A Systematic Review and Quantitative Analysis of Interteaching

Interteaching is a behavioral teaching method that departs from the traditional lecture format (Boyce & Hineline in BA 25:215–226, 2002). We updated and expanded previous interteaching reviews and conducted a meta-analysis on its effectiveness. Systematic searches identified 38 relevant studies spanning the years 2005–2018. The majority of these studies were conducted in undergraduate face-to-face courses. The most common independent variables were manipulations of the configuration of interteaching or comparisons to traditional-lecture format. The most common dependent variables were quiz or examination scores. Only 24% of all studies implemented at least five of the seven components of interteaching. Prep guides, discussions, record sheets, and frequent assessments were the most commonly implemented. Meta-analyses indicated that interteaching is more effective than traditional lecture or other control conditions, with an overall large effect size. Furthermore, variations in the configuration of the interteaching components do not seem to substantially limit its effectiveness, as long as the discussion component is included. Future research informed by the present review includes: (a) investigating the efficacy of interteaching in additional academic areas, online environments, workplace training, and continuing education, (b) testing alternative outcome measures, generalization, and procedural integrity, (c) conducting systematic component analyses, and (d) measuring social validity from the instructor’s perspective.

     

What matters is the underlying experience: Similar motor responses during processing observed hand actions and hand-related verbs

It is well-accepted that processing observed actions involves at some extent the same neural mechanisms responsible for action execution. More recently, it has been forwarded that also the processing of verbs expressing a specific motor content is subserved by the neural mechanisms allowing individuals to perform the content expressed by that linguistic material. This view is also known as embodiment and contrasts with a more classical approach to language processing that considers it as amodal. In the present study, we used a go/no-go paradigm, in which participants were requested to respond to real words and pictures and refrain from responding when presented stimuli were pseudowords and scrambled images. Real stimuli included pictures depicting hand- and foot-related actions and verbs expressing hand- and foot-related actions. We, therefore, directly compared the modulation of hand motor responses during the observation of actions and the presentation of verbs, expressing actions in the same category. The results have shown that participants gave slower hand motor responses during the observation of hand actions and the processing of hand-related verbs as than observed foot actions and related verbs. These findings support embodiment showing that whatever the modality of presentation (observed action or verb), the modulation of hand motor responses was similar, thus suggesting that processing seen actions and related verbs shares common mechanisms most likely involving the motor system and the underlying motor experience.     

HPV High Risk and Protective Behaviors: The Effects of Religious Affiliation

The majority of Americans identify themselves as belonging to some religious group. There is a mixed body of literature on whether or not religious affiliation has an influence on engaging in risky behaviors among young adults attending college. This study examined associations between religious affiliation, risky sexual practices, substance use, and family structure among a sample of predominantly white college females attending a southeastern university. Given the high risk of acquiring genital human papillomavirus infection as a result of high risk sexual practices, gaining a better understanding of how religious affiliation can be used to promote healthy sexual behaviors is warranted.     

Aging memories: differential decay of episodic memory components

Some memories about events can persist for decades, even a lifetime. However, recent memories incorporate rich sensory information, including knowledge on the spatial and temporal ordering of event features, while old memories typically lack this "filmic" quality. We suggest that this apparent change in the nature of memories may reflect a preferential loss of hippocampus-dependent, configurational information over more cortically based memory components, including memory for individual objects. The current study systematically tests this hypothesis, using a new paradigm that allows the contemporaneous assessment of memory for objects, object pairings, and object-position conjunctions. Retention of each memory component was tested, at multiple intervals, up to 3 mo following encoding. The three memory subtasks adopted the same retrieval paradigm and were matched for initial difficulty. Results show differential decay of the tested episodic memory components, whereby memory for configurational aspects of a scene (objects' co-occurrence and object position) decays faster than memory for featured objects. Interestingly, memory requiring a visually detailed object representation decays at a similar rate as global object recognition, arguing against interpretations based on task difficulty and against the notion that (visual) detail is forgotten preferentially. These findings show that memories undergo qualitative changes as they age. More specifically, event memories become less configurational over time, preferentially losing some of the higher order associations that are dependent on the hippocampus for initial fast encoding. Implications for theories of long-term memory are discussed.     

Number versus extent in newborns’ spontaneous preference for collections of dots

This study investigated processing of number and extent in newborns. Using visual preference, we showed that newborns discriminated between small sets of dot collections relying solely on implicit numerical information when non-numerical continuous variables were strictly controlled (Experiment 1), and solely on continuous information when numerical variables were controlled (Experiment 2). When number and extent were pitted against each other (Experiment 3), newborns showed no visual preference, suggesting that the two variables play comparable roles in attracting newborns’ visual attention. In contrast to reports of dominance of continuous variables, these findings suggest that multiple dimensions attract newborns’ attention and guide their visual exploration.     

