The effects of a training package to teach note taking on the formation of equivalence classes

Effective note taking may enhance learning outcomes for students and serve as a directly observable form of mediation within a test context. Frampton et al. (2023) used stimulus fading to teach note taking in the form of a graphic organizer (GO) during matching-to-sample baseline relations training (MTS-BRT). Moderately high yields were observed with young adults despite the use of linear series training, abstract stimuli, and five-member classes. The present study taught the same note taking strategy using an intervention package including video illustration, voice-over instructions, and feedback to eight college students. Participants were taught to construct the GO during MTS-BRT with three three-member classes of familiar stimuli. Then the effects of MTS-BRT alone with three five-member classes of abstract stimuli was evaluated. Participants efficiently completed training with familiar stimuli and passed the posttest on the first attempt. With the abstract stimuli, participants engaged in GO construction during MTS-BRT and the six participants that demonstrated high levels of fidelity to the trained note taking strategy passed the posttest on the first attempt. These results replicate findings from Frampton et al. while using a more efficient intervention package. Benefits of teaching overt mediation responses are discussed as well as future directions for translation to applied contexts.     

Jeanine Thweatt-Bates. Cyborg Selves: A Theological Anthropology of the Posthuman

Abstract

Of all the research programs investigating radical life extension, cybernetic immortality is, by definition, the most ambitious. Several models fall within this category. While some include the possibility of “re-corporealizing” either as machine, biological entity, or hybrid, all models have several essentials in common. They require the ability to construct a non-biological (e.g., electronic) substrate that can model the functioning human brain, including the ability for consciousness (self-awareness) and a means for uploading into this artificial mind the contents of one's mortal life experiences. The individuals who have speculated most comprehensively on this include Ted Chu, Raymond Kurzweil, and Martine Rothblatt.¹1 Relevant books include: Ted Chu, Human Purpose and Transhuman Potential: A Cosmic Vision for Our Future Evolution (San Rafael, CA: Origin Press, 2014); Michio Kaku, The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind (New York: Doubleday, 2014); Ray Kurzweil, How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed (London: Penguin, 2013); Martine Rothblatt, Virtually Human: The Promise and the Peril of Digital Immortality (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2014).     

Be Kind to Three-Legged Dogs: Children's Literal Interpretations of TV's Moral Lessons

Sixty-four kindergarteners watched a 10-minute television episode intended to promote inclusive attitudes toward people with disabilities. In the original version, a disabled character was initially feared then eventually accepted. In an edited version, the fear was removed. The majority of children in both conditions, misunderstood the intended moral lesson, and failed to generalize beyond the specifics of the plot. Among children who were randomly assigned to the original version, those who understood the characters' goals and emotions better were less likely to comprehend the intended message of tolerance; remembering the happy ending had no effect. Among those assigned to the fear-removed version, those who better understood the goals and the happy ending were more likely to comprehend the intended message.     

Helping Children Enter Into Another's Experiences: The Look and Feel of It

The role of focusing 4-year-olds' attention on “feeling” or “looking” was examined in three experiments by testing predictions about children's memory for their interactions with an adult partner as they engaged in a collaborative task. Children made collages with an adult partner, and they were later asked to remember who placed the pieces on the collage. Children were more likely to claim they placed pieces actually placed by their partner (Experiments 1, 2, and 3), unless directed to think about how their partner looked when placing the partner's pieces (Experiments 1 and 3). False claims were observed after children were directed to think about how it would “feel” to perform the actions, whether motoric instructions were focused on the self (Experiment 2, N = 48) or partner (Experiment 1, N = 40, and Experiment 3, N = 24). Furthermore, false claims (referred to as I did it errors) were positively associated with accurate collage memory (Experiment 3). These findings suggest that adopting a perspective during encoding that involves “feeling” movements—whether focused on the self or partner—plays an important role in children's memory for collaboration (in this context, memory for contributions made by children or their adult partners to the completion of a collage). A focus on “feeling” may be a way to “enter into” the experiences of another, promoting anticipation and recoding, which may lead to better learning in both collaborative and non-collaborative contexts.     

