Attitudes about memory dampening drugs depend on context and country

When people take drugs such as propranolol in response to trauma, it may dampen their bad memories – tempering recall of a traumatic event. We examined people's attitudes toward these drugs. Americans and New Zealanders read about a hypothetical assault inserting themselves into a scenario as a victim attacked while serving on a peace keeping mission (soldier role) or while walking home from a job as a restaurant manager (civilian role). Then they told us whether they should receive a memory dampening drug, and whether they would want to take a memory dampening drug. Subjects were negatively disposed towards a memory dampening drug, but Americans who adopted the soldier role were more in favor of having access to the drug than those who adopted the civilian role. We discuss the implications of these findings in relation to an increasing trend in ‘cosmetic neurology’, medicating with the goal of enhancement, rather than therapy. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Spirituality and Justice in Schindler's LIST: A Case Study Informed by Karl Barth and Gustav Gutierrez

In this paper I use the life of Oscar Schindler as a case study demonstrating how the Spirit hovers in the midst of lived experience, inviting Schindler to love and justice, all the while honoring whatever form of freedom Oscar Schindler feels the necessity to choose. My question is, “How was it possible to arouse Oscar Schindler's isolated and opportunistic individualism and transform it into a passionate and gratitude filled preferential treatment for the poor and disenfranchised?” The theology and spirituality of Karl Barth and Gustav Gutierrez inform the theological framework for this study.     

You say tomato? Collaborative remembering leads to more false memories for intimate couples than for strangers

Research on memory conformity shows that collaborative remembering--typically in the form of discussion--can influence people's memories. One question that remains is whether it matters with whom we discuss our memories. To address this question we compared people's memories for an event after they discussed that event with either their romantic partner or a stranger. Pairs of subjects watched slightly different versions of a movie, and then discussed some details from the movie, but not others. Subjects were better at remembering non-discussed details than discussed details: when remembering discussed details they incorrectly reported information from their partner's version instead of their own. In addition, subjects who discussed the event with their romantic partner (rather than with a stranger) were even more likely to report false memories. We discuss our findings in relation to other research on memory conformity, social influences on false memories, and memory systems within romantic relationships.     

Millisecond precision psychological research in a world of commodity computers: New hardware,new problems?

Since the publication of Plant, Hammond, and Turner (2004), which highlighted a pressing need for researchers to pay more attention to sources of error in computer-based experiments, the landscape has undoubtedly changed, but not necessarily for the better. Readily available hardware has improved in terms of raw speed; multicore processors abound; graphics cards now have hundreds of megabytes of RAM; main memory is measured in gigabytes; drive space is measured in terabytes; ever larger thin film transistor displays capable of single-digit response times, together with newer Digital Light Processing multimedia projectors, enable much greater graphic complexity; and new 64-bit operating systems, such as Microsoft Vista, are now commonplace. However, have millisecond-accurate presentation and response timing improved, and will they ever be available in commodity computers and peripherals? In the present article, we used a Black Box ToolKit to measure the variability in timing characteristics of hardware used commonly in psychological research.     

Case Study Evidence for an Irreducible Form of Knowing How to: An Argument Against a Reductive Epistemology

Over recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in arguments favouring intellectualism—the view that Ryle’s epistemic distinction is invalid because knowing how is in fact nothing but a species of knowing that. The aim of this paper is to challenge intellectualism by introducing empirical evidence supporting a form of knowing how that resists such a reduction. In presenting a form of visuomotor pathology known as visual agnosia, I argue that certain actions performed by patient DF can be distinguished from a mere physical ability because they are (1) intentional and (2) knowledge-based; yet these actions fail to satisfy the criteria for propositional knowledge. It is therefore my contention that there exists a form of intentional action that not only constitutes a genuine claim to knowledge but, in being irreducible to knowing that, resists the intellectualist argument for exhaustive epistemic reduction.

Using source cues and familiarity cues to resist imagination inflation

To investigate whether people can resist imagination inflation--the imagination-induced increased confidence that fictitious childhood events really happened--we gave them different types of cues. In a three-stage procedure, participants: (1) rated their confidence that a list of childhood events had happened to them, (2) imagined some of these events, and (3) made confidence ratings a second time. Subjects received either no cues about the source of the imagined event, an additional source cue (perspective), an additional familiarity cue (a plausibility questionnaire), or both cues. Only subjects who had both types of cues resisted imagination inflation. These results suggest that additional cues can sometimes safeguard people from becoming more confident that fictitious events were genuine experiences.     

Funded Personnel Services Research: Patterns and Trends

Completed and on-going research projects in the personnel services funded by the Office of Education were analyzed regarding the topics investigated, geographical area in which the research was being done, agencies receiving the grant, and the frequency of different research designs and statistical analyses. The analysis suggests that research in the personnel services is predominantly centered in the North Central accreditation region; is experimental in design and has an apparently growing programmatic emphasis; and, finally, is primarily concerned with college student populations. A number of questions are raised for consideration in the discussion and conclusions.