The effect of pictorial detail and elaboration on children's retention.

In a visual memory task, two degrees of stimulus detail were compared to test Reese's hypothesis that stimulus detail would facilitate retention of paired associates for young children. Stimuli were presented in an elaborated or nonelaborated fashion so that the effect of detail on retention of both types of materials could be investigated. Four and 5 year-old children were included to assess a reported developmental trend that elaboration facilitates retention for older children but fails to do so for younger children. Both age groups performed equally well, and detail had no effect. Elaboration aided retention significantly. A second study, in which difficulty of the task was increased, yielded equivalent results. The constraints on performance by recall and recognition tasks were discussed.     

Effects of type of responding on memory/visual search: Responding just “yes” or just “no” can lead to inflexible performance

Interactions of stimulus consistency and type of responding were examined during perceptual learning. Subjects performed hybrid memory-visual search tasks over extended consistent and varied mapping practice. Response conditions required subjects to respond to both the presence and absence of a target, only when a target was present or only when a target was not present. After training, the subjects were transferred to a different response condition. The results indicate that: (1) performance on search tasks with stimuli that are variably mapped show no qualitative changes attributable to manipulation of response format; (2) improvement due to consistent mapping (CM) practice is attenuated in the no-only response condition; (3) yes-only CM training attenuates the subjects ability to transfer to no-only responding; and (4) yes/no CM training leads to the greatest improvement and transfer when compared with other responding conditions. The practice and transfer data support and extend previous research investigating effects of response set in memory/visual search and help to delineate factors that facilitate or inhibit reduction of load effects in memory and visual search.     

Improvement in memory with time

Groups of rats which had incompletely learnt to escape from shock into the lit arm of a Y-maze, were tested for retention of the habit at various times after training. These times ranged from 30 min. to 17 days. Retention was found to be poor from 30 min. to 5 days, showed a marked improvement at 7 to 10 days and a subsequent decrement after 14 days. These results parallel those previously found for the differential susceptibility to cholinergic drugs of habits of different age. They provide further evidence that memory strength increases with time up to a point, and then gradually decreases.     

Constraints on retrieval search for episodic information in children and adults

The hypothesis that a lack of structural constraint limits children's ability to use context and category cues to search associative memory for episodic information is examined in this study. Second and fifth graders and college adults were shown word triplets at acquisition and asked to recall the final target member of each triplet in a cued recall task. The manipulations concerned sources of associative structure that could constrain retrieval search. The degree to which the members of the triplets were associated was varied, as well as the kind of association, and the kind and amount of retrieval support provided in the cue, and encoding was constrained by orienting questions or was unconstrained. The results showed that children's effective use of retrieval cues was more dependent on episodic associative structure, retrieval support, and the constrained encoding of associative information than was adults'. Differences in the associative structure of information in permanent memory seemed to contribute to the results.     

Social dominance and interpersonal power: Asymmetrical relationships within hierarchy‐enhancing and hierarchy‐attenuating work environments

We studied whether high‐social dominant employees sustain hierarchies in different hierarchy‐enhancing and hierarchy‐attenuating organizations endorsing harsh and soft power tactics. We found that social dominance orientation was positively associated with harsh power tactics, and negatively associated with soft power tactics. Employees higher in social dominance orientation endorsed harsh and opposed to soft power tactics as respectively hierarchy‐enhancing and hierarchy‐attenuating legitimizing myths that promote a dominant‐submissive form of intergroup relationships. We also found that supervisors higher in social dominance, due to their dominant position, strongly opposed soft power tactics more than subordinates did. Amongst high‐social dominant employees in the hierarchy‐attenuating (vs. hierarchy‐enhancing) organization, we observed the strongest opposition to soft power tactics, which are the tactics most shared in an organization which tends to attenuate hierarchies.     

An electrophysiological study of school-aged children with a history of failure to thrive during infancy.

Sixty-five subjects, ages 8 to 12, participated in a visual electrophysiological study. Twenty-two of the subjects had received a diagnosis of nonorganic failure-to-thrive (FTT) before the age of three. The remaining 43 subjects had no history of FTT and served as Controls. IQs were obtained with the abbreviated WISC-III, and the Controls were split into two groups, LO IQ and HI IQ, to provide a LO IQ Control group with an average IQ equivalent to the FTT group. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from five scalp locations during a cued continuous performance task (CPT). Subjects had to press a button every time they saw the letter "X" following the letter "A" (50 targets out of 400 stimuli). During the CPT, the FTT subjects made marginally more errors of omission to targets than the LO IQ Control group and significantly more errors of omission than the HI IQ Control subjects. The groups did not differ significantly on errors of commission (false alarms) or reaction times to targets. ERP averages revealed a group difference in amplitude in a late slow wave for the 50 non-X stimuli (false targets) that followed the letter A. This difference was greatest over frontal sites, where the FTT group had a more negative going slow wave than each control group. Late frontal negativity to No Go stimuli has been linked with post-decisional processing, notably in young children. Thus, the FTT subjects may have less efficient inhibitory processes, reflected by additional late frontal activation.     

Cognitive, perceptual-speed, and psychomotor determinants of individual differences during skill acquisition

The authors describe a series of experiments that explore 3 major ability determinants of individual differences in skill acquisition in the context of prior theory (e.g., P.L. Ackerman, 1988) and subsequent empirical and theoretical research. Experiment 1 assessed the predictability of individual differences in asymptotic skill levels on the Kanfer-Ackerman Air Traffic Controller (ATC) task. Experiment 2 provided an exploration of the construct space underlying perceptual-speed abilities. Experiment 3 concerned an evaluation of theoretical predictions for individual differences in performance over skill development in a complex air traffic control simulation task (TRACON) and the ATC task, with an extensive battery of general and perceptual-speed measures, along with a newly developed PC-based suite of psychomotor ability measures. Evidence addressing the predictability of individual differences in performance at early, intermediate, and asymptotic levels of practice is presented.     

The development of therapeutic alliance during psychological assessment: patient and therapist perspectives across treatment

We examined the impact of patient- and therapist-rated alliance developed during psychological assessment on the subsequent alliance measured early and late in formal psychotherapy. We hypothesized that a working alliance developed during psychological assessment conducted from a collaborative therapeutic model of assessment (TMA; Finn & Tonsager, 1992, 1997; Fischer, 1994) between the patient and therapist would carry into formal psychotherapy. We also hypothesized that alliance for those patients receiving a TMA would be significantly greater than patients receiving psychological testing as usual. To test this hypothesis, we administered the Combined Alliance Short Form-Patient Version (Hatcher & Barends, 1996) and the Combined Alliance Short Form-Therapist Version (Hatcher, 1999) to a sample of outpatients and their therapists at the end of the assessment feedback session, early, and late in psychotherapy. The hypotheses were supported as alliance scales rated at the assessment feedback session demonstrated positive and significant relationships with alliance throughout formal psychotherapy and in relation to a control group. The clinical utility and research implications of these findings are discussed.