The roles of imagery,language, and metamemory in cross-modal transfer in children

Summary The relative strengths of association of imagery, language, and metamemory to cross-modal transfer were evaluated in 5-year-olds and 7-year-olds. Children were administered either tactual-visual or visual-tactual cross-modal transfer tasks, as well as two visual imagery tasks (spatial recall and mental rotation), two language competence tasks (vocabulary and word usage), metamemory questions, and a general intelligence task. With intelligence and handedness controlled, only visual imagery related significantly to cross-modal transfer. These findings suggest that mental imagery, as opposed to language competence or metamemory, is a principal component of cross-modal transfer, and they are consistent with the observation that preverbal human infants and infrahuman primates exhibit cross-modal transfer.     

TELEPHONE CONVERSATIONAL SKILLS TRAINING WITH SOCIALLY ISOLATED,IMPAIRED NURSING HOME RESIDENTS

We evaluated the effectiveness of a comprehensive training program for enhancing the conversational skills of socially isolated, impaired elderly nursing home residents. A multiple baseline design across behaviors was used to train four subjects (aged 87, 85, 68, and 66), on four content-related conversational components: (a) expressing common courtesies, (b) making positive self-disclosures, (c) asking questions, and (d) making interjections and acknowledgments. Training procedures included instructions, modeling, behavior rehearsal, feedback, and reinforcement. Results showed positive effects with all four subjects; in two cases, changes were significant enough to affect untrained observers' perceptions of the elders' conversational skills.     

Visual scanning during pattern recognition in children and adults

Eye movement and fixation responses of 3- to 6-year-old children and adults were recorded during a pattern recognition task. During familiarization, fixations were more repetitive and less extensive for older subjects. The fixation patterns of older children who were consistently able to solve the recognition problems were like those of the adults. Unsuccessful 4- to 6-year-olds spent more time fixating the modified area of the nonstandard pattern presented in paired comparison with the standard, even though their final decision was false. Thus, preschool children were able to locate relevant visual information even when they did not use this information to solve tasks. The results suggest that visual fixations do not always reflect active attention, and that direct fixations of visual information are clearly not sufficient and may not be necessary for problem solving.     

Learning under stress: how does it work?

The effects of stress on learning and memory are not always clear: both facilitating and impairing influences are described in the literature. Here we propose a unifying theory, which states that stress will only facilitate learning and memory processes: (i) when stress is experienced in the context and around the time of the event that needs to be remembered, and (ii) when the hormones and transmitters released in response to stress exert their actions on the same circuits as those activated by the situation, that is, when convergence in time and space takes place. The mechanism of action of stress hormones, particularly corticosteroids, can explain how stress within the context of a learning experience induces focused attention and improves memory of relevant information.     

Mel Gibson’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Passion</Emphasis> and the Many Uses of Christ’s Suffering

Many Christians resonated with Mel Gibsons film, The Passion of the Christ. The films sympathetic portrayal of Pontius Pilate reinforces the sense of victimization Americans have experienced since 9/11, however, and obscures the real meaning of Christs suffering.Marian Ronan is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Theology and Religion at the American Baptist Seminary of the West, a member seminary of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA.     

Effects of directional uncertainty on visually-guided joystick pointing

Reaction times generally follow the predictions of Hick's law as stimulus-response uncertainty increases, although notable exceptions include the oculomotor system. Saccadic and smooth pursuit eye movement reaction times are independent of stimulus-response uncertainty. Previous research showed that joystick pointing to targets, a motor analog of saccadic eye movements, is only modestly affected by increased stimulus-response uncertainty; however, a no-uncertainty condition (simple reaction time to 1 possible target) was not included. Here, we re-evaluate manual joystick pointing including a no-uncertainty condition. Analysis indicated simple joystick pointing reaction times were significantly faster than choice reaction times. Choice reaction times (2, 4, or 8 possible target locations) only slightly increased as the number of possible targets increased. These data suggest that, as with joystick tracking (a motor analog of smooth pursuit eye movements), joystick pointing is more closely approximated by a simple/choice step function than the log function predicted by Hick's law.     

The origins of empathic concern

Recent developments in research cast doubt on early conceptions of young children as primarily egocentric and uncaring of others' needs. Studies reviewed indicate a broad range of social competencies children bring to their interpersonal relationships. As early as 2 years of age, they show (a) the cognitive capacity to interpret, in simple ways, the physical and psychological states of others, (b) the emotional capacity to experience, affectively, the state of others, and (c) the behavioral repertoire that permits the possibility of attempts to alleviate discomfort in others. Both temperament and environment may contribute to individual differences in concern for others. Early socialization experiences that lead to adaptive and maladaptive patterns of responsiveness to others' needs are described. Examples of environmental risk conditions include parental depression, marital discord, parental maltreatment. Implications of this work for broadening existing conceptualizations of empathy and related prosocial orientations are addressed.     

Remembering ads: The effects of encoding strategies,retrieval cues,and emotional response

This study uses the encoding specificity principle ( Tulving & Thomson, 1973 ) and the distinction between episodic and semantic knowledge to test predictions about the effects of processing goals and retrieval cues on memory for emotional and neutral TV commercials. Subjects viewed five emotional and five neutral ads embedded in programming. Encoding instructions asked subjects to either (a) evaluate each product or (b) “just watch” as they viewed the ads. Retrieval cues were either the opening scene of each ad (executional cue) or the product category (categorical cue). Both recall and response-time measures were used to index ad memory-trace accessibility. The results showed that when encoding and retrieval conditions were compatible (evaluation instructions with categorical cue, and just-watch instructions with executional cue) ad memory traces were retrieved more rapidly than when encoding and retrieval conditions were incompatible. In addition, subjects who “just watched” emotional ads were able to retrieve those ad memory traces more rapidly when given an executional cue compared to a categorical cue, whereas subjects who evaluated neutral ads at encoding recalled more ads, and retrieved them more rapidly, when given a categorical cue compared to an executional cue. Finally, we show that searching memory first with an executional cue and then with a product-category cue leads to an increase in ad recall for both emotional and neutral ads, whereas searching first with a categorical cue and then with an executional cue leads to a decrease in ad recall for neutral ads.