Effects of Guided Notes on University Students' Responding and Recall of Information

The present study assessed the effects of guided notes on student responding and accuracy of recall of lecture material in an undergraduate psychology class using multi-element design. Guided notes were administered for approximately half of the class sessions on a random schedule. Data were collected on the frequency of student responses and daily quizzes were administered to assess accuracy of recall of information presented in the lecture. Results indicated higher mean quiz scores and response frequencies during the guided notes condition. Social validity questionnaires administered to participants revealed satisfaction with results and procedures.     

How people explain actions performed by groups and individuals.

The authors explore whether people explain intentional actions performed by groups differently from actions performed by individuals, A theoretical framework is offered that distinguishes between 2 modes of explanation: the agent's reasons (beliefs or desires in light of which the agent decided to act) and causal histories of reasons (CHRs; factors that preceded and brought about the agent's reasons). The authors develop the hypothesis that people use more CHR explanations when explaining group actions than when explaining individual actions. Study 1 demonstrates this asymmetry. Studies 2 and 3 explore 2 necessary conditions for the asymmetry: that the group be perceived as an aggregate of individual actors rather thin as a jointly acting group and that explainers have general information available about the group. Discussion focuses on people's perception of groups as entities and agents.     

Conditioned inhibitory effects of discriminated Pavlovian training with food in rats depend on interactions of search modes,related repertoires,and response measures

Like other accounts of conditioned inhibition, behavior systems predicts (and Experiment 1 shows) that during summation and retardation tests, presentation of a negative conditioned stimulus (a CS-) created by discriminative Pavlovian food conditioning will interfere with a focal search response, such as nosing in the feeder. Unlike most other views, behavior systems predicts (and Experiment 2 shows) that the same CS- can potentiate a general search response, like attending to a moving artificial prey stimulus. Contacting the prey stimulus in extinction increased over baseline when a CS- but not a CS Novel preceded it. Experiment 3 showed this effect was not due to unconditioned qualities of the CS-. It appears that the effects of a discriminative CS- depend on the interaction of the training contingency with search modes related to the unconditioned stimulus (US), their perceptual-motor repertoires and environmental support, and the choice of response measure.     

Abnormalities in visual processing amongst students with body image concerns

Individuals with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) appear to possess abnormalities in the way they observe and discriminate visual information. A pre-occupation with perceived defects in appearance has been attributed to a local visual processing bias. We studied the nature of visual bias in individuals who may be at risk of developing BDD – those with high body image concerns (BICs) – by using inverted stimulus discrimination. Inversion disrupts global, configural information in favor of local, feature-based processing. 40 individuals with high BIC and 40 low BIC controls performed a discrimination task with upright and inverted faces, bodies, and scenes. Individuals with high BIC discriminated inverted faces and bodies faster than controls, and were also more accurate when discriminating inverted bodies and scenes. This reduction in inversion effect for high BIC individuals may be due to a stimulus-general local, detail-focused processing bias, which may be associated with maladaptive fixation on small features in their appearance.     

Methods for evaluating empirical bayes point estimates of latent trait scores

Empirical Bayes point estimates of latent trait scores, derived under the assumptions of one of several test theory models, display a certain degree of instability unless the sample size is sufficiently large. A measure of this instability over repeated sampling is the distribution of the overall expected squared error loss which converges, both in probability and in the mean, to the minimum (Bayes) overall expected loss as sample size increases. An asymptotic distribution theory is developed, and the resulting large sample approximation is compared with results obtained from simulated data. Attention is also given to the effects of using a smoothing procedure.     

Psychosocial Stress and Cardiovascular Risk: What is the Role of Daily Experience?

We describe an ecological momentary assessment (EMA) protocol designed to measure daily life experiences along several psychosocial dimensions (Social Conflict, Task Demand, Decisional Control, Negative Affect, and Arousal) hypothesized to be relevant for cardiovascular disease risk. In a large community sample, these assessments have been administered in conjunction with ambulatory blood pressure (ABP) monitoring and measures of subclinical cardiovascular disease. Several results have emerged that support the promise of this approach. First of all, each of these dimensions of experience appears to be a trigger for cardiovascular activation, with movement on each scale being associated with significant within-person changes in heart rate and blood pressure in the natural environment. Second, there appear to be individual differences in physiological responsiveness to these dimensions of daily experience, with such differences being associated in some cases with laboratory-based assessments of cardiovascular reactivity, as might be expected. Third, EMA ratings are associated in several instances with (between-person) stable individual differences in ABP readings. And finally, we have found that some of the characteristics defined by our EMA ratings are related to measures of subclinical atherosclerosis. Such effects appear to be mediated, in part, by ABP. The advantages of using EMA measures for capturing the effects of psychosocial stressors are highlighted by comparing the predictive validity of these daily life assessments to traditional global self-reports. We conclude by describing future plans for use of this type of assessment protocol for helping us to characterize psychosocial characteristics relevant to cardiovascular disease risk. Personality and social processes during daily living may have an important impact not only on psychological functioning but also on physical health and disease. In this article we review our recent work involving the assessment of daily experience as a means of better understanding the role of psychosocial stress in cardiovascular disease risk. First, we outline the rationale for our interest in daily experience sampling for examining these processes, and we describe the methods we have adopted for this purpose. Next, we review findings from a recent study in which we have used these approaches to examine the role of psychosocial stress on ABP and atherosclerosis in a community-dwelling sample. We compare our approach to more traditional (global self-report and laboratory-observation) methods for examining these relationships in humans, and we discuss potential future directions for use of daily experience sampling in studies of health and behavior.