Age Affects Strategic But Not Spontaneous Recall in 35- and 46-Month-old Children

ABSTRACT

It is well documented that young children have difficulties with strategically remembering past events. Recent evidence on event memory in 35- and 46-month-old children suggests that strategic retrieval (yes/no questions) improves with age, whereas spontaneous retrieval is relatively unaffected by age. We here replicate and extend those findings (N = 124): First, a novel free (strategic) recall test was added to improve ecological validity. Second, the free recall procedure allowed us to make direct comparisons between spontaneous and free strategic recall relative to age. The free recall test revealed similar results in the standard yes/no questions (older children outperformed younger). The direct comparison between spontaneous and free recall revealed a reliable interaction between age and retrieval mode: While the children’s age did not affect spontaneous recall, the 46-month-olds outperformed the 35-month-olds on the free recall test. The results add to the accumulating evidence that spontaneous recall of events is an early developmental achievement.     

Practical and psychological problems in invalidation evaluation

Practical and psychological problems to give opinions of invalid were discussed and the defects of the practice in the neurologic and psychiatric branch of science are shown. The declaration of psychiatric findings is called to special attention.     

The right thing to do or the smart thing to do? How communicating moral or business motives for diversity affects the employment image of Dutch public and private sector organizations

Many organizations have diversity statements in place in which they publicly declare their appreciation of and commitment to workforce diversity. These statements can either contain moral motives (e.g., “diversity reduces social inequalities”), business motives (e.g., “diversity enhances innovation”), or a combination of moral and business motives. In a desk study involving 182 Dutch organizations, we found that (a) private sector organizations more often than public sector organizations communicate business motives, (b) that public and private sector organizations are equally likely to communicate moral motives, and (c) that public sector organizations more frequently than private sector organizations communicate a combination of moral and business motives. Next, we used an experimental design to examine the causal influence of communicating different diversity motives on organizations' employment image (i.e., perceptions of organizational morality, competence, and attractiveness) among prospective employees (n = 393). Here, we used a scenario in which a healthcare organization was portrayed as either a public or a private sector organization and communicated either only moral motives, only business motives or a combination of moral and business motives for diversity. We found that for a public sector organization communicating moral instead of business motives for valuing diversity induced a more favorable employment image. For a private sector organization, there were no differences in employment image depending on the motive communicated. Together, these two studies shed new light on the role of diversity motives in establishing a positive employment image.