A reexamination of stimulus-frequency effects in recognition: two mirrors for low- and high-frequency pseudowords

The word-frequency mirror effect (more hits and fewer false alarms for low-frequency than for high-frequency words) has intrigued memory researchers, and multiple accounts have been offered to explain the result. In this study, participants were differentially familiarized to various pseudowords in a familiarization phase that spanned multiple weeks. Recognition tests given during the first week of familiarization replicated a result of W. T. Maddox and W. K. Estes (1997) that failed to show the classic word-frequency mirror effect for pseudowords; however, recognition tests given toward the end of training showed the classic mirror pattern. In addition, a stimulus-frequency mirror effect for "remember" vs. "know" judgments was obtained. These data are consistent with an account of the mirror effect that posits the involvement of dual processes for episodic recognition.     

The medical student experience with disasters and disaster response

Medical students from New York City were integrally involved in the response by health professionals to aid the families of victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center. The present study was performed to investigate the emotional impact of this involvement on medical students from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. One hundred fifty-seven students responded to a mail survey that explored their personal and professional involvement in the disaster as well as their psychiatric symptoms in the week after the event and at the time of the survey (3.5 months after the event). Findings suggested a differential emotional impact on female students and on students involved in less supervised and more emotionally intense activities. However, involvement in the relief effort, per se, did not contribute to psychiatric symptomatology. It may have been associated with enhanced professional self-esteem among the students. These findings have implications for future planning of psychiatric response to disasters.     

Learning disability subtypes: classification of high functioning hyperlexia

This study examined 30 children with hyperlexic reading patterns and average intelligence to determine if established learning disability subtypes could be applied to these children with hyperlexia. Two groups emerged. One type showed language learning disorder patterns with good visual memory. This group also showed a high percentage of phonetic word errors. A second hyperlexic group showed signs of nonverbal learning disorder with visual spatial deficits and impaired visual memory. This latter subgroup showed few phonetic errors with more sight word errors. These findings suggest subtypes of high functioning hyperlexia, one showing language deficits characteristic of dysphasia and one showing patterns similar to visual spatial dyslexia.     

Building phonotactic knowledge in bilinguals: role of early exposure

Timing and amount of exposure to a 2nd language in the acquisition of phonotactic restrictions was examined in 4 experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, 10-month-old monolingual and bilingual Catalan-Spanish infants were presented with nonwords that were phonotactically legal or illegal in Catalan and phonotactically illegal in Spanish. Differences between the 4 groups of infants were obtained as a function of language dominance. In Experiments 3 and 4, adult Spanish-Catalan bilinguals were compared with the same materials. Catalan-dominant bilinguals were more accurate than Spanish-dominant bilinguals in their perception of legal sequences; however, they were not more accurate with illegal sequences. The findings suggest a complex correlation between the pattern of preference and the amount and timing of exposure.     

Religiosity,attributional style,and social support as psychosocial buffers for African American and white adolescents' perceived risk for suicide

Psychosocial buffers were evaluated for their relative contributions to adolescents' perceived risk for suicide. A community sample of African American and White adolescents (N = 1,098) rated the likelihood that they would die by suicide and completed standardized measures of depression, hopelessness, intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity, orthodoxy, social support, and causal attributional style. Orthodoxy-commitment to core beliefs-emerged as the single strongest correlate after controlling for the effects of other buffers. The effect of depression on perceived suicide risk was moderated by the adolescent's degree of orthodoxy. Commitment to core, life-saving beliefs may help explain the religion-suicide link for adolescents.     

Can the Edinburgh Risk of Repetition Scale Predict Repetition of Deliberate Self‐poisoning in an Australian Clinical Setting?

This study tested the ability of the Edinburgh Risk of Repetition Scale (ERRS) to identify patients at high risk for repeat deliberate self-poisoning (DSP). Consecutive DSP patients (N= 1,317) over a 3-year period were followed-up for 12 months. A statistically significant relationship between ERRS scores and repetition was observed; however, sensitivity and specificity were low. Logistic regression analysis revealed only "previous parasuicide" contributed significantly to repetition. The ERRS had limited value in identifying patients at high risk of repeat DSP in this clinical population.     

Infant temperament,pleasure in parenting,and marital happiness in adoptive families

Temperamental characteristics have been related to later externalizing and internalizing behavioral outcomes. To assess the relationship between temperament and the early family environment, we measured infant temperament, pleasure in parenting, and marital happiness via parent report in 99 families with a nonrelative adoptive infant. Perceptions of child temperament were assessed using two subscales of the Infant Behavior Questionnaire (IBQ; Rothbart, 1981). Mothers and fathers who rated their adoptive child as showing more Distress to Limitations (on the IBQ) reported less pleasure in routine parenting activities; this effect was mediated by marital happiness for fathers. Mothers reported less pleasure in parenting with infants perceived to be more temperamentally fearful (on the IBQ). The bidirectional relationship between temperamental characteristics and pleasure in parenting is discussed. © 2001 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.     

Values,Susceptibility to Normative Influence,and Attribute Importance Weights: A Nomological Analysis

It is argued that the construct of individual susceptibility to normative influence (SNI) needs to be put into a wider nomological framework, with antecedents and consequences. Based on prior literature, a causal sequence is hypothesized in which values are antecedent to SNI, which itself shapes the importance placed by the individual on different attributes. It is further suggested that the relation between values and SNI is strongest for “external” values, and that high SNI leads to greater importance for attributes that provide “socially visible” benefits. Data from a national field survey (N= 663) on consumer preferences are analyzed to test these hypotheses, using confirmatory factor analysis via LISREL 8.30 (Jöreskog & Sörbom, 1993). The analysis finds support for most of the hypothesized structural relations.     

The influence of task requirements on priming in object decision and matching

We argue that task requirements can be the determinant in generating different results in studies on visual object recognition. We investigated priming for novel visual objects in three implicit memory tasks. A study-test design was employed in which participants first viewed line drawings of unfamiliar objects and later made different decisions about structural aspects of the objects. Priming for both symmetric and asymmetric possible objects was observed in a task requiring a judgment of structural possibility. However, when the task was changed to one requiring a judgment of structural symmetry, only symmetric possible objects showed priming. Finally, in a matching task in which participants made a same-different judgment, only symmetric possible objects exhibited priming. These results suggest that an understanding of object representation will be most fruitful if it is based on careful analyses of both the task demands and their interaction(s) with encoding and retrieval processes.