Major memory for microblogs

Online social networking is vastly popular and permits its members to post their thoughts as microblogs, an opportunity that people exploit, on Facebook alone, over 30 million times an hour. Such trivial ephemera, one might think, should vanish quickly from memory; conversely, they may comprise the sort of information that our memories are tuned to recognize, if that which we readily generate, we also readily store. In the first two experiments, participants’ memory for Facebook posts was found to be strikingly stronger than their memory for human faces or sentences from books—a magnitude comparable to the difference in memory strength between amnesics and healthy controls. The second experiment suggested that this difference is not due to Facebook posts spontaneously generating social elaboration, because memory for posts is enhanced as much by adding social elaboration as is memory for book sentences. Our final experiment, using headlines, sentences, and reader comments from articles, suggested that the remarkable memory for microblogs is also not due to their completeness or simply their topic, but may be a more general phenomenon of their being the largely spontaneous and natural emanations of the human mind.     

Do Children’s Attributions Mediate the Link Between Parental Conditional Regard and Child Depression and Emotion?

Both parental conditional regard for academics and depressogenic attributions are related to detrimental psychological outcomes for children. Here we examine associations among parental conditional negative regard, child depressogenic attributions, child depressive symptoms, and emotion reactivity in children between the ages of 8 and 12, as well as whether children’s self-reported and behavioral attributions for negative events mediate associations between parental conditional negative regard for academics with children’s depressive symptoms and emotion reactivity. In Study 1 (N?=?108, M _age ?=?9.73, 50 male), children’s self-reported attributions for hypothetical events mediated the link between parental conditional negative regard and child depressive symptoms. In Study 2 (N?=?104, M _age ?=?10.28, 54 male), children attempted an impossible puzzle task while their skin conductance level was monitored, after which they completed an interview that was coded for spontaneous attributions for failure. Children’s spontaneous attributions mediated the link between parental conditional negative regard and child emotion reactivity, but not depressive symptoms. Findings suggest that children’s attributions may be a mechanism through which parental conditional negative regard is related to children’s depressive symptoms and emotion reactivity during a performance challenge. These results have implications for developmental models of depression risk and potential areas for clinical interventions with both children and their parents.     

Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Teaching Package Utilizing Behavioral Skills Training and In Situ Training to Teach Gun Safety Skills in a Preschool Classroom

There are a number of different safety threats that children face in their lives. One infrequent, but highly dangerous situation a child can face is finding a firearm. Hundreds of children are injured or killed by firearms each year. Fortunately, behavioral skills training (BST) and in situ training (IST) are effective approaches for teaching a number of different skills, including safety skills. The purpose of this study was to evaluate a teaching package for preschool teachers to learn to conduct BST to teach safety skills. Following teacher-implemented BST, the experimenter completed in situ training and supplemental instructions. A multiple baseline across subjects design was used to evaluate the effectiveness of this teaching package implemented by the teacher and experimenter with five preschoolers. Five children demonstrated the skills following IST and additional reinforcement or time out. The use of additional reinforcement, as well as treatment fidelity are discussed.     

The Integration of Noninvasive Prenatal Screening into the Existing Prenatal Paradigm: a Survey of Current Genetic Counseling Practice

Since its introduction four years ago, noninvasive prenatal screening for fetal aneuploidy (NIPS) has been widely adopted as a screening tool for women at a high risk for fetal aneuploidy. As use expands into the general population, questions arise concerning the integration of NIPS into preexisting screening paradigms. This study aims to examine the use of NIPS in current practice among prenatal counselors, predominantly in the United States, in order to inform strategies for the optimal use of both new and existing screening techniques. We electronically surveyed 208 members of the National Society of Genetic Counselors to ascertain how NIPS is currently being used. Genetic counselors were also queried as to the advantages and disadvantages of offering NIPS to all patients regardless of a priori risk. Results indicate substantial variation in practice regarding which patients are offered NIPS and how counselors have incorporated this technology into existing screening routines. The majority of participants report offering NIPS in conjunction with another method of screening for fetal aneuploidy, indicating that NIPS is being used as an addition rather than as a replacement. These screening methods primarily include nuchal translucency (NT) (45.1 %, n = 78) and first trimester serum screening, with or without an NT (19.7 %, n = 34). Furthermore, the majority report that they would be concerned about losing the clinical value of an NT in a complete transition to NIPS (85.4 %, n = 164). Counselors are evenly split on the merits of expanding the use of NIPS to the general population (con: 55.3 %, n = 105; pro: 44.7 %, n = 85). The lack of consensus suggests that updated practice guidelines might benefit counselors. In addition, respondents emphasized the need to better educate patients and providers about the risks, benefits, and limitations of the test.     

