The power of a musical instrument: Franklin, the Mozarts, Mesmer, and the glass armonica

In 1761 Benjamin Franklin invented the armonica (often referred to as the glass harmonica), an instrument designed to simplify the playing of the musical glasses. The instrument immediately became popular and inspired compositions by Wolfgang Mozart, who had the opportunity to hear and play one at the house of Franz Anton Mesmer. Armonica music was used by Mesmer in his séances, because he felt it could promote healing by propagating a mystical fluid that he called animal magnetism through the body. After Mesmer's theories were debunked by a highly respected panel of scientists, the armonica fell out of vogue. Because Franklin was on the panel that examined the discredited mesmerism, he indirectly contributed to his own invention's demise.     

Direct comparison of auditory implicit memory tests

In this experiment, we examined the degree to which four implicit tests and two explicit tests, all involving auditory presentation, were sensitive to the perceptual characteristics of the stimuli presented during study. Presenting stimuli visually decreased priming in all the implicit memory tests, relative to auditory presentation. However, changing voice between study and test decreased priming only in the implicit memory tests requiring identification of words degraded by noise or by low-pass filtering, but not in those tests requiring generation from word portions (stems and fragments). Modality effects without voice effects were observed in cued recall, but the opposite pattern of results (voice effects without modality effects) was obtained in recognition. The primary new finding is the demonstration that auditory memory tests, both explicit and implicit, differ in their sensitivity to the perceptual information encoded during study.     

An Interpersonal Analysis of Adult Attachment Style: Circumplex Descriptions, Recalled Developmental Experiences, Self-Representations, and Interpersonal Functioning in Adulthood

Previous research suggests that the structure of adult attachment is dimensional, but the specific dimensions remain unclear. Given its relational nature, studies should examine attachment structure in association with conceptually related interpersonal constructs. The interpersonal model ( Kiesler, 1996 ) provides an integrative framework to examine this structure and associations between dimensions of attachment security (i.e., Anxiety and Avoidance) and: 1) the dimensions of the interpersonal circumplex, 2) the five‐factor model of personality, 3) recollections of mothers and fathers, and 4) current self‐processes and adult social functioning. In two samples of undergraduates, the Anxiety and Avoidance dimensions were associated with a hostile‐submissive interpersonal style. Canonical correlation analyses revealed that dimensions representing combinations of Anxiety and Avoidance, and roughly corresponding to the dimensions from Secure (i.e., low Anxiety and Avoidance) to Fearful (i.e., high Anxiety and Avoidance) attachment and from Preoccupied (i.e., high Anxiety and low Avoidance) to Dismissive (i.e., low Anxiety and high Avoidance) attachment related to the interpersonal constructs. The Secure to Fearful dimension (i.e., overall attachment security) seemed to share relatively more variance with the interpersonal constructs. These dimensions were associated with theoretically consistent characteristics, recollections of early experiences with parents, self‐representations, and social functioning.     

Typology of violence derived from ratings of severity and provocation

Two exploratory studies examined ratings of the severity of violence of several behaviors. In Study 1, a very consistent ordering of the behaviors by severity was obtained from two groups of participants. The stated justification for the behaviors was manipulated, and both mitigation and aggravation effects were observed. Study 2 found that essentially the same ordering of behaviors could be obtained in a provocation-rating task, and that both the severity ratings and the provocation ratings yielded four interpretable types of violence upon factor analysis: more severe physical (V1), less severe physical (V2), more severe nonphysical (V3), and less severe nonphysical (V4). Individual profiles of severity ratings across these four types yielded two interpretable groupings of participants upon cluster analysis: a violence-sensitive group and a violence-tolerant group. The violence-tolerant group had lower severity ratings for three of the four types of violence. These empirical distinctions help to illuminate what appear to be different meanings of the term violent for different behavior categories and for different individuals.     

An interpersonal analysis of adult attachment style: circumplex descriptions,recoiled developmental experiences,self-representations,and interpersonal functioning in adulthood

Previous research suggests that the structure of adult attachment is dimensional, but the specific dimensions remain unclear. Given its relational nature, studies should examine attachment structure in association with conceptually related interpersonal constructs. The interpersonal model (Kiesler, 1996) provides an integrative framework to examine this structure and associations between dimensions of attachment security (i.e., Anxiety and Avoidance) and: 1) the dimensions of the interpersonal circumplex, 2) the five-factor model of personality, 3) recollections of mothers and fathers, and 4) current self-processes and adult social functioning. In two samples of undergraduates, the Anxiety and Avoidance dimensions were associated with a hostile-submissive interpersonal style. Canonical correlation analyses revealed that dimensions representing combinations of Anxiety and Avoidance, and roughly corresponding to the dimensions from Secure (i.e., low Anxiety and Avoidance) to Fearful (i.e., high Anxiety and Avoidance) attachment and from Preoccupied (i.e., high Anxiety and low Avoidance) to Dismissive (i.e., low Anxiety and high Avoidance) attachment related to the interpersonal constructs. The Secure to Fearful dimension (i.e., overall attachment security) seemed to share relatively more variance with the interpersonal constructs. These dimensions were associated with theoretically consistent characteristics, recollections of early experiences with parents, self-representations, and social functioning.     

