Preschool children's eye‐movements during pictorial recall

We investigated eye‐movements during preschool children's pictorial recall of seen objects. Thirteen 3‐ to 4‐year‐old children completed a perceptual encoding and a pictorial recall task. First, they were exposed to 16 pictorial objects, which were positioned in one of four distinct areas on the computer screen. Subsequently, they had to recall these pictorial objects from memory in order to respond to specific questions about visual details. We found that children spent more time fixating the areas in which the pictorial objects were previously displayed. We conclude that as early as age 3–4 years old, children show specific eye‐movements when they recall pictorial contents of previously seen objects.     

Evidence for disproportionate dual-task costs in older adults for episodic but not semantic memory

Previous research demonstrates that older adults are poor at dual tasking, but there is less agreement on whether their decrement is worse than that predicted from single-task performance. This study investigated whether task domain moderates dual-task costs in old age. In two experiments, young and older adults retrieved either previously learned associates (episodic retrieval) or overlearned category members (semantic retrieval) under single or working-memory load conditions, using cued recall (Experiment 1) and recognition (Experiment 2) procedures. In both experiments the proportional costs of dual tasking were age invariant for semantic retrieval but were particularly marked for episodic retrieval, although the size of the age effect was reduced in recognition compared to cued recall. The data suggest that age effects in dual tasking may be domain specific.     

The effect of varied physician affect on recall, anxiety, and perceptions in women at risk for breast cancer: an analogue study.

Evaluated the effect of varied physician affect on subject recall, anxiety, and perceptions in a simulated tense and ambiguous medical situation. Forty women at risk for breast cancer viewed videotapes of an oncologist presenting--with either worried or nonworried affect--mammogram results. Although the mammogram results and the oncologist were the same in both presentation, analyses indicated that, compared to the women receiving the results from a nonworried physician, the women receiving the results from a worried physician recalled significantly less information, perceived the clinical situation as significantly more severe, reported significantly higher levels of state anxiety, and had significantly higher pulse rates. These results suggest that physician affect plays a critical role in patient reaction to medical information. Implications for compliance research, patient satisfaction, and physician training are discussed.     

On the relation between feeling of knowing and lexical decision: persistent subthreshold activation or topic familiarity?

Experiment 1 replicated Yaniv and Meyer's (1987) finding that lexical decision and episodic recognition performance was better for words previously yielding high-accessibility levels (a combination of feeling-of-knowing and tip-of-the-tongue ratings) in comparison with those yielding low-accessibility levels in a rare word definition task. Experiment 2 yielded the same pattern even though lexical decisions preceded accessibility estimates by a full week. Experiment 3 dismissed the possibility that the Experiment 2 results may have been due to a long-term influence from the lexical decision task to the rare word judgment task. These results support a model in which Ss (a) retrieve topic familiarity information in making accessibility estimates in the rare word definition task and (b) use this information to modulate lexical decision performance.     

Biology of elderly suicide.

Most studies of suicide in younger patients have demonstrated significant alterations in the serotonin system. Although a high percentage of completed suicides occur in late-life, to date very few studies of the biology of suicide have focused on this age group. This chapter describes age-related changes in the central nervous system pertinent to the biology of suicide, then reviews post-mortem biological studies of the brains of suicides and suicide attempters. As suicide attempts in the elderly are characterized by the use of violent means, biologic studies of impulsive violence are discussed. Finally we describe data on the effect of degenerative diseases on the serotonin system and the possible link to increased suicidal behavior in affected patients. This review underscores the need for further study of the biology of suicide in the geriatric age group.     

A comparison of the effects of partial reinforcement schedules using a within-subject serial autoshaping procedure

Three experiments, each using a single group of pigeons, are reported. In Experiment 1 subjects were initially trained with two stimuli, one of which was always followed by food, the other being reinforced according to a 50% partial reinforcement schedule. Subsequently a serial procedure was adopted in which an additional stimulus, C, was consistently followed by the partially reinforced CS. A second additional stimulus, A, was followed on half of its occurrences by the continuously reinforced CS, its remaining presentations being followed by nothing. The rate of autoshaped keypecking was substantially greater during A than during C. In the remaining experiments subjects received first-order conditioning with a single stimulus that was either partially (Experiment 2) or continuously (Experiment 3) reinforced. The stimuli A and C were then again introduced for serial autoshaping. Stimulus A was occasionally paired with the CS and occasionally followed by nothing, whereas stimulus C was always followed by the CS. As in Experiment 1, the rate of responding during A was greater than during C. It is proposed that one influence on the rate of autoshaped keypecking during a CS is the accuracy with which the immediate consequences of that CS are predicted.