Increasing false recognition rates with confirmatory feedback: a phenomenological analysis

During a simulated witness interrogation, participants were encouraged to confabulate an account consistent with false information concerning a videotaped event. The interviewer verbally affirmed some false responses. Previous research has shown that, a week later, participants often recognize confabulated events that were affirmed by the experimenter as being from the video. What is unclear is whether confirmatory feedback encouraged a change in the mental representation of the confabulated events to fit the original event or confirmation might have merely encouraged a change in beliefs about the event. To further understand the mechanisms that underlie the confirmatory feedback effect, participants were asked to judge the phenomenological experience associated with false recognition.     

The Koala Fear Questionnaire: a standardized self-report scale for assessing fears and fearfulness in pre-school and primary school children

The Koala Fear Questionnaire (KFQ) is a standardized self-report scale for assessing fears and fearfulness in children aged between 4 and 12 years. The current article presents six studies which examined the reliability and validity of the KFQ. Study 1 (N=108) demonstrated that the visual fear scales of Koala bears as employed in the KFQ are highly comparable to the standard 3-point scales that are used in other childhood fear measures. Study 2 (N=163) provided support for the convergent validity of the KFQ in a sample of 8- to 14-year-old children. That is, the scale correlated substantially with alternative measures of childhood fear and anxiety. Study 3 (N=189) showed that the KFQ possesses good internal consistency and test-retest stability in a group of 8- to 11-year-old children. The results of Studies 4 (N=129) and 5 (N=176) indicated that the KFQ is suitable for children aged 4 to 6 years and demonstrated that the psychometric properties of the scale in younger children are highly similar to those obtained in older children. Study 6 (N=926) showed that the factor structure of the KFQ was theoretically meaningful: although the data clearly pointed in the direction of one factor of general fearfulness, spurs of the commonly found five-factor solution of childhood fear were found in the KFQ. Altogether, the KFQ seems to be a valuable addition to the instrumentarium of clinicians and researchers who are working with fearful and anxious children.     

Treatment of pharmacotherapy-refractory posttraumatic stress disorder among Cambodian refugees: a pilot study of combination treatment with cognitive-behavior therapy vs sertraline alone

Cambodian refugees with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) represent a cohort in severe need of treatment, but little information is available to guide treatment choices. We selected a sample of pharmacotherapy-refractory individuals to test the efficacy of combination treatment with sertraline and cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) for treating PTSD. Participants in this pilot study were ten Khmer-speaking women who had been at a mean age of 22-26 years during the Pol Pot period (1975-1979). These patients were randomly assigned to either sertraline alone or combined treatment. We found that combined treatment offered additional benefit in the range of medium to large effect sizes for PTSD and associated symptoms. Our findings indicate that substantial gains can be achieved by adding CBT to pharmacotherapy for PTSD, and that a program of CBT emphasizing information, exposure, and cognitive-restructuring can be successfully modified for Khmer-speaking refugees.     

Bimanual training reduces spatial interference

The authors investigated whether training can reduce bimanual directional interference by using a star-line drawing paradigm. Participants (N = 30) were required to perform rhythmical arm movements with identical temporal but differing directional demands. Moreover, the effectiveness of part-task training in which each movement was practiced in isolation was compared with that of whole-task training in which only combined movements were performed. Findings revealed that bimanual training substantially reduced spatial interference, but unimanual training did not. The authors therefore concluded that the spatial coupling of the limbs is not implemented in a rigid way; instead, the underlying neural correlate can undergo plastic changes induced by training. Moreover, the practical implication that emerged from the present study is that athletic, musical, or ergonomic skills that require a high degree of interlimb coordination are best served by whole-task practice.     

Assessing the factorial invariance of Harter's self-concept measures: comparing preadolescents with and without spina bifida using child,parent, and teacher report

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the structure of children's self-concept, as rated by children themselves on the Self-Perception Profile for Children (SPPC; Harter, 1985), and the structure of children's competence, as rated by their parents on the Rating Scale of Child's Actual Behavior (PRS) and teachers on the Rating Scale of Child's Actual Behavior (TRS; Harter, 1985), are similar across samples of children with and without spina bifida (children were 8 and 9 years of age; n = 68 in each sample). Using confirmatory factor analyses, results revealed that a multidimensional model for the SPPC and the TRS fit the data well for both samples. On the other hand, the model for both mothers' and fathers' PRS ratings did not fit the data for the spina bifida sample. Further tests of factorial invariance conducted on the SPPC and TRS revealed that the spina bifida and able-bodied samples tended to have the same pattern and magnitude of factor loadings for both instruments. There was some invariance, however, in the amount of unique error variance accounted for across samples. These results bolster our confidence in using the SPPC and TRS to compare children with and without spina bifida.     

