Schema and deviation effects in remembering repeated unfamiliar stories

In today's globalized world, we frequently encounter unfamiliar events that we may have difficulty comprehending – and in turn remembering – due to a lack of appropriate schemata. This research investigated schema effects in a situation where participants established a complex new schema for an unfamiliar type of story through exposure to four variations. We found that immediate recall increased across subsequent stories and that distortions occurred less frequently – participants built on the emerging schema and gradually established representations of parts of the story that were initially transformed. In recall with delays increasing up to 1 month, quantitative measures indicated forgetting while distortions increased. The second focus of this research was on content and order deviation effects on recall. The content deviation, in contrast with previous repeated-event research, was not remembered well and was associated with lower recall; the order deviation had a similar (but expected) effect. We discuss discrepancies between results of this study and previous literature, which had focused on schemata for familiar events, in relation to stages of schema development: it seems that in unfamiliar repeated events, a complex new schema is in the early stages of formation, where the lack of attentional resources limits active processing of deviations.     

Contrasting jail diversion and in-jail services for mental illness and substance abuse: do they serve the same clients?

Baseline data from a study of jail diversion services and in-jail behavioral health services were used to examine the differences in clients served by these two models of responding to people with co-occurring mental health and substance abuse problems in the criminal justice system. Clients of the diversion service had more acute psychiatric symptoms and were more likely to have a diagnosis of psychosis NOS. Clients of the in-jail service were more likely to have been on probation or parole in the past and to have received substance abuse treatment. Different service models may attract and serve different populations of clients. Diversion services may cast a wider net that includes clients who may not have otherwise been involved in forensic services.     

Memory states and memory tasks: an integrative framework for eyewitness memory and suggestibility

An integrative framework (IMP) is presented which depicts performance in eyewitness suggestibility experiments as the participants' solutions of memory tasks, depending on (a) a specified task-relevant memory base and (b) the participants' perception of the memory task. Three theoretical explanations of the effect of misleading post-event information are reinterpreted and reduced to one single core: individuals answer test questions while assuming the consistency of event and post-event information. The impact of such consistency assumptions (a) is demonstrated in a first experiment, where the usual misinformation effect obtained with the Loftus standard test procedure disappeared when the participants' consistency assumptions were destroyed prior to testing, and (b) manifests itself in a qualitative analysis of individual processing strategies for discrepancies between details. Experiment 2, employing methodological innovations suggested by IMP, examined the memory base and found no evidence for memory impairment or misattributions of post-event details to the witnessed scene. However, a follow-up study conducted four and a half months later revealed a strong tendency for such misattributions which might indicate long-term integration of information.     

Context Matters: Differential Gendering of Physics in Arabic-speaking,Hebrew-speaking,and Single-Sex State Schools in Israel

Sex Roles - Although physics is one of the most male-dominated educational fields in Europe and North America, this is not the case in all parts of the world. The present study investigates...     

Genetic engineering and contemporary democratic theory

Genetic engineering is discussed in relation to contemporary theories of individual rights, such as natural rights and liberalism, and theories of societal good, such as utilitarianism and the public interest. The social responsibility to future generations is explored. Different rationales for justifying limitations on reproductive rights are presented and discussed.     

Changing likes and dislikes through the back door: The US-revaluation effect

US-revaluation refers to the observation that subsequent changes in the valence of an unconditioned stimulus (US) after pairing it with a neutral, conditioned stimulus (CS) also changes the valence of the associated CS. Experiment 1 found evidence for the US-revaluation effect using an unobtrusive measure of evaluation. However, US-revaluation effects were more pronounced for positive-to-negative compared to negative-to-positive revaluations. Experiment 2 replicated this finding for self-reported evaluations, further showing that US-revaluation effects are stable over time and independent of explicit memory for the revaluating information. Using a modified paradigm, Experiment 3 ruled out method-related explanations for these findings and showed that changes in CS evaluations are correlated with parallel changes in US evaluations. These findings encourage the view of evaluative conditioning as an instance of stimulus–stimulus (S–S) rather than stimulus-response (S–R) learning. Implications for basic and applied research are discussed.     

Wittgenstein on Expectation,Action, and Internal Relations, 1930–1932

According to Wittgenstein, internal relations are such that, once their terms are given, it is unthinkable that they do not hold. In his early philosophy, the concept of internal relation plays a central role in his views on meaning. The present paper addresses the question of how Wittgenstein's views about internal relations develop during his years of transition (1930–32). In particular, it investigates the connections between the concepts of internal relation, logical multiplicity, and aspect seeing in two thematic fields: (1) Wittgenstein's discussion of the relation between an expectation and what fulfils it, and (2) his discussion of the relation between a sign and an action guided by it.     

Childhood Cancer and Brain Tumor Late Effects: Relationships with Family Burden and Survivor Psychological Outcomes

This study examines illness-specific family burden as a mediator of the association between late effects of childhood cancer and survivors’ emotional and behavioral outcomes. Childhood cancer survivors (n?=?65; ages 10–17) two or more years off-treatment completed measures assessing internalizing and PTSD symptoms. Parents reported on illness-specific family burden, late effects severity, and survivor internalizing/externalizing problems. Providers documented the number of late effects. Illness-specific family burden was correlated with provider-reported late effects (r?=?.29, p?<?.05) and parent report of severe late effects (r?=?.56, p?<?.01). Results supported an indirect effect of illness-specific family burden on number of late effects and parent-reported survivor internalizing problems, p?<?.05. Indirect effects were not found in models predicting PTSD and externalizing problems. Illness-specific family burden is an important intervention target for reducing internalizing problems in childhood cancer survivors with late effects.     

Imitation in young children: when who gets copied is more important than what gets copied

Unlike other animals, human children will copy all of an adult's goal-directed actions, including ones that are clearly unnecessary for achieving the demonstrated goal. Here we highlight how social affiliation is key to this species-specific behavior. Preschoolers watched 2 adults retrieve a toy from a novel apparatus. One adult included irrelevant actions in her demonstration; the other only used actions causally related to opening the apparatus. After both adults took turns demonstrating, 1 left the test room, and the remaining adult gave the apparatus to the child. Children reproduced the irrelevant actions only when given the apparatus by the adult who had demonstrated them, even though the departed adult's actions emphasized how unnecessary these redundant actions were. Our results highlight the specialized skills for participating in cultural groups that have evolved in humans and provide insight into why finding such high fidelity copying in other animals has proven elusive.     

Uniforms affect the accuracy of children's eyewitness identification decisions

A substantial proportion of line‐up identifications involving child eyewitnesses in the UK are conducted by police officers wearing uniform. This study examined the possibility that wearing a uniform constitutes an authority cue that adversely affects a child's ability to make accurate eyewitness identifications. Sixty participants aged 9–10 years old witnessed a staged crime and were later asked to identify a ‘burglar’ from a simultaneous line‐up using a 2 (uniform: present vs. absent) × 2 (target: present vs. absent) design. Children in the uniform present conditions made significantly more choices than children in the uniform absent conditions. More importantly, in the presence of a uniform, children made significantly more false identifications in target‐absent line‐ups. Analysis of supplementary, identification‐related variables (identification time and confidence, state anxiety) suggested that (1) the children experienced uncertainty if the target was absent from the line‐up, but (2) this uncertainty was not expressed when the line‐up administrator wore a uniform, leading to an increase in false identifications. Implications for line‐up administration procedures for children are discussed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.