Personality and Memory in Old Age

We examined the impact of personality on episodic memory performance in a sample of 287 healthy adults aged 68-95 years. Extraversion and neuroticism were assessed with a standardized personality inventory. Episodic memory was assessed with an everyday task. Results from regression analyses controlling for the effects of age, gender, and education show that higher extraversion and lower neuroticism are associated with higher episodic memory performance. In addition, the strength of the correlations between neuroticism and episodic memory declined with increasing age in a male sub-sample, revealing an interaction between age and neuroticism.     

THE NELSON‐DENNY READING TEST AS A PREDICTOR OF COLLEGE GRADES

ABSTRACT

This report studied the predictive validity of the Nelson‐Denny Reading Test (NDRT). Using a sample of over 12,000 college students, the ability of the NDRT was compared to the ability of the Scholastic Aptitude Verbal Tests (SAT‐V) in predicting freshman grade point average and grades in English composition. For each test regression equations were calculated using a calibration group and then crossvalidated with a test group of the sample. The effectiveness of each test was compared applying three evaluation indices: multiple correlation coefficient, mean absolute error of prediction, and the proportion whose predicted grade was within 0.20 units of their actual grade. Essentially, the NDRT and SAT‐V were of equal value in predicting the criteria     

Different Anaphoric Expressions Are Investigated by Event-Related Brain Potentials

Event-related potentials were recorded to substantiate the claim of a distinct psycholinguistic status of (a) pronouns vs. proper names and (b) ellipses vs. proper names. In two studies 41 students read sentences in which the number of intervening words between the anaphor and its antecedent was either small or large. Comparing the far with the near distance condition revealed anaphor resolution specific effects: Ellipses triggered a potential shift with a short latency (approximately 120-200 ms) and with a fronto-central scalp distribution while pronouns and proper names triggered one with a longer latency (approximately 360-440 ms) and a parietal to right-occipital distribution. The early effect resembled the left-anterior negativity which has been related to syntax processing, while the latter resembled an N400 which is assumed to reflect semantic integration processes. These findings support the idea that ellipses and pronouns/proper names are processed by distinct mechanisms being implemented in distinct cortical cell assemblies.     

Watch out! That could be dangerous: valence-arousal interactions in evaluative processing

Seven studies involving 146 undergraduates examined the effects of stimulus valence and arousal on direct and indirect measures of evaluative processing. Stimuli were emotional slides (Studies 1 to 6) or words (Study 7) that systematically varied in valence and arousal. Evaluative categorization was measured by reaction times to evaluate the stimuli (Studies 2, 3, and 7), latencies related to emotional feelings (Study 3), and incidental effects on motor performance (Studies 4 and 5). A consistent interaction was observed such that evaluation latencies were faster if a negative stimulus was high in arousal or if a positive stimulus was low in arousal. Studies 1, 6, and 7 establish that the findings are not due to stimulus identification processes. The findings therefore suggest that people make evaluative inferences on the basis of stimulus arousal.     

Why good guys wear white

Affect is a somewhat abstract concept that is frequently linked to physical metaphor. For example, good is often depicted as light (rather than dark), up (rather than down), and moving forward (rather than backward). The purpose of our studies was to examine whether the association between stimulus brightness and affect is optional or obligatory. In a series of three studies, participants categorized words as negative or positive. The valence of the words and the brightness of the letters were varied orthogonally. In Studies 1, 2, and 3, we found that categorization was inhibited when there was a mismatch between stimulus brightness (e.g., light) and word valence (e.g., negative). Studies 4 and 5 reveal boundary conditions for the effect. The studies suggest that, when making evaluations, people automatically assume that bright objects are good, whereas dark objects are bad.     

Stuck in a rut: perseverative response tendencies and the neuroticism-distress relationship

Clinical views of neuroticism-linked distress often make reference to the perseverative sorts of mental processes that reinforce such experiences. The goal of the present 7 studies, involving 488 undergraduate participants, was to directly examine such perseverative processes. Individual differences in response perseveration were operationalized in terms of choice reaction time difficulties switching (vs. repeating) responses across consecutive trials. Response perseveration interacted with neuroticism in predicting negative emotion, dissatisfaction with life, and displays of negative emotion (Studies 1-4). Specifically, neuroticism-outcome relations were quite a bit stronger at high levels of perseveration. Additional studies (Studies 5-7) provided support for the convergent and discriminant validity of response perseveration. Overall, the results highlight the manner in which response perseveration reinforces experiences of negative emotion.     

Turning the other cheek. Agreeableness and the regulation of aggression-related primes

Aggression-related cues (e.g., violent media) can prime both hostile thoughts and the tendency to commit aggression. However, not everyone engages in an aggressive act after being exposed to an aggression-related cue. Some thought pattern, perhaps an automatic one, may prevent the cue-aggression sequence in some individuals. These considerations motivated the present research, which examined the potential for agreeableness to moderate the effect of aggression-related cues on behavior and cognition. In Study 1, we found that priming with aggression-related cues increased aggressive behavior, but only among individuals low in agreeableness. Study 2 showed that aggression-related cues activated prosocial thoughts among individuals high in agreeable affect (a component of agreeableness). These results reveal that agreeable individuals are able to short-circuit the cue-aggression sequence, likely by recruiting prosocial thoughts in response to aggression-related primes.     

The rise and decline of prospective memory performance across the lifespan

In the present study, the trajectory of prospective memory across the lifespan was investigated in a total of 200 participants from five age groups (4- to 6-year-old children, 13- to 14-year-old adolescents, 19- to 26-year-old adults, 55- to 65-year-old adults, and 65- to 75-year-old adults). In an event-based prospective memory task the prospective and the retrospective components were assessed separately. For the prospective component, the results showed better performance for adolescents and young adults than for children and 65- to 75-year-old adults. In addition, participants belonging to the latter group were more likely to forget the retrospective component after having noticed the prospective memory targets. Overall, these results indicate that across the lifespan prospective memory performance follows a similar inverted u-shape function as is well known for retrospective episodic memory.