Recall of sex-role appropriate and inappropriate models in children's songs

The function of sex of model and sex-role appropriateness of models' behavior in facilitating children's recall of song characters and content was explored. Fifty-eight boys and girls, aged 6 1/2, listened to two songs in one of three treatment conditions. The songs had male-dominant/female-subordinant, female-dominant/male-subordinant, or neutral-dominant/neutral-subordinant lyrics. As expected, children attended selectively to same-sex characters, recalling more when the same-sex character was dominant. Boys reported liking males more than females, while girls had no sexual preference. Surprisingly, both boys and girls more frequently reported that they wanted to be like the subordinant characters than like the dominant characters.     

THE USE OF STIMULUS CONTROL OVER LITTERING IN A NATURAL SETTING

A conventional litter receptacle (55-gallon drum) and a specially designed receptacle consisting of a 55-gallon drum adorned with a plywood “hat” were alternated in two areas of a football stadium over a period of four games. A frequency count of several types of litter articles showed that more than twice as many items were deposited within the experimental container than the conventional one (an average of 52.5 and 21.5 items per game, respectively). The weight of litter deposited within each container showed a similar relationship. An average of 0.65 kg of litter per game were deposited within the conventional receptacle compared with an average of 1.3 kg per game for the experimental receptacle.     

Memory confusions for real and imagined completions of symmetrical visual patterns

In Experiment 1, subject ratings indicated that it was easier to imaginally complete half of a symmetrical form when the form was symmetrical about the vertical axis than when the form was rotated so that it was symmetrical about the horizontal axis. In Experiment 2, new subjects saw these same forms, some presented as wholes and some presented as halves. Compared with controls, subjects who were instructed to imagine the vertically symmetrical half forms as complete had more difficulty remembering which forms had been presented as wholes and which had been presented as halves. Imagery and control groups did not differ in ability to discriminate half from whole horizontally symmetrical forms. The results are consistent with predictions from Johnson and Raye’s (1981) reality monitoring model that discriminating memories of imagined and perceived events should be a function of the amount of cognitive operations included in the memory.     

The consequences for memory of imagining in another person’s voice

Subjects listened to and imagined words and then attempted to discriminate words they had heard from words they had imagined. Discrimination was better when subjects imagined themselves saying the words (Experiments 1 and 2) than when subjects imagined the words in the speaker’s voice. Subjects also had more difficulty discriminating imagined from perceived words when they imagined in the speaker’s voice than when they imagined words in a voice other than their own or the speaker’s (Experiment 1). The results are consistent with the idea that reality monitoring is affected by the degree of similarity in sensory characteristics of memories derived from perception and from imagination (Johnson & Raye, 1981).     

Primary and Secondary Caregiver Reports of Quality of Life in Pediatric Asthma: Are they Comparable?

This study aimed to compare primary and secondary caregiver QOL within families of children with asthma and determine the potential importance of including secondary caregiver QOL in clinical and research settings. Participants included 118 families of children with asthma that had primary and secondary caregivers. Families completed measures in a single research session. Caregivers reported on QOL, psychological functioning, and family burden; children completed a measure of QOL. Child lung function was determined from objective spirometry. Adherence to prescribed controller medication was measured for 6 weeks following the research visit. Primary caregiver QOL was significantly lower than secondary caregiver QOL (Mean overall QOL of 5.85 versus 6.17, p < .05). Better medication adherence was associated with higher primary caregiver QOL (ρ = .22, p = .02); secondary caregiver QOL, not primary caregiver QOL, was positively associated with child QOL (ρ = .20, p = .03). Families with discrepant QOL scores between caregivers (difference in scores of at least .50) were characterized by more family burden and primary caregiver psychological symptoms. Differences in QOL scores between caregivers may be a reflection of primary caregivers’ greater investment in daily asthma management. In families reporting low burden and few psychological difficulties in the primary caregiver, QOL assessments from either caregiver may may be informative and representative of how parents are adapting to child asthma. In families experiencing high levels of burden or more primary caregiver psychological difficulties, QOL reports from secondary caregivers may not be as clinically meaningful.     

Pigeons see correspondence between objects and their pictures

The extent to which nonhumans recognize the correspondence between static pictures and the objects they represent remains an interesting and controversial issue. Pictures displayed on computers are used extensively for research on behavioral and neural mechanisms of cognition in birds, yet attempts to show that birds recognize the objects seen in pictures have produced mixed and inconclusive results. We trained pigeons to discriminate between two identically colored but differently shaped three-dimensional objects seen directly or as pictures, and we found clear bidirectional transfer of the learned object discrimination. Transfer from objects to pictures occurred even when pigeons were trained with 12 views and only novel views of the objects were presented in transfer. This study provides the strongest evidence yet that pigeons can recognize the correspondence between objects and pictures.     

Importing perceived features into false memories

False memories sometimes contain specific details, such as location or colour, about events that never occurred. Based on the source-monitoring framework, we investigated one process by which false memories acquire details: the reactivation and misattribution of feature information from memories of similar perceived events. In Experiments 1A and 1B, when imagined objects were falsely remembered as seen, participants often reported that the objects had appeared in locations where visually or conceptually similar objects, respectively, had actually appeared. Experiment 2 indicated that colour and shape features of seen objects were misattributed to false memories of imagined objects. Experiment 3 showed that perceived details were misattributed to false memories of objects that had not been explicitly imagined. False memories that imported perceived features, compared to those that presumably did not, were subjectively more like memories for perceived events. Thus, perception may be even more pernicious than imagination in contributing to false memories.     

Intramuscular electrical stimulation of facial muscles in humans and chimpanzees: Duchenne revisited and extended

The pioneering work of Duchenne (1862/1990) was replicated in humans using intramuscular electrical stimulation and extended to another species (Pan troglodytes: chimpanzees) to facilitate comparative facial expression research. Intramuscular electrical stimulation, in contrast to the original surface stimulation, offers the opportunity to activate individual muscles as opposed to groups of muscles. In humans, stimulation resulted in appearance changes in line with Facial Action Coding System (FACS) action units (AUs), and chimpanzee facial musculature displayed functional similarity to human facial musculature. The present results provide objective identification of the muscle substrate of human and chimpanzee facial expressions- data that will be useful in providing a common language to compare the units of human and chimpanzee facial expression.