Memory for what, where, and when in the black-capped chickadee (Poecile atricapillus)

Episodic memory is the ability to remember personally experienced past events (Tulving in Organization of memory. Academic Press, San Diego, pp. 381–403, 1972). In non-human animals, the behavioural criterion for episodic-like memory is remembering “what” occurred in conjunction with “when” and “where” (Clayton and Dickinson in Nature 395:272–274, 1998). We conducted tests for “what, where, and when” memory in a food-storing bird, the black-capped chickadee (Poecile atricapillus). In Experiment 1, chickadees found sunflower seeds and mealworms in concealed sites in their home cage. Birds later re-visited these sites after either a short (3 h) or long (123 h) retention interval. Chickadees normally prefer mealworms, but at the long retention interval mealworms were degraded in taste and appearance. Chickadees showed some memory for what kind of food they had encountered and where, but no memory for when food had previously been found. Experiment 2 followed a similar procedure, except that chickadees searched for hidden sunflower seeds and mealworms in trees in an indoor aviary. These more natural conditions increased both the spatial scale of the task and the effort required to find food. In this experiment, birds showed evidence for all three components of what–where–when memory. Unlike some previous studies of episodic-like memory, birds’ behaviour cannot be accounted for by differential memory strength for more recent events. The results show that memory for what, where, and when occurs in food-storing birds outside the corvid family, does not require food caching or retrieval, and that remembering “when” can depend on the nature of the task.     

THE STUDY AND TREATMENT OF MOTHERS AND INFANTS,THEN AND NOW: MELANIE KLEIN'S “NOTES ON BABY” IN A CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOANALYTIC CONTEXT

This paper draws on Melanie Klein's (unpublished) observational notes of her infant grandson, written primarily in 1938 and 1939. Apart from moving glimpses into a young family's life, the notes contain astute observations of an infant's behavior and emotions. Compared with Klein's published writings, the style is less theoretical and polemical. Later, in his latency years, Klein's grandson was in analysis with Marion Milner, who in 1952 published a paper drawing on the treatment. The present paper focuses on (1) how observations and treatment of the same child and his family by clinicians in close relationships with each other (Klein, Milner, and Winnicott) fertilized reciprocal influence but also brought into question the validity of Klein's observations, and (2) the relative merits and contributions of various modalities in understanding the infant's psyche, including experimental research, direct observation, parent–infant psychotherapy, and reconstructions from older patients—as occurs, for example, in psychoanalysis.     

The suppression of q card selections: Evidence for deductive inference in Wason's Selection Task

The results of three experiments investigating the role of deductive inference in Wason's selection task are reported. In Experiment 1, participants received either a standard one-rule problem or a task containing a second rule, which specified an alternative antecedent. Both groups of participants were asked to select those cards that they considered were necessary to test whether the rule common to both problems was true or false. The results showed a significant suppression of q card selections in the two-rule condition. In addition there was weak evidence for both decreased p selection and increased not-q selection. In Experiment 2 we again manipulated number of rules and found suppression of q card selections only. Finally, in Experiment 3 we compared one- and two-rule conditions with a two-rule condition where the second rule specified two alternative antecedents in the form of a disjunction. The q card selections were suppressed in both of the two-rule conditions but there was no effect of whether the second rule contained one or two alternative antecedents. We argue that our results support the claimthat people make inferences about the unseen side of the cards when engaging with the indicative selection task.     

Social desirability in personality inventories: Symptoms,diagnosis and prescribed cure

An analysis of social desirability in personality assessment is presented. Starting with the symptoms, Study 1 showed that mean ratings of graded personality items are moderately to strongly linearly related to social desirability (Self Deception, Impression formation, and the first Principal Component), suggesting that item popularity may be a useful heuristic tool for identifying items which elicit socially desirable responding. We diagnose the cause of socially desirable responding as an interaction between the evaluative content of the item and enhancement motivation in the rater. Study 2 introduced a possible cure; evaluative neutralization of items. To test the feasibility of the method lay psychometricians (undergraduates) reformulated existing personality test items according to written instructions. The new items were indeed lower in social desirability while essentially retaining the five factor structure and reliability of the inventory. We conclude that although neutralization is no miracle cure, it is simple and has beneficial effects.     

