Attachment dismissal predicts frontal slow-wave ERPs during rejection by unfamiliar peers

Attachment representations are thought to provide a cognitive-affective template, guiding the way individuals interact with unfamiliar social partners. To examine the neural correlates of this process, we sampled event-related potentials (ERPs) during exclusion by unfamiliar peers to differentiate insecure-dismissing from securely attached youth, as indexed by the child attachment interview. Thirteen secure and 10 dismissing 11- to 15-year-olds were ostensibly connected with two peers via the Internet to play a computerized ball-toss game. Actually, peers were computer generated, first distributing the ball evenly, but eventually excluding participants. Afterward children rated their distress. As in previous studies, distress was related to a negative left frontal slow wave (500-900 ms) during rejection, a waveform implicated in negative appraisals and less approach motivation. Though attachment classifications were comparable in frontal ERPs and distress, an attachment-related dismissal dimension predicted a negative left frontal slow wave during rejection, suggesting that high dismissal potentially involves elevated anticipation of rejection. As expected, dismissal and self-reported distress were uncorrelated. Yet, a new approach to quantifying the dissociation between self-reports and rejection-related ERPs revealed that dismissal predicted underreporting of distress relative to ERPs. Our findings imply that evaluations and regulatory strategies linked to attachment generalize to distressing social contexts in early adolescence.     

Shattered Illusions: The Effect of Explicit Memory Mediation on an Indirect Memory Test

Four experiments were conducted to explore the possible involvement of explicit memory in an indirect memory test in which white noise accompanying old sentences was judged to be quieter than white noise accompanying new sentences (Jacoby, Allan, Collins, & Larwill, 1988). Experiment 1 established that this effect lasted up to 1 week. Experiment 2 found that a group of amnesic patients showed a noise effect that was marginally above chance and not significantly less than that of their matched controls after a delay of one day. Effects of time pressure at test (Experiment 3) and divided attention at study (Experiment 4) suggested that the memory processes mediating the noise effect were not automatic, although the possibility that the processes involve enhanced fluency is also discussed.     

Parental reflective functioning and theory of mind acquisition: A developmental perspective

This study investigated theory of mind (ToM) development in 83 children aged 3–5 years and its associations with parental reflective functioning (PRF), using a multidimensional and developmental approach. Results showed that ToM dimensions (i.e., affective, belief-desire, and cognitive) gradually increased with age. All dimensions of PRF (i.e., prementalizing modes, certainty about mental states, and interest and curiosity in mental states) were associated with ToM dimensions, with different dimensions being differentially related to ToM, including age-related effects.     

Rate of forgetting in amnesia: II. Recall and recognition of word lists at different levels of organization.

Amnesic rate of decline of free recall, cued recall, and recognition of word lists with different levels of organization was investigated in 2 experiments. In Experiment 1, it was found that amnesic free recall of semantically related word lists declined at an accelerated rate, whereas free recall of lists of unrelated words declined at a normal rate. Cued recall and recognition performance of both kinds of word lists appeared to decline at a normal rate. In Experiment 2, the results of the free-recall and recognition conditions were replicated using an improved experimental design. The observed amnesic forgetting pattern is interpreted as arising from an impairment in consolidation of long-term memory for complex associations between 2 or more items and their study context that is caused by extended hippocampal system lesions.     

Rate of forgetting in amnesia: I. Recall and recognition of prose.

Three experiments explored the rate at which amnesic participants' free recall, cued recall, and recognition of prose declined over short filled delays. In Experiment 1, after performance had been matched to that of controls at 15s, amnesics showed accelerated forgetting over delays of up to 10 min in a free-recall condition, whereas recognition performance declined normally over delays of up to 1 hr. This pattern of results was replicated in Experiment 2, which showed that amnesic rate of forgetting on a test of cued recall was influenced by level of cuing. Experiment 3 showed that excessive sensitivity to interference was unlikely to be the cause of the amnesic patients' accelerated forgetting rate, which is instead explained in terms of storage deficit accounts of amnesia.     

The modality effect in long-term memory: a test of the echoic-consolidation hypothesis

Thirty-four subjects performed a task which combined the running memory and ‘throughlist’ distractor paradigms and was designed to permit an echoic consolidation effect across all serial positions , The predicted long-term difference between reading aloud and reading silently was clearly demonstrated and the results were used to argue in support of the ‘indirect-echoic’ hypothesis.