Expression and processing of emotions: Relationships with cd4+ levels in 42 hiv-positive asymptomatic individuals

Abstract

Background: The study investigated the relationship between CD4+ levels and two emotion-related measures, one of expressed emotion (Hostility directed Inwards, Hdl) and one of capacity for emotional processing (Referential Activity, RA).

Method42 HIV-1 positive asymptomatic subjects, under AZT treatment, underwent CD4+ assessment immediately after a brief interview. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and analyzed using the Gottschalk-Gleser and Referential Activity scales. Of the Gottschalk-Gleser scales, only Hdl was considered.

ResultsAs hypothesized, the regression of emotion-related scores on CD4 + levels showed a curvilinearrelationship with Hdl scores, and a linearrelationship with RA scores. Subjects with the best immune status therefore showed intermediate levels of expressed emotion and a high capacity for emotional processing.

ConclusionThe findings support the usefulness of working through, rather than releasing emotion. Previous negative findings in the field might be explained by the unjustified assumption of linear relationships between expressed emotion and health.     

Towards a positive organizational study of family-owned businesses: Embracing a fertile territory

In response to the lead article “The study of organizational behavior in Family Business” (this issue), the present commentary focuses on the study of family-owned businesses from a positive organizational perspective with the aim of enriching the avenues for research proposed by the authors. Based on the socioemotional wealth approach, it is argued that family-owned firms represent a unique organizational context to advance positive organizational scholarship (POS) concepts. Likewise, the field of POS is emphasized as an important field of study to increase our understanding of family-owned businesses. In a selective review of the literature, the topic of prosocial practices is discussed. In doing so, it is hoped that scholars begin embracing the fertile territory at the interface between POS and family-business research.     

The cradle of causal reasoning: newborns’ preference for physical causality

Perception of mechanical (i.e. physical) causality, in terms of a cause–effect relationship between two motion events, appears to be a powerful mechanism in our daily experience. In spite of a growing interest in the earliest causal representations, the role of experience in the origin of this sensitivity is still a matter of dispute. Here, we asked the question about the innate origin of causal perception, never tested before at birth. Three experiments were carried out to investigate sensitivity at birth to some visual spatiotemporal cues present in a launching event. Newborn babies, only a few hours old, showed that they significantly preferred a physical causality event (i.e. Michotte's Launching effect) when matched to a delay event (i.e. a delayed launching; Experiment 1) or to a non‐causal event completely identical to the causal one except for the order of the displacements of the two objects involved which was swapped temporally (Experiment 3). This preference for the launching event, moreover, also depended on the continuity of the trajectory between the objects involved in the event (Experiment 2). These results support the hypothesis that the human system possesses an early available, possibly innate basic mechanism to compute causality, such a mechanism being sensitive to the additive effect of certain well‐defined spatiotemporal cues present in the causal event independently of any prior visual experience.     

Gender differences in mathematics anxiety: An artifact of response bias?

Abstract

Females are more likely than males to report anxiety about mathematics. Hunsley and Flessati (1988) examined two explanations for this difference: the sex-role socialization hypothesis, which states that gender differences occur as a result of differences in socialization, and the math experiences hypothesis, which states that math anxiety is due to previous experiences with mathematics, regardless of gender. They found support only for the math experiences hypothesis, and suggested that the gender difference in math anxiety may be an artifact of response bias.

The present study replicated the Hunsley and Flessati study and included an evaluation of response bias. One hundred and fifty Introductory Psychology students completed a series of questionnaires examining mathematics anxiety, attitudes and mathematical background. The findings of Hunsley and Flessati were replicated, however no evidence was found for a gender-linked response bias. An alternative explanation for the gender difference in math anxiety is proposed based on the finding that females are more self-critical.     

Sex differences in memory for landmark arrays in C57BL/J6 mice

The most robust sex differences in cognition across polygynous mammalian species are the sex-specific patterns of the use of spatial cues during encoding and orientation. In laboratory rats, wild rodents, and humans, females orient preferentially to the features and arrangement of local landmarks, while males preferentially attend to distant landmarks. Yet this sex-specific pattern is often absent or reversed in the laboratory mouse, a species representing a major laboratory model of neural mechanisms. We explored sex differences in the C57BL/J6 strain of laboratory mouse by employing tasks that were motivated by the natural patterns of exploration. We predicted that such tasks would unmask the predicted default polygynous patterns of cue use by females and males. We used two standard tasks, a novel object recognition task and a five-stage serial object dishabituation task. On the first task, the results showed a female advantage in detecting the novel object, as predicted by prior results from other polygynous species. In the second task, we found, also as predicted, a male advantage in performance when the polarization of the array was distorted and a female advantage in performance when the local array was re-arranged. The pattern of sex-specific advantages in performance in C57BL/J6 mouse is thus concordant with that found in other polygynous mammals.