Susceptibility to retroactive interference: The effect of context as a function of age and cognition

Previous studies have shown that contextual cues improve memory performance and reduce interference in younger adults. However, it is not clear whether middle-aged and older adults can also benefit from contextual cues, or if this ability diminishes with ageing and cognitive decline. In order to test this question, we tested 69 middle-aged adults (aged 30–50 years) and 65 older adults (aged 65–85). Participants completed a retroactive interference paradigm with or without contextual cues. Cognitive functioning of older adults was assessed using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, which is a sensitive and highly validated tool to detect cognitive decline in older age. The results showed that while middle-aged adults were able to benefit from context to improve recognition and reduce interference, older adults were not able to benefit from it. However, when we compared older adults with lower (<26) and higher (≥26) scores on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, we found that older adults with high cognitive functioning could benefit from context advantage at retrieval to improve recognition compared to those with lower cognitive functioning. Yet, similar to older adults with lower cognitive functioning, they could not benefit from context advantage at encoding and hence were still susceptible to interference.     

Disempowerment and Psychological Distress in the Lives of Young People in Eastern Cape, South Africa

A qualitative study was conducted in Butterworth, in the rural Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, to explore sources of distress for young people. Semi-structured, individual in-depth interviews were conducted with 16 men and 24 women aged 16–22 years. The findings revealed interconnections between structural factors such as death, poverty, unemployment and gender injustices to cause distress. Negative home dynamics such as disinheritance, financial hardships, undisclosed paternal identity, substance abuse, child abuse and unpredictable informal adoption circumstances were worries of the participants. Worries over their inability to complete school dominated the narratives of orphaned participants. Lack of communication and consultation within families on important matters contributed to distress. Distress related to sexual relationships, such as infidelity, an unacknowledged pregnancy, intimate partner violence, transactional sex and sexual orientation were evident only in women’s narratives. Strengthening of families, improving financial security, extension of social grants and no-fee school policies are needed to alleviate distress in young people in this area. These findings are a call for the monitoring of policy delivery imperatives for child protection.     

What do two-year-olds understand about hidden-object events?

Preferential-looking studies suggest that by 2 months of age, infants may have knowledge about some object properties, such as solidity. Manual search studies of toddlers examining these same concepts, however, have failed to provide evidence for the same understanding. Investigators have recently attempted to reconcile this disparity but failed to control for the visual novelty of test outcomes. The current design corrected this problem and also tested toddlers' predictions of the object's location. The task involved the same events and apparatus that have been used in manual search tasks but used looking as the dependent measure. Children looked longer when an agent opened the correct door and found no ball than when an incorrect door was opened to reveal no ball. A 2nd experiment indicated that children's preferential-looking performance did not differ from that in manual search tasks simply because additional response time had been allowed to respond. Previous comparisons of looking versus reaching tested children's postdiction response to an object in an unexpected location, but these findings indicate that toddlers can predict where the object should be.     

Learning from successful and failed experience: the moderating role of kind of after-event review

The claim that appropriate "after-event review (AER)" may increase the relative value of drawing lessons from successes, as compared with failures, was examined in the present study. The study was a laboratory experiment in which the effect of type of AER (failure-focused, success-focused, failure- and success-focused, and no AER review) on performance improvement and causal attributions was tested under conditions of earlier success and earlier failure. In general, 2 results were demonstrated: (a) Drawing lessons from successful experience is feasible, and its effectiveness is contingent upon the type of AER. More specifically, after successful events, the most effective review is that of wrong actions, whereas after failed events, any kind of event review (correct or wrong actions) is effective. (b) AERs elicit more internal (as opposed to external) and specific (as opposed to general) attributions. These 2 classifications moderate the effect of AERs on task performance.     

Do Provocateurs’ Emotion Displays Influence Children’s Social Goals and Problem Solving?

The social goals and social problem-solving of children who varied in social adjustment were examined in the context of hypothetical ambiguous provocation situations in which provocateurs’ emotion displays were systematically manipulated. Children rated the importance of six different social goals and explained how they would solve the problems. Social adjustment was measured with rating and nomination sociometric procedures. Rejected-aggressive, rejected-nonaggressive, average-nonaggressive, and popular-nonaggressive children showed both commonalities and differences in rating the six social goals, the relative importance of the six social goals, and social problem-solving depending on the provocateur’s emotion display. When provocateurs were happy, there were few group differences, but when provocateurs were angry or sad, rejected-aggressive children: a) rated hostile/instrumental goals more positively; b) rated prosocial goals less positively; and c) made problem-solving responses that were less friendly than those of other children. Results are discussed in relation to Lemerise and Arsenio’s (2000) model of emotion and social information processing.     

Is there a magnitude effect in tipping?

The present study examined nearly 1,000 tips recorded for two taxicabs, two hair salons, and two restaurants. In each of the six cases, amount of tip increased linearly as a function of the amount of the bill. Contrary to standard microeconomic theory, there was a magnitude effect in that as the amount of the bill increased, the percent tip tended to decrease. The present results extend the findings of Chapman and Winquist (1998), obtained using hypothetical scenarios, to real-world tipping behavior. Chapman and Winquist argued that a magnitude effect in tipping reflects the shape of the utility function for money. We suggest, however, that the magnitude effect may be the mathematical consequence of replotting the fundamental relationship between tip and bill amounts in terms of percent tip, given that the observed linear relation between tip and bill amounts has a positive intercept. We suggest further that the positive intercept arises because a tip represents a judgment as to what constitutes a fair or equitable wage, and part of what constitutes a fair wage is independent of the amount of the bill, reflecting compensation for simply being there when needed. The present account implies that different explanations may be needed for magnitude effects observed in different domains.     

How infants use perceptual information to guide action

When infants catch a rolling ball by intercepting its trajectory, the action is prospectively controlled to take account of the object's speed, direction and path. We complicated this task in two ways: by occluding a portion of the ball's path with a screen, and by sometimes placing a barrier that blocked the ball's path behind the screen. In two experiments we manipulated visual information about the barrier and the ball's trajectory to see how this would aid 9‐month‐olds’ performance. Anticipatory reaching was possible but difficult with a partially occluded trajectory; actually catching the ball was aided by full view of the trajectory although timing of reach onset was not affected. Full sight of the barrier and trajectory through a transparent screen prevented inappropriate reaching, whereas sight of the barrier alone through a ‘window’ in an opaque screen did not. We interpreted these results as evidence for decreased performance as cognitive load increased with the loss of visual information. In contrast to anticipatory reaching behavior, search for the ball after it disappeared behind the screen was facilitated by the opaque window condition, confirming previous studies that found superior search with opaque versus transparent screens.