Community implementation of PMTO™: Impacts on referrals to specialist services and schools

Sigmarsdóttir, M. & Björnsdóttir, A. (2012). Community implementation of PMTO?: Impacts on referrals to specialist services and schools. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 53, 506–511. In 2000, the city of Hafnarfjörður, Iceland, implemented Parent Management Training – Oregon Model (PMTO^?) to prevent and treat behavioral problems among children. This paper describes the implementation and findings regarding impacts in the community. As hypothesized, findings showed that the number of referrals to specialist services decreased in Hafnarfjörður following PMTO implementation and increased in two comparison communities not implementing the method. Within the Hafnarfjörður community, recorded instances of behavior problems reduced in elementary schools working in line with PMTO. The results presented are the first such findings in Iceland and suggest the kinds of systematic changes communities may experience following the implementation of an evidence‐based program.     

Timing individuals in a group using a computer-generated code sequence

A method of timing individual subjects in any size group is described. Using a standard movie projector, a specially produced 16-mm film projects codes composed of three letters. Each code remains on the screen for 2/3 sec. Subjects are asked to record the code they see after completing each experimental task. Computer programs, written in BASIC, generate the 1,000 codes used in the film, edit the subject-recorded codes, and translate the codes into time measures. The code sequence on the film is designed: (1) to discourage subjects from attempting to calculate their own interval times, (2) to catch false codes and recording errors, and (3) to allow the experimenter who knows the structure of the codes to easily translate individual codes into time.     

Links between attachment orientations and dispositional and diary–based measures of disclosure in dating couples: A study of actor and partner effects

Issues concerning the influence of attachment characteristics on own and partner’s disclosure were addressed using a sample of 113 couples in medium–term dating relationships. Individual differences in attachment were assessed in terms of relationship anxiety and avoidance. Disposition to disclose was assessed using questionnaire measures of self–disclosure, relationship–focused disclosure, and the ability to elicit disclosure from the partner; in addition, structured diaries were used to assess aspects of disclosure (amount, intimacy, emotional tone, and satisfaction) in the context of couples’ everyday interactions. Couple–level analyses showed that avoidance strongly predicted dispositional measures of disclosure, whereas anxiety (particularly partner’s anxiety) was related to negative evaluations of everyday interactions. Interactive effects of attachment dimensions and gender were also obtained, highlighting the complexity of communication behavior. The results are discussed in terms of the goals and strategies associated with working models of attachment.     

Hurt feelings in couple relationships: Exploring the role of attachment and perceptions of personal injury

This research program focused on perceptions of the appraisals and emotions involved in hurtful events in couple relationships. Study 1 tested the broad proposition that hurt feelings are elicited by relational transgressions that generally imply relational devaluation and that evoke a sense of personal injury by threatening positive mental models of self and/or others. Participants (N= 224) provided retrospective accounts of an experience of being hurt by a romantic partner. These accounts, together with expert judges’ ratings, showed that most hurtful events involved relational transgressions that signal both relational devaluation and threat to positive mental models; however, relational devaluation was relatively unimportant in explaining the hurt associated with partners’ distrust. A sense of injury emerged as the dominant theme in open‐ended accounts of emotional reactions; however, other negative emotions also featured and were related to the type of event reported. The emotion terms generated in Study 1 were used as stimuli in a word‐sorting task (Study 2). This study confirmed that many of the terms were perceived specifically as injury related, and shed further light on the link between appraisals and emotions. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Do development and learning really decrease memory? On similarity and category-based induction in adults and children

In a recently published study, Sloutsky and Fisher [Sloutsky, V. M., & Fisher, A.V. (2004a). When development and learning decrease memory: Evidence against category-based induction in children. Psychological Science, 15, 553-558; Sloutsky, V. M., & Fisher, A. V. (2004b). Induction and categorization in young children: A similarity-based model. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133, 166-188.] demonstrated that children have better memory for the items that they generalise to than do adults. On the basis of this finding, they claim that children and adults use different mechanisms for inductive generalisations; whereas adults focus on shared category membership, children project properties on the basis of perceptual similarity. Sloutsky & Fisher attribute children's enhanced recognition memory to the more detailed processing required by this similarity-based mechanism. In Experiment 1 we show that children look at the stimulus items for longer than adults. In Experiment 2 we demonstrate that although when given just 250ms to inspect the items children remain capable of making accurate inferences, their subsequent memory for those items decreases significantly. These findings suggest that there are no necessary conclusions to be drawn from Sloutsky & Fisher's results about developmental differences in generalisation strategy.     

Deciding between theories of how reasoning develops is hard

Although Sloutsky agrees with our interpretation of our data, he argues that the totality of the evidence supports his claim that children make inductive generalisations on the basis of similarity. Here we take issue with his characterisation of the alternative hypotheses in his informal analysis of the data, and suggest that a thorough Bayesian analysis, although practically very difficult, is likely to result in a more finely balanced outcome than he suggests.