Long-term retention of information about presentation modality by children and adults

A mixed-modality continuous recognition task followed by a final recognition test after 0 h, 4 h, 1 day, or 7 days was administered to third- and fourth-grade children and adults. Subjects gave recognition responses and reported presentation modalities. Forgetting rates for both words and input mode were invariant with age. The decay functions for presentation modality were affected, however, by the initial input mode, with modality identification declining more rapidly for words heard first than for words seen first. Information about whether a word was seen or heard remained in memory for at least 4 h. The results demonstrate that long-term-memory representations contain a great deal of information about input mode and suggest that the theoretical distinction between automatic and effortful processing may be a useful one.     

PARTICIPATIVE EDUCATION FOR CHILDREN: AN EFFECTIVE APPROACH TO INCREASE SAFETY BELT USE

Vehicle license plate numbers and the shoulder belt use of front-seat occupants were recorded unobtrusively when parents delivered and picked up their children at a Montessori school during 5-day baseline, intervention, and follow-up phases. Practicing and presenting a 15-min safety belt skit increased the safety belt use of those 6 kindergarten children who were not consistent belt users 82% above their preintervention baseline belt use mean of 47%. The belt use of these children's parents (who watched the skit) increased to 56% above their baseline mean of 36%. Also, mean safety belt use of 11 primary school children who watched the skit increased to 70% above their baseline of 28%. Mean safety belt use of the older children's parents (who didn't watch the skit) remained at approximately 31% for each phase, regardless of whether children were vehicle occupants. The follow-up observations, taken 3 months after the intervention, revealed 60% belt use for the kindergartners, 48% for the primary school children, and 71% for the kindergartners' parents when the children were vehicle occupants but only 30% when the parents were driving alone.     

Dichoptic interaction of visual structure and light flashes

Perceptual interaction between monocular flashes and different amounts of continuously visible target structure shown to the other eye was investigated. A response variable called dominance of the flashes is defined and found to be a direct function of flash intensity and an inverse function of contraocular target structure. The dominance variable is distinguished from subjective brightness of the flashes and subjective complexity of the targets. The observed effects are attributed to limited central processing capacity with increased informational load.     

Role-taking skills in intellectually-gifted third-grade children

Very bright (mean IQ = 152) third graders were compared with both average IQ third graders and average IQ sixth graders on perceptual, cognitive, and affective perspective-taking tasks. The role-taking skills of the intellectually-gifted children were more similar to those of their mental age mates than to those of their chronological age mates on both the cognitive and affective tasks. On the perceptual task, the bright children's performance fell between that of the two comparison groups. The results provide evidence that gifted children are advanced in thinking about both the social and physical worlds, and have implications for educational issues such as curriculum development and acceleration vs. enrichment.     

Changes in Behaviour and Body Weight Following a Single or Double Social Defeat in Rats

In a series of experiments, the consequences of a single and double social conflict on various behaviours and body weight in rats were studied. Animals were subjected to social defeat by placing them into the territory of an aggressive male conspecific for one hour, either once, or twice at the same time on two consecutive days. To assess the consequences of social defeat, three experiments were performed with independent groups of rats. In the first experiment, an open field test was performed two days after the last conflict. Locomotor activity was strongly reduced after social defeat. There were no differences between the single and double defeat group. To assess the effects of social defeat on subsequent social behaviour, a second experiment was performed in which experimental animals were confronted with an unfamiliar non-aggressive rat two days after a single or double conflict. Social defeat resulted in a reduction of social contact with the unfamiliar conspecific. There was no difference between the single and double conflict group. In the third experiment, the effects of social conflict on food intake, body weight and saccharine preference were measured. Food intake was not affected after a single conflict, but in the double conflict group food intake was decreased for several days. Body weight gain was decreased after both single and double social defeat. The decrease was stronger in the double conflict group. Water intake and saccharine preference were not significantly affected. This study revealed that social defeat in rats causes pronounced changes in various behaviours and body weight. Different aspects of behaviour are differentially affected by defeat with respect to the magnitude and time course of the changes induced. Moreover, different behavioural parameters are differentially sensitive to repetition of the stressor.