Parents Produce Explicit Cues That Help Toddlers Distinguish Joking and Pretending

While separate pieces of research found parents offer toddlers cues to express that they are (1) joking and (2) pretending, and that toddlers and preschoolers understand intentions to (1) joke and (2) pretend, it is not yet clear whether parents and toddlers consider joking and pretending to be distinct concepts. This is important as distinguishing these two forms of non‐literal acts could open a gateway to understanding the complexities of the non‐literal world, as well as the complexities of intentions in general. Two studies found parents offer explicit cues to help 16‐ to 24‐month‐olds distinguish pretending and joking. Across an action play study (n = 25) and a verbal play study (n = 40) parents showed more disbelief and less belief through their actions and language when joking versus pretending. Similarly, toddlers showed less belief through their actions, and older toddlers showed less belief through their language. Toddlers' disbelief could be accounted for by their response to parents' language and actions. Thus, these studies reveal a mechanism by which toddlers learn to distinguish joking and pretending. Parents offer explicit cues to distinguish these intentions, and toddlers use these cues to guide their own behaviors, which in turn allows toddlers to distinguish these intentional contexts.     

Recognition Practice Results in a Generalizable Skill in Older Adults: Decreased Intrusion Errors to Novel Objects Belonging to Practiced Categories

Accessing memories is often accompanied by both positive and negative consequences. For example, practice recognizing some visual images held in memory can improve memory for the practiced images and hurt memory for related images (i.e., recognition‐induced forgetting). However, visual stimuli have been shown to improve memory for older adults by decreasing false memories. This suggests that older adults may be immune to recognition‐induced forgetting and that recognition practice may decrease susceptibility to intrusion errors. We first tested the hypothesis that older adults are immune to recognition‐induced forgetting. We found older adults exhibit recognition‐induced forgetting. Next, we tested the hypothesis that recognition practice decreases older adult's rates of intrusion errors. We found lower intrusion errors for novel objects from practiced categories. This represents a generalizable learning effect; practice recognizing a target object (e.g., your pill bottle) improves the rejection of new lures (e.g., identifying the pill bottle that is not yours).Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effects of Facebook Maintenance Behaviors on Partners’ Experience of Love

This study collected data from 75 heterosexual couples. Partners self-reported their own Facebook behaviors as well as their perceptions of their partner’s Facebook behaviors. Partners also completed the Partner Relationship Quality Components inventory. Analyses used a pairwise data set according to the Actor Partner Interdependence Model. Confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated that two factors explained 59 % of the variance regarding Facebook behaviors: Partner Facebook Maintenance (PFM) and Actor Facebook Maintenance (AFM). Two structural equation models were created, one proposing that PFM and AFM would predict Actor Love and Partner Love when controlling for length of relationship, relationship status, and gender, the other proposing that Actor Love and Partner Love would predict PFM and AFM. Overall analysis indicates good model fit for both models. These results suggest that partners who perceive higher levels of love in their relationship actually participate in less Facebook Maintenance behaviors, and couples who engage in more Facebook Maintenance behaviors experience less love in the relationship. Implications for couples and therapists are discussed.     

Test of memory malingering with children: The utility of Trial 1 and TOMMe10 as screeners of test validity

There is a growing body of research suggesting that the shorter versions of the Test of Memory Malingering (TOMM) may provide an accurate assessment of effort in children. During neuropsychological evaluations, some circumstances result in only one completed trial of the TOMM or partial completion of a trial. Research suggests that a cut-score of 40 or 41 on Trial1 is highly predictive of passing the TOMM overall. In the current study, 194 school-age children with academic and/or behavioral problems were used to compare the accuracy of TOMM1 and TOMMe10 (errors on the first 10 items of TOMM1) in predicting passing/failing of TOMM2. For the children in this sample, a score of < 40 items correct (≥ 10 errors) on TOMM1 was highly accurate in predicting a passing performance on the TOMM2 (sensitivity = .80, specificity = .91) with a Negative Predictive Value = .98 at the malingering base rate of 7% (TOMM2 failure in our sample). A score of 2 errors (8 items correct) on the TOMMe10 was slightly less sensitive than that of the TOMM1 (specificity = .96, sensitivity = .53) but with a similar Negative Predictive Value (.96). Consistent with the research from adult populations, TOMM1 and TOMMe10 appear to be quite accurate in predicting performance on the standard administration of the TOMM and may be useful screeners. However, compared to that found in adult samples, slight differences in suggested cutoffs for TOMM1 and TOMMe10 may be warranted for children.     

Information about foregone rewards impedes dynamic decision-making in older adults

“Making an informed decision” implies that more information leads to better decisions, yet it may be the case that additional information biases decisions in a systematic and sometimes detrimental manner. In the present study, we examined the effect of additional information on older adults’ decision-making using a task for which available rewards were dependent on the participant’s recent pattern of choices. The optimal strategy was to forego the immediately rewarding option in favor of the option that yielded larger delayed reward. We found that providing information about true foregone rewards – the reward that would have been received had the participant chosen the other option – significantly reduced older adults’ decision-making performance. However, false foregone rewards – foregone rewards manufactured to make the long-term option appear more immediately rewarding – led older adults to perform at a level equal to younger adults. We conclude that providing information about foregone rewards biases older adults toward immediate rewards at a greater rate than younger adults, leading to poorer older adult performance when immediate rewards and long-term rewards conflict, but intact performance when immediate rewards and long-term rewards appear to align.     

Verbal facilitation effects instead of verbal overshadowing in face memory of 4- to 6-year olds

Research on eye witness memory in older children and adults revealed that verbally describing unfamiliar faces impairs later recognition of these faces, known as the “verbal overshadowing effect”. The aim of this study was to investigate whether a verbal overshadowing effect occurs in 4- to 6-year olds, too, and whether visualization (i.e., drawing the seen face) might elicit a visual overshadowing effect. Instead of a verbal overshadowing effect, a verbal facilitation effect was revealed with verbal intelligence being a significant predictor for recognition accuracy in the verbalization group but not in the control group. No effect of visualization was observed on recognition accuracy. Potential explanations for the results are discussed.     

Word association in early Alzheimer’s disease

The hypothesis that Alzheimer’s disease (AD) degrades semantic representations predicts that AD qualitatively alters spontaneous thoughts. In two experiments contrasting free associations to words with strong (e.g., bride-groom) versus weak (e.g., body-leg) associates participants with AD produced less common responses (e.g., bride-pretty) than normal controls but only for words with strong associations, and only on the first (but not on second or third) association response. Furthermore, all participants produced fewer semantically related responses to words with weak associates. Because strong associations should be retrieved more easily than weak associations these results are problematic for retrieval-based accounts of AD. Instead we propose that AD entails a semantic deficit, and that strong associations involve more semantic processing than weak associations (in all speakers).