Retrieval-induced facilitation: initially nontested material can benefit from prior testing of related material

Classroom exams can assess students' knowledge of only a subset of the material taught in a course. What are the implications of this approach for long-term retention? Three experiments (N = 210) examined how taking an initial test affects later memory for prose materials not initially tested. Experiment 1 shows that testing enhanced recall 24 hr later for the initially nontested material. This facilitation was not seen for participants given additional study opportunities without initial testing. Experiment 2 extends this facilitative effect to a within-subjects design. Experiment 3 demonstrates that this facilitation can be modulated by conscious strategies. These results have implications for educational practice and the theoretical developments of the testing effect, associative memory, and retrieval inhibition.     

The classification of violence risk

The Classification of Violence Risk (COVR) is an interactive software program designed to estimate the risk that a person hospitalized for mental disorder will be violent to others. The software leads the evaluator through a chart review and a brief interview with the patient. At the end of this interview, the software generates a report that contains a statistically valid estimate of the patient's violence risk-ranging from a 1% to a 76% likelihood of violence-including the confidence interval for that estimate, and a list of the risk factors that the program took into account to produce the estimate. In this article, the development of the COVR software is described and several issues that arise in its administration are discussed.     

Does expanded retrieval produce benefits over equal-interval spacing? Explorations of spacing effects in healthy aging and early stage Alzheimer's disease

Three experiments explored different schedules of retrieval practice in young adults, older adults, and individuals with dementia of the Alzheimer type. In each experiment, an initial acquisition phase was presented in which participants studied or attempted to retrieve response words to cues, followed by a later cued-recall test. Experiment 1 produced a benefit of expanded retrieval over equal-interval retrieval during acquisition, but this benefit was lost in final cued recall. In Experiments 2 and 3, participants received corrective feedback during acquisition and modified spacing schedules. There was again no evidence of a difference between expanded and equal-interval conditions in final cued recall. Discussion focuses on the potential benefits and costs of expanded retrieval on a theoretical and applied level.     

Examining the principles in principled conservatism: the role of responsibility stereotypes as cues for deservingness in racial policy decisions

Why do educated conservatives oppose affirmative action? Those in the "principled conservatism" camp say opposition is based on principled judgments of fairness about the policies. Others, however, argue that opposition is based on racism. The present article offers an alternative perspective that may reconcile these contradictory points of view. In 2 studies, the authors show 2 major findings: (a) that conservatives oppose affirmative action more for Blacks than for other groups, in this case women, and (b) that the relationship between conservatism and affirmative action attitudes is mediated best by group-based stereotypes that offer deservingness information and not by other potential mediators like old-fashioned racism or the perceived threat that affirmative action poses to oneself. The authors conclude that educated conservatives are indeed principled in their opposition to affirmative action, but those principles are group based not policy based.     

Children's printed word database: Continuities and changes over time in children's early reading vocabulary

In this paper we introduce a comprehensive database of the vocabulary in reading materials used by 5 – 9 year old children in the UK. The database is available on‐line http:www.essex.ac.ukpsychologycpwd and allows researchers into early reading development the possibility of rigorous control over critical characteristics of experimental stimuli such as word frequency, regularity and length, frequency of grapheme‐phoneme correspondences, orthographic and phonological neighbourhoods etc. The on‐line database is also a resource that can be used by practitioners with interests in literacy development and literacy instruction. It can be used to obtain characteristics for a user‐generated list of words, or else to generate a list of words according to constraints specified by the user. Here we present an overview of the construction of the database, the materials entered into it, the survey of schools by which we obtained information about the books that were most likely to be used by children in each age group, and the search features available on the database website. We also discuss certain characteristics of the Vocabulary itself and compare these with those reported in an earlier non‐representative database reported in Stuart, Dixon, Masterson and Gray (2003). We then present a detailed analysis of the characteristics of Vocabulary in books used in the Reception year, against the background of recent recommendations for change in the early teaching of reading. Finally, we present data showing that the database is indeed already proving a useful resource for both practitioners and researchers.     

Achievement motivation among urban adolescents: Work hope, autonomy support, and achievement-related beliefs

Drawing upon expectancy value, hope, and self-determination theories, this study explores the contributions of work-based beliefs and autonomy support as predictors of adaptive achievement-related beliefs. Two hundred and one urban high school students who were enrolled in a work-based learning program completed measures of work hope, autonomy support, and achievement beliefs. Results from the full canonical correlation model revealed that work hope, career planning, and autonomy support shared 37.5% of the variance with achievement-related beliefs. Moreover, work hope and teacher autonomy support further contributed unique variance in explaining these beliefs. The findings contribute to the theoretical knowledge base concerning the value of work-based learning in fostering academic motivation among adolescents.     

Use of binaural cues for sound localization in two species of Phyllostomidae: the Greater spear-nosed bat (Phyllostomus hastatus) and the Short-tailed fruit bat (Carollia perspicillata)

Unlike humans, not all mammals use both of the binaural cues for sound localization. Whether an animal uses these cues can be determined by testing its ability to localize pure tones; specifically, low frequencies are localized using time-difference cues, and high frequencies are localized using intensity-difference cues. We determined the ability to use binaural cues in 2 New World bats, Phyllostomus hastatus, large omnivores, and Carollia perspicillata, small frugivores, by testing their tone-localization ability using a conditioned avoidance procedure. Both species easily localized high-frequency tones, indicating that they could use the interaural intensity-difference cue. However, neither species was able to use the phase-difference cue to localize either low-frequency pure tones or amplitude-modulated tones (which provided an envelope for additional time analysis). We now know of 3 bat species that cannot use binaural time cues and 2 that can. Further exploration of localization in bats may provide insight into the neural analysis of time cues in species that do not hear low frequencies.     

employers' perceptions of transition programming for students with emotional disturbances

This qualitative study compiled input from employers (N = 7) participating in a program geared to prepare high school students with emotional disturbances for post‐high‐school employment situations. Data were collected through open‐ended interviews related to 4 research questions and analyzed through thematic and comparative analysis. Results showed a link between the skills employers desired from their employees and skills needed for students with emotional disturbances to be successful. Employers' recommendations included measures to address prior to program implementation and ways to create strong support systems for students with disabilities.