Aging and attentional biases for emotional faces

We examined age differences in attention to and memory for faces expressing sadness, anger, and happiness. Participants saw a pair of faces, one emotional and one neutral, and then a dot probe that appeared in the location of one of the faces. In two experiments, older adults responded faster to the dot if it was presented on the same side as a neutral face than if it was presented on the same side as a negative face. Younger adults did not exhibit this attentional bias. Interactions of age and valence were also found for memory for the faces, with older adults remembering positive better than negative faces. These findings reveal that in their initial attention, older adults avoid negative information. This attentional bias is consistent with older adults' generally better emotional well-being and their tendency to remember negative less well than positive information.     

The role of syntactic obligatoriness in the production of intonational boundaries

Researchers have hypothesized that words that are highly related semantically are more likely to occur within the same intonational phrase (F. zzaq;, 1988; E. O. Selkirk, 1984). D. Watson and E. Gibson (2004) proposed that semantic closeness can be captured by using the argument/adjunct distinction, such that intonational boundaries are more likely to occur before adjuncts than before arguments. In the current experiment, the authors compared two aspects of argumenthood: semantic relatedness and obligatoriness. In a production study, speakers were more likely to place an intonational phrase boundary between a word and a dependent if the dependent was optional (e.g., after "investigation" in "The reporter's investigation [of the crash] unnerved the officials") than if the dependent was obligatory (e.g., after "investigated" in "The reporter investigated [the crash], and this unnerved the officials"). These data suggest that obligatoriness is a better predictor of intonational boundary placement than semantic closeness.     

Contrasting activity patterns of two related octopus species, Octopus macropus and Octopus vulgaris

Octopus macropus and Octopus vulgaris have overlapping habitats and are exposed to similar temporal changes. Whereas the former species is described as nocturnal in the field, there are conflicting reports about the activity time of the latter one. To compare activity patterns, the authors tested both species in the laboratory. Octopuses were exposed to a light-dark cycle and held under constant dim light for 7 days each. O. macropus showed nocturnal and light-cued activity. According to casual observations, O. vulgaris started out nocturnal but had switched to mostly diurnal when the experiment began. Individual variation of its activity was found. The different activity patterns of O. macropus and O. vulgaris might reflect their lifestyles, the latter species being more generalist.     

Does dyslexia develop from learning the alphabet in the wrong hemisphere? A cognitive neuroscience analysis

A new perspective is described which views developmental dyslexia as the outcome of learning to write the alphabet in the nondominant (right) hemisphere. The letter-level and whole-word subtypes of dyslexia are seen as differing responses adopted to cope with this predicament. Striking similarities between dyslexics and callosotomy patients in the allocation of covert attention to lateralized stimuli provide direction for integrating a diversity of dyslexic research within this framework. This synthesis, together with information from pure alexia, brain activation, and reading research, lends insight into the neural circuitry of the compensatory strategies adopted by the two dyslexic subtypes.     

Source monitoring and suggestibility to misinformation: adult age‐related differences

We compared young and older adults' source monitoring performance on an explicit source identification test using the misinformation paradigm. Several age‐related differences in source memory were demonstrated: (a) older adults were more likely than were young adults to say that they saw information that was actually only suggested to them; (b) older adults were more confident in their false memories than were young adults; (c) older adults were less confident in their accurate memory for the source of information than were young adults. Together, the data suggest that older adults either lacked or failed to use helpful diagnostic source information (e.g. perceptual details or temporal information), and that their confidence in their false memories reflected an over‐weighting of semantic information. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Influence of Deviant Friends on Delinquency: Searching for Moderator Variables

Three categories of potential moderators of the link between best friend's deviancy and boys' delinquency during early adolescence were investigated: personal (i.e., disruptiveneness profile during childhood, attitude toward delinquency), familial (i.e., parental monitoring, attachment to parents), and social (i.e., characteristics of other friends). Best friend's and other friends' deviancy were assessed during preadolescence through the use of peer ratings. Potential moderators were assessed at the same age period with teacher ratings or self-reports. Finally, delinquent behaviors were assessed at ages 13 and 14, as well as age 10 for control purposes, with self-reports. Results showed that boys' disruptiveness profiles during childhood, attachment to parents, and attitude toward delinquency moderated the link between best friend's deviancy and later delinquent behaviors. Other friends' deviancy and parental monitoring had main effects but no moderating effects. These results help clarify the conditions under which exposure to a deviant best friend can influence boys' delinquent behaviors. They also help to reconcile different theoretical explanations of the role of deviant friends in the development of delinquency.     

Aging and reflective processes of working memory: binding and test load deficits

It was hypothesized that age-related deficits in episodic memory for feature combinations (e.g., B. L. Chalfonte & M. K. Johnson, 1996) signal, in part, decrements in the efficacy of reflective component processes (e.g., M. K. Johnson, 1992) that support the short-term maintenance and manipulation of information during encoding (e.g., F. 1. M. Craik. R. G. Morris. & M. L. Gick, 1990; T. A. Salthouse, 1990). Consistent with this, age-related binding deficits in a working memory task were found in 2 experiments. Evidence for an age-related test load deficit was also found: Older adults had greater difficulty than young adults when tested on 2 features rather than 1, even when binding was not required. Thus, disruption of source memory in older adults may involve deficits in both encoding processes (binding deficits) and monitoring processes (difficulty accessing multiple features, evaluating them, or both).     

Choice-supportive source monitoring: do our decisions seem better to us as we age?

Participants were given several 2-option choices and then asked to review how they felt about their decisions, to review the details of their decisions, or to do an unrelated task. When later asked to attribute features to the previous options, in each condition older adults (64-83 years) attributed significantly more positive and fewer negative features to their chosen options than to foregone options. Younger adults' (18-22 years) attributions were as choice-supportive as those of older adults in the affective review condition but were less so in the other conditions. The age difference was present even when older and younger adults were equated for source identification and recognition accuracy. This study suggests that as people age, their tendency to distort memory in favor of the options they chose increases. In addition, it suggests that affectively reviewing choices increases younger adults' tendency toward choice-supportive memory.