Pictorial superiority effects in oldest-old people

We examined memory for pictures and words in middle-age (45-59 years), young-old (60-74 years), old-old (75-89 years), and the oldest-old adults (90-97 years) in the Louisiana Healthy Aging Study. Stimulus items were presented and retention was tested in a blocked order where half of the participants studied 16 simple line drawings and the other half studied matching words during acquisition. Free recall and recognition followed. In the next acquisition/test block a new set of items was used where the stimulus format was changed relative to the first block. Results yielded pictorial superiority effects in both retention measures for all age groups. Follow-up analyses of clustering in free recall revealed that a greater number of categories were accessed (which reflects participants' retrieval plan) and more items were recalled per category (which reflects participants' encoding strategy) when pictures served as stimuli compared to words. Cognitive status and working memory span were correlated with picture and word recall. Regression analyses confirmed that these individual difference variables accounted for significant age-related variance in recall. These data strongly suggest that the oldest-old can utilise nonverbal memory codes to support long-term retention as effectively as do younger adults.     

Aspects of grammatical development in young French children with SLI

This paper presents an exploratory study of the spontaneous production of 11 French children clinically diagnosed as specific language impaired (SLI). In a cross‐sectional study of the children under and over 5 years of age, we investigate the production of finite and non‐finite verbal forms, of sentences with overt and null subjects, and of pronominal clitics. A comparison between younger and older children with SLI highlights developmental patterns which parallel normal syntactic development in important respects, though at a slower pace. An area of difficulty which clearly persists for the older group involves the domain of pronominal complement clitics.     

Integrating New Members into an Ongoing Therapy Group: The Life-Line Technique

Integrating a new member into an existing group poses many problems, both for the new member and the group as a whole. To address these, the authors propose use of a life-line technique to introduce a new member to the group. Following review of the basic narrative assumptions, a specific procedure that utilizes the life-line is described. Comments of new and old members after one typical life-line presentation are given. These comments are representative of those made on other occasions. They indicate that this life story review is therapeutically helpful and assists the process of integration of a new member into an ongoing group. Some limitations of this method are addressed in the discussion.     

To see the invisible messiah: Messianic socialization in the wake of a failed prophecy in Chabad

The study explores how the meshichistim (messianics) among the Jewish ultra-orthodox Chabad (Lubavitch) Hasidim manage the rupture entailed by the death of their leader, the Rebbe, whom they uphold as the King Messiah. Based on ethnographic research of contemporary pilgrimage to the Rebbe's court in Brooklyn, whose rituals and pedagogical framework are constructed by the meshichistim, the study problematizes the functional assumptions and implications of the rich literature on failed prophecies in millenarian movements, a literature heavily influenced by the theoretical model of cognitive dissonance. The case of Chabad meshichistim suggests that a millenarian group can reinvent itself through multifaceted cultural, pedagogical and ritual endeavors that are rife with internal contradictions. Moreover, these endeavors reveal that the rupture has not been balanced, regularized or normalized, but rather expresses the continuous complexity of life in its shadow.     

Adolescent Place Attachment, Social Capital, and Perceived Safety: A Comparison of 13 Countries

In adolescence, children become increasingly independent and autonomous, and spend more time in neighborhood settings away from home. During mid-to-late adolescence, youth often become more critical about the place they live. Their attachment to home and even community may decrease as they explore and develop new attachments to other specific places. The aim of this study is to understand how 15-year-old students from 13 countries perceive their local neighborhood area (place attachment, social capital and safety), and how these different community cognitions are interrelated. We hypothesize that their place attachment predicts safety, and that the relationship is mediated in part by social capital. Result show that, despite cross-cultural differences in neighborhood perceptions, the proposed theoretical model fits robustly across all 13 countries.     

Comparing two-digit numbers: the importance of being presented together

The effect of presentation mode on magnitude comparisons of two-digit (2D) numbers was examined using the stimuli set developed by Nuerk, Weger, and Willmes (2001). In Experiment 1, only number pairs from difference decades were presented either simultaneously or sequentially. In the former case there was evidence for the parallel processing of both the units and decades digits and for a components representation, consistent with previous findings. In contrast, in the latter case there was evidence for the processing of mainly the decades digits. In Experiment 2, within-decade number pairs were added to make both digits task relevant. The results from the simultaneous condition were again consistent with a components representation, while results from the sequential presentation were in line with a holistic representation, in line with Zhang and Wang's (2005) research. Results therefore suggest that the processing of 2D numbers depends on the way they are presented.     

