A COMPARISON OF SEMANTIC‐ AND MNEMONIC‐BASED VOCABULARY‐LEARNING STRATEGIES

Fourth‐ and fifth‐grade students were taught the meanings of new vocabulary items according to one of three instructional strategies. Two of the strategies were semantic‐based (contextual analysis and semantic mapping), and the other strategy was mnemonic‐based (the keyword method). Consistent with recent research findings, the keyword method facilitated students’ recall of the vocabulary items’ definitions, and this was true in both higher‐ and lower‐achieving subject populations. In the higher‐achieving sample, the keyword method was also superior to the contextual analysis strategy on two vocabulary‐usage tests, one that was administered on the day immediately following instruction and one that was administered a week later. Mean performance on a one‐week delayed definition‐matching test was statistically equivalent in the three conditions, although in the higher‐achieving sample a reliably higher proportion of keyword subjects than contextual analysis subjects attained perfect scores on that test. No significant difference between the two semantic‐ based strategies was found on any of the dependent measures. Implications of the results and suggestions for future research are included in the discussion.     

Televised Sexual Content and Parental Mediation: Influences on Adolescent Sexuality

Little research has been conducted to examine the influence of exposure to televised sexual content on adolescent sexuality or how parental intervention may reduce negative effects of viewing such content. This study uses self-report data from 1,012 adolescents to investigate the relations among exposure to sexually suggestive programming, parental mediation strategies, and three types of adolescent sexuality outcomes: participation in oral sex and sexual intercourse, future intentions to engage in these behaviors, and sex expectancies. As predicted, exposure to sexual content was associated with an increased likelihood of engaging in sexual behaviors, increased intentions to do so in the future, and more positive sex expectancies. Often, parental mediation strategies were a significant factor in moderating these potential media influences.     

Adolescent Decisional Autonomy Regarding Participation in an Emergency Department Youth Violence Interview

Much attention has been given to determining whether an adolescent patient has the capacity to consent to research. This study explores the factors that influence adolescents' decisions to participate in a research study about youth violence and to determine positive or negative feelings elicited by being a research subject. The majority of subjects perceived their decision to participate to be free of coercion, and few felt badly about having participated. However, adolescents who were alone in the room during the assent process were more likely to report that they chose freely to be a research subject. This study may influence the ways physicians communicate with adolescent patients around research assent within a clinical care environment.     

Disappearing Percepts: Evidence for Retention Failure in Metacontrast Masking

Results from a number of paradigms (including change blindness, inattentional blindness, integration over saccades, and backward masking) suggest that most of the visual information we take in is not retained, even for very short periods of time. This has led some to question whether such information is ever really perceived. We examine this issue using a variant of the classic metacontrast stimulus. When a briefly presented disk is followed by a briefly presented ring, observers may report not seeing the disk. Rather they report seeing the ring flicker as if the change in form from disk to ring is not recorded. This effect is highly dependent on the interval between the onset of the disk and the onset of the ring (the “stimulus onset asynchrony” or SOA). The maximum effect is usually found at a critical SOA of about 50 msec. Here we show that the ability of observers to distinguish such a disk/ring pair from a flickering ring is dependent also on how soon after the stimulus they respond. Early responses show a much smaller masking effect than late responses: Near the critical SOA accuracy improves when the observer responds more quickly (the opposite of the standard speed-accuracy trade-off), although at longer and shorter SOAs observers are less accurate on these early responses (a typical speed-accuracy trade-off). We interpret this finding as demonstrating that, at least in the case of metacontrast, retention of form information is disrupted, rather than initial access.     

Perseveration in Normal Aging: A Comparison of Perseveration Rates on Design Fluency and Verbal Generative Tasks

Three generative tasks (design generation, animal naming, words starting with m) from the Cognitive Linguistic Quick Test were administered to 73 healthy individuals in four age groups (18–39, 40–59, 60–74, 75–88) and scored for perseveration and productivity. Perseveration rates for design generation were significantly higher, and increased linearly as a function of age. The number of individuals who perseverated at least once on design generation also increased linearly, with highest prevalence in the oldest group. No age effects were found for perseveration on the verbal naming tasks. Perseverations across tasks were independent of one another. The design generation task may require multiple simultaneous processing skills, placing more demand on compromised executive processing in the elderly.     

Familiarity and sex based stereotypes on instant impressions of male and female faculty

To address the stranger-to-stranger critique of stereotyping research, psychology students $(n= 139)$ and law students $(n = 58)$ rated photographs of familiar or unfamiliar male or female professors on competence. Results from Study 1 indicated that familiar male psychology faculty were rated as more competent than were familiar female faculty, whereas unfamiliar female faculty were rated as more competent than unfamiliar male faculty. By contrast, in Study 2, familiarity had a stronger positive effect on competence ratings of female faculty than it did for male faculty. Among psychology students, familiarity increased sex bias against female faculty, whereas among law students familiarity decreased sex bias. Together, these studies call into question the stranger-to-stranger critique of stereotyping research. Our findings have direct implications for the context of student evaluations. In male-dominated disciplines it is important for students to be exposed to female instructors in order to reduce pre-existing biases against such instructors.     

Extended cognition and the space of social interaction

The extended mind thesis (EM) asserts that some cognitive processes are (partially) composed of actions consisting of the manipulation and exploitation of environmental structures. Might some processes at the root of social cognition have a similarly extended structure? In this paper, I argue that social cognition is fundamentally an interactive form of space management—the negotiation and management of “we-space”—and that some of the expressive actions involved in the negotiation and management of we-space (gesture, touch, facial and whole-body expressions) drive basic processes of interpersonal understanding and thus do genuine social-cognitive work. Social interaction is a kind of extended social cognition, driven and at least partially constituted by environmental (non-neural) scaffolding. Challenging the Theory of Mind paradigm, I draw upon research from gesture studies, developmental psychology, and work on Moebius Syndrome to support this thesis.     

Developing physical activity interventions for youth with cystic fibrosis and congenital heart disease: Learning from their parents

Despite the benefits of physical activity for youth with cystic fibrosis (CF) and congenital heart disease (CHD), most are insufficiently active. More information is required on how to facilitate physical activity in these populations. Although there are no studies that provide information about participation in CF and CHD youth from the perspective of parents, the involvement of caregivers may be an important facilitator to physical activity in youth with chronic diseases.

Objective

This qualitative study explored how the parents of youth with CF and CHD experience physical activity, and parents commented on both their own and their child’s physical activity.

Methods

Twenty-nine parents from a CHD and CF clinic participated in a semi-structured interview, and a thematic analysis of the transcribed data was undertaken.

Results

Parents discussed the numerous benefits and barriers associated with physical activity for both child and self. Role modeling was a critical social process to overcoming barriers. Parents experiences were situated within the broader family context characterized by a prevailing sense of stress and complexity.

Conclusion

By illustrating how the parents of youth with CF and CHD understand the role of physical activity in their and their child’s life, this study provides valuable information regarding the development of interventions to increase physical activity among children with CF and CHD.