The effect of grammatical gender and semantic context on lexical access in Italian using a timed word-naming paradigm

The effects of sentence context and grammatical gender on lexical access were investigated in Italian using a timed word-naming paradigm. Large main effects of both sentence context and the gender of the article were observed; the interaction between gender and semantics was significant over subjects. Strong facilitation by both gender and semantics was observed, relative to a neutral-control baseline condition. Results are compared with (1) a prior study with the same design, using a picture-naming paradigm, except that objects described by written words were replaced by pictures (Bentrovato, Devescovi, D'Amico, & Bates, 1999); (2) a separate norming study of timed word reading in a list format, using the same stimuli (D'Amico, Devescovi, & Bates, 2001); and (3) a prior study of German comparing word and picture naming in short, semantically neutral phrases (Jacobsen, 1999). Differences in methodology and in findings between the Italian word naming and the German word naming are compared and discussed. Findings of the present study are interpreted in support of interactive-activation models in which different sources of information are combined on-line to predict, anticipate, or preactivate lexical targets.     

Activation of human motion processing areas during event perception

Observers are able to segment continuous everyday activity into meaningful parts. This ability may be related to processing low-level visual cues, such as changes in motion. To address this issue, the present study combined measurement of evoked responses to event boundaries with functional identification of the extrastriate motion complex (MT+) and the frontal eye field (FEF), two regions related to motion perception and eye movements. The results provided strong evidence that MT+ is activated by event boundaries: Individuals' MT+ regions showed strong responses to event boundaries, and MT+ was collocated with a lateral posterior region that responded at event boundaries. The evidence regarding the FEF was less conclusive: The FEF showed reliable but relatively reduced responses to event boundaries, but the FEF was medial and superior to a frontal area that responded at event boundaries. These results suggest that motion cues, and possibly eye movements, may play key roles in event structure perception.     

A grouping interpretation of the modality effect in immediate probed recognition

In a series of experiments on immediate probed recognition for eight 3-digit numbers, it was shown that if the target modality involved auditory components and the effect of the similarity of the modality of the probe to that of the targets was controlled, unequivocal evidence was obtained for an auditory superiority effect (modality effect) for hit rates for the final items of the list. Moreover, false-alarm rates were significantly lower following targets with an auditory component than they were following silently seen targets. It is argued that this pattern of hits and false alarms is consistent with the idea that targets that have an auditory component yield memory representations that are better grouped as units than are those for targets that are only silently seen; in particular, if a new probe has a first digit that accidentally matches the first digit of a target item, it is more likely that the subject will mistakenly identify this new probe as old (give a false alarm) if the target has only been partially encoded because it was only silently seen.     

Semantic Contribution to Immediate Serial Recall Using an Unlimited Set of Items: Evidence for a Multi-level Capacity View of Short-term Memory

The purpose of this study was to assess the respective roles of lexical and semantic levels of representations in immediate serial recall, by testing participants with items that varied on both these dimensions. Contrary to most studies where a small fixed set of words are repeated over trials, the current items were tested once by sampling them from an unlimited set of items without replacement. Participants recalled three classes of words under articulatory suppression: nonwords, function words, and content words. Results indicated an advantage for function words over nonwords, confirming a specifically lexical contribution to immediate serial recall. Additionally, content words were more frequently recalled than function words, confirming a semantic contribution. These results imply that non-phonological factors influence immediate serial recall and are consistent with a multi-level capacity view of short-term memory.     

When Interviewers Desire Accurate Impressions: The Effects of Notetaking on the Influence of Expectations1

The present study explored the possibility that notetaking would help accuracy-minded interviewers to avoid cognitive expectation biases. Interviewers in simulated employment interviews were given bogus pre-interview expectations about their applicants and were either encouraged or not encouraged to take extensive notes. Consistent with past research on accuracy-motivated interviewers, both notetaking and non-notetaking interviewers avoided creating self-fulfilling prophecies. Of central interest, notetaking reduced the cognitive biasing effect of negative expectations on interviewers' overall impressions of their applicants, but failed to reduce cognitive bias in interviewers' evaluations of expectation-specific applicant characteristics. In conjunction with the motivation to form accurate impressions, notetaking can help to reduce the impact of erroneous pre-interview expectations in interviewer final evaluations.