The Yin and Yang of cell cycle progression and differentiation in the oligodendroglial lineage

In white matter disorders such as leukodystrophies (LD), periventricular leucomalacia (PVL), or multiple sclerosis (MS), the hypomyelination or the remyelination failure by oligodendrocyte progenitor cells involves errors in the sequence of events that normally occur during development when progenitors proliferate, migrate through the white matter, contact the axon, and differentiate into myelin-forming oligodendrocytes. Multiple mechanisms underlie the eventual progressive deterioration that typifies the natural history of developmental demyelination in LD and PVL and of adult-onset demyelination in MS. Over the past few years, pathophysiological studies have mostly focused on seeking abnormalities that impede oligodendroglial maturation at the level of migration, myelination, and survival. In contrast, there has been a strikingly lower interest for early proliferative and differentiation events that are likely to be equally critical for white matter development and myelin repair. This review highlights the Yin and Yang principles of interactions between intrinsic factors that coordinately regulate progenitor cell division and the onset of differentiation, i.e. the initial steps of oligodendrocyte lineage progression that are obviously crucial in health and diseases.     

Processing approaches to cognition: the impetus from the levels-of-processing framework

Processing approaches to cognition have a long history, from act psychology to the present, but perhaps their greatest boost was given by the success and dominance of the levels-of-processing framework. We review the history of processing approaches, and explore the influence of the levels-of-processing approach, the procedural approach advocated by Paul Kolers, and the transfer-appropriate processing framework. Processing approaches emphasise the procedures of mind and the idea that memory storage can be usefully conceptualised as residing in the same neural units that originally processed information at the time of encoding. Processing approaches emphasise the unity and interrelatedness of cognitive processes and maintain that they can be dissected into separate faculties only by neglecting the richness of mental life. We end by pointing to future directions for processing approaches.     

Modality effects in false recall and false recognition

R. E. Smith and R. R. Hunt (1998) reported a dramatic reduction in false remembering in a list-learning paradigm by switching from auditory to visual presentation at study. The current authors replicated these modality effects using written recall and visual recognition tests but obtained smaller effects than those in R. E. Smith and R. R. Hunt's study. In contrast, no modality effect occurred on auditory recognition tests. Manipulating study and test modality within-subjects (Experiment 2) and between-subjects (Experiment 3) yielded similar results. It was also found that subjects frequently judged critical nonstudied words as having been presented in the modality of their corresponding study lists. The authors concluded that subjects could retrieve distinctive information about a study list's presentation modality to reduce false remembering but only did so under certain conditions. The modality effect on false remembering is a function of both encoding and retrieval factors.     

Illusory recollection of voices

We investigated source misattributions in the DRM false memory paradigm (Deese, 1959, Roediger & McDermott, 1995). Subjects studied words in one of two voices, manipulated between‐lists (pure‐voice lists) or within‐list (mixed‐voice lists), and were subsequently given a recognition test with voice‐attribution judgements. Experiments 1 and 2 used visual tests. With pure‐voice lists (Experiment 1), subjects frequently attributed related lures to the corresponding study voice, despite having the option to not respond. Further, these erroneous attributions remained high with mixed‐voice lists (Experiment 2). Thus, even when their related lists were not associated with a particular voice, subjects misattributed the lures to one of the voices. Attributions for studied items were fairly accurate in both cases. Experiments 3 and 4 used auditory tests. With pure‐voice lists (Experiment 3), subjects frequently attributed related lures and studied items to the corresponding study voice, regardless of the test voice. In contrast, with mixed‐voice lists (Experiment 4), subjects frequently attributed related lures and studied items to the corresponding test voice, regardless of the study voice. These findings indicate that source attributions can be sensitive to voice information provided either at study or at test, even though this information is irrelevant for related lures.     

Age-related positivity effects and autobiographical memory detail: Evidence from a past/future source memory task

This study investigated whether the age-related positivity effect strengthens specific event details in autobiographical memory. Participants retrieved past events or imagined future events in response to neutral or emotional cue words. Older adults rated each kind of event more positively than younger adults, demonstrating an age-related positivity effect. We next administered a source memory test. Participants were given the same cue words and tried to retrieve the previously generated event and its source (past or future). Accuracy on this source test should depend on the recollection of specific details about the earlier generated events, providing a more objective measure of those details than subjective ratings. We found that source accuracy was greater for positive than negative future events in both age groups, suggesting that positive future events were more detailed. In contrast, valence did not affect source accuracy for past events in either age group, suggesting that positive and negative past events were equally detailed. Although ageing can bias people to focus on positive aspects of experience, this bias does not appear to strengthen the availability of details for positive relative to negative past events.