Using tests to enhance 8th grade students' retention of U.S. history facts

Laboratory studies show that retention of information can be powerfully enhanced through testing, but evidence for their utility to promote long‐term retention of course information is limited. We assessed 8th grade students' retention of U.S. history facts. Facts were reviewed after 1 week, 16 weeks or not reviewed at all. Some facts were reviewed by testing (Who assassinated president Abraham Lincoln?) followed by feedback (John Wilkes Booth), while others were re‐studied. Nine months later, all students received a test covering all of the facts. Facts reviewed through testing were retained significantly better than facts reviewed through re‐studying, and nearly twice as well as those given no review. The best retention occurred for facts that were reviewed by testing after a 16‐week time interval. Although the gain in item was numerically small, due to floor effects, these results support the notion that testing can enhance long‐term retention of course knowledge. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An Examination of Religious Priming and Intrinsic Religious Motivation in the Moral Hypocrisy Paradigm

Reliable individual differences have not yet been identified in moral hypocrisy. This research examined whether intrinsic religious motivation combined with an experimental religious priming manipulation would predict decreased moral hypocrisy. A sample of Christian college students ( N =142) completed the Religious Orientation Scale—Revised, and the moral motivation paradigm, which tests whether participants will act in accordance with their moral beliefs at a cost to themselves. Half the participants received religious priming prior to the procedure. Intrinsic religiosity predicted decreased moral hypocrisy, but only when religiosity was primed. Findings support Allport's view of intrinsic religiosity, but with an emphasis on cognitive processes in addition to motivational ones.     

Shared intentionality

We argue for the importance of processes of shared intentionality in children's early cognitive development. We look briefly at four important social-cognitive skills and how they are transformed by shared intentionality. In each case, we look first at a kind of individualistic version of the skill -- as exemplified most clearly in the behavior of chimpanzees -- and then at a version based on shared intentionality -- as exemplified most clearly in the behavior of human 1- and 2-year-olds. We thus see the following transformations: gaze following into joint attention, social manipulation into cooperative communication, group activity into collaboration, and social learning into instructed learning. We conclude by highlighting the role that shared intentionality may play in integrating more biologically based and more culturally based theories of human development.     

Preferences and life evaluations of older adults with and without dementia: reliability, stability, and proxy knowledge

This study assessed the reliability and stability of care preferences and life evaluations among older adults with and without dementia. The study also examined spouse proxy predictions of partner responses. Test-retest reliability over 1 week, stability over 1 year, and proxy knowledge were all moderate to good, but lower for people with dementia. In all 3 areas, however, there was broad interindividual variability. People with dementia may become less reliable and stable in their self-reports, and some spouse proxies may have flawed knowledge about their partner, but dementia status alone is not sufficient to presume poor reliability or knowledge.     

The relationship between childhood abuse and adult personality disorder symptoms

This study assessed personality disorder symptomatology in a community sample of healthy adults without diagnosable DSM-IV-TR Axis I psychiatric disorders who reported a history of childhood abuse. Twenty-eight subjects with a history of moderate to severe physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse according to the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire were compared to 33 subjects without an abuse history on symptoms of personality disorders. Subjects in the Abuse group were more likely to report subclinical symptoms of paranoid, narcissistic, borderline, antisocial, obsessive compulsive, passive-aggressive, and depressive personality disorders. These findings link reports of childhood abuse with symptoms of personality disorders in the absence of Axis I psychiatric disorders in a community sample of healthy adults.     

The reliability of a model influences 14-month-olds’ imitation

Human infants have an enormous amount to learn from others to become full-fledged members of their culture. Thus, it is important that they learn from reliable, rather than unreliable, models. In two experiments, we investigated whether 14-month-olds (a) imitate instrumental actions and (b) adopt the individual preferences of a model differently depending on the model’s previous reliability. Infants were shown a series of videos in which a model acted on familiar objects either competently or incompetently. They then watched as the same model demonstrated a novel action on an object (imitation task) and preferentially chose one of two novel objects (preference task). Infants’ imitation of the novel action was influenced by the model’s previous reliability; they copied the action more often when the model had been reliable. However, their preference for one of the novel objects was not influenced by the model’s previous reliability. We conclude that already by 14 months of age, infants discriminate between reliable and unreliable models when learning novel actions.