The temporal distribution of autobiographical memory: changes in reliving and vividness over the life span do not explain the reminiscence bump

When autobiographical memories are elicited with word cues, personal events from middle childhood to early adulthood are overrepresented compared to events from other periods. It is, however, unclear whether these memories are also associated with greater recollection. In this online study, we examined whether autobiographical memories from adolescence and early adulthood are recollected more than memories from other lifetime periods. Participants rated personal events that were elicited with cue words on reliving or vividness. Consistent with previous studies, most memories came from the period in which the participants were between 6 and 20 years old. The memories from this period were not relived more or recalled more vividly than memories from other lifetime periods, suggesting that they do not involve more recollection. Recent events had higher levels of reliving and vividness than remote events, and older adults reported a stronger recollective experience than younger adults.     

Multiple contributions to priming effects for familiar faces: analyses with backward masking and event-related potentials

The model of face recognition by Bruce and Young postulates a pool of structural representations for familiar faces in long-term memory, so-called face recognition units (FRUs). Event-related brain potentials show early repetition priming effects for familiar faces around 250-300 ms [N250r or early repetition effect (ERE)], which are thought to reflect the activation of these FRUs. However, small N250r effects are also seen for unfamiliar faces suggesting that priming of perceptual codes (i.e., pictorial and structural codes) also contributes to early repetition effects. Using a face-familiarity task in Experiment 1, we aimed to eliminate these perceptual contributions to face priming by backward masking the prime face with a different, unfamiliar face. As expected, a repetition priming effect appeared only for familiar faces. Experiment 2 used a semantic-decision task and compared the effects of different kinds of masks that interfered with either pictorial codes or with pictorial and structural codes. Our findings indicate that both structural codes and memory representations contribute to the N250r and that unfamiliar-face masks interfere only with structural codes. Face-masks may therefore provide a useful tool to extract the pure contributions of memory representations (i.e., FRUs) to repetition priming.     

The embarrassed bystander: Embarrassability and the inhibition of helping

Two studies tested whether individual differences in the tendency to experience embarrassment could predict interpersonal helping behavior (informing another individual about a correctible flaw). In Study 1, 84 participants were given a chance to help an experimenter by telling her that she had ink on her face. Some knew she had an interview immediately following the experiment; some did not. Some participants were there with a confederate; some were alone. The presence of the confederate or of the interview predicted (negatively and positively, respectively) whether the participant would point out the ink. Among those who pointed out the ink, individuals higher in embarrassability were slower to help. In Study 2, participants reported on real-life interactions with others who had a temporary flaw (e.g., food in their teeth). Conceptually replicating Study 1, participants higher in embarrassability were less likely to point out the flaw. These studies suggest that fear of embarrassment is a strong inhibitory factor in social helping situations, and that personality factors can predict who will be inhibited from helping.     

Don't Count Calorie Labeling Out: Calorie Counts on the Left Side of Menu Items Lead to Lower Calorie Food Choices

Providing calorie counts on restaurants’ menus/menu boards is one of the most prominent policy interventions that has been implemented to combat the obesity epidemic in America. However, previous research across multiple disciplines has found little effect of providing calorie counts on calories ordered, leading some to call calorie provision a failed policy. The authors propose that this failure is partly due to not considering how people process information when making food choices: Americans read from left‐to‐right, processing calorie information only after processing the food item's name. Thus, the authors test a simple way to improve the effectiveness of calorie counts: display calorie counts to the left (vs. right) of food items. A field study and a laboratory study with American participants found that calorie counts to the left (vs. right) decreased calories ordered by 16.31%. A final laboratory study demonstrated that this effect is reversed among Hebrew‐speakers, who read from right‐to‐left, providing further evidence that the order in which calorie information is processed matters. Accordingly, calling calorie labeling a policy failure may be premature.     

