Very rapid forgetting: Reply to Muter

We reply to the commentary in which Muter (1995) disputes the findings and arguments of Cunningham, Healy, Till, Fendrich, and Dimitry (1993) concerning the rate of forgetting from primary memory. Although Muter (1980) had reported very rapid forgetting when secondary memory processes were minimized, Cunningham et al. found that the rate of forgetting from primary memory was no more rapid when secondary memory processes were minimal than it was when secondary memory processes were substantial. We locate the discrepancy between the two studies specifically at recall performance on the 0-sec retention interval, and we argue that the very rapid forgetting found by Muter (1980) can be attributed in large part to the fact that although subjects in his experiments did not expect to recall the letters after a filled retention interval, at the time of encoding and after an unfilled delay they did have a high overall expectancy to recall the letters.     

Multiple factors of cognitive failure and their relationships with stress vulnerability

Use of the Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ) in clinical research assumes that the questionnaire measures a single factor. A factor analysis of the CFQ was performed, on a sample of 475 students, using accurate procedures for determining the number of factors. These procedures gave mutually inconsistent results: at least two alternative factor structures can be extracted from the CFQ. An interpretable seven factor solution was found, but the CFQ probably has insufficient items to measure more than two strongly defined factors. The capacity of CFQ multiple factors to predict measures related to stress vulnerability was tested in a further study (N=57). Correlations between CFQ total score and neuroticism and use of coping strategies appeared to depend mainly on a single CFQ multiple factor, related to failures of concentration. Some of the other CFQ factors predicted other criteria. Further research on multiple factors of cognitive failure might improve the validity of the CFQ as a predictor of stress vulnerability and of cognitive performance.     

Semantic, phonological, and mediated priming in reading and lexical decisions

Four experiments were conducted to investigate whether semantic activation of a concept spreads to phonologically and graphemically related concepts. In lexical decision or self-paced reading tasks, subjects responded to pairs of words that were semantically related (e.g., light-lamp), that rhymed (e.g., lamp-damp), or that combined both of these relations through a mediating word (e.g., light-damp). In one version of each task, test lists contained word-word pairs (e.g., light-lamp) as well as nonword-word (e.g., pown-table) and word-nonword pairs (e.g., month-poad); in another version, test lists contained only word-word pairs. The lexical decision and self-paced reading tasks were facilitated by semantic and rhyming relations regardless of the presence or absence of nonwords on the test lists. The effect of the mediated relation, however, depended on the presence of nonwords among the stimuli. When only words were included, there was no effect of the mediated relation, but when nonwords were included, lexical decision and self-paced reading responses were inhibited by the mediated relation. These inhibitory effects are attributed to processes occurring after lexical access, and the relative advantages of the self-paced reading task are discussed.     

Family Consumption of Low Fat Foods: Stated Preference Versus Actual Consumption1

Food preferences for low fat, low cholesterol foods were obtained directly from 30 mother and child pairs. The food preferences of mothers and children were not related and both were not accurate in estimating each other's food likes. When food preferences of mother and child were correlated with stated frequency of consumption, virtually no relationships emerged. The best predictor of what was being served to the entire family was what the father (husband) liked to eat. These results suggest that dietary interventions in families should include the fathers.     

Transformative Treatments

Contemporary social‐scientific research seeks to identify specific causal mechanisms for outcomes of theoretical interest. Experiments that randomize populations to treatment and control conditions are the “gold standard” for causal inference. We identify, describe, and analyze the problem posed by transformative treatments. Such treatments radically change treated individuals in a way that creates a mismatch in populations, but this mismatch is not empirically detectable at the level of counterfactual dependence. In such cases, the identification of causal pathways is underdetermined in a previously unrecognized way. Moreover, if the treatment is indeed transformative it breaks the inferential structure of the experimental design. Transformative treatments are not curiosities or “corner cases,” but are plausible mechanisms in a large class of events of theoretical interest, particularly ones where deliberate randomization is impractical and quasi‐experimental designs are sought instead. They cast long‐running debates about treatment and selection effects in a new light, and raise new methodological challenges.     

Does spatial information impact immediate verbatim recall of verbal navigation instructions?

The present study addresses the issue of whether spatial information impacts immediate verbatim recall of verbal navigation instructions. Subjects heard messages instructing them to move within a two-dimensional depiction of a three-dimensional space consisting of four stacked grids displayed on a computer screen. They repeated the instructions orally and then followed them manually by clicking with a mouse on the grids. Two groups with identical instructions were compared; they differed only in whether the starting position was indicated before or after the instructions were given and repeated, with no differences in the manual movements to be made. Accuracy on both the oral repetition and manual movement responses was significantly higher when the starting position was indicated before the instructions. The results are consistent with the proposal that there is only a single amodal mental representation, rather than distinct verbal and nonverbal representations, of navigation instructions. The advantage for the before condition was found even for the oral repetition responses, implying that the creation of the amodal representation occurred immediately, while the instructions were being held in working memory. In practical terms, the findings imply that being able to form a mental representation of the movement path while being given verbal navigation instructions should substantially facilitate memory for the instructions and execution of them.