The effects of associations and aging on illusory recollection

Younger and older adults (mean years = 20.5 and 75) studied lists of associated words for a final recognition test. The length (5, 10, or 15 associates) and modality (auditory or visual) of study lists were manipulated within subjects. For both groups, increasing the number of associates increased illusory recollections of a related lure's presentation (measured by source judgments and the Memory Characteristics Questionnaire). This pattern suggests that associative activation of the lure influenced illusory recollection, and aging spared this process. In contrast, age impaired the recollection of source for studied words (auditory or visual) and had identical effects on source attributions for related lures. This pattern suggests that the true recollection of source influenced illusory recollection of source, and age impaired this process. To account for these and other results, we propose that associative activation drives an attribution process that binds subjectively detailed features to a false memory.     

Disconfirming intergroup evaluations: asymmetric effects for in-groups and out-groups

The authors examined whether a fundamental bias in the way people process information has implications for efforts to improve intergroup relations. The authors exposed participants to information about their own social category and a different social category that was either positive or negative in connotation. To examine what effect this information would have on participants' attitudes toward their own group and the other group, the authors measured both explicit and implicit evaluations before and after exposure. The findings suggest that, at a preconscious level, exposure to negative information affects participants' attitudes toward their own group, but that positive information has a negligible impact on attitudes toward other groups. The authors found an opposite pattern for explicit (conscious) evaluations. These asymmetries are consistent with cognitive and motivational theory on intergroup relations and may have important implications for efforts to reduce prejudice.     

Effects of stress typicality during spoken word recognition by native and nonnative speakers of English: Evidence from onset gating

Onset gating was used to investigate the effects of stress typicality during the processing of disyllabic nouns and verbs by 34 native and 36 nonnative speakers of English. We utilized 50-msec increments and included two conditions. In the silenced condition, only word onsets were presented (the participants had no information about the duration or stress pattern of the entire word). In the filtered condition, word onsets were presented with a low-pass filtered version of the remainder of the word (this type of filtering provides duration and stress information in the absence of phonemic information). The results demonstrated significant effects of stress typicality in both groups of speakers. Typically stressed trochaic nouns and iambic verbs exhibited advantaged processing, as compared with atypically stressed iambic nouns and trochaic verbs. There was no significant effect of presentation condition (silenced or filtered). The results are discussed in light of recent research in which the effects of lexical stress during spoken word recognition have been investigated.     

Information processing and reasoning with premises that are empirically false: Interference,working memory,and processing speed

In this study, we looked at the contributions of individual differences in susceptibility to interference and working memory to logical reasoning with premises that were empirically false (i.e., not necessarily true). A total of 97 university students were given a sentence completion task for which a subset of stimuli was designed to generate inappropriate semantic activation that interfered with the correct response, a measure of working memory capacity, and a series of logical reasoning tasks with premises that were not always true. The results indicate that susceptibility to interference, as measured by the error rate on the relevant subset of the sentence completion task, and working memory independently account for variation in reasoning performance. The participants who made more errors in the relevant portion of the sentence completion task also showed more empirical intrusions in the deductive reasoning task, even when the effects of working memory were partialed out. Working memory capacity was more clearly related to processes involved in generating uncertainty responses to inferences for which there was no certain conclusion. A comparison of the results of this study with studies of children's reasoning suggests that adults are capable of more selective executive processes than are children. An analysis of latency measures on the sentence completion task indicated that high working memory participants who made no errors on the sentence completion task used a strategy that involved slower processing speed, as compared with participants with similar levels of working memory who did make errors. In contrast, low working memory participants who made no errors on the sentence completion task had relatively shorter reaction times than did comparable participants who did make errors.     

Nine Months of Multicomponent Behavioral Treatment for ADHD and Effectiveness of MTA Fading Procedures

We examined 9-month data from the 14-month NIMH Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (the MTA) as a further check on the relative effect of medication (MedMgt) and behavioral treatment (Beh) for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) while Beh was still being delivered at greater intensity than at 14-month endpoint, and conversely as a check on the efficacy of the MTA behavioral generalization/maintenance procedures. Intention-to-treat analysis at 9 months showed essentially the same results as at 14 months, after Beh had been completely faded; MedMgt and the combination (Comb) of medication and Beh were significantly superior to Beh and community care (CC) for ADHD and oppositional-defiant (ODD) symptoms, with mixed results for social skills and internalizing symptoms. All treatment-group differences examined as changes in slopes from 9 to 14 months were nonsignificant (we found general improvement for all groups). Slopes from baseline to 9 months correlated highly (r > .74, p < .0001) with slopes from baseline to 14 months for all groups. The time function from baseline to 14 months showed a significant linear, but not quadratic, trend for the main outcome measure (a composite of parent- and teacher-rated ADHD and ODD symptoms) for all groups. Findings suggest that in contrast to the hypothesized deterioration in the relative benefit of Beh between 9 and 14 months (after completion of fading), the MTA Beh generalization and maintenance procedures implemented through 9 months apparently yielded continuing improvement through 14 months, with preservation of the relative position of Beh compared to other treatment strategies.