Are self-explanations always beneficial?

We present evidence suggesting that the effect of self-explanations on learning is not always beneficial and, in fact, in some contexts has a detrimental effect. Over eight sessions, fourth-graders engaged in investigation of a database with the goal of identifying causal effects. In a separate task, children in one condition also generated self-explanations regarding the mechanisms underlying the causal effects they believed to be present. In a comparison condition, they did not. On a transfer task, children in the no-explanations condition showed superior causal inference performance. The findings are discussed as reflecting the development of “data-reading” skill with which an emphasis on explanations may interfere.     

Cognitive and life stress predictors of relapse in remitted unipolar depressed patients: test of the congruency hypothesis.

Remitted depressed subjects (N = 59) were followed longitudinally to determine whether dependent or self-critical persons are more vulnerable to relapse after exposure to life events that have a bearing on interpersonal or achievement concerns. Regression analyses indicated that congruency effects, as measured by the occurrence of achievement-related adversity in the lives of self-critical subjects, accounted for a significant increment in relapse variance over each variable entered singly. When data from the 2 months just before relapse were analyzed, some evidence of congruency effects in dependent subjects experiencing interpersonal-related adversity was obtained. These findings highlight the dimensional qualities of life even impact and call for greater differentiation in modeling the activation of a diathesis and precipitation of depression after life stress.     

Grammatical priming effects between pronouns and inflected verb forms

Summary Deciding on the lexical status of a word can be facilitated by a preceding, semantically related word. Three experiments are reported demonstrating a different kind of facilitation due to the grammatical relation between function words and content words in Serbo-Croatian. A pronoun facilitated or inhibited the lexical decision on a following verb depending on whether the person of the verb, as represented by its inflected ending, agreed with the person of the pronoun. Also, verbs primed subsequent pronouns but the pattern of results for the verbal priming of pronouns was markedly different from that for the pronominal priming of verbs. The results suggest that the organization of the internal lexicon is sensitive to grammatical relations as well as semantical relations between words.     

Dominance and typicality norms for properties: Convergent and discriminant validity

Sensory properties of verbally depicted items, such as those of color or shape, were indexed for dominance (frequency of output) and typicality (perceptual “goodness”). Participants (total N=193) served in one of four conditions. The most dominant property response was computed for 105 nouns by one group. A second group rated these properties for typicality, relative to a constituent property (i.e., given one’s idea of yellow, how typically “yellow” are the following items: butter, canary, daffodil, ...). A third group produced as many properties as possible for each of 65 nouns. Dominance was computed for all 459 properties so produced. The last group rated these 459 properties for typicality relative to the parent noun (i.e., Given your image of an apple, how typically round is it? How typically soft is it? etc.). A multimethod-multitrait analysis indicated that both typicality and dominance were reliable, and that both exhibited convergent and discriminant validity. Typicality measured relative to an ideal property exhibited greater discriminant validity from dominance than when measured relative to the parent noun. Selected uses of these norms in studies of semantic memory, metaphor judgment, and concept identification were discussed.     

Anorexic eating attitudes and behaviors of male and female college students

This study examined gender differences in eating attitudes and behaviors in a sample of 471 undergraduate college students. The prevalence of symptomatology indicative of anorexia was determined using the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26). In addition, the family climate, parent-child dynamics, and self-concept of students with and without maladaptive eating attitudes and behaviors were compared, and the relationship between eating attitudes/behaviors and current psychological distress was examined. Anorexic symptomatology was found for 20% of the females and 10% of the males. In general, students without symptomatic attitudes and behaviors had a more positive self-concept and reported less psychological distress than did those with eating disturbances. The findings suggest that eating problems may be more prevalent among males than previously estimated.