Age-related memory deficits in rats and mice: enhancement with peripheral injections of epinephrine

Epinephrine peripherally administered to rats and mice immediately following avoidance and/or appetitive training enhances later memory retention in both young and old animals. These findings suggest a possible involvement of peripheral adrenergic systems in memory dysfunctions which accompany aging.     

Two faces of verbal ability

Although psychologists often think and act as though there were only one global domain of verbal ability, there are actually two—verbal comprehension and verbal fluency. For reasons that are not entirely clear, verbal comprehension has received, by far, the most attention in both the psychometric and information-processing literatures. Both are important, pervasive abilities. For example, whereas reading draws primarily on verbal comprehension ability, writing draws primarily on verbal fluency ability; similarly, whereas listening primarily requires verbal comprehension, speaking depends more heavily on verbal fluency. This article seeks to redress some of the imbalance in the literature on the study of these two broad domains of verbal ability. The article is divided into four main parts. The first parts set the stage by placing the study of verbal abilities in a historical context within the field of psychology. The second part describes some alternative approaches to the study of verbal comprehension, summarizing what we have learned from these approaches. The third part reviews some of the few studies that have examined verbal fluency and then describes our own new information-processing approach to the study of this ability. The fourth part explores the relations between the two faces of verbal ability—comprehension and fluency.     

Adults' conceptions of intelligence across the adult life span.

To examine whether young, middle-aged, and older adults view the concept of intelligent person as similar or different during adulthood, 140 adults of various ages rated how likely it would be for individuals of average and exceptional intelligence at 30, 50, and 70 years of age to be engaged in behaviors previously identified by adults as characterizing adult intelligence. Adults perceived more similarity between exceptionally intelligent prototypes of closer ages (i.e., 30 and 50 and 50 and 70). Intelligence was perceived to consist of interest and ability to deal with novelty, everyday competence, and verbal competence--dimensions that were perceived to be differentially important for different-aged prototypes and by individuals of different ages. Participants' conceptions also included the idea that intelligence is malleable and that abilities differentially increase or decrease across the life span.     

The effects of divorce and custody arrangements on children's behaviour, development and adjustment

A group of experts from developmental and clinical psychology, sociology,social welfare, and law met at a conference centre in Middleburg, Virginiaon December 1-4, 1994, under the sponsorship of the U.S. National Instituteof Child Health and Human Development. The group's mandate was to evaluateexisting knowledge regarding the ways in which children are affected bydivorce and the varying custody arrangements that follow it. Many of thediscussions also addressed the ways in which the adverse effects of divorcemight be ameliorated by changes in policy or practice. This documentrepresents a statement co-signed by most of the participants summarizingareas of agreement regarding the current status of knowledge in this areaand outlining topics in need of further research. The report is designed toguide various legislatures, the judiciary, the bar, and the various mentalhealth professionals who are involved in counselling or educating familiesexperiencing separation or divorce, as well as those who mediate oradjudicate the disputes regarding the custody of minor children. Thepreliminary draft of this consensus document was prepared by Michael E. Lamband Kathleen J. Sternberg following the three-day conference, withadditional redrafting by Ross A. Thompson. The draft was reviewed andrevised by the other participants over the ensuing months. This report,revised in accordance with the participants' comments, is a product of this process.     

Natural, unnatural, and supernatural concepts

Five experiments investigating information-processing consequences of concept naturalness and unnaturalness are reported. In particular, an attempt is made to examine the separate and joint effects of simplicity and entrenchment upon reasoning with natural and unnatural concepts. The experiments employed four variants of a concept-selection task in which subjects characterized the state of an object at some future time on the basis of information about the object at that time and at some earlier time. In all five experiments, both simplicity and entrenchment affected ease of information processing. The last two experiments showed that the effect of simplicity was greater than that of entrenchment. An informationprocessing model of task performance provided a very good account of the latency and error data. Scores from the concept-selection task correlated with scores from a set of psychometric inductive-reasoning tests; indeed, the correlations were higher than those usually found between cognitive task performance and psychometrically measured intelligence. Processing of nonentrenched concepts may provide a useful means for studying the nature of intelligent performance.     

