The effects of age,enactment, and cue-action relatedness on memory for intentions in the Virtual Week task

ABSTRACT

The current study investigated the influence of encoding modality and cue-action relatedness on prospective memory (PM) performance in young and older adults using a modified version of the Virtual Week task. Participants encoded regular and irregular intentions either verbally or by physically performing the action during encoding. For half of the intentions there was a close semantic relation between the retrieval cue and the intended action, while for the remaining intentions the cue and action were semantically unrelated. For irregular tasks, both age groups showed superior PM for related intentions compared to unrelated intentions in both encoding conditions. While older adults retrieved fewer irregular intentions than young adults after verbal encoding, there was no age difference following enactment. Possible mechanisms of enactment and relatedness effects are discussed in the context of current theories of event-based PM.     

Schizophrene Patienten der forensischen Psychiatrie im Vergleich zu schizophrenen Patienten der Allgemeinpsychiatrie

Background

The number of schizophrenic patients admitted to forensic hospitals according to section 63 of the German Criminal Code has increased continuously over the past years. Some researchers assume that these forensic patients form a group of patients with very complex mental disorders, a number of risk factors and insufficient pretreatment in general psychiatry. This study aimed to identify differences regarding the history of treatment of forensic and general psychiatric patients diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Method

The matched samples included 72 male patients from forensic wards and 72 male patients from general psychiatric institutions diagnosed with schizophrenia. The history of psychiatric treatment was reconstructed by interviewing the patients as well as outpatient psychiatrists and patients’ legal custodians and by analyzing patient medical records.

Results

In contrast to the general psychiatric patients, prior to admission forensic patients were less integrated into psychiatric care and showed a lower rate of treatment compliance. They also showed a higher rate of previous compulsory treatment because of aggressive behavior towards other persons as well as higher rates of treatment difficulties and violent behavior during previous inpatient treatment. Furthermore, forensic patients had a higher number of previous criminal convictions and had been convicted more often for violent offences. With regard to other relevant risk factors (e.g. comorbid substance abuse disorder, age, education, conduct disorder, antisocial personality disorder, previous exposure to violent and abusive behavior) the two patient groups were, however, comparable.

Conclusions

Regarding schizophrenic patients with comorbid substance abuse disorders, previous violent delinquency and violent behavior during previous inpatient treatment, an intensive outpatient aftercare should be arranged before they are discharged from general psychiatric institutions.     

A comparison of visual and auditory representational momentum in spatial tasks

Similarities have been observed in the localization of the final position of moving visual and moving auditory stimuli: Perceived endpoints that are judged to be farther in the direction of motion in both modalities likely reflect extrapolation of the trajectory, mediated by predictive mechanisms at higher cognitive levels. However, actual comparisons of the magnitudes of displacement between visual tasks and auditory tasks using the same experimental setup are rare. As such, the purpose of the present free-field study was to investigate the influences of the spatial location of motion offset, stimulus velocity, and motion direction on the localization of the final positions of moving auditory stimuli (Experiment 1 and 2) and moving visual stimuli (Experiment 3). To assess whether auditory performance is affected by dynamically changing binaural cues that are used for the localization of moving auditory stimuli (interaural time differences for low-frequency sounds and interaural intensity differences for high-frequency sounds), two distinct noise bands were employed in Experiments 1 and 2. In all three experiments, less precise encoding of spatial coordinates in paralateral space resulted in larger forward displacements, but this effect was drowned out by the underestimation of target eccentricity in the extreme periphery. Furthermore, our results revealed clear differences between visual and auditory tasks. Displacements in the visual task were dependent on velocity and the spatial location of the final position, but an additional influence of motion direction was observed in the auditory tasks. Together, these findings indicate that the modality-specific processing of motion parameters affects the extrapolation of the trajectory.     

Inhibiting children's memory of an interactive event: the effectiveness of a cover‐up

Children are generally more susceptible than adults to suggestive interview techniques. Children's memories of an event can be altered and added to by presenting post‐event information (PEI). What is not known is whether embedding silence about a particular scene within the PEI makes that scene less likely to be reported. Children aged 5–6 years made cakes with an agent ‘Mrs Flour’. The following day they received PEI in which a target scene from the original event was omitted, resulting in children reporting the target scene significantly less often than did controls (control= 57% and omit= 23% correct responses). There was direct evidence from the children's language that the omission led to a detriment in memory for the original scene itself. Allowing children to draw during the interview did not reduce the effect. Implications are discussed in terms of child victims and witnesses particularly regarding child sexual abuse. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

THE WOMEN'S STUDIES EXPERIENCE

This study included 212 women and 38 men students from nine women's studies classes and 101 women and 35 men from nine non-women's studies classes. At pretesting and posttesting students completed the Performance Self-Esteem Scale (PSES) and measures of their educational and job certainty and motivation. Comparison students were similar to women's studies students in having a woman teacher and having an interest in the women's studies curriculum. At posttesting women's studies students showed greater gains in PSES scores ( p < .01) and in job motivation and job certainty ( p < .01) than did the comparison students. The results support the value of women's studies for men as well as women students.     

Examining Family Communication Patterns and Seeking Social Support Direct and Indirect Effects Through Ability and Motivation

Seeking social support remains a relatively understudied aspect of supportive communication. By integrating the literatures on family communication patterns (FCPs) and supportive communication, this study examines dispositional factors that influence support seeking in particular situations. Specifically, communicative ability and motivation to seek support were theorized to mediate the relationship between FCPs and recalled strategies of support seeking. Results from a sample (N = 352) of undergraduate students not only demonstrate that people's FCPs impart different levels of communicative ability and motivation to seek support, but also indirectly influence people's strategies of support seeking. Ability and motivation also directly influence support seeking, and several of these effects are moderated by participants' sex.     

The Ability/Performance Dimension of Self-esteem: Implications for Women's Achievement Behavior

A 33-item measure, the Performance-Self-Esteem Scale (PSES), was developed to tap self-evaluations of ability and performance. Evidence from four samples of undergraduates (a total of 224 women and 236 men) indicate that the PSES measures a separate, distinct dimension of self-esteem. As predicted, undergraduate males scored higher on the scale than undergraduate women (p <.003), although this difference was significant for juniors and seniors only. Implications for research related to women's achievement-related behaviors and the college experience are considered.     

Pregnancy-specific stress, prenatal health behaviors, and birth outcomes

OBJECTIVE: Stress in pregnancy predicts earlier birth and lower birth weight. The authors investigated whether pregnancy-specific stress contributes uniquely to birth outcomes compared with general stress, and whether prenatal health behaviors explain this association. DESIGN: Three structured prenatal interviews (N = 279) assessing state anxiety, perceived stress, life events, pregnancy-specific stress, and health behaviors. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Gestational age at delivery, birth weight, preterm delivery (<37 weeks), and low birth weight (<2,500 g). RESULTS: A latent pregnancy-specific stress factor predicted birth outcomes better than latent factors representing state anxiety, perceived stress, or life event stress, and than a latent factor constructed from all stress measures. Controlling for obstetric risk, pregnancy-specific stress was associated with smoking, caffeine consumption, and unhealthy eating, and inversely associated with healthy eating, vitamin use, exercise, and gestational age at delivery. Cigarette smoking predicted lower birth weight. Clinically-defined birth outcomes were predicted by cigarette smoking and pregnancy-specific stress. CONCLUSION: Pregnancy-specific stress contributed directly to preterm delivery and indirectly to low birth weight through its association with smoking. Pregnancy-specific stress may be a more powerful contributor to birth outcomes than general stress.