Turning the tables: language and spatial reasoning

This paper investigates possible influences of the lexical resources of individual languages on the spatial organization and reasoning styles of their users. That there are such powerful and pervasive influences of language on thought is the thesis of the Whorf-Sapir linguistic relativity hypothesis which, after a lengthy period in intellectual limbo, has recently returned to prominence in the anthropological, linguistic, and psycholinguistic literatures. Our point of departure is an influential group of cross-linguistic studies that appear to show that spatial reasoning is strongly affected by the spatial lexicon in everyday use in a community (e.g. Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1993). Linguistic and nonlinguistic coding of spatial arrays: explorations in Mayan cognition (Working Paper No. 24). Nijmegen: Cognitive Anthropology Research Group, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics; Cognitive Linguistics 6 (1995) 33). Specifically, certain groups customarily use an externally referenced spatial-coordinate system to refer to nearby directions and positions ("to the north") whereas English speakers usually employ a viewer-perspective system ("to the left"). Prior findings and interpretations have been to the effect that users of these two types of spatial system solve rotation problems in different ways, reasoning strategies imposed by habitual use of the language-particular lexicons themselves. The present studies reproduce these different problem-solving strategies in speakers of a single language (English) by manipulating landmark cues, suggesting that language itself may not be the key causal factor in choice of spatial perspective. Prior evidence on rotation problem solution from infants (e.g. Acredolo, L.P. (1979). Laboratory versus home: the effect of environment on the 9-month-old infant's choice of spatial reference system. Developmental Psychology, 15 (6), 666-667) and from laboratory animals (e.g. Restle, F. (1975). Discrimination of cues in mazes: a resolution of the place-vs.-response question. Psychological Review, 64, 217-228) suggests a unified interpretation of the findings: creatures approach spatial problems differently depending on the availability and suitability of local landmark cues. The results are discussed in terms of the current debate on the relation of language to thought, with particular emphasis on the question of why different cultural communities favor different perspectives in talking about space.     

Functional learning among children, adolescents, and young adults

This study examined age-related differences in functional learning performance manifested among children, adolescents, and young adults placed in a two-cue ecology involving cues with direct relation and inverse relations with the criterion. On each trial, participants were instructed to consider the values taken by two cues, predict from these two values the value of a criterion, and finally examine the corresponding feedback value (i.e., the correct value of the criterion for this situation). The authors' hypotheses were that: (a) very few children under 11 years of age would be able to learn how to use the inverse relation cue for predicting the criterion, although they would be able to correctly use the direct relation cue; (b) most adolescents and young adults over 17 years of age would be able to learn how to use the inverse relation cue and combine it with the direct relation cue; and (c) adolescents between 11 and 17 years of age would show various levels of achievement. In general, these predictions were confirmed. Not until 11 years was a substantial proportion of participants (23%) able to reject the direct relation hypothesis and select the inverse relation hypothesis during learning.     

Early tactile experience of low birth weight children: links to later mental health and social adaptation

The purpose of this study was twofold: to determine (1) the degree to which specific qualities of maternal touch may contribute to the low birth weight infant's emotional and behavioural problems as well as social adaptation, and (2) the relationship between maternal touch and a mother's other caregiving behaviour. The sample included 114 socioculturally diverse infants and their mothers who were videotaped during an infant feeding when the baby was 3 months old. This videotape was analysed to assess dimensions of mother–infant interaction, including maternal touch. Data on perinatal risk and the mother's acceptance versus rejection of the infant were also acquired. Social adaptation and emotional/behavioural problems were measured when the child was 2 years of age. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that maternal touch accounted for 15% of the variance in the likelihood of a child having emotional/behavioural problems at age 2. Children who received more nurturing touch had significantly fewer internalizing problems (such as depression) while children receiving both more frequent touch and harsh touch had more externalizing problems (such as aggressive behaviour). Infants who were less responsive to their caregivers were especially at risk of developing aggressive/destructive behaviour as a result of frequent touch. But less responsive infants also appeared to benefit most from greater use of diverse types of maternal touch, accounting for 6% of the variance in superior adaptive behaviour at age 2. Nurturing touch was the only quality that showed even a modest relationship to other caregiving behaviour, suggesting that touch may play a distinct role in the infant's psychosocial development. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Involuntary language switching in two bilingual patients during the Wada test and intraoperative electrocortical stimulation

We present two bilingual patients without language disorders in whom involuntary language switching was induced. The first patient switched from Dutch to English during a left-sided amobarbital (Wada) test. Functional magnetic resonance imaging yielded a predominantly left-sided language distribution similar for both languages. The second patient switched from French to Chinese during intraoperative electrocortical stimulation of the left inferior frontal gyrus. We conclude that the observed language switching in both cases was not likely the result of a selective inhibition of one language, but the result of a temporary disruption of brain areas that are involved in language switching. These data complement the few lesion studies on (involuntary or unintentional) language switching, and add to the functional neuroimaging studies of switching, monitoring, and controlling the language in use.