Isolating the components of intelligence

In a recent volume (Sternberg, 1977b), I proposed a method called componential analysis that provides a means to isolate the components of intelligent performance. The method was described in detail, and then tested in a series of experiments. But an important question was left unanswered by this early work: Is componential analysis generalizable to tasks other than analogies? More recently, I have been investigating the generalization of the methodology to other tasks, and have also been engaged in extending the methodology in order to increase its flexibility of application. The present article (a) briefly summarizes the structure of a componential analysis, (b) describes the method of precuing, the method originally used for isolating the components of intelligence, and (c) describes new methods that have also been successful in isolating these components in a variety of reasoning tasks.     

The development of analogical reasoning processes.

Two experiments were conducted to test the generalizability to children of a theory of analogical reasoning processes originally proposed for adults (R. J. Sternberg, Psychological Review, 1977a, 84, 353–378; R. J. Sternberg, Intelligence, information processing, and analogical reasoning: The componential analysis of human abilities, Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1977b) and to examine the development of analogical reasoning processes in terms of five proposed sources of cognitive development: (a) availability of component operations; (b) strategy for combining multiple component operation; (c) strategy for combining multiple executions of the same component operation; (d) consistency in use of strategy; (e) component-operation latency and difficulty. Between 15 and 21 subjects in each of grades 2, 4, 6, and adulthood (ages 8, 10, 12, and 19 years, respectively) were tested in their ability to solve analogies of systematically varied difficulty. Performance was measured in terms of latencies for items solved correctly, latencies for all items solved, and error rates. A slightly modified version of the Stenberg, 1977(a), Stenberg, 1977(b) theory was found to be applicable to the data for each of the age levels tested. In analogies with perceptually separable attributes, change over age was found in sources (d) and (e) noted above. In analogies with perceptually integral attributes, change over age was found in sources (a), (c), (d), and (e). Developmental trends were discussed in terms of past theory and findings, and possible reasons for differences in developmental patterns between the two kinds of analogies were suggested.     

Perceived fraudulence in young adults: is there an "imposter syndrome"?

This investigation consists of two studies designed to examine perceived fraudulence, its measurement, and the personality traits associated with the experience in young adults. For Study 1, the Perceived Fraudulence Scale (PFS), a new measure constructed for this study, was administered to a sample of 50 college undergraduates, along with several other self-report measures; a semistructured interview and thought-listing exercise were added to provide convergent assessments of perceived fraudulence. Correlational patterns and regression analyses supported the investigators' conceptualization of perceived fraudulence as involving a combination of fraudulent ideation, depressive tendencies, self-criticism, social anxiety, achievement pressures, and self-monitoring skills. Study 2, in which 100 college undergraduates completed several personality questionnaires, replicated the factor structure of the PFS and provided some evidence for the discriminant validity of the construct of perceived fraudulence.     

Use of a structured investigative protocol enhances the quality of investigative interviews with alleged victims of child sexual abuse in Britain

One hundred alleged victims of child sexual abuse (aged 4–13; M = 9.3 years) were interviewed by police investigators about their alleged experiences. Half of the children were interviewed using the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) structured interview Protocol, whereas the other children, matched with respect to their age, relationship with the alleged perpetrator, and seriousness of the alleged offenses, were interviewed by investigators following the Memorandum of Good Practice. Protocol‐guided interviews elicited more information using free‐recall invitations and less information using directive, option‐posing and suggestive questions than did standard Memorandum interviews. There were no age differences in the proportion of total information provided in response to open‐ended invitations in either condition, but there was a significant increase with age in the proportion of central information provided in response to open‐ended invitations. Published in 2008 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.