Enhanced human memory consolidation with post-learning stress: interaction with the degree of arousal at encoding

Abundant evidence indicates that endogenous stress hormones such as epinephrine and corticosterone modulate memory consolidation in animals. We recently provided the first demonstration that an endogenous stress hormone (epinephrine) can enhance human memory consolidation. However, these findings also suggested that post-learning stress hormone activation does not uniformly enhance memory for all recently acquired information; rather, that it interacts with the degree of arousal at initial encoding of material in modulating memory for the material. Here we tested this hypothesis by administering cold pressor stress (CPS) or a control procedure to subjects after they viewed slides of varying emotional content, and assessing memory for the slides 1 wk later. CPS, which significantly elevated salivary cortisol levels, enhanced memory for emotionally arousing slides compared with the controls, but did not affect memory for relatively neutral slides. These findings further support the view that post-learning stress hormone-related activity interacts with arousal at initial encoding to modulate memory consolidation.     

Mental multiplication: Nothing but the facts?

Current models of adult arithmetic performance assume that representation includes only facts and procedures. However, other kinds of representations such as an analog scale or sets of number multiples might be useful in a variety of multiplication-related tasks. Introducing the practice transfer paradigm, we demonstrate that associations between distinct representational structures can be detected via cross-task transfer, provided that initial performance is retrieval based. Results support the predictions of the integrated-structures model of multiplication knowledge. Implications for well-established item differences such as the problem-size effect are addressed, and the question of how integration occurs is considered.     

Gender Differences in the Social Functioning of Adolescents with Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has been associated with social difficulties. Boys with IBD may have increased risk for social problems due to delayed growth and puberty, but gender differences in social functioning have not been investigated. This study examined gender differences in multiple areas of social functioning for adolescents with IBD compared to healthy adolescents. Participants were 92 adolescents 11-17?years (50 with IBD, 42 healthy) and parents who completed questionnaires assessing social functioning. IBD was associated with poorer social functioning in the areas of social competence and social problems. Boys with IBD had worse social competence, with no gender differences for social problems. Gender predicted the use of social contact as a coping strategy, but no significant group differences were found for other areas of social functioning. Adolescents with IBD experience significant social difficulties in some areas, and boys are at risk for poor social competence. However, previously reported social difficulties may not extend to all areas of social functioning.     

Early Career Boot Camp: A Novel Mechanism for Enhancing Early Career Development for Psychologists in Academic Healthcare

The purpose of this article is to describe a pilot mentoring program for Early Career Psychologists (ECPs) working in Academic Health Centers (AHCs) and synthesize the lessons learned to contribute to future ECP and AHC career development training programs. The authors describe an early career development model, named the Early Career Boot Camp. This intensive experience was conducted as a workshop meant to build a supportive network and to provide mentorship and survival tools for working in AHCs. Four major components were addressed: professional effectiveness, clinical supervision, strategic career planning, and academic research. Nineteen attendees who were currently less than 5 years post completion of doctoral graduate programs in psychology participated in the program. The majority of boot camp components were rated as good to excellent, with no component receiving below average ratings. Of the components offered within the boot camp, mentoring and research activities were rated the strongest, followed by educational activities, challenges in AHCS, and promotion and tenure. The article describes the purpose, development, implementation, and assessment of the program in detail in an effort to provide an established outline for future organizations to utilize when mentoring ECPs.     

Electrodermal responses to sources of dual-task interference

There is a response selection bottleneck that is responsible for dual-task interference. How the response selection bottleneck operates was addressed in three dual-task experiments. The overlap between two tasks (as indexed by the stimulus onset asynchrony [SOA]) was systematically manipulated, and both reaction time and electrodermal activity were measured. In addition, each experiment also manipulated some aspect of the difficulty of either task. Both increasing task overlap by reducing SOA and increasing the difficulty of either task lengthened reaction times. Electrodermal response was strongly affected by task difficulty but was only weakly affected by SOA, and in a different manner from reaction time. A fourth experiment found that the subjectively perceived difficulty of a dual-task trial was affected both by task difficulty and by SOA, but in different ways than electrodermal activity. Overall, the results were not consistent with a response selection bottleneck that involves processes of voluntary, executive attention. Instead, the results converge with findings from neural network modeling to suggest that the delay of one task while another is being processed reflects the operation of a routing mechanism that can process only one stream of information for action at a time and of a passive, structural store that temporarily holds information for the delayed task. The results suggest that conventional blocked or event-related neuroimaging designs may be inadequate to identify the mechanism of operation of the response selection bottleneck.     

Reducing stereotype threat in order to facilitate learning

Recent stereotype threat research has demonstrated that negative stereotypes about women's math ability can impair their mathematical learning. This experiment extends this research by examining whether presenting “gender fair” information can reduce learning decrements (on a focal and transfer task) and if the timing of this information matters. Women (N = 140) and men (N = 60) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: control, stereotype threat only, stereotype threat removed before learning, and stereotype threat removed after learning. Compared with women in the control condition and women who had stereotype threat removed before learning, learning and transfer were poorer for women in the stereotype threat only condition and women who had stereotype threat removed after learning but before learning assessment. Men's learning and transfer were unaffected by condition. These findings suggest that a manipulation that can reduce performance deficits can also reduce learning decrements if it is presented before learning occurs. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Refining the measurement of distress intolerance

Distress intolerance is an important transdiagnostic variable that has long been implicated in the development and maintenance of psychological disorders. Self-report measurement strategies for distress intolerance (DI) have emerged from several different models of psychopathology and these measures have been applied inconsistently in the literature in the absence of a clear gold standard. The absence of a consistent assessment strategy has limited the ability to compare across studies and samples, thus hampering the advancement of this research agenda. This study evaluated the latent factor structure of existing measures of DI to examine the degree to which they are capturing the same construct. Results of confirmatory factor analysis in three samples totaling 400 participants provided support for a single-factor latent structure. Individual items of these four scales were then correlated with this factor to identify those that best capture the core construct. Results provided consistent support for 10 items that demonstrated the strongest concordance with this factor. The use of these 10 items as a unifying measure in the study of DI and future directions for the evaluation of its utility are discussed.