Writing ourselves in Waikawa: Bitter (sweet) waters

In this paper the authors, three migrant academics, involved in counselling education, use a process of collective biographical memory work (CBMW) to explore the influence of landscape in forming new identies in new lands. Our aim was to extend the investigation of subjectification, transgression and relationship to include the non-human, nature and landscape. Our transitions were made at various ages and stages from the United Kingdom to Aotearoa New Zealand and are caught up in the post-colonial struggle of how to be with Other. The project is based on the premise that people’s relationships with the places of their existence and the ecosystems that surround them matter, and that this is especially so for migrants. However, we note that the influence of place is often subsumed in sociocultural interpretations. In this paper we foreground the human–nature relationship through a collection of shared, embodied, memories of landscapes, in order to explore the influence of the non-human spaces in which we have lived on our re-subjectification. We offer this piece as an example of ‘transient convergence’ [Anderson, J., 2009. Transient convergence and relational sensibility: beyond the modern constitution of nature. Emotion, Space and Society 2, 120–127], reflecting our belief that our lives depend upon building a more respectful relationship with our planet.     

Task-switching performance with 1:1 and 2:1 cue-task mappings: not so different after all

When task-switching studies use the task-cuing procedure with a 1:1 cue-task mapping, task switching and cue switching are confounded, which is problematic for interpreting switch costs. The use of a 2:1 cue-task mapping is a potential solution to this problem, but it is possible that introducing more cues may also introduce marked changes in task-switching performance. In 5 experiments involving 160 subjects, the authors compared performance with 1:1 and 2:1 mappings across several methodological changes. Differences in switch costs between mappings were small and, in most analyses, nonsignificant. In all experiments, both mappings yielded significant reductions in switch cost across cue-target interval, and there were significant cue-switching effects with the 2:1 mapping. A model of cue encoding fit the data from both mappings about equally well. Overall, task-switching performance was more similar than it was different between mappings, leading the authors to suggest that the use of a 2:1 mapping is a viable solution to the problem associated with a 1:1 mapping.     

When children are witnesses: The effects of context,age and gender on adults' perceptions of cognitive ability and honesty

The goals of the present study were to examine how context impacts perceptions of children, and the extent to which context interacts with a child's age and gender to alter adults perceptions of children. Specifically, we examine how perceptions of honesty (i.e. knowing the difference between truth and lie, being trusted by adults, being reliable, and honest) and cognitive ability (i.e. having a good memory for events and being able to attend and concentrate) are the same or different in the context of a child sexual abuse case (CSA) than when no context is provided. First, the results revealed few significant findings with regard to either juror or child gender. The analyses did reveal several context effects, with attention, trusted, reliable and honesty each producing higher ratings, and therefore better perceived memories, in the CSA condition than the no context condition. Also, ratings of all the dependent variables varied by age and 4 out of the 5 higher order interactions involved child age. Importantly, we found that ratings of honesty and cognitive abilities were not linear with age but, typically, ratings increased with age but then leveled out or started decreasing after 8 years‐of‐age. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The south beach study: Bystanders' memories are more malleable

People's reports are affected by what others say. The current study compared memory conformity effects of people who interacted with a confederate, and of bystanders to that interaction. A second goal was to observe if memory conformity occurs in a naturalistic setting. A male confederate approached a group of people at the beach and had a brief interaction. About a minute later a research assistant approached the group and administered a target‐absent lineup to each person in the group. Memory conformity was observed. Bystanders were twice as likely to conform as those who interacted with the confederate. Forensic investigators should take into consideration the role a person plays in an event when assessing eyewitness evidence. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The response order effect: People believe the first person who remembers an event

When groups of people remember an event, the order in which they discuss their memories is important. In three experiments, a response order effect was shown in which participants believed the first speaker to be more accurate and more confident than a subsequent speaker. Further, participants were more likely to report as their own memory what the first speaker reported than what a subsequent speaker reported. The experiments showed that the response order effect was not due to intrinsic characteristics of what the first speaker said. Even when participants chose the response order themselves and the speakers’ dialogue was counterbalanced, participants still believed that the first speaker was more accurate and confident than a subsequent speaker. Because in most situations the person who introduces a particular topic into a discussion is more accurate, people may assume that this is true, even when the response order is random.     

