Men and Women Inmates’ Accounts of Their Pathways to Crime: A Gender Analysis

Most of the research on gender differences in crime has been based on quantitative methods and focused on either women or men, but not both. In this qualitative study, we explored the association between gender and perceived pathways to crime. We employed a thematic analysis of 20 interviews with inmates, focusing on how they negotiated notions about femininity and masculinity while constructing their own pathways to crime. Men and women presented different pathways, but both oscillated between pathways guided by victimization and by power seeking. The findings suggest possible new directions regarding the use of gender binaries in criminology research and indicate the heavy toll of gender essentialism on both genders.     

The effects of overlearning and distributed practise on the retention of mathematics knowledge

In two experiments, 216 college students learned to solve one kind of mathematics problem before completing one of various practise schedules. In Experiment 1, students either massed 10 problems in a single session or distributed these 10 problems across two sessions separated by 1 week. The benefit of distributed practise was nil among students who were tested 1 week later but extremely large among students tested 4 weeks later. In Experiment 2, students completed three or nine practise problems in one session. The additional six problems constituted a strategy known as overlearning, but this extra effort had no effect on test scores 1 or 4 weeks later. Thus, long‐term retention was boosted by distributed practise and unaffected by overlearning. Unfortunately, most mathematics textbooks rely on a format that emphasises overlearning and minimises distributed practise. An easily adopted alternative format is advocated. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Congruency effects in part-list cuing inhibition.

In demonstrations of part-list cuing inhibition, subjects who are shown a subset of studied list words recall fewer noncue words than subjects not shown such part-list cues. We propose that part-list inhibition is governed in part by an incongruency principle: Inhibition occurs to the extent that part-list cues induce a retrieval framework different from that used to encode list items. In Experiment 1, word lists were studied followed by a test of free recall either without cues, or with cue words serially organized to be either congruent or incongruent with the order of studied items. In Experiments 2-4, cues consisted of every second study item in the original presentation order (congruent ones) or reordered to form famous names or familiar idioms that had been hidden in the study list (incongruent cues). More part-list inhibition was observed with incongruent cues than congruent cues in all 4 experiments.     

Misconceptions about incline speed for nonlinear slopes

In 3 experiments, college students provided qualitative predictions about a marble's speed along nonlinear inclines. When predicting the outcome of a race between identical marbles along differently shaped ramps, most students predicted incorrectly that the shorter path was necessarily quicker (the shorter-quicker belief). When comparing instantaneous speed at 2 points, most students predicted incorrectly that incline speed depended on the slope at that point (the slope-speed belief). A final experiment provides evidence that the slope-speed belief reflects a deeper fallacy regarding the resistance encountered while traversing inclines and lifting objects. This fallacy also predicts the prevalent belief that heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects during incline descent or free fall.     

Processing of basic speech acts following localized brain damage: a new light on the neuroanatomy of language

We examined the effect of localized brain lesions on processing of the basic speech acts (BSAs) of question, assertion, request, and command. Both left and right cerebral damage produced significant deficits relative to normal controls, and left brain damaged patients performed worse than patients with right-sided lesions. This finding argues against the common conjecture that the right hemisphere of most right-handers plays a dominant role in natural language pragmatics. In right-hemisphere damaged patients, there was no correlation between location and extent of lesion in perisylvian cortex and performance on BSAs. By contrast, processing of the different BSAs by left hemisphere-damaged patients was strongly affected by perisylvian lesion location, with each BSA showing a distinct pattern of localization. This finding raises the possibility that the classical left perisylvian localization of language functions, as measured by clinical aphasia batteries, partly reflects the localization of the BSAs required to perform these functions.     

Analyzing the dynamics of free recall: An integrative review of the empirical literature

Relatively few experiments have measured the time course of free recall from episodic or semantic memory. Of those that have, most report that cumulative recall is a negatively accelerated exponential (or hyperbolic) function that is characterized by two properties: asymptotic recall and rate of approach to asymptote. The most common measure of free recall performance (viz., the number of items recalled) provides a reasonably good estimate of asymptotic recall if a relatively long recall period is used (which is rare), but the effect of experimental manipulations on the rate of approach to asymptote cannot be determined without timing when recall responses occur. The research reviewed herein suggests that the rate of approach to asymptote may offer an estimate of the breadth of search through long-term memory. The search in question, unlike most of those investigated in the memory literature, is unique in that it requires minutes rather than milliseconds to complete.