Developmental trends in recall of central and incidental auditory material

An auditory recall task, involving central and incidental stimuli and designed to correspond to that used in visual selective attention studies, was developed and presented to second-, fourth-, sixth-, and eighth-graders. There were significant differences in favor of older compared to younger Ss and girls compared to boys. In addition, Ss performed better when animals were the relevant and foods the irrelevant stimuli than vice versa. The nature of the developmental increase in auditory recall of central vs incidental stimuli demonstrated in this task was discussed in terms of developmental trends found in the visual modality. The sex differences and differences found for the animals vs foods condition were discussed with regard to differential short-term memory strategies.     

Main and interaction effects of metallic toxins on classroom behavior

This study investigated the relationships of metal levels and metal combinations to children's classroom behavior. Hair-metal concentrations of lead, arsenic, mercury, cadmium, and aluminum were determined in 80 randomly selected elementary-age children, who were also rated by their classroom teacher on the Walker Problem Behavior Identification Checklist (WPBIC). Parents were interviewed to control for confounding variables that may have affected behavioral development. Regression analysis indicated that the set of metals was significantly related to increased scores on four of the five WPBIC subscales and on the total scale, with lead being a major contributor to four of the six dependent measures. Metal combinations were significantly related to increased scores on the WPBIC subscales measuring acting-out, disturbed peer relations, and immaturity, and on the total scale. A continuing reexamination of metal poisoning concentrations is needed because metal levels and metal combinations previously thought harmless may be associated with nonadaptive classroom behavior.     

Accounting for Missing Correlation Coefficients in Fixed-Effects MASEM

Meta-analytic structural equation modeling (MASEM) is increasingly applied to advance theories by synthesizing existing findings. MASEM essentially consists of two stages. In Stage 1, a pooled correlation matrix is estimated based on the reported correlation coefficients in the individual studies. In Stage 2, a structural model (such as a path model) is fitted to explain the pooled correlations. Frequently, the individual studies do not provide all the correlation coefficients between the research variables. In this study, we modify the currently optimal MASEM-method to deal with missing correlation coefficients, and compare its performance with existing methods. This study is the first to evaluate the performance of fixed-effects MASEM methods under different levels of missing correlation coefficients. We found that the often used univariate methods performed very poorly, while the multivariate methods performed well overall.     

Context cue focality influences strategic prospective memory monitoring

Monitoring the environment for the occurrence of prospective memory (PM) targets is a resource-demanding process that produces cost (e.g., slower responding) to ongoing activities. However, research suggests that individuals are able to monitor strategically by using contextual cues to reduce monitoring in contexts in which PM targets are not expected to occur. In the current study, we investigated the processes supporting context identification (i.e., determining whether or not the context is appropriate for monitoring) by testing the context cue focality hypothesis. This hypothesis predicts that the ability to monitor strategically depends on whether the ongoing task orients attention to the contextual cues that are available to guide monitoring. In Experiment 1, participants performed an ongoing lexical decision task and were told that PM targets (TOR syllable) would only occur in word trials (focal context cue condition) or in items starting with consonants (nonfocal context cue condition). In Experiment 2, participants performed an ongoing first letter judgment (consonant/vowel) task and were told that PM targets would only occur in items starting with consonants (focal context cue condition) or in word trials (nonfocal context cue condition). Consistent with the context cue focality hypothesis, strategic monitoring was only observed during focal context cue conditions in which the type of ongoing task processing automatically oriented attention to the relevant features of the contextual cue. These findings suggest that strategic monitoring is dependent on limited-capacity processing resources and may be relatively limited when the attentional demands of context identification are sufficiently high.     

Using another's gaze as an explicit aid to insight problem solving

Research has shown that implicitly guiding attention via visual cues or unrelated tasks can increase the likelihood of solving insight problems. We examined whether following another person making specific skin-crossing saccades could induce similar attentional shifts and increase solution rates for Duncker's ((1945)) radiation problem. We presented 150 participants with one of three 30-s eye movement patterns from another problem solver: (a) focusing solely on the central tumour; (b) naturally making skin-crossing saccades between the outside area and the tumour from multiple angles; or (c) making deliberate skin-crossing saccades between the outside area and the tumour from multiple angles. Following another person making skin-crossing saccades increased the likelihood of solving the radiation problem. Our results demonstrate that another person's eye movements can promote attentional shifts that trigger insight problem solving.     

Explaining away the negative effects of evaluation on analogical transfer: the perils of premature evaluation

Four experiments explored effects on analogical transfer of evaluating solutions to base problems. In contrast to reports of positive effects of explanation, evaluation consistently reduced transfer rates and impaired mental representations of base material. This effect was not ameliorated by encoding for a later memory test, summarizing, or engaging in similar processes at encoding and recall. However, providing a prior explanation task removed the inhibitory effect of evaluation. It appears that evaluation leads to encoding of extraneous material that interferes with access to solution-critical analogous information. Prior explanation inoculates against negative effects on transfer by ensuring that new information introduced via evaluation is organized around existing representations of relevant information of the base problem. The results suggest that the source of difficulty in analogical transfer may reside not only in retrieval and mapping but also in the initial encoding of problems.     

Book reviews

Abstract

Oakhill, J. &; Garnham, A. (1988). Becoming a skilled reader, Oxford: Blackwell. Pp. 206. ISBN 0-631-15244X £27.50 (hardback), ISBN 0-631-15776X £8.95 (paperback).

Brewin, C. R. (1988). Cognitive foundations of clinical psychology. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Ltd. Pp. 224. ISBN 0-86377-098-3 £24.50 (hardback), ISBN 0-86377-099-1 £8.95 (paperback).