The Comparative Effects of a Modified Self-Questioning Strategy and Story Mapping on the Reading Comprehension of Elementary Students with Learning Disabilities

An alternating treatments design was used to examine the effects of story mapping, a modified self-questioning strategy, and no intervention on literal and inferential reading comprehension of elementary students with learning disabilities. Immediate post-tests indicated that students attained significantly greater comprehension in the self-questioning and story mapping conditions over no intervention. Although students attained similarly high levels of overall comprehension when they used story mapping and self-questioning, students scored slightly higher on inferential comprehension questions in the self-questioning condition. Additionally, 4 out of the 5 students indicated a preference for the self-questioning strategy.     

Is the truth in the details? Extended narratives help distinguishing false “memories” from false “reports”

The present study examined the effects of fantasy proneness on false "reports" and false "memories", of existent and non-existent footage of a public event. We predicted that highly fantasy prone individuals would be more likely to stand by their initial claim of having seen a film of the event than low fantasy prone participants when prompted for more details about their experiences. Eighty creative arts students and 80 other students were asked whether they had seen CCTV footage preceding the attack on Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh up to, and including, non-existent footage of the actual moment of the attack. If affirmative, they were probed for extended narratives of what they claimed to have seen. Overall, 64% of participants provided a false "report" by answering yes to the initial question. Of these, 30% provided no explicit details of the attack, and a further 15% retracted their initial answer in their narratives. This left 19% of the sample who appeared to have false "memories" because they provided explicit details of the actual moment of the attack. Women scored higher than men and art students scored higher than other students on fantasy proneness, but there was no effect on levels of false reporting or false "memory". Memories were rated more vivid and clear for existent compared to non-existent aspects of the event. In sum, these data suggest a more complex relationship between memory distortions and fantasy proneness than previously observed.     

Measuring the activation level of critical lures in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm

In four experiments, the activation level in memory of critical lures was assessed after encoding Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) lists. The results demonstrated that studying longer, 14-item lists resulted in superadditive priming of the lures because they were more available in memory than truly studied items. Studying shorter DRM lists resulted in activation levels of the lures that was similar to studied items. Collectively, the results suggest that a first stage in creating false memories with the DRM paradigm is making the critical lures highly available in memory during list encoding. Moreover, the results suggest that false memories are likely to have occurred at the time a list is studied by a mechanism such as an implicit associative response, but a monitoring phase at retrieval is acknowledged that could be used to avoid them. Other theoretical accounts are also considered.     

Can't quite commit: rumination and uncertainty

Why do some individuals persist in self-destructive rumination? Two studies investigated the relation between a ruminative response style and the reluctance to initiate instrumental behavior. In Study 1, ruminators were compared to nonruminators regarding their evaluation of a self-generated plan to revise their university housing system and, in Study 2, concerning their plan to redesign the undergraduate curriculum. In both studies, on relevant composite measures, ruminators expressed less satisfaction and confidence with regard to their plans than did nonruminators. They were also less likely to commit to the plans they generated. The findings suggest that in addition to its documented detrimental effects on thinking and problem solving, self-focused rumination may inhibit instrumental behavior by increasing uncertainty, resulting in further rumination and behavioral paralysis.     

What Triggers Abnormal Eating in Bulimic and Nonbulimic Women?

Dissociative experiences and abnormal eating were examined in 92 non-eating-disordered women and 61 age-matched bulimic women. In the non-clinical sample of women, dissociative experiences were associated with abnormal eating attitudes and behavior, even after controlling for other forms of psychopathology; furthermore, dissociation mediated the relationships between abnormal eating and sexual abuse, abnormal eating and emotional distress, and abnormal eating and impulsivity. Analyses using both bulimic women and occasional binge eaters among the controls showed that a combination of reported negative affect and dissociative experiences preceding a binge was associated with the highest levels of abnormal eating. Finally, in both bulimic women and occasional binge eaters, feelings of panic appeared to decrease as a binge episode progressed, whereas, in bulimic women only, dissociative experiences appeared to increase during binge eating. The implications for the role of dissociation in combination with emotional distress in triggering and reinforcing abnormal eating in women are discussed.