Providing information about diagnostic features at retrieval reduces false recognition

In the following study, participants encoded blocked DRM word lists and we varied whether they received information before test about the utility of mnemonic features that potentially discriminate between veridical and false memories. The results of three experiments revealed that this manipulation successfully reduced false recognition of critical theme words. We also found that this manipulation was effective for younger but not older adults. Furthermore, calling attention to the features in test instructions alone was sufficient for reducing false recognition and its effectiveness was not enhanced by also asking participants to rate their phenomenal experience. We argue that providing diagnostic information before test allows participants to establish more accurate expectations about the task and thus improves the efficacy of retrieval and monitoring processes that are subsequently engaged.     

The Effects of Imagery Training on Swimming Performance: An Applied Investigation

A multiple-baseline design was used to examine the influence of an imagery intervention on the performance of swimmers’ times on a thousand-yard practice set. Performance times for four swimmers were collected over a 15-week period during preseason training. The intervention took place over a 3-week period and was introduced after the fourth week of the study. The results revealed that three out of four participants significantly improved their times on the one thousand-yard practice set after being introduced to the imagery intervention. The results are discussed in terms of the implications of using imagery to improve athlete's performance on continuous tasks.     

Is Winning Everything? The Relative Contributions of Motivational Climate and Won-Lost Percentage in Youth Sports

The purpose of this study was to examine the main and interactive effects of motivational climate and won-lost percentage upon young athletes’ evaluations of their coaches, enjoyment of their team experience, and perceived parental liking for the coach. A total of 268 male and female youth basketball players, aged 10 to 15 years, completed the Motivational Climate Scale for Youth Sports (Smith, Cumming, & Smoll, in press) and selected attitudinal scales relating to their sport enjoyment and their evaluations of their coach. Regular season won-lost percentages were calculated for each of the 50 teams. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to predict player evaluations of the coach. Attitudes toward the coach were positively associated with perceptions of a mastery-involved climate and negatively associated with perceptions of an ego-involved climate. Won-lost percentages positively predicted players’ evaluations of their coach's knowledge and teaching ability, but accounted for far less attitudinal variance than did the motivational climate measures. Consistent with earlier findings, young athletes’ sport enjoyment, and evaluations of their coach were more strongly related to coaching behaviors than to their team's won-lost record. No significant interactions involving winning and motivational climate were found.     

Alcohol Use in Three Different Inner Cities in South Africa: AUDIT-C and CAGE

The aim of the present study was to describe the frequency of risky drinking among a general urban population survey (n=1379) in South Africa with the help of (Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test) AUDIT-C scores, CAGE (Cut down, Annoyed, Guilty, Eye-opener) scores and compare the scores with calculated risky drinking in terms of weekly alcohol consumption or heavy episodic drinking. Results indicate 44.4% for men and 25.4% for women as hazardous or harmful drinkers and using the CAGE 44.7% (55% among men and 35.5% among women). AUDIT-C and CAGE cases were more likely to be women than men and were also more likely among Coloureds and Whites than Black Africans and Indians or Asians. This study showed a greater sensitivity of AUDIT to CAGE.     

From Canon to Dialectic to Antinomy: Giving Inclinations Their Due

In a recent paper, Eckart Förster challenges interpreters to explain why in the first Critique practical reason has a canon but no dialectic, whereas in the second Critique, there is not only a dialectic, but an antinomy of practical reason. In the Groundwork, Kant claims that there is a natural dialectic with respect to morality (4:405), a different claim from those advanced in the first and second Critiques. Förster's challenge may therefore be reformulated as the problem of explaining why practical reason has a canon in the first Critique, a dialectic in the Groundwork, and an antinomy in the second Critique. In this paper, I answer this challenge. I argue that these differences are due to the different aims and scope of the works, and in particular, the different place of the inclinations in their arguments.     

Learning Count Nouns and Adjectives: Understanding the Contributions of Lexical Form Class and Social-Pragmatic Cues

In two experiments, one hundred ninety-two 3-year-olds, 4-year-olds, and adults heard a novel word for a target object and then were asked to extend the label to one of two test objects, one matching in shape-based object category (the shape match) and the other matching in a property other than shape (the property match). We independently manipulated the lexical form class cues (count noun, adjective) and social-pragmatic cues (point actions, property-highlighting actions) accompanying the label. The impact of these two types of cue on extension differed markedly across age groups. Adults and 4-year-olds extended the word to the property match significantly more often when the term was modeled as an adjective and when it was presented with property-highlighting actions; but adults extended both adjectives and count nouns systematically to the property match when the speaker highlighted the non-shape property, whereas 4-year-olds systematically extended only adjectives to the property match under these conditions. Three-year-olds extended the word to the property match significantly more often when the label was modeled as an adjective but were not significantly affected by the social-pragmatic cues; and they failed to extend either adjectives or count nouns systematically to the property match when the speaker highlighted the non-shape property. We discuss the results in terms of the proposal that word learning draws on cues from multiple sources and the nature of the “shape bias” in lexical development.     

Operant discrimination of relative frequency ratios in black-capped chickadee song

The two-note fee bee song of the black-capped chickadee (Poecile atricapillus) is sung at many different absolute frequencies, but the relative frequencies, or “pitch ratios”, between the start and end of the fee note (glissando) and the fee and the bee notes (inter-note interval) are preserved with each pitch-shift. Ability to perceive these ratios and their relative salience varies with sex of the bird and setting: while both sexes appear to perceive changes in the inter-note interval, males appear to attend to the glissando in the field, and females appear to attend to both ratios. In this study, we compared directly whether male and female chickadees could discriminate between normal fee bee songs and songs that had one or both of the pitch ratios altered, and whether birds attended to one type of alteration over another. Both sexes learned to discriminate normal from altered songs; songs lacking an inter-note interval were more easily discriminated than songs with only the glissando removed. Females performed slightly better than males, including in the most difficult task with the stimuli lacking the glissando. Our study illustrates the value of using perceptual tasks to directly compare performance between the sexes and to demonstrate the difference between perception of and attention to acoustic features of vocal communication.     

Neural circuitry of emotion regulation: Effects of appraisal,attention, and cortisol administration

Psychosocial well-being requires effective regulation of emotional responding in context of threat or stress. Neuroimaging studies have focused on instructed, volitional regulation (e.g., reappraisal or distancing), largely ignoring implicit regulation that does not involve purposeful effort to alter emotional experience. These implicit processes may or may not involve the same neural pathways as explicit regulatory strategies. We examined the neurobiology of implicit emotional regulation processes and the impact of the stress hormone cortisol on these processes. Our study task employed composite pictures of faces and places to examine neural activity during implicit emotional processing (of emotional faces), while these responses were implicitly regulated by attention shift away from the emotionally evocative stimuli, and while subjects reflectively appraised their own emotional response to them. Subjects completed the task in an fMRI scanner after random assignment to receive placebo or hydrocortisone (HCT), an orally administered version of cortisol. Implicit emotional processing activated insula/IFG, dACC/dMPFC, midbrain and amygdala. With attention shifting, we saw diminished signal in emotion generating/response regions (e.g., amygdala) and increased activations in task specific attention regions like parahippocampus. With appraisal of emotions, we observed robust activations in medial prefrontal areas, where activation is also seen in instructed reappraisal studies. We observed no main effects of HCT administration on brain, but males and females showed opposing neural effects in prefrontal areas. The data suggest that different types of emotion regulation utilize overlapping circuits, but with some strategy specific activation. Further study of the dimorphic sex response to cortisol is needed.