Developmental differences in episodic memory across school ages: evidence from enacted events performed by self and others

The aim of this study was to examine action memory as a form of episodic memory among school-aged subjects. Most research on action memory has focused on memory changes in adult populations. This study explored the action memory of children over time. A total of 410 school-aged child participants, comprising 201 girls and 208 boys in four age groups (8, 10, 12, and 14), were included in this study. We studied two forms of action encoding, subject-performed tasks (SPTs) and experimenter-performed tasks (EPTs), which were compared with one verbal encoding task as a control condition. At retrieval, we used three memory tests (free recall, cued recall, and recognition). We observed significant differences in memory performance in children aged 8–14 years with respect to free recall and cued recall but not recognition. The largest memory enhancement was observed for the SPTs in the 8–14-year-old participants under all test conditions. Participants performed equally well on the free recall of SPTs and EPTs, whereas they displayed better performances on the cued recall and recognition of SPTs compared to EPTs. The strategic nature of SPTs and the distinction between item-specific information and relational information are discussed.     

An Empowerment Evaluation Model for Sexual Assault Programs: Empirical Evidence of Effectiveness

Using an empowerment evaluation approach, the Sexual Assault and Rape Prevention (SARP) Evaluation Project brought together university researchers, public health evaluators, state funders, and program staff to provide evaluation training and consultation to all state-funded rape prevention and victim services programs in Michigan. In this paper, the specific activities of the SARP project are described, and process and outcome data are presented that address the effectiveness of this empowerment evaluation approach. Based on subjective reports from program staff and objective data obtained from state funders, results suggest that this evaluation model was successful in helping 90% of the prevention programs and 75% of the victim services programs successfully develop and launch program evaluations. One-year follow-up data indicate that 90% of the programs had sustained their evaluation efforts after the formal work of the SARP project had ended.     

A Swedish non-word repetition test for preschool children

A Swedish non-word repetition test for preschool children was constructed with the aim of measuring short-term phonological memory, which has been shown to correlate with language development and language proficiency. Normative data based on results for 200 children four to six years of age are presented. An item analysis of the original 30-item test resulted in a shortened 24 non-word version found suitable for four- to six-year old children. Results for this shortened version, which had a Cronbach's alpha of 0.73, showed longer non-words to be more difficult to repeat than shorter ones, and significant effects of age and compatibility of the tester's and the child's accent, but not of gender. The results are discussed within the framework of Baddeley's working memory model.     

Effectiveness of an empirically supported treatment for social phobia in the field

This study examined the effectiveness of individual exposure combined with cognitive restructuring for social phobia in a clinical setting as well as the influence of sample restriction criteria on the effect size. Participants were 217 unselected patients with a primary diagnosis of social phobia who were treated by 57 therapists in four outpatient clinics of the Christoph-Dornier-Foundation of Clinical Psychology in Germany. Results 6 weeks after the end of therapy showed highly significant reductions in social phobic fears and avoidance as well as in general anxiety and symptoms of depression. However, patients who dropped out during therapy reported a significantly higher degree of depression. Results did not differ between the four outpatient clinics and are comparable with the average effect-sizes reported by meta-analytic studies of controlled efficacy research, using selected patients. Also, restricting the sample according to the selection criteria often applied in research settings did not result in higher effect sizes for the applied outcome measures. We conclude that individual cognitive behavioural therapy for social phobia can be transported from research settings to the field of mental health.     

The influence of violent and nonviolent computer games on implicit measures of aggressiveness

We examined the causal relationship between playing violent video games and increases in aggressiveness by using implicit measures of aggressiveness, which have become important for accurately predicting impulsive behavioral tendencies. Ninety‐six adults were randomly assigned to play one of three versions of a computer game that differed only with regard to game content (violent, peaceful, or abstract game), or to work on a reading task. In the games the environmental context, mouse gestures, and physiological arousal—as indicated by heart rate and skin conductance—were kept constant. In the violent game soldiers had to be shot, in the peaceful game sunflowers had to be watered, and the abstract game simply required clicking colored triangles. Five minutes of play did not alter trait aggressiveness, yet an Implicit Association Test detected a change in implicit aggressive self‐concept. Playing a violent game produced a significant increase in implicit aggressive self‐concept relative to playing a peaceful game. The well‐controlled study closes a gap in the research on the causality of the link between violence exposure in computer games and aggressiveness with specific regard to implicit measures. We discuss the significance of importing recent social–cognitive theory into aggression research and stress the need for further development of aggression‐related implicit measures. Aggr. Behav. 36:1–13, 2010. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

The relationships between processing facial identity,emotional expression,facial speech,and gaze direction during development

Four experiments were conducted with 5- to 11-year-olds and adults to investigate whether facial identity, facial speech, emotional expression, and gaze direction are processed independently of or in interaction with one another. In a computer-based, speeded sorting task, participants sorted faces according to facial identity while disregarding facial speech, emotional expression, and gaze direction or, alternatively, according to facial speech, emotional expression, and gaze direction while disregarding facial identity. Reaction times showed that children and adults were able to direct their attention selectively to facial identity despite variations of other kinds of face information, but when sorting according to facial speech and emotional expression, they were unable to ignore facial identity. In contrast, gaze direction could be processed independently of facial identity in all age groups. Apart from shorter reaction times and fewer classification errors, no substantial change in processing facial information was found to be correlated with age. We conclude that adult-like face processing routes are employed from 5 years of age onward.     

Conspiracy thinking and state-trait anxiety in young Polish adults

The relationships among conspiracy thinking and state and trait anxiety were examined with 118 high school students who were assessed using the Conspiracy Beliefs Scale and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. Among boys there was a positive correlation between scores on A-Trait and the conspiracy thinking (r = .39) whereas among girls there was a negative correlation between these scores (r = -.32).     

Letter-detection patterns in German: A window to the early extraction of sentential structure during reading

Letters are more difficult to detect in function words than in content words, presumably because function words serve to cue sentential structure but recede to the background as meaning unfolds. This function disadvantage was found for the definite article in German for all three genders and all four cases, but it was more pronounced when the article appeared in a nominative noun phrase than in an object noun phrase. It was also more pronounced for the typical subject-predicate-object sentential format than for the object-predicate-subject sentential format and also when the definite article unequivocally specified the case of a phrase than when it was ambiguous. The results suggest that the structural frames established on line in reading are finely tuned to both phrase-level and sentence-level organization.