Metacognition of the testing effect: Guiding learners to predict the benefits of retrieval

If the mnemonic benefits of testing are to be widely realized in real-world learning circumstances, people must appreciate the value of testing and choose to utilize testing during self-guided learning. Yet metacognitive judgments do not appear to reflect the enhancement provided by testing Karpicke & Roediger (Science 319:966–968, 2008). In this article, we show that under judicious conditions, learners can indeed reveal an understanding of the beneficial effects of testing, as well as the interaction of that effect with delay (Experiment 1). In that experiment, subjects made judgments of learning (JOLs) for previously studied or previously tested items in either a cue-only or a cue–target context, and either immediately or after a 1-day delay. When subjects made judgments in a cue-only context, their JOLs accurately reflected the effects of testing, both immediately and at a delay. To evaluate the potential of exposure to such conditions for promoting generalized appreciation of testing effects, three further experiments elicited global predictions about restudied and tested items across two study/test cycles (Experiments 2, 3, and 4). The results indicated that learners’ global naïve metacognitive beliefs increasingly reflect the beneficial effects of testing when learners experience these benefits with increasing external support. If queried under facilitative circumstances, learners appreciate the mnemonic enhancement that testing provides on both an item-by-item and global basis but generalize that knowledge to future learning only with considerable guidance.     

Investigating Hypervigilance for Social Threat of Lonely Children

The hypothesis that lonely children show hypervigilance for social threat was examined in a series of three studies that employed different methods including advanced eye-tracking technology. Hypervigilance for social threat was operationalized as hostility to ambiguously motivated social exclusion in a variation of the hostile attribution paradigm (Study 1), scores on the Children’s Rejection-Sensitivity Questionnaire (Study 2), and visual attention to socially rejecting stimuli (Study 3). The participants were 185 children (11 years-7 months to 12 years-6 months), 248 children (9 years-4 months to 11 years-8 months) and 140 children (8 years-10 months to 12 years-10 months) in the three studies, respectively. Regression analyses showed that, with depressive symptoms covaried, there were quadratic relations between loneliness and these different measures of hypervigilance to social threat. As hypothesized, only children in the upper range of loneliness demonstrated elevated hostility to ambiguously motivated social exclusion, higher scores on the rejection sensitivity questionnaire, and disengagement difficulties when viewing socially rejecting stimuli. We found that very lonely children are hypersensitive to social threat.     

Influences of culture and visual context on real-time social categorization

Social categorization is often thought to be based on facial features and immune to visual context. Moreover, East Asians have been argued to attend to context more than Westerners. American and Chinese participants were presented with faces varying along a White-Asian morph continuum either in American, neutral, or Chinese contexts. American contexts made White categorizations more likely, and Chinese contexts made Asian categorizations more likely. Further, the compatibility between facial and contextual cues influenced the directness of participants' hand trajectories en route to selecting a category response. Even when an ultimate response was not biased by context, the trajectory was nevertheless partially attracted to the category response associated with the context. Importantly, such partial attraction effects in hand trajectories revealed that the influence of context began earlier in time for Chinese relative to American participants. Together, the results show that context systematically influences social categorization, sometimes altering categorization responses and other times only temporarily altering the process. Further, the timing of contextual influences differs by culture. The findings highlight the role of contextual and cultural factors in social categorization.     

A New Perspective Concerning Experiments on Semantic Intuitions

Machery, Mallon, Nichols, and Stich [2004; forthcoming] use experimental methods to raise a spectre of doubt about reliance on intuitions in developing theories of reference which are then deployed in philosophical arguments outside the philosophy of language. Machery et al. ran a cross-cultural survey asking Western and East Asian participants about a famous case from the philosophical literature on reference (Kripke's Gödel example). They interpret their results as indicating that there is significant variation in participants' intuitions about semantic reference for that case. We argue that this interpretation is mistaken. We detail a type of ambiguity found in Machery et al.'s probe but not yet noted in the response literature. We argue that this epistemic ambiguity could have affected their results. We do not stop there, however: Rather than rest content with a possibility claim, we ran four studies to test the impact of this ambiguity on participants' responses. We found that this accounts for much of the variation in Machery et al.'s original experiment. We conclude that in the light of our new data, their argument is no longer convincing.     

