Female laryngectomees' satisfaction with communication methods and speech-language pathology services

132 female laryngectomees responded to a questionnaire regarding satisfaction with their communication methods as postlaryngectomees and speech-language pathology services. Respondents were satisfied overall with their primary communication selection; however, most would like to try a method that produced a more feminine-sounding voice. 68% were satisfied with their speech-language pathology services.     

Interference to ongoing activities covaries with the characteristics of an event-based intention

Previous studies of event-based prospective memory have demonstrated that the character of an ongoing task can affect cue detection. By contrast, this study demonstrated that there is a reciprocal relationship insofar as cue-verification and response-retrieval processes interfered with making a response in the ongoing task. The amount of interference was determined by the type of intention, which was manipulated to affect the complexity of verification and retrospective response retrieval. These relationships were true even when the interference caused by cue detection was separated from a more general effect to ongoing-task performance caused by shifts in attentional allocation policies. The results have theoretical implications for models that attempt to specify the cognitive microstructure of event-based prospective memory.     

Specifying the relations between affect and heavy alcohol use among young adults

Current reformulations of the tension reduction hypothesis posit that only a subset of vulnerable individuals are at risk for drinking in response to negative affect. To further specify this model, this study examined the types of mood and social contexts under which affect and alcohol use are associated. Participants were 74 college students who completed repeated assessments of mood, alcohol use, friendship quality, and social support. A complex pattern of findings supported the moderating influences of gender, friendship factors, and the timing of behavior (i.e., weekends vs. weekdays) on the relation between affect and alcohol use. Young adults with less intimate and supportive friendships, as compared with their peers, showed risk for greater drinking following relative elevations in sadness and hostility. Such drinking episodes, in turn, predicted subsequent elevations in these same negative moods the following week. Gender differences in such a cyclical pattern of affect and alcohol use were found to vary across differing emotional experiences. Recommendations for a more refined theory of affect and alcohol use are discussed.     

False recognition occurs more frequently during source identification than during old-new recognition

A number of recent reports have investigated false memories using variants of the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. Because these false memories have been difficult to eliminate, this study investigated whether false recognition could be reduced by incorporating source-monitoring criteria into decision processes. Making claims about the manner in which items were learned should require more careful scrutiny of memories, and therefore false recognition should be minimized with source instructions as compared with old-new recognition instructions. In 3 experiments that varied the combination of sources, false recognition was increased rather than reduced by applying source-monitoring processes. The theoretical implications of these counterintuitive results are discussed in terms of the old-new detection component of source judgments.     

Isolation,not locality

There is a long tradition of preferring local theories to ones that posit lawful or causal influence at a spacetime distance. In this paper, we argue against this preference. We argue that nonlocality is scientifically unobjectionable and that nonlocal theories can be known. Scientists can gather evidence for them and confirm them in much the same way that they do for local theories. We think these observations point to a deeper constraint on scientific theorizing and experimentation: the (quasi-) isolation of causal or lawful influence. We argue that this requirement ought to replace the locality desideratum in science. We then explore the possibility that the order of explanation has been reversed: perhaps it is isolatable influence that determines what counts as local in the first place.     

Motivating the academic mind: High-level construal of academic goals enhances goal meaningfulness,motivation, and self-concordance

How one thinks about or conceptualizes a goal has important consequences for the motivational features of goal pursuit. Two experiments tested the hypothesis, inspired by work on meaning in life, action identification theory, and expectancy-value theory, that high-level construal of an academic goal should enhance motivation to pursue that goal. In each experiment, we manipulated high-level versus low-level construal of an academic goal and assessed several variables related to the goal: the perceived meaningfulness of the goal, motivation to pursue the goal, and goal self-concordance. Supporting the hypothesis, individuals who thought about their academic goal in a high-level manner viewed their goal as more meaningful, reported being more motivated to pursue the goal, and reported the goal to be more self-concordant. Implications and future directions are discussed.     

Experiencing versus contemplating: Language use during descriptions of awe and wonder

Awe and wonder are theorised to be distinct from other positive emotions, such as happiness. Yet little empirical or theoretical work has focused on these emotions. This investigation explored differences in language used to describe experiences of awe and wonder. Such analyses can provide insight into how people conceptualise these emotional experiences, and whether they conceptualise these emotions to be distinct from other positive emotions, and each other. Participants wrote narratives about experiences of awe, wonder and happiness. There were differences in the language used to describe these positive emotional states, consistent with the theorised functions of each emotion. Awe was related to observing the world, reflected in greater use of perception words. Wonder was related to trying to understand the world, reflected in greater use of cognitive complexity and tentative words. Language use for both emotions reflected an environmental focus, whereas language use for happiness reflected a social/relationship focus.     

Do attitudes toward societal structure predict beliefs about free will and achievement? Evidence from the Indian caste system

Intuitive theories about the malleability of intellectual ability affect our motivation and achievement in life. But how are such theories shaped by the culture in which an individual is raised? We addressed this question by exploring how Indian children's and adults’ attitudes toward the Hindu caste system – and its deterministic worldview – are related to differences in their intuitive theories. Strikingly, we found that, beginning at least in middle school and continuing into adulthood, individuals who placed more importance on caste were more likely to adopt deterministic intuitive theories. We also found a developmental change in the scope of this relationship, such that in children, caste attitudes were linked only to abstract beliefs about personal freedom, but that by adulthood, caste attitudes were also linked to beliefs about the potential achievement of members of different castes, personal intellectual ability, and personality attributes. These results are the first to directly relate the societal structure in which a person is raised to the specific intuitive theories they adopt.     

Sex differences in grade three students' attitudes toward physical activity.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the attitudes children have towards physical activity and whether boys and girls differ significantly. Sex differences were hypothesized on one or more of the subdomains of Grade 3 Children's Attitudes Toward Physical Activity inventory. The 46 boys and 51 girls ranged from 8 to 10 years of age. A multivariate analysis of variance indicated a significant effect for sex, and subsequent univariate analysis indicated that the boys had significantly lower scores than the girls on the Aesthetic subscale. Results were discussed in terms of attitides about activity in physical education classes and continued research with younger children.