Individual differences in everyday retrospective memory failures

The present study examined individual differences in everyday retrospective memory failures. Undergraduate students completed various cognitive ability measures in the laboratory and recorded everyday retrospective memory failures in a diary over the course of a week. The majority of memory failures were forgetting information pertaining to exams and homework, forgetting names, and forgetting login and ID information. Using latent variable techniques the results also suggested that individual differences in working memory capacity and retrospective memory were related to some but not all everyday memory failures. Furthermore, everyday memory failures predicted SAT scores and partially accounted for the relation between cognitive abilities and SAT scores. These results provide important evidence for individual differences in everyday retrospective memory failures as well as important evidence for the ecological validity of laboratory measures of working memory capacity and retrospective memory.     

Student Burnout and Engagement: A Test of the Conservation of Resources Theory

The current study explored predictors of burnout and engagement in 1st-year college students. The theory of conservation of resources was used to create a path model for burnout and engagement. Specifically, the theory suggests that perceptions of demands mediate the relationship between resources and coping strategies. In turn, coping mediates the relationship of demands on the outcomes of burnout and engagement. Results indicate demands partially mediated the relationship between resources and coping strategies. Similarly, coping partially mediated the relationship between demands and burnout and engagement. Results suggest that teaching students adaptive ways of coping and extinguishing maladaptive ways of coping with the academic environment can increase engagement and decrease burnout. Implications for research, theory, and practice are discussed.     

Ethnic matching and treatment outcome with Hispanic and Anglo substance-abusing adolescents in family therapy.

This study examined treatment outcomes of 86 highly acculturated Hispanic and Anglo substance-abusing adolescents in functional family therapy, testing the hypothesis that ethnic matching of therapist and client is related to better treatment outcomes for clients. Adolescents reported on their substance use pre- and posttreatment on a timeline follow-back interview. Ethnically matched Hispanic adolescents demonstrated greater decreases in their substance use compared with Hispanic adolescents with Anglo therapists. Ethnic match status was not related to treatment outcome for Anglo clients. Thus, the matching hypothesis was supported for Hispanic clients only. The results underscore the importance of greater ethnic diversity among therapists and better cultural competency training for Anglo therapists. More research is needed on individual differences in the effects of ethnic matching.     

Factors that influence search termination decisions in free recall: an examination of response type and confidence

In three experiments search termination decisions were examined as a function of response type (correct vs. incorrect) and confidence. It was found that the time between the last retrieved item and the decision to terminate search (exit latency) was related to the type of response and confidence in the last item retrieved. Participants were willing to search longer when the last retrieved item was a correct item vs. an incorrect item and when the confidence was high in the last retrieved item. It was also found that the number of errors retrieved during the recall period was related to search termination decisions such that the more errors retrieved, the more likely participants were to terminate the search. Finally, it was found that knowledge of overall search set size influenced the time needed to search for items, but did not influence search termination decisions.     

Variation in working memory capacity and episodic memory: Examining the importance of encoding specificity

In the present study, we examined the extent to which encoding specificity influences the relation between individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) and episodic recall. Participants performed a paired associates cued recall task in which a rhyme or a semantic judgment was made during encoding. During recall participants were presented with the cue word along with either a rhyme or semantic cue. Across both rhyme and semantic conditions, encoding and retrieval conditions either matched or mismatched. When encoding and retrieval conditions matched, high WMC individuals outperformed low WMC individuals. When encoding and retrieval conditions mismatched, high and low WMC individuals performed equivalently. Importantly, this occurred because high WMC individuals were hurt more than low WMC individuals when conditions mismatched. These results demonstrate the importance of encoding specificity in the relation between WMC and episodic recall as well as of unifying prior work that has demonstrated that high WMC individuals are hurt more in some recall conditions than are low WMC individuals.     

Extensive performance on the antisaccade task does not lead to negative transfer

Executive-control processes regulate thoughts, emotions, actions, and behaviors that are critical for everyday functioning. Recently, researchers have suggested that these processes can be flexibly modified by tasks that require executive control. Specifically, it has been argued that executive-control tasks can deplete these executive-control processes, which can in turn lead to negative transfer on subsequent task performance. Importantly, the degrees of malleability in executive-control processes and transfer to different tasks are of ongoing debate. The present study critically examined the hypothesis that executive-control processes can be exerted and whether or not this exertion would negatively transfer to performance on various subsequent tasks. Across a series of experiments, negative transfer effects from extensive performance on the antisaccade task were not found. Traditional hypothesis testing and Bayes factor computations were used to validate these findings. Collectively, the present results put in question the use of the antisaccade task to observe both near and far negative transfer from using executive-control processes.     

Are math readiness and personality predictive of first-year retention in engineering?

On the basis of J. G. Borkowski, L. K. Chan, and N. Muthukrishna's model of academic success (2000), the present authors hypothesized that freshman retention in an engineering program would be related to not only basic aptitude but also affective factors. Participants were 129 college freshmen with engineering as their stated major. Aptitude was measured by SAT verbal and math scores, high school grade-point average (GPA), and an assessment of calculus readiness. Affective factors were assessed by the NEO-Five Factor Inventory (FFI; P. I. Costa & R. R. McCrae, 2007), and the Nowicki-Duke Locus of Control (LOC) scale (S. Nowicki & M. Duke, 1974). A binary logistic regression analysis found that calculus readiness and high school GPA were predictive of retention. Scores on the Neuroticism and Openness subscales from the NEO-FFI and LOC were correlated with retention status, but Openness was the only affective factor with a significant unique effect in the binary logistic regression. Results of the study lend modest support to Borkowski's model.