Lecturer fluency can impact students' judgments of learning and actual learning performance

The way in which information is presented can influence students' judgments of learning (JOLs). Carpenter, Wilford, Kornell, and Mullaney (2013) found that students reported higher JOLs after viewing a fluent lecturer (good speaker) versus a disfluent lecturer, whereas actual learning performance was unaffected by lecturer fluency. The current research sought to replicate Carpenter et al. (2013) and examine whether students could improve calibration of their JOLs if provided a second opportunity to do so over a different video. In three experiments, participants watched a video of a fluent or disfluent lecturer, made a JOL, completed a free-recall test, and then repeated this procedure with a second video. The fluent lecturer generally produced higher JOLs than the disfluent lecturer (for both videos) across all three experiments. However, fluency also had a positive impact on actual learning performance. These diverging results further illuminate the impact lecturer fluency can have on student learning.     

The Theory of Planned Behavior: A Conceptual Framework to View the Career Development of Women

This study explores the role played by self-efficacy in predicting employees' intentions to apply for promotion, and also to confirm its importance as a third independent determinant of intention within the theory of planned behavior. To this end, questionnaires were administered to 108 employees of an organization operating in the north of Ireland. Regression analyses not only provided strong support for the addition of self-efficacy to the variables contained within Ajzen & Fishbein's (1980) framework, but also highlighted its importance in the context of women. Indeed, for women, it helped to explain some 77% of the variance and produced the strongest relationship with the intention variable. For men, however, only 54% of the variance was explained, and some importance was also attributed to the normative component of the model.     

The descent of cognitive development

A constructivist theory of the evolution of cognitive development is proposed. Seven propositions are posed plus supporting evidence. Constructing fundamental physical and logicomathematical conceptual universals underlies the development of cognition in primate phylogeny, ontogeny and history. Nevertheless, diverging onset and offset ages, velocity, extent, sequencing and organization mark the evolution of cognitive development in primate phylogeny. Thus, the evolution is heterochronic, not simply recapitulatory. Converging origins followed by diverging development of primates' conceptual constructions insures species‐specific cognitive specializations. Some specializations (e.g. recursive classifying) evolved in great ape development but not in monkey development; while others (e.g. hierarchically integrated classifying) evolved in human development only. Human enculturation and language (symbolic) rearing fosters quantitative but not qualitative progress in most of chimpanzees’ developing cognition. Heterochronic evolution provided humans with the widest and most synchronic ontogenetic window of opportunity for progressive cognitive development. The descendant cognitive development – humans’ precocial, integrated and extended intellectual constructions – bridges the evolution and history of ideas.     

FISH 3: A microworld for studying social dilemmas and resource management

A Java-based microworld environment for studying resource management is described. FISH 3 may be used in research or the classroom to investigate commons dilemmas and resource dilemmas. The program uses ocean fishing as its metaphor; participants (“fishers”) experience the metaphor through both graphics (“fish” may be seen in an ocean) and text (e.g., resource replenishment is translated as “spawning”). In either stand-alone or networked modes, either with all human fishers or a mixture of human and computer fishers, 15 parameters such as the number of resource units (fish), participants (fishers), and trials (seasons), payoff values, the rate and period of resource regeneration (spawning), harvesting greed by computer fishers, awareness of other harvesters’ actions, uncertainty in the amount of the resource, operating costs, and whether the resource is visible to harvesters may be varied.     

Further evidence on the similarity of memory processes in the process dissociation procedure and in source monitoring

Buchner, Erdfelder, Steffens, and Martensen (1997) proposed that the memory processes involved in recognition judgments in the process dissociation procedure are the same as those involved in standard source monitoring tasks. Two extensions of that research are presented here. First, following a line of reasoning recently brought forward by Jacoby (1998), the instructions in the earlier study could have triggered different processes from those triggered by his instructions. However, with instructions conforming as closely as possible to those reported by Jacoby (1991), Experiment 1 replicated the earlier recognition judgment finding almost perfectly. Second, the memory processes underlying fame judgments in the process dissociation procedure could also resemble those involved in source monitoring tasks. Indeed, the results of Experiment 2 are compatible with the hypothesis that the same processes are involved in fame judgments given a source monitoring or a process dissociation procedure.     

Motor impairment and antisocial behavior in adolescent males at high risk for schizophrenia

A familial link between schizophrenia and antisocial behavior has been established (e.g., Silverton, 1985). This study examined this relationship in a Danish cohort. The subjects were 36 high-risk males (offspring of a schizzophrenic parent) and 36 low-risk males (offspring of parents without psychopathology). This high-risk subjects exhibited more antisocial behavior than the low-risk subjects. We tested the hypothesis of a correlation between neurointegrative deficits, as defined by motor impairment, and antisocial behavior, rated at ages 10–13, in subjects at genetic risk for schizophrenia. Path analyses were conducted from motor impairment at 1 year and motor impairment at 10–13 years to antisocial behavior separately for high-risk and low-risk subjects. Adolescent motor impairment was a significant predictor of antisocial behavior for high-risk subjects. Motor impairment at 1 year was also associated with antisocial behavior for these subjects, although the association was partly due to the indirect effects of motor impairment at 1 year on motor impairment at 10–13 years, which, in turn, was associated with changes in antisocial behavior. As predicted, none of the path coefficients nor the effect coefficient was significant for low-risk subjects.     

Psychojargon in the psycholegal report: Ratings by judges,psychiatrists, and psychologists

Questionnaires designed to measure the perceived value of technical terminology for psycholegal reports were completed by 67 judges, 78 forensic psychiatrists, and 126 forensic psychologists. Judges were asked for ratings of the degree to which each term aids their understanding, and clinicians were asked for ratings of the likelihood that they would use each term in a report for the court. Rank-ordered ratings of the 45 terms were highly correlated among the three respondent groups, suggesting that forensic clinicians are generally aware of the problem of using incomprehensible psychojargon. Empirical ratings can be helpful in distinguishing between comprehensible and incomprehensible psychojargon for psycholegal use.     

Interactional aspects of cognitive organization

Further propositions are formulated towards a comprehensive structural developmental theory of cognitive change, begun in Langer (1969a, 1969b). Here, the analytic focus is upon: (a) The organization of the subject's assimilatory operations and accomodatory figurations; (b) the intrinsic coordinations between the theoretical and empirical cognitions constructed, respectively, by these two kinds of functional structures; and (c) the cognitive developmental changes produced by intrinsic coordinations. Derivative empirical hypotheses are considered in light of findings summarized here and elsewhere.     

Psychological androgyny and college students' judgments of mental health

College students' perceptions of the mental health of men and women were examined in comparison to an adult health standard. Two hundred forty male and female undergraduates were asked to describe a socially competent healthy adult man, healthy adult woman, or a healthy adult (sex unspecified) using the Bem Sex-Role Inventory, which provides a measurement of androgyny as well as masculinity and femininity. In accordance with the Broverman, Broverman, Clarkson, Rosenkrantz, and Vogel (1970) study of clinicians' perceptions, the healthy man was described as similar to the adult standard, while the healthy woman was not. Unlike the Broverman et al. (1970) study, the male but not the female subjects perceived the healthy woman as different, suggesting that college women may be less likely to endorse sex-linked conceptions of mental health than their male counterparts.