Measurement of Preoperative Anxiety in Young Children: Self-report Versus Observer-rated

The utility of the self-report Children’s Anxiety and Pain Scale Anxiety subscale (CAPS-A) in comparison to the widely used, observer-rated Modified Yale Preoperative Anxiety Scale (mYPAS) in assessing anxiety in children undergoing day surgery procedures was examined. The CAPS-A test-retest reliability, concurrent validity with the Modified Yale Preoperative Anxiety Scale (mYPAS), and sensitivity to expected increases in anxiety at stressful times during the preoperative period were examined. Levels of observer-rated (mYPAS) and self-reported anxiety (CAPS-A) were obtained from 61 children (3 to 6 years) undergoing day surgery procedures. The CAPS-A demonstrated adequate test-retest reliability. Concurrent validity between the CAPS-A and mYPAS scores was poor. The CAPS-A failed to show sensitivity to the expected increases in anxiety at stressful time-points. Thus, an alternative scoring strategy for the CAPS-A was proposed (i.e., child’s refusal to point was scored as high anxiety). Post-hoc analyses demonstrated good concurrent and adequate convergent validity with the alternative scoring strategy.     

Testing pigeon memory in a change detection task

Six pigeons were trained in a change detection task with four colors. They were shown two colored circles on a sample array, followed by a test array with the color of one circle changed. The pigeons learned to choose the changed color and transferred their performance to four unfamiliar colors, suggesting that they had learned a generalized concept of color change. They also transferred performance to test delays several times their 50-msec training delay without prior delay training. The accurate delay performance of several seconds suggests that their change detection was memory based, as opposed to a perceptual attentional capture process. These experiments are the first to show that an animal species (pigeons, in this case) can learn a change detection task identical to ones used to test human memory, thereby providing the possibility of directly comparing short-term memory processing across species.     

Contextual control over task-set retrieval

Contextual cues signaling task likelihood or the likelihood of task repetition are known to modulate the size of switch costs. We follow up on the finding by Leboe, Wong, Crump, and Stobbe (2008) that location cues predictive of the proportion of switch or repeat trials modulate switch costs. Their design employed one cue per task, whereas our experiment employed two cues per task, which allowed separate assessment of modulations to the cue-repetition benefit, a measure of lower level cue-encoding processes, and to the task-alternation cost, a measure of higher level processes representing task-set information. We demonstrate that location information predictive of switch proportion modulates performance at the level of task-set representations. Furthermore, we demonstrate that contextual control occurs even when subjects are unaware of the associations between context and switch likelihood. We discuss the notion that contextual information provides rapid, unconscious control over the extent to which prior task-set representations are retrieved in the service of guiding online performance.     

Automatic and controlled response inhibition: associative learning in the go/no-go and stop-signal paradigms

In 5 experiments, the authors examined the development of automatic response inhibition in the go/no-go paradigm and a modified version of the stop-signal paradigm. They hypothesized that automatic response inhibition may develop over practice when stimuli are consistently associated with stopping. All 5 experiments consisted of a training phase and a test phase in which the stimulus mapping was reversed for a subset of the stimuli. Consistent with the automatic-inhibition hypothesis, the authors found that responding in the test phase was slowed when the stimulus had been consistently associated with stopping in the training phase. In addition, they found that response inhibition benefited from consistent stimulus-stop associations. These findings suggest that response inhibition may rely on the retrieval of stimulus-stop associations after practice with consistent stimulus-stop mappings. Stimulus-stop mapping is typically consistent in the go/no-go paradigm, so automatic inhibition is likely to occur. However, stimulus-stop mapping is typically inconsistent in the stop-signal paradigm, so automatic inhibition is unlikely to occur. Thus, the results suggest that the two paradigms are not equivalent because they allow different kinds of response inhibition.