The role of autonomic arousal in feelings of familiarity

Subjective feelings of familiarity associated with a stimulus tend to be strongest when specific information about the previous encounter with the stimulus is difficult to retrieve (e.g., the butcher-on-the-bus phenomenon; [Mandler, G. (1980). Recognizing: The judgment of previous occurrence. Psychological Review, 87, 252-271.]). When a stimulus has been encountered previously and the circumstances of the encounter cannot be recollected, additional cognitive resources may be directed toward recollection processes; this resource allocation is accompanied by autonomic arousal [Dawson, M. E., Filion, D. L., & Schell, A. M. (1989). Is elicitation of the autonomic orienting response associated with allocation of processing resources?. Psychophysiology, 26, 560-572]. One easily measurable index of autonomic arousal is the skin conductance response (SCR). In the present study, participants studied lists of words and then gave recognition ratings to briefly displayed and masked studied and nonstudied test words while their SCRs were monitored. Results revealed a relationship between recognition ratings and the temporal characteristics of the SCR, supporting the idea that feelings of familiarity are indeed "feelings" in that they stem from autonomic arousal associated with cognitive resource allocation.     

The importance of knowledge in vivid text memory: An individual-differences investigation of recollection and familiarity

The goal of this study was to examine how individual variation in readers’ skills and, in particular, their background knowledge about a text are related to text memory. Recollection and familiarity estimates were obtained from remember and know judgments to text ideas. Recollection estimates to old items were predicted by readers’ background knowledge, but not by other comprehension-related factors, such as word-decoding skill and working memory capacity. False alarms involving recollection of new items (inferences) were diminished as a function of verbal ability, working memory capacity, and reasoning but increased as a function of background knowledge. The results suggest that recollection indexes the reader’s ability to construct a text representation in which text ideas are integrated with relevant domain knowledge. Moreover, these results highlight the importance of background knowledge in explaining individual variation in comprehension and memory for text.     

The hippocampus as a "stupid," domain-specific module: Implications for theories of recent and remote memory, and of imagination.

The hippocampus and surrounding regions of the medial temporal lobe play a central role in all neuropsychological theories of memory. It is still a matter of debate, however, how best to characterise the functions of these regions, the hippocampus in particular. In this article, I examine the proposal that the hippocampus is a "stupid" module whose specific domain is consciously apprehended information. A number of interesting consequences for the organisation of memory and the brain follow from this proposal and the assumptions it entails. These, in turn, have important implications for neuropsychological theories of recent and remote episodic, semantic, and spatial memory and for the functions that episodic memory may serve in perception, comprehension, planning, imagination, and problem solving. I consider these implications by selectively reviewing the literature and primarily drawing on research my collaborators and I have conducted.     

RATIONAL EMOTIVE BEHAVIOR THERAPY AFTER ELLIS: PREDICTIONS FOR THE FUTURE

The 9 members of the Institute for Rational-Emotive Therapy’s International Training Standards and Review Committee (of which Albert Ellis is currently one) predict the status of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) after the death of Albert Ellis, its progenitor. Most respondents addressed whether REBT will exist in its own right or be subsumed under the broad umbrella of Cognitive Behavior Therapy. Reprinted from Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 17, 413–427, 1995. AMHCA. Reprinted with permission. No further reproduction authorized without written permission from the American Mental Health Counselors Association. Stephen G. Weinrach was a professor of counseling and human relations at Villanova University, Villanova, Pennsylvania. He died in 2004. The authors expressed their appreciation to Martin Gerstein and Allen Ivey for their generous contributions to a draft version of this article. Colleen Deeter provided valuable editorial assistance in the preparation and coordination of this project.     

The Unrecognized Stereotyping and Discrimination Against Singles

ABSTRACT— A widespread form of bias has slipped under our cultural and academic radar. People who are single are targets of singlism : negative stereotypes and discrimination. Compared to married or coupled people, who are often described in very positive terms, singles are assumed to be immature, maladjusted, and self-centered. Although the perceived differences between people who have and have not married are large, the actual differences are not. Moreover, there is currently scant recognition that singlism exists, and when singlism is acknowledged, it is often accepted as legitimate.     

Understanding the Windsor Report. Two Leaders in the American Church Speak Across the Divide – Ian T. Douglas and Paul F.M. Zahl

Book reviewed:
Understanding the Windsor Report. Two Leaders in the American Church Speak Across the Divide , Ian T. Douglas and Paul F.M. Zahl, Church Publishing 2005 (0-89869-487-6), viii + 184 pp., pb $20.00     

Unpacking the relation between extraversion and volunteering in later life: The role of social capital

This study tested the hypothesis that the relation between extraversion and volunteering by older adults is fully mediated by social capital (participation in clubs and organizations, church attendance, and contact with friends). Data for this study come from 888 adults between the ages of 65–90 years old who participated in the Later Life Study of Social Exchanges (LLSSE). In support of our hypothesis, structural equation modeling revealed that extraversion exerted: (a) a significant total effect on volunteering (0.122), (b) significant indirect effects on volunteering via contact with friends (0.042), church attendance (0.034), and clubs and organizations (females only: 0.042), and (c) a non-significant direct effect on volunteering (0.010). These findings suggest that social capital provides a viable explanation for the association between extraversion and volunteering.     

Rotational kinematics influence multimodal perception of heaviness

Perceived heaviness has been shown to be specific to an object’s rotational inertia (I ), its resistance to rotational acceleration. According to the kinematic specification of dynamics (KSD) principle, we hypothesized that I is optically specified by rotational kinematics. Using virtual depictions of wielded objects, we investigated whether the visually detected rotational kinematics of wielded objects would influence perceived heaviness in a manner consistent with the inertial model of heaviness perception. We scaled the virtual object’s movement so that it rotated more or less than its wielded counterpart, specifying lower and higher I, respectively. Perceived heaviness was inversely related to the rotational scaling factor, consistent with a KSD interpretation of the inertial model.     

The search for an effective clinical behavior analysis: the nonlinear thinking of Israel goldiamond

This paper has two purposes; the first is to reintroduce Goldiamond's constructional approach to clinical behavior analysis and to the field of behavior analysis as a whole, which, unfortunately, remains largely unaware of his nonlinear functional analysis and its implications. The approach is not simply a set of clinical techniques; instead it describes how basic, applied, and formal analyses may intersect to provide behavior-analytic solutions where the emphasis is on consequential selection. The paper takes the reader through a cumulative series of explorations, discoveries, and insights that hopefully brings the reader into contact with the power and comprehensiveness of Goldiamond's approach, and leads to an investigation of the original works cited. The second purpose is to provide the context of a life of scientific discovery that attempts to elucidate the variables and events that informed one of the most extraordinary scientific journeys in the history of behavior analysis, and expose the reader (especially young ones) to the exciting process of discovery followed by one of the field's most brilliant thinkers. One may perhaps consider this article a tribute to Goldiamond and his work, but the tribute is really to the process of scientific discovery over a professional lifetime.