limited-capacity parallel model (in which stopping and GO2 processing occur concurrently) with a capacity-sharing proportion that resembles serial processing.     

Retrieving information from a hierarchical plan

Plans give structure to behavior by specifying whether and when different tasks must be performed. However, the structure of behavior need not mirror the structure of the plan. To investigate this idea, the authors studied how plan information is retrieved in the context of a novel sequence-position cuing procedure, wherein subjects memorize two task sequences, then perform trials on which they are randomly cued to perform a task at one of the serial positions in a sequence. Several empirical effects were consistent with retrieval from a hierarchically structured representation (but not a non-hierarchical representation), including large sequence-repetition benefits, position-repetition benefits only for sequence repetitions, and a lack of robust task-repetition benefits. The data were successfully modeled by assuming that retrieval was time-consuming, susceptible to priming, cue-dependent, structurally constrained, and token-specific. In tandem, the empirical data and modeling work provide deeper insight into the representation of and access to information in memory that comprises a plan for guiding behavior.