Random dynamics and the research programme of classical mechanics

The modern mathematical theory of dynamical systems proposes a new model of mechanical motion. In this model the deterministic unstable systems can behave in a statistical manner. Both kinds of motion are inseparably connected, they depend on the point of view and researcher's approach to the system. This mathematical fact solves in a new way the old problem of statistical laws in the world which is essentially deterministic. The classical opposition: deterministic‐statistical, disappears in random dynamics. The main thesis of the paper is that the new theory of motion is a revolution in the research programme of classical mechanics. It is the revolution brought about by the development of mathematics.     

Is attention allocation sensitive to word informativeness?

Summary When two words are presented simultaneously, where one of them is predictable from the context and the other one is not, it is conceivable that attention is captured by the expected word (cf. Flowers, Polansky, & Kerl, 1981), or that attention is directed to where it is presumably more needed, namely to the unexpected word. To explore these possibilities we used a paradigm in which the subjects' primary task was to report either one or both of two simultaneously presented words, and attention was measured by performance on a secondary task, that is, detecting small gaps in a letter stroke. In a preliminary test, this measure of attention was found to be sensitive to the manipulation of attention by means of an arrow pointer. Word predictability was manipulated by presenting an incomplete sentence immediately before the two words. The sentence was either semantically congruent with one of the words or with neither of them. The mode of word report (partial vs. full) was manipulated between subjects. No difference was found in either mode between the gap detection scores in the expected and the unexpected words. Neither of those scores differed from the score for trials in which both words were unexpected. The results suggest that at the time of selection, or attention allocation, cues about word identity are not yet available, or are not utilized.Most of the work reported here was done as an M.A. thesis of the second author under the supervision of the first and third authors. The research was supported in part by a grant from the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF), Jerusalem, Israel     

On the Positive Side of Avoidance Motivation: An Increase in Avoidance Motivation Reduces Procrastination among Students

People who procrastinate often pay a heavy price in terms of illness, stress, and poor performance. Because procrastination has harmful consequences, we predicted that avoidance motivation, a self‐regulation system that protects people from harm, would also protect them against procrastination. We hypothesised that avoidance motivation reduces procrastination, despite the known destructive effects avoidance motivation has on thriving. In Study 1, students high in chronic‐avoidance motivation had the lowest dropout rates from a bonus‐granting longitudinal study. In Study 2, avoidance motivation was negatively related to delay in submitting a term paper, when controlling for chronic procrastination, self‐efficacy, impulsiveness, and age. In Study 3, an experimental manipulation of avoidance motivation reduced procrastination three times, but only once significantly. In Study 4, manipulations of both avoidance motivation and approach motivation, relative to a control motivation, using a within‐subjects design, indicated that the avoidance manipulation reduced procrastination in submitting subsequent reading reports, whereas the approach manipulation did not. We subjected all our results to a meta‐analysis that indicated that avoidance motivation had a significant preventive effect on procrastination. We conclude that avoidance motivation can reduce procrastination, and suggest that our avoidance‐manipulation techniques could be applied across a variety of organisational and educational settings.     

Strategic encoding and retrieval processes in verbal recall among middle-aged and older adults

The authors used an analysis of individual differences to examine the role of executive control in strategic encoding and retrieval in verbal recall. Participants enrolled in the Louisiana Healthy Aging Study completed measures of working memory (WM), cognitive status, vocabulary, and free recall of words. Indices of clustering in free recall were calculated to permit inferences on strategic encoding and retrieval processes. We hypothesized that WM would be more strongly associated with strategic encoding and retrieval metrics than vocabulary based on the assumption that successful remembering requires executive control in WM. Regression analyses, together with a variance portioning procedure, confirmed that WM had comparable levels of unique and shared variance with the strategic encoding and retrieval metrics, and both exceeded vocabulary. Theoretical and clinical implications of these data are considered, with the suggestion of future research in lifespan samples as opposed to exclusively young adult or older adult samples.