Memory lapses during a pandemic: Differential associations between COVID-stress and daily memory lapses?

The policies related to COVID-19 pandemic such as stay at home orders and social distancing increased daily stress and associated impairments in mental health. This study examines the association between COVID-related stress and cognitive functioning by examining two different types of daily memory lapses, those related to prospective memory (i.e., memory for future plans) and retrospective memory (i.e., memory for past information) as well as the perceived emotional and functional consequences of daily memory problems. As part of a larger study, 58 adults (18 men; 22 ± 3 years) completed a web-based version of the daily inventory of stressful events including stress related to COVID-19 and positive/negative affect for eight consecutive days between 8 September 2020 and 11 November 2020. Findings showed that prospective lapses were positively correlated with COVID-19 stressors (r = 0.41, p = 0.002). At the within-person level, daily COVID-19 stressors were significantly associated with the number of prospective lapses (b = 0.088, SE = 0.040). COVID-19-related stressors were not significantly related to retrospective lapses (all ps > 0.05). Our findings suggested that more daily COVID-19 stressors were related to greater numbers of prospective lapses in daily life even among healthy younger adults. Thus, future research should address long term relations of COVID-19 stress and cognitive functioning in addition to the specific cognitive impairments related to COVID-19 infection.     

Ideology,moral reframing,and persuasion in the context of COVID-19 vaccines

A possible strategy for circumventing vaccine hesitancy and increasing support for vaccines is moral reframing. Moral Foundations Theory suggests messages framed using individuating foundations should be more persuasive to liberals, while messages framed using binding foundations should be more persuasive to conservatives. In an experiment, we investigated the role of political ideology and moral reframing in persuading college students to support mandating COVID-19 vaccination on university campuses. We tested harm-framed and loyalty-framed interventions to persuade liberals and conservatives, respectively. Results indicated that overall conservatives were less persuaded than liberals. Liberals were more persuaded by a harm-framed than loyalty-framed message when measuring ideology categorically (but not continuously). There were no differences in persuasion among conservatives. With further research, moral reframing could be effective in increasing support for vaccines and mandatory vaccinations.     

Negative priming insame-different matching: Further evidence for a central locus of inhibition

Responses to recently ignored information may be slower or less accurate than responses to information not recently encountered. Such negative priming effects imply that the mechanism of selective attention operates on unattended, as well as attended, information. In the present experiment, subjects judged the second and fourth letters of five-letter strings (e.g., BABAB) as “same” or “different.” Responses were slower when a target letter was identical to the distractors presented in the immediately preceding trial. This effect did not depend on which response was required on the current or preceding trial. The results suggest that ignored information is functionally disconnected from the response system as a whole, rather than from a specific response.     

Correlates of organizational commitment: Differences in the public and private sector

Private and public sector managers were compared regarding their job characteristics and organizational commitment. We hypothesized that job characteristics would be positively related to commitment and that sector would moderate that relationship. Moderated regression analyses revealed partial support for both hypotheses. The existence of clarity and challenge were positively related to commitment. Job characteristics demonstrated a stronger relationship with commitment among private sector managers. Explanations for these findings and directions for future research are discussed.     

An alternative procedure for analyzing job analysis results for content-oriented test development

Content-oriented test development requires information derived from a comprehensive job analysis. The job data typically consist of task and skill statements identified by subject matter experts. These statements characterize a target job and are then used to develop the test plan and item budget. The predominant practice for combining data from the task and job skill domains to facilitate preparation of a test plan and item budget is an impressionistic approach. This study reports variations and extensions of an alternative quantitative procedure for linking task and job skill data (Hughes & Prien, 1989) using results obtained in field studies. The results indicate that the procedure reported by Hughes and Prien (1989) yields consistent results. Also, modifications to the procedure result in more detailed solutions.Dr. Charles Lawshe graciously contributed three sets of job analysis data to this research project. Dr. Lawshe also provided a very thoughtful and cogent critique of our attempts to express these thoughts to a user audience and for this we are grateful.     

Route-finding: A measure of everyday executive functioning in the head-injured adult

This is an ecological test of adaptation in head-injured adults, reporting reliability and validity of the Executive Function Route-finding Task (EFRT; Boyd and Sautter, 1985). A Likert scale was used to rate executive aspects of route-finding such as task formulation, strategy of approach, detection and correction of errors, and dependence on cueing among 31 head-injured young adults within a large rehabilitation facility. The Task has high inter-rater reliability and acceptable concurrent validity with other neuropsychological constructs.     

Family preservation using multisystemic treatment: Long-term follow-up to a clinical trial with serious juvenile offenders

In a randomized clinical trial, multisystemic family preservation was shown to significantly reduce rates of criminal activity and incarceration in a sample of 84 serious juvenile offenders and their multi-need families. In the current study, archival records were searched for re-arrest an average of 2.4 years post-referral. Survival analysis showed that youths who received multisystemic family preservation were less likely to be re-arrested than were youths who had received usual services. Such results represent the first controlled demonstration that family preservation, when delivered via a clearly specified treatment model, has lasting effects with serious juvenile offenders. Implications for family preservation and juvenile justice research are discussed.     

Relevant consequence and empirical inquiry

A criterion of adequacy is proposed for theories of relevant consequence. According to the criterion, scientists whose deductive reasoning is limited to some proposed subset of the standard consequence relation must not thereby suffer a reduction in scientific competence. A simple theory of relevant consequence is introduced and shown to satisfy the criterion with respect to a formally defined paradigm of empirical inquiry.Research support was provided by the Office of Naval Research under contract No. N00014-89-J-1725 to Osherson and Weinstein, Swiss National Science Foundation under contract No. 21-32399.91 and by a Siemens Corporation grant to Osherson.