Developmental differences in memory for cross‐modal associations

Associative learning is critical to normal cognitive development in children. However, young adults typically outperform children on paired‐associate tasks involving visual, verbal and spatial location stimuli. The present experiment investigated cross‐modal odour–place associative memory in children (7–10 years) and young adults (18–24 years). During the study phase, six odours were individually presented and paired with one of 12 spatial locations on a board. During the test phase, participants were presented with the six stimuli individually and were asked to place each stimulus on the correct spatial location. Children committed significantly more errors on the odour–place task than did young adults. However, item recognition memory for the odours or spatial locations involved in the odour–place associative memory task was similar between children and young adults. Therefore, poor odour–place associative memory in children did not result from impaired memory for the individual odours or spatial locations involved in the associations. The results suggest that cross‐modal associative memory is not fully developed in children.     

Bad riddance or good rubbish? Ownership and not loss aversion causes the endowment effect

People typically demand more to relinquish the goods they own than they would be willing to pay to acquire those goods if they did not already own them (the endowment effect). The standard economic explanation of this phenomenon is that people expect the pain of relinquishing a good to be greater than the pleasure of acquiring it (the loss aversion account). The standard psychological explanation is that people are reluctant to relinquish the goods they own simply because they associate those goods with themselves and not because they expect relinquishing them to be especially painful (the ownership account). Because sellers are usually owners, loss aversion and ownership have been confounded in previous studies of the endowment effect. In two experiments that deconfounded them, ownership produced an endowment effect but loss aversion did not. In Experiment 1, buyers were willing to pay just as much for a coffee mug as sellers demanded if the buyers already happened to own an identical mug. In Experiment 2, buyers’ brokers and sellers’ brokers agreed on the price of a mug, but both brokers traded at higher prices when they happened to own mugs that were identical to the ones they were trading. In short, the endowment effect disappeared when buyers were owners and when sellers were not, suggesting that ownership and not loss aversion causes the endowment effect in the standard experimental paradigm.     

Memory of self-performed tasks: Self-performing during recognition

Two experiments focused on whether performing actions described by to-be-remembered phrases during recognition enhances recognition compared with results of a standard verbal recognition test. The enhancement was predicted when the actions described by the phrases had been performed during study, but not when the phrases were verbally encoded by simply listening to and memorizing the material. Both experiments showed that enactment prior to recognition improved memory performance, but only when subjects had encoded by enactment. Experiment 1 also demonstrated that this test-procedure effect was independent of a bizarreness effect, which was observed only with the verbal encoding task. Experiment 2 showed that the effect of enactment during recognition was reduced when subjects used different hands for performing the actions during study and recognition- The findings support the assumption that some kind of motor memory record underlies the enactment effect that occurs when actions are performed during recognition.     

Religion as a resource for bereaved parents

This paper addresses the relationship between bereavement and religious beliefs for parents. In-depth, qualitative interviews of twenty-seven couples were used to address the question of the relative value of religion as a coping resource during grief. Also addressed were ways in which religion was a positive resource (enhancing recovery), a neutral resource (having no impact), or a negative resource (retarding recovery). Conclusions are presented regarding the resource value of religion and ways in which others, primarily clergy, family, and friends, can enhance positive and minimize negative impact of religion during bereavement.This is a revision of a paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the national Council on Family Relations in Nuvember 1989 in new Orleans.     

Pastoral response to marital alienation

Couples who seek pastoral help for their troubled marriages often display great hostility in their marital relationships. These negative feelings are the result of a cumulative process in which alienation builds over time through a series of hostile interactions by the distressed partners. Before assisting couples in solving the basic problems confronting them, the pastor must guide the couples in halting the destructive process of alienation and in establishing a climate of mutual cooperation in their marriages. Conventional marriage counseling techniques require a reasonable amount of positive couple interaction for the methods to be successful.Ch. Lt. Col. Gilbert W. Beeson, Jr., is a member of the United States Air Force Chaplain Resource Board. His address is: USAF Chaplain Board—LMDC/HCX, Bldg 814, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama 36112.