When practice makes imperfect: debilitating effects of overlearning

It was hypothesized that as overlearning leads to "mindlessness," the individual components of a task become relatively inaccessible to consciousness and therefore unavailable to serve as evidence of task competence. This may lead to a decrement in performance if circumstances, for example, a label connoting relative inferiority, lead one to question one's ability. This was tested in the first experiment by varying practice on a task (no practice, moderate practice, and overpractice) by label assigned to subjects (no label, assistant, boss). As predicted, performance decrements resulted for the no practice and overpracticed subjects who were assigned the inferior status label but not for the moderate practice subjects for whom the task components were still salient. In a second experiment it was found that the debilitation could be prevented for an overlearned task by making components of the task salient. Implications for the vulnerability of experts to these performance debilitations are explored.     

Text processing and feedback: what have we learned?

In studies on the effects of feedback on text comprehension, it was determined that text content interacts differentially with the feedback provided. Specifically, the types of memorial representations sought must be considered in terms of type of text, feedback timing, frequency, and modality.     

Transcendental meditation, mindfulness, and longevity: an experimental study with the elderly

Can direct change in state of consciousness through specific mental techniques extend human life and reverse age-related declines? To address this question, 73 residents of 8 homes for the elderly (mean age = 81 years) were randomly assigned among no treatment and 3 treatments highly similar in external structure and expectations: the Transcendental Meditation (TM) program, mindfulness training (MF) in active distinction making, or a relaxation (low mindfulness) program. A planned comparison indicated that the "restful alert" TM group improved most, followed by MF, in contrast to relaxation and no-treatment groups, on paired associate learning; 2 measures of cognitive flexibility; mental health; systolic blood pressure; and ratings of behavioral flexibility, aging, and treatment efficacy. The MF group improved most, followed by TM, on perceived control and word fluency. After 3 years, survival rate was 100% for TM and 87.5% for MF in contrast to lower rates for other groups.     

Pre- and postlexical loci of contextual effects on word recognition

The context in which a word occurs could influence either the actual decoding of the word or a postrecognition judgment of the relatedness of word and context. In this research, we investigated the loci of contextual effects that occur in lexical priming, when prime and target words are related along different dimensions. Both lexical decision and naming tasks were used because previous research had suggested that they are differentially sensitive to postlexical processing. Semantic and associative priming occurred with both tasks. Other facilitative contextual effects, due to syntactic relations between words, backward associations, or changes in the proportion of related items, occurred only with the lexical decision task. The results indicate that only associative and semantic priming facilitate the decoding of a target; the other effects are postlexical. The results are related to the different demands of the naming and lexical decision tasks, and to current models of word recognition.     

Pregnancy: A social stigma?

Experimental evidence is presented which explores the social stimulus value of pregnancy. It was found that, for men especially, the pregnant woman elicits avoidance and staring and that these responses occur primarily because pregnancy is a novel visual stimulus. For women, avoidance seems to be tied less to the stimulus aspects of the pregnant woman than to role expectations about her behavior. The pregnant woman is expected to be passive, but is simultaneously rejected for being so. It is argued that this constellation of responses may produce discomfort and withdrawal in the pregnant woman herself, since avoidance and staring are easily interpreted as negative reactions. How these reactions fit into the cultural response to pregnancy is discussed.     

Long-term effects of a control-relevant intervention with the institutionalized aged

Elderly nursing home residents who were tested as part of an intervention designed to increase feelings of choice and personal responsibility over daily events were reevaluated 18 month later. Nurses' ratings and health and mortality indicators suggest that the experimental treatment and /or the processes that it set in motion had sustained beneficial effects.