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.     

Assessing State Mental Contamination: Development and Preliminary Validation of the State Mental Contamination Scale

This 2-part study described the development and preliminary validation of the State Mental Contamination Scale (SMCS), a multi-item self-report measure of state mental contamination. In Study 1, community adults (N = 211) in the United States were randomly assigned to a pathogen disgust, moral disgust, or neutral condition and then completed the SMCS. Study 1 results supported a 1-factor structure of the SMCS items. Scores on the SMCS items evidenced good internal consistency and strong interitem correlations. SMCS scores were significantly greater following the 2 disgust conditions relative to the neutral condition and a full range of SMCS scores were found in the disgust conditions. An independent sample of community adults (N = 121) from the United States participated in Study 2 to extend Study 1 results. Study 2 results indicated that SMCS scores were manipulated independently of trait mental contamination, more strongly related to convergent than a discriminant measure, and shared unique variance with a criterion measure after controlling for convergent measures. The future use of the SMCS is discussed.     

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.     

Belongingness and Burdensomeness in Adolescents: Slovene Translation and Validation of the Interpersonal Needs Questionnaire

The Interpersonal Needs Questionnaire (INQ) for assessing thwarted belongingness (TB) and perceived burdensomeness (PB) has not been validated with community adolescents. We translated and administered the INQ to 307 Slovenian adolescents twice over 2–3 months and found that the 15‐item version (INQ‐15) did not fit without modification. TB and PB scales correlated with concurrent and later suicide ideation and lifetime suicide attempt history. The latent PB factor was associated with concurrent and later ideation controlling for TB, age, gender, depressive symptoms, binge drinking, and peer victimization. Suicide ideation and binge drinking were independently related to attempt history. Assessing and intervening on PB and binge drinking may be promising approaches to suicide prevention with community adolescents.     

Word norms for blind and sighted subjects: Familiarity,concreteness, meaningfulness,imageability, imagery modality,and word associations

Normative values for word characteristics were obtained from a sample of 12 college-educated, totally congenitally blind subjects on the basis of their ratings of 161 nouns on scales of familiarity, concreteness, meaningfulness, and imageability. The dominant modality of imagery for each image-evoking word and the strongest word associate for each item also were recorded. The same data were collected for a group of sighted subjects, both to provide a comparison group for the blind subjects and to test the comparability of sighted subjects’ ratings with existing norms. Ratings for sighted subjects correlated strongly with those norms, although the coefficients were slightly higher for ratings of concreteness and imageability than for ratings of familiarity and meaningfulness. Ratings of blind subjects correlated only slightly lower with existing norms for imagery and concreteness, but considerably lower for familiarity and meaningfulness.     

Predicting performance times from deliberate practice hours for triathletes and swimmers: what, when, and where is practice important?

In Studies 1 and 2, the authors evaluated deliberate practice theory through analyses of the relationship between practice and performance for 2 populations of athletes: triathletes and swimmers, respectively. In Study 3, the authors obtained evaluations of practice from athletes' diaries. Across athletes, length of time involved in fitness activities was not related to performance. For the triathletes, a significant percentage of variance in performance was captured by practice. This was not so for sprint events for the swimmers, in which gender was a significant predictor. In the diaries, physical activities were perceived as enjoyable. In contrast to the results obtained from questionnaires, enjoyment did not covary with an activity's relevance to improving performance. Although these findings highlight the importance of sport-specific practice, the authors question a domain-independent account of expertise based on deliberate practice.     

Disordered Eating in Women's Gymnastics: Perspectives of Athletes,Coaches, Parents,and Judges

This study examined the knowledge base and perspectives of current and retired gymnasts, parents, coaches and judges with respect to disordered eating in gymnasts. Surveys were designed for this study and included open-ended questions, Likert scales, and checklists. The results indicated that various discrepancies existed between the groups' reports. For example, the retired gymnasts reported more eating disorders and negative views of their experiences than did the current gymnasts. The coaches attributed the use of unhealthy weight control practices to other coaches but not to themselves. Gymnasts who received disparaging comments about their bodies or instructions to lose weight had significantly more disordered eating patterns than those who had not received such comments. The importance of one's social environment on eating and weight control practices is emphasized. Every group recommended further education about nutrition, adolescent development, body image, and psychological well-being. Limitations and future recommendations are addressed.     

Aging and judgments of duration: Effects of task complexity and method of estimation

The effects of aging on judgments of short temporal durations were explored using the prospective paradigm and the methods of verbal estimation and production. Younger and older adults performed a perceptual judgment task at five levels of complexity for periods of 30, 60, and 120 sec. Participants either continued to perform the task for a specified interval (production) or were stopped and then verbally estimated the interval. Older adults gave shorter verbal estimates and longer productions than did younger adults. The methods of verbal estimation and production yielded approximately equal duration judgment ratios once range effects were taken into account. Task complexity had little effect. The major conclusion is that duration judgment ratios decrease from younger to older adults when the intervals are filled with a mental task.     

Environmental events and induction of metamotivational reversals

Three administrations of the Telic State Measure were used to test the notion from reversal theory that environmental events may induce reversals in metamotivational state. Significant changes in scores on Telic State Measure items from three different groups of students experiencing three different environmental events and one student control group (total N=96) confirmed that unexpected environmental events could induce reversals from the telic to the paratelic metamotivational state.