A double dissociation of implicit and explicit memory in younger and older adults

This study examined whether age-related differences in cognition influence later memory for irrelevant, or distracting, information. In Experiments 1 and 2, older adults had greater implicit memory for irrelevant information than younger adults did. When explicit memory was assessed, however, the pattern of results reversed: Younger adults performed better than older adults on an explicit memory test for the previously irrelevant information, and older adults performed less well than they had on the implicit test. Experiment 3 investigated whether this differential pattern was attributable to an age-related decline in encoding resources, by reducing the encoding resources of younger adults with a secondary task; their performance perfectly simulated the pattern shown by the older adults in the first two experiments. Both older and younger adults may remember irrelevant information, but they remember it in different ways because of age-related changes in how information is processed at encoding and utilized at retrieval.     

Living in the Past,Present, and Future: Measuring Temporal Orientation With Language

Temporal orientation refers to individual differences in the relative emphasis one places on the past, present, or future, and it is related to academic, financial, and health outcomes. We propose and evaluate a method for automatically measuring temporal orientation through language expressed on social media. Judges rated the temporal orientation of 4,302 social media messages. We trained a classifier based on these ratings, which could accurately predict the temporal orientation of new messages in a separate validation set (accuracy/mean sensitivity = .72; mean specificity = .77). We used the classifier to automatically classify 1.3 million messages written by 5,372 participants (50% female; ages 13–48). Finally, we tested whether individual differences in past, present, and future orientation differentially related to gender, age, Big Five personality, satisfaction with life, and depressive symptoms. Temporal orientations exhibit several expected correlations with age, gender, and Big Five personality. More future‐oriented people were older, more likely to be female, more conscientious, less impulsive, less depressed, and more satisfied with life; present orientation showed the opposite pattern. Language‐based assessments can complement and extend existing measures of temporal orientation, providing an alternative approach and additional insights into language and personality relationships.     

Is There Social Consensus Regarding Researcher Conflicts of Interest?

Consensus around what constitutes researcher conflicts of interest (COIs) and awareness of their influence on our research are two critical steps in ensuring the integrity of our science. In this research, data were collected from individual scholars via 2 surveys 5 years apart and from journals and associations to examine the level of social consensus and moral awareness among scholars, journals, and associations regarding researcher COIs. Although we observed increases in level of social consensus and moral awareness between 2012 and 2017, results still revealed limited agreement about what relationships constitute a COI and limited awareness about the presence of and the ethical issues surrounding COIs. Although all journals and associations we examined supported COI disclosure, most did not provide researchers with detailed COI-related information, guidance, or disclosure tools. Limited social consensus and moral awareness regarding COIs is problematic because it inhibits the recognition, disclosure, and management of COIs and limits ethical decision making. We need to continue and enhance discussions about COIs and aim to create consensus and awareness where we do not have it with the goal of reducing potential scientific misconduct related to COIs.     

Varying Levels and Types of Engagement in an Online Relationship Enhancement Program for Couples Following Breast Cancer

Engagement in online interventions, defined as the extent to which participants are involved in and attentive to the contents of the intervention, has been shown to predict treatment outcome. However, participant engagement and program completion are often quite low. Aiming to provide insights that could help improve engagement, this study explores engagement in an online intervention for young couples with breast cancer, Couplelinks, by describing the development of a method to assess engagement, presenting a framework for understanding varying engagement levels, and discussing strategies used by Couplelinks facilitators to work with participants of differing engagement levels. The measure of engagement developed for this study was a composite consisting of indices of average completion time, accountability, and attitude. Utilizing this composite measure, the following distinct “couple types,” with varying levels of engagement, were discerned: (a) “keen” couples, (b) “compliant” couples, (c) “apologetic” couples, and (d) “straggling” couples. Facilitators’ approaches to working with each type of couple and suggestions for potential therapeutic applications are discussed. The finding that couples vary in terms of engagement level, and not solely based on facilitator skill and/or involvement, supports the need to better understand the concept of engagement in order to make online interventions more effective.     

High-Stakes Testing Case Study: A Latent Variable Approach for Assessing Measurement and Prediction Invariance

Psychometrika - The existence of differences in prediction systems involving test scores across demographic groups continues to be a thorny and unresolved scientific, professional, and societal...     

Cognitive control and lexical access in younger and older bilinguals

Ninety-six participants, who were younger (20 years) or older (68 years) adults and either monolingual or bilingual, completed tasks assessing working memory, lexical retrieval, and executive control. Younger participants performed most of the tasks better than older participants, confirming the effect of aging on these processes. The effect of language group was different for each type of task: Monolinguals and bilinguals performed similarly on working memory tasks, monolinguals performed better on lexical retrieval tasks, and bilinguals performed better on executive control tasks, with some evidence for larger language group differences in older participants on the executive control tasks. These results replicate findings from individual studies obtained using only 1 type of task and different participants. The confirmation of this pattern in the same participants is discussed in terms of a suggested explanation of how the need to manage 2 language systems leads to these different outcomes for cognitive and linguistic functions.     

A Comparison of Attachment Theory and Individual Psychology: A Review of the Literature

The authors assert that the essential elements of attachment theory and Individual Psychology are similar to each other. In particular, both theories include a coherent and stable view of the self and the world and both acknowledge the importance of social interaction for the expression of these patterns. Additional suggestions for areas in which clinicians and researchers of either theory may collaborate are presented.