Math and Memory in Bilingual Preschoolers: The Relations Between Bilingualism,Working Memory,and Numerical Knowledge

ABSTRACT

Bilingual children exhibit enhanced working memory (WM) skill relative to monolingual children, which could have implications for early mathematics development. Competency in mathematics is supported by conceptual and procedural mathematical knowledge, and numerical knowledge is in turn supported by underlying cognitive processes such as WM. Building on this evidence, we investigated whether bilingual preschoolers demonstrated, relative to monolingual peers, enhanced performance on WM and greater numerical knowledge. We examined the role of WM in numerical understanding for both monolingual and bilingual children. Participants were 4- and 5-year old children (74) recruited from preschools serving families from a range of socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic backgrounds. Participants completed a nonverbal WM task and a range of numerical-knowledge measures, specifically numeral identification, addition, symbolic magnitude comparison, and nonsymbolic magnitude comparison tasks. Results revealed that bilingual children outperformed monolingual peers on WM even after controlling for age and socioeconomic status (SES). Bilingual children also demonstrated greater performance on addition and numeral identification tasks. For all tasks except numeral identification, WM predicted children’s performance on numerical knowledge measures. We discuss results in terms of the possible unique cognitive and academic advantages bilingual children may have.     

Environmental Factors Contributing to Wrongdoing in Medicine: A Criterion-Based Review of Studies and Cases

In this article we describe our approach to understanding wrongdoing in medical research and practice, which involves the statistical analysis of coded data from a large set of published cases. We focus on understanding the environmental factors that predict the kind and the severity of wrongdoing in medicine. Through review of empirical and theoretical literature, consultation with experts, the application of criminological theory, and ongoing analysis of our first 60 cases, we hypothesize that 10 contextual features of the medical environment (including financial rewards, oversight failures, and patients belonging to vulnerable groups) may contribute to professional wrongdoing. We define each variable, examine data supporting our hypothesis, and present a brief case synopsis from our study that illustrates the potential influence of the variable. Finally, we discuss limitations of the resulting framework and directions for future research.     

Religious Social Identity as an Explanatory Factor for Associations Between More Frequent Formal Religious Participation and Psychological Well-Being

Abstract

Guided by social identity theory, this study investigated having a closer identification as a member of one's religious group as an explanatory mechanism for linkages between more frequent formal religious participation and better subjective psychological well-being (more positive affect, less negative affect, and more life satisfaction). Multivariate regression models were estimated based on data from 3,032 respondents, ages 25 to 74, in the 1995 National Survey of Midlife in the U.S. Results provided support for the hypothesis that religious social identity would mediate the associations between more frequent religious service attendance and all three dimensions of subjective psychological well-being examined. These findings contribute to understandings of self, religion, and health while indicating the continued importance of drawing on well-developed social psychological theory in investigations of linkages between religion and mental health.     

Parental Depression and Economic Disadvantage: The Role of Parenting in Associations with Internalizing and Externalizing Symptoms in Children and Adolescents

This study examined the effects of parental depression symptoms, economic disadvantage, and parenting behaviors in 180 children and adolescents of depressed parents (ages 9–15 years-old). Analyses revealed that while parental depression symptoms, economic disadvantage, and disrupted parenting behaviors were related to children’s internalizing and externalizing symptoms, disrupted parenting (e.g., intrusive, neglectful parenting) accounted for the association of parental depressive symptoms and economic disadvantage with children’s symptoms. This study provides evidence that disrupted parenting may be a common or shared process through which both parental depression and economic disadvantage are associated with children’s internalizing and externalizing problems.     

Relational Aggression in College Students' Dating Relationships

This study focused on romantic relational aggression, a variable that appears to predict intimate partner violence but remains understudied in the college population. College student participants (N?=?260) between the ages of 18 and 25 who reported that they had been in a romantic relationship during the past year completed measures of romantic relational aggression, sex role attitudes, acceptance of couple violence, and trait anger. Although respondent gender and sex role attitudes predicted romantic relational aggression as expected, gender did not moderate the relationship between sex role attitudes and relational aggression. Acceptance of violence predicted the perpetration of romantic relational aggression above and beyond the effects of trait anger and sex role attitudes. Trait anger also predicted romantic relational aggression.     

Composite Trauma and Mental Health Diagnosis as Predictors of Lifetime Nonsuicidal Self-Injury History in an Adult Online Sample

Some research indicates that trauma history might be related to nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI), but the exact nature of this relationship is unknown. Therefore, we created and tested a structural equation model for the relationships between composite trauma, NSSI, mental health diagnosis, and gender in a community sample of 296 U.S. adults recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk. Composite trauma and mental health diagnosis were significantly predictive of an NSSI history. The pathway between NSSI and gender was not significant. It is important to consider multiple domains of trauma, in the form of composite lifetime trauma, as risk factors for NSSI.