Longitudinal multilevel models of the big-fish-little-pond effect on academic self-concept: counterbalancing contrast and reflected-glory effects in Hong Kong schools

Longitudinal multilevel path models (7,997 students, 44 high schools, 4 years) evaluated effects of school-average achievement and perceived school status on academic self-concept in Hong Kong, which has a collectivist culture with a highly achievement-segregated high school system. Consistent with a priori predictions based on the big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE), higher school-average achievements led to lower academic self-concepts (contrast effect), whereas higher perceived school status had a counterbalancing positive effect on self-concept (reflected-glory, assimilation effect). The negative BFLPE is the net effect of counterbalancing influences, stronger negative contrast effects, and weaker positive assimilation effects so that controlling perceived school status led to purer--and even more negative--contrast effects. Attending a school where school-average achievement is high simultaneously resulted in a more demanding basis of comparison for one's own accomplishments (the stronger negative contrast effect) and a source of pride (the weaker positive assimilation effect).     

Prisonomics and the use of psychotropic drugs on incarcerated offenders: ethical considerations

The authors discuss the ethical considerations involved in using psychotropic medications with incarcerated offenders. Medications cannot be used as tool of oppression. Medication cannot be used to justify overpopulation, to quietly terminate prisoners, and must be administered by licensed health professionals. There must be informed consent.     

The positive and negative consequences of multiple-choice testing

Multiple-choice tests are commonly used in educational settings but with unknown effects on students' knowledge. The authors examined the consequences of taking a multiple-choice test on a later general knowledge test in which students were warned not to guess. A large positive testing effect was obtained: Prior testing of facts aided final cued-recall performance. However, prior testing also had negative consequences. Prior reading of a greater number of multiple-choice lures decreased the positive testing effect and increased production of multiple-choice lures as incorrect answers on the final test. Multiple-choice testing may inadvertently lead to the creation of false knowledge.     

Test modality affects source monitoring and event-related potentials

Two experiments investigated the effect of test modality (visual or auditory) on source memory and event-related potentials (ERPs). Test modality influenced source monitoring such that source memory was better when the source and test modalities were congruent. Test modality had less of an influence when alternative information (i.e., cognitive operations) could be used to inform source judgments in Experiment 2. Test modality also affected ERP activity. Variation in parietal ERPs suggested that this activity reflects activation of sensory information, which can be attenuated when the sensory information is misleading. Changes in frontal ERPs support the hypothesis that frontal systems are used to evaluate source-specifying information present in the memory trace.     

Gender,Race, and Speech Style Stereotypes

Considerable research has shown that people have stereotypical beliefs about the speech and communication style of women and men. There is less research about stereotypes of Black people's speech, and none that jointly or comparably investigates communication stereotypes as a function of both gender and race. In this study, White college students (n = 111) rated a fictional character's speech on 36 pairs of words characteristic of communication style (e.g., emotional–unemotional) and also generated dialogue for the character. Targets' race and sex were varied. Results showed that beliefs about speech style were stronger for race than gender. Black speakers, both women and men, were rated as more direct and emotional, and less socially appropriate and playful, than White speakers. The dialogue generated by participants for Black speakers was less grammatical and more profane than for White speakers. Gender effects were consistent with earlier research but suggest a weakening of stereotypes; women's speech was seen as somewhat less direct and more emotional than men's speech. Beliefs about speech and communication style are important because they may function not only to describe what is but to prescribe what should be in social interaction.     

Investigating the encoding and retrieval of intentions with event-related potentials

Strong evidence exists in the literature that remembering to complete intentions involves executive processing subserved by the frontal lobes. Event-related potentials were measured during the encoding of actions with the intention to perform versus more neutral material about which there was no such intentionality. Event-related potentials were also measured in a two-alternative discrimination task requiring identification of the to-be-performed actions and to-be-memorized actions. The results suggest that formation and retrieval of intentions differs from encoding and retrieval of similar material committed to memory. Additionally, the results suggest that right frontal areas may play an important role in the formation of prospective actions and that intentions are kept active in memory by processing mediated by the left frontal pole.     

The inadvertent use of prior knowledge in a generative cognitive task

In four experiments with 332 participants, participants were asked to generate novel nonwords for English categories. When participants were shown examples embedded with regular orthographic structures, participants’ nonwords tended to conform orthographically to the examples, despite instructions to avoid using features of the examples. The effect was found with immediate testing (Experiment 1) and delayed testing (Experiment 2). The effect was also found with arbitrary features (Experiments 1–4), as well as with naturally occurring orthographic regularities (Experiment 4). Participants had difficulty avoiding the use of this prior knowledge, despite being able to list the features they were asked to avoid (Experiment 3). The results are discussed in terms of the inadvertent use of prior knowledge in generative cognitive tasks.     

The activation of unrelated and canceled intentions

The intention superiority effect is the finding that intentions to perform an activity are stored in a heightened state of activation. The effect has also been generalized to the finding that once an intention is fulfilled, it is inhibited relative to more neutral material about which no intentionality has been formed. In two experiments, we tested some ecological and naturally occurring situations taken from the literature on prospective memory and demonstrated that they have consistent consequences for the activation level of an intention. In Experiment 1, a constellation of unrelated activities displayed heightened activation prior to completion and displayed inhibition after completion. In Experiment 2, canceling the intention resulted in inhibition just as completing the intention does in this paradigm. The results are discussed in terms of their practical and theoretical importance to theories of prospective memory.     

Processing locational and orientational information

In choice reaction time (RT) tasks, college students verified the truth of displays expressing spatial relations between two objects. The relations werelocational (A is left of B) ororientational (A and B are horizontal). The objects were names of states in the United States, symbols, or letter arrays. The objects were memorized prior to the display (states and letters) or were presented as part of the display (symbols and letters). In the location tasks with both states and symbols, locatives were spatial (right, left, above, below) or compass (north, south, east, west). Distance between states was also varied. When location was judged, horizontally aligned stimuli resulted in slower responses than vertically aligned stimuli, independently of materials and locative set. Reaction time was inversely related to distance. When orientation was judged, responses to horizontal pairs of states were slower than responses to vertical pairs of states, responses to horizontal pairs of letters were faster than responses to vertical pairs, and RT did not depend upon the orientation of symbols. This pattern of results suggests that orientational judgments are influenced by type of materials and the entext to which the material has been encoded (i.e., memorized). Locational judgments reflect a potent source of difficulty not present in orientation tasks, namely, telling left from right. Alternative explanations of the right-left effect are discussed.