Geometric cues,reference frames,and the equivalence of experienced-aligned and novel-aligned views in human spatial memory

Spatial memories are often organized around reference frames, and environmental shape provides a salient cue to reference frame selection. To date, however, the environmental cues responsible for influencing reference frame selection remain relatively unknown. To connect research on reference frame selection with that on orientation via environmental shape, we explored the extent to which geometric cues were incidentally encoded and represented in memory by evaluating their influence on reference frame selection. Using a virtual environment equipped with a head-mounted-display, we presented participants with to-be-remembered object arrays. We manipulated whether the experienced viewpoint was aligned or misaligned with global (i.e., the principal axis of space) or local (i.e., wall orientations) geometric cues. During subsequent judgments of relative direction (i.e., participants imagined standing at one object, facing a second object, and pointed toward a third object), we show that performance was best when imagining perspectives aligned with these geometric cues; moreover, global geometric cues were sufficient for reference frame selection, global and local geometric cues were capable of exerting differential influence on reference frame selection, and performance from experienced-imagined perspectives was equivalent to novel-imagined perspectives aligned with geometric cues. These results explicitly connect theory regarding spatial reference frame selection and spatial orientation via environmental shape and indicate that spatial memories are organized around fundamental geometric properties of space.     

Religion,Volunteering, and Educational Setting: The Effect of Youth Schooling Type on Civic Engagement

Research on civic engagement shows that volunteering rates decline as young people move from adolescence into emerging adulthood. Using panel data spanning this period of the life course, we examine the impact of secondary schooling type—public, Catholic, Protestant, private nonreligious, and homeschool—on sustaining volunteering into emerging adulthood. We apply a framework that posits pathways between secondary schooling and sets of opportunities to volunteer embedded in institutions and social networks. We also posit a link between schooling type and durable motivational dispositions to volunteer. Results indicate substantial differences by schooling type, although our measures of opportunity structure and motivation do not adequately account for these differences. Those educated in Protestant secondary schools are considerably more likely than other young people to continue to volunteer, even accounting for potential spurious influences. Those schooled at home or in private nonreligious settings are significantly less likely to continue volunteering. We conclude by discussing two alternative accounts that should be addressed in further research: one focused on the role of habituated social practices and the other focused on differences in organizational efforts to link adolescent volunteering to emerging adult volunteering.     

Does Religion Suppress,Socialize, Soothe,or Support? Exploring Religiosity's Influence on Crime

A negative association between religiosity and crime is commonly documented in the United States and other Western contexts. In this study, we examine associations between religiosity and criminal probability among randomly selected survey respondents in a non‐Western Christian context (Lviv, Ukraine) and a non‐Western Islamic context (Dhaka, Bangladesh). In addition, we explore whether religiosity is associated in these contexts with various theoretical mechanisms identified in prior research, including self‐control, social control, moral beliefs, negative emotions, and social support. Results confirm that religiosity is negatively correlated with projected criminal probability in non‐Western contexts as well as among both Christian and Muslim respondents. Furthermore, net of social and demographic characteristics, religiosity appears to indirectly influence crime through moral beliefs and, to a lesser extent, through self‐control and informal social control.     

"To Be or Not to Be French": Soixante-Huitard Reflections on " la Question Juive "

The parable of Kafka’s short story “A Hunger Artist” has defied interpretation. This essay suggests this is less problematic if we place Kafka’s writing within a Jewish hermeneutic model, such as the parables of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, and consider the effect on interpretation of the spiritual and historical crisis of modernity. The parable of the parable is not that there is no meaning in the text, but that the keys to meaning may have been lost. The alienated, assimilated Jew standing at the gate of the Law finds the gate to meaning and to redemption closing. Redemption does not come through interpretation, as in Rabbi Nachman’s stories, but comes too late.     

Transference,triangles and trajectories

In this article the author addresses the issue of the need to lessen the likelihood of a regressive transference neurosis in short-term therapy. He examines the role that active interpretation of the transference can have in shaping the transference so that it remains at the level of the transference that is ubiquitous. He explores the relationship between such an active interpretative approach and the need for the therapist to be empathic and sensitive to the patient and to allow space for a patient's independent discoveries. The author describes the role of the Central Therapeutic Focus, as a constellation of the Triangles of Insight, in guiding the therapist to select those manifestations of the transference to interpret, and in enabling the therapist to retain a stance that is sensitive and empathic. The Central Therapeutic Focus is contrasted with the concept of the Central Issue, and with the latter's more specific attention to the contribution that it makes to the therapist's communication of their empathic understanding of the patient's difficulties. The nature of the relationship between the therapist and the patient in short-term therapy is explored further and the connections between companionable interaction, ego-relatedness and the matrix of the transference are outlined. The author proceeds to consider the nature of the process of working through in short-term therapy and of the need to attend to the patient's external world as the place in which this can occur. The contribution of the Central Therapeutic Focus in shaping the trajectory through which the patient and therapist attend to the external world is examined. This in turn is linked to the identification of a patient's ordinary solution to their problem as a means of resolving their Dilemma. The article concludes with a case example that illustrates these themes.