Retrograde amnesia: forgetting back

Recently, the field of animal memory research has seen a resurgence of interest in the mechanisms underlying retrograde amnesia (RA) and in the use of RA as a technique for studying memory processes. A recent report from a major neuroscience lab, which demonstrated RA for an old reactivated memory, revitalized the debate regarding the widely accepted memory-consolidation theory of RA. Here, we discuss a number of the characteristics of RA and consider the findings that led to the development of the memory-consolidation hypothesis, as well as those suggesting an alternative retrieval-deficit explanation.     

MANULEX: a grade-level lexical database from French elementary school readers.

This article presents MANULEX, a Web-accessible database that provides grade-level word frequency lists of nonlemmatized and lemmatized words (48,886 and 23,812 entries, respectively) computed from the 1.9 million words taken from 54 French elementary school readers. Word frequencies are provided for four levels: first grade (G1), second grade (G2), third to fifth grades (G3-5), and all grades (G1-5). The frequencies were computed following the methods described by Carroll, Davies, and Richman (1971) and Zeno, Ivenz, Millard, and Duvvuri (1995), with four statistics at each level (F, overall word frequency; D, index of dispersion across the selected readers; U, estimated frequency per million words; and SFI, standard frequency index). The database also provides the number of letters in the word and syntactic category information. MANULEX is intended to be a useful tool for studying language development through the selection of stimuli based on precise frequency norms. Researchers in artificial intelligence can also use it as a source of information on natural language processing to simulate written language acquisition in children. Finally, it may serve an educational purpose by providing basic vocabulary lists.     

Effects of Perceived Organizational Support on Objective and Subjective Career Success via Need Satisfaction: A Study Among French Psychologists

The authors examined potential links between perceived organizational support (POS) and objective and subjective career success through the satisfaction of the 3 basic psychological needs (BPNs) posited in self‐determination theory. The inclusion of BPN satisfaction as a mediator provides an interesting route, suggesting it is a condition for POS to lead to career success. The authors submitted an online questionnaire to 379 French counseling psychologists and examined the responses using a cross‐sectional design with only 1 measurement. The results indicated the indirect effects of POS on objective career success via the satisfaction of the 3 BPNs and on subjective career success via satisfaction of the needs for autonomy and competence.     

More dissociations and interactions within central executive functioning: a comprehensive latent-variable analysis

The present study examined the separability of six executive functions (verbal storage-and-processing coordination, visuospatial storage-and-processing coordination, dual-task coordination, strategic retrieval, selective attention, and shifting) and their relationships, by means of confirmatory factor analysis. A set of tasks thought to primarily assess each target function was administered to 180 participants. The results demonstrated that five of the six functions initially considered were distinguishable albeit related constructs, with one of these functions combining inhibitory and strategic retrieval processes. The analyses failed to reveal a single dual-task coordination ability underlying performance on the dual-tasks. These findings provide further support for the fractionation of the central executive into several functions and also stress the need to approach executive functioning in terms of both dissociations within general functions and specific interactions between some of these functions.     

Cognitive avoidance of intrusive memories and autobiographical memory: specificity, autonoetic consciousness, and self-perspective

Autobiographical memory (AM) specificity is impaired in depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Previous studies emphasised the role of cognitive avoidance of intrusive memories in this impairment. This study aimed to examine the association of cognitive avoidance of intrusive memories with specificity, autonoetic consciousness, and self-perspective. A total of 38 healthy participants were given the revised Impact of Event Scale (IES-R) and an AM task designed to assess positive and negative memories regarding specificity, autonoetic consciousness (remember/know procedure), and self-perspective (field/observer procedure). Taking into account age, verbal IQ, mood, harm avoidance, and executive resources, the IES-R avoidance subscale was negatively correlated with specificity and remember responses for positive memories, and with remember and field responses for negative memories. These findings suggest that cognitive avoidance of intrusive memories is associated with a decrease of the episodic components of AM retrieval.     

Working memory and error detection in texts: what are the roles of the central executive and the phonological loop?

Subjects performed a text error detection task, either alone or in conjunction with a secondary task aimed at specifically hindering the functioning of either the central executive in working memory or of the phonological loop. We focused on the decline in detection performance as a function of the type of error to be detected (typographical, orthographic, or semantic/syntactic) and the processing span required for detection (one word, several words within the same clause, or several clauses). The results showed that the central executive in working memory is involved in detecting semantic/syntactic errors and in detecting orthographic ones, but not in detecting typographical errors. Moreover, the degree of involvement increases with the processing span. The phonological loop is involved in detection whenever processing above the word level is required. As observed in many studies, these results suggest that the difficulty subjects have detecting semantic errors as compared to other types of errors is due to the heavier working memory load: maintenance of the phonological representation and greater involvement of the central executive. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Developmental coordination disorder pertains to a deficit in perceptuo-motor synchronization independent of attentional capacities

We investigated from a dynamic pattern perspective to motor coordination whether the deficiency in motor coordination characterizing Developmental Coordination Disorder children pertains to a general disorder in synchronization leading to a lower stability of the performed coordination pattern, and the extent to which the trouble is linked to attentional capacities. Twenty-four DCD children without ADHD aged eight to thirteen and 60 control children were asked (1) to perform a Continuous Performance Test assessing sustained attention; (2) to flex one finger either in synchrony or in syncopation with a visual periodic signal whose frequency was increased stepwise, assessing synchronization abilities. For the attentional task, percentage of exact responses, number of errors and reaction time were recorded. For the synchronization task, we measured relative phase (i.e., the ratio between the stimulus and the response onset and the time separating two successive stimuli). DCD children were significantly more variable than controls in both conditions and the difficulty in synchronization was unrelated to attentional disorders (ANCOVA). These findings support the idea of a general synchronization disorder in DCD children underlying their poor motor coordination. Moreover, this synchronization disorder does not appear to be strictly dependent on the level of sustained attentional capacities.     

Between cultural relativism and liberal ethnocentrism: What does Saudi Arabia tell us about cultural variation in moral identity and prejudice?

Cultural conceptions of morality are grounded in diverse moral foundations, but moral identity research often assumes that individualizing concerns are the universal basis for morality. Moral identity scales grounded only in individualizing foundations risk liberal ethnocentrism, to the extent that binding foundations emphasized in collectivist cultures are overlooked. Three hundred and ninety-five Saudi Arabian and UK participants completed prejudice and moral identity measures, which either narrowly measured only individualizing foundations or broadly measured both binding and individualizing foundations. The broader measure had greater power to predict prejudice scores in both countries, particularly in Saudi Arabia. Generally, moral identities grounded in individualizing foundations predicted less prejudice, while moral identities grounded in binding foundations predicted higher prejudice in both countries. Individualizing measures of moral identity may assess ethnocentric concepts, but recognizing morality grounded in binding considerations may taint the category of moral identity with self-concepts that are associated with greater—not less—ethnocentrism.     

A new look at the attribution of moral responsibility: The underestimated relevance of social roles

What are the main features that influence our attribution of moral responsibility? It is widely accepted that there are various factors which strongly influence our moral judgments, such as the agent’s intentions, the consequences of the action, the causal involvement of the agent, and the agent’s freedom and ability to do otherwise. In this paper, we argue that this picture is incomplete: We argue that social roles are an additional key factor that is radically underestimated in the extant literature. We will present an experiment to support this claim.