Consolidation of novel word learning in native English-speaking adults

Sleep has been shown to improve the retention of newly learned words. However, most methodologies have used artificial or foreign language stimuli, with learning limited to word/novel word or word/image pairs. Such stimuli differ from many word-learning scenarios in which definition strings are learned with novel words. Thus, we examined sleep's benefit on learning new words within a native language by using very low-frequency words. Participants learned 45 low-frequency English words and, at subsequent recall, attempted to recall the words when given the corresponding definitions. Participants either learned in the morning with recall in the evening (wake group), or learned in the evening with recall the following morning (sleep group). Performance change across the delay was significantly better in the sleep than the wake group. Additionally, the Levenshtein distance, a measure of correctness of the typed word compared with the target word, became significantly worse following wake, whereas sleep protected correctness of recall. Polysomnographic data from a subsample of participants suggested that rapid eye movement (REM) sleep may be particularly important for this benefit. These results lend further support for sleep's function on semantic learning even for word/definition pairs within a native language.     

Harry Potter and Contemporary Magic: Fantasy Literature,Popular Culture,and the Representation of Religion

This article discusses the reasons for the religious reactions to the Harry Potter novels, arguing that the books contribute to, and reflect, the reconfiguration of religion in contemporary society. The article analyses the media qualities of fantasy literature and the specific representation of magic in the novels and argues that these aspects form an important part of the reasons for the religious reactions. Fantasy literature and other popular culture that represents and mediates religious expressions and phenomena actively contribute to the reconfiguration of, and communication about, religion in contemporary society and are thus of consequence for what we understand ‘religion’ to be in the study of religions.     

Speech and Language Difficulties Along with Other Child and Family Factors Associated with Health Related Quality of Life of Australian Children

Speech and/or language difficulties (SaLD) can potentially compromise a child’s health-related quality-of-life (HRQoL). Very few studies have examined associations between SaLD, other child and family factors and HRQoL and none have been undertaken in Australia. We explore these associations using data from a nationally representative Australian sample of 4–5 year old children, extracted from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC) (n?=?4386). The Disability-Stress-Coping Model informed variable selection. Three domains of HRQoL were examined, and assessed on physical, emotional and social functioning subscales of the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL). SaLD measures included parent concern about speech/language (Parents’ Evaluation of Developmental Status) and receptive vocabulary ability (adapted Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III). Multiple regression analyses revealed that various child and family factors representing all constructs from the Disability-Stress-Coping Model were significantly associated with HRQoL. Specifically, HRQoL was positively associated with parental warmth and child’s general health and negatively associated with parent speech/language concerns and maternal depression across all domains. Parents with concerns about their pre-school child’s speech and language rate the quality of their child’s health more poorly across physical, emotional and social domains. Associations between parent speech/language concerns and HRQoL were notable for being apparent in a (non-clinical) population sample and for persisting independent of factors such as maternal depression, parenting style and the child’s general health.     

Effectiveness Research: Transporting Interpersonal Psychotherapy for Depressed Adolescents (IPT-A) From the Lab to School-Based Health Clinics

This paper describes the process of modifying and transporting an evidence-based treatment, Interpersonal Psychotherapy for Depressed Adolescents (IPT-A), from a university setting to school-based health clinics. It addresses conceptual issues involved in the shift from efficacy to effectiveness research as well as operational issues specific to the transport of IPT-A into school-based health clinics. Consideration is given to the rationale for an IPT-A effectiveness study, methodological concerns, and the timing of the move from the lab to the community. The authors identify challenges and barriers to initiating effectiveness and transportability research and provide suggestions for overcoming these barriers. Recommendations for conducting research in school-based practice settings are provided.     

Memory effects in syntactic ERP tasks

The study presented here investigated the role of memory in normal sentence processing by looking at ERP effects to normal sentences and sentences containing grammatical violations. Sentences where the critical word was in the middle of the sentence were compared to sentences where the critical word always occurred in sentence-final position. Grammaticality judgments were required at the end of the sentence. While the violations in both conditions result in the expected increase in the P600 component (reflecting the fact that the syntactic violation is being processed), the sentences with the sentence-medial critical word also result in a late frontal negativity effect. It is hypothesized that this effect is due to greater memory requirements that are needed to keep the violation in mind until a response can be made at the end of the sentence. The maintenance of the decision that a sentence is ungrammatical must be kept in memory longer for sentence-medial violations as opposed to when the violation occurs at the end of the sentence (immediately preceding the moment at which the judgment can be made).