College Students’ Perceptions of and Responses to Academic Dishonesty: An Investigation of Type of Honor Code,Institution Size,and Student–Faculty Ratio

College students (n = 928) from small, medium, and large institutions with either a modified or no honor code were presented with cheating scenarios and asked to rate how dishonest they perceived the behavior to be and the likelihood that they would report it. No main effects were found for institution size or type of honor code. Student–faculty ratio was not correlated with responses to the cheating scenarios. Students from modified honor code schools perceived more severe punishments for cheating and understood the reporting process better than students from non–honor code schools. Implications for modified honor code systems are discussed.     

How often are thoughts metacognitive? Findings from research on self-regulated learning,think-aloud protocols,and mind-wandering

Metacognitive monitoring refers to how people evaluate their cognitive performance. An extensive literature examines how accurately individuals engage in monitoring. The question of how often individuals engage in metacognitive monitoring has been largely neglected, although one might expect situational, group, and individual variability in monitoring frequency. We argue that this is a critical omission, given that the frequency of metacognitive monitoring might have important implications for monitoring accuracy and task performance. Within this review, we highlight findings from three literatures, that each provide insight into how often individuals engage in monitoring. To clarify the important links and potential overlaps between these separate bodies of research, we begin by summarizing the metacognitive monitoring literature, including age-related patterns in monitoring accuracy. We then connect these questions regarding spontaneous monitoring, including age-related patterns in spontaneous monitoring, to targeted reviews of the self-regulated learning, think-aloud protocol, and mind-wandering literatures. We discuss situational and dispositional factors believed to influence monitoring accuracy, and propose that the same factors could potentially influence the frequency of spontaneous monitoring. Additionally, we propose that age-related increases in spontaneous monitoring (as suggested by age-related increases in TRI) may contribute to older adults’ intact monitoring abilities. It is our hope that this review will encourage increased attention and research on the topic of spontaneous monitoring.     

Why do older adults have difficulty with semantic fluency?

Aging involves many cognitive declines, particularly in fluid intelligence, with relative maintenance of crystallized intelligence. This paradox is evident in the language domain: lexical retrieval becomes slower and less accurate, despite well preserved vocabularies. Verbal fluency assesses both crystallized and fluid aspects of language. Semantic fluency hypothetically reflects semantic knowledge, while letter fluency putatively reflects executive functioning, which would predict a greater impact of aging on the latter. However, the opposite is typically observed.

To investigate factors contributing to such asymmetries, we examined verbal fluency in 86 adults (30-89 years). Multiple regression analyses indicated that semantic fluency depends largely on lexical retrieval speed, as well as visualization strategies to support controlled retrieval, skills which may disproportionately decline with age. By contrast, letter fluency relies heavily on vocabulary knowledge, providing some protection against age-related declines. These findings contribute to our understanding of the mechanisms of typical age-related declines in word retrieval.     

Learning and growing from ‘communities of practice’: autoethnographic narrative vignettes of an aspiring educational researcher’s experience

This is an autoethnographic study that inquiries into my own journey as an aspiring educational researcher throughout the second course of my Master’s Program at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. My experiences take place in the context of a group of real educational researchers and their on-going research project at the faculty of education called ‘Beyond Plant Blindness: Seeing the importance of plants for a sustainable world’ (BPB). All of the experiences included in this study are expressed in the form of chronologically ordered narrative vignettes. In order to bring theoretical meaning to these experiences, the vignettes were critically reflected upon and interpreted through the concept Communities of Practice (CoP), which is central to situated learning theory. Through this conceptual lens, my experiences revealed that an aspiring educational researcher may feel emotional and intellectual growth as a newcomer who is granted legitimate peripheral participation in the ‘real’ researcher CoP. Consequently, this study sheds light on ways that real researchers may play a part in shaping the identities of aspiring educational researchers through learning experiences. However, more generally, this study may facilitate fresh conversations about the complexities of learning, identity, and inclusion in the field of educational research.     

Correction to: Continuous flash suppression and monocular pattern masking impact subjective awareness similarly

Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics - There is an error in Fig. 4, part A. In the “continuous flash suppression” box, the labels “non-dominant eye” and...     

Changing the rate and hippocampal dependence of trace eyeblink conditioning: slow learning enhances survival of new neurons

Trace eyeblink conditioning in which a conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus are separated by a gap, is hippocampal dependent and can rescue new neurons in the adult dentate gyrus from death (e.g., Beylin et al., 2001; Gould et al., 1999). Tasks requiring more training trials for reliable expression of the conditioned response are most effective in enhancing survival of neurons (Waddell & Shors, 2008). To dissociate hippocampal dependence from acquisition rate, we facilitated hippocampal-dependent trace eyeblink conditioning in two ways: a shorter trace interval and signaling the intertrial interval with a post-US cue. Trace conditioning with a shorter trace interval (250ms) requires an intact hippocampus, and acquisition is faster relative to rats trained with a 500ms trace interval (e.g., Weiss et al., 1999). Using excitotoxic hippocampal lesions, we confirmed that eyeblink conditioning with the 250 or 500ms trace interval is hippocampal dependent. However, training with the post-US cue was not hippocampal dependent. The majority of lesion rats in this condition reached criterion of conditioned responding. To determine whether hippocampal dependence is sufficient to rescue adult-generated neurons in the dentate gyrus, rats were injected with BrdU and trained in one of the three trace eyeblink arrangements one week later. Of these training procedures, only the 500ms trace interval enhanced survival of new cells; acquisition of this task proceeded slowly relative to the 250ms and post-US cue conditions. These data demonstrate that rate of acquisition and not hippocampal dependence determines the impact of learning on adult neurogenesis.     

Affiliation Goals and Health Behaviors

People are inherently driven by the need to form and maintain relationships, and these affiliation goals can influence health behaviors in two ways: (a) indirectly, by increasing a person's attention to others and subsequently leaving them more likely to emulate the health behaviors of others (social contagion); (b) directly, by leading people to be more likely to engage in health behaviors they perceive as helping them to form and maintain relationships with others (self-initiated behavioral engagement). In this review, we discuss the evidence for the catalyzing role of affiliation goals in these two processes for a variety of positive (e.g., exercising, smoking-cessation) and detrimental health behaviors (e.g., binge drinking and eating, needle sharing). Additionally, we discuss individual difference factors that may temporarily or chronically activate affiliation goals and ultimately impact health behaviors. Affiliation goals hold many implications for future work, and for improving interventions.