Rate of acquisition, adult age, and basic cognitive abilities predict forgetting: new views on a classic problem

Rate of forgetting is putatively invariant across individuals, sharing few associations with individual-differences variables known to influence encoding and retrieval. This classic topic in learning and memory was revisited using a novel statistical application, multilevel modeling, to examine whether (a) slopes of forgetting varied across individuals and (b) observed individual differences in forgetting shared systematic relations with adult age, learning speed, and cognitive ability. Participants (N = 136) received mnemonic training prior to memorizing 4-digit numbers to perfection, and retention was tested immediately after training and after 30 min, 24 hr, 7 weeks, and 8 months. Slower rate of learning to criterion, older age, and poorer cognitive performance predicted accelerated forgetting with associations most pronounced within 24 hr from baseline. Observed correlates of differential forgetting slopes are similar to those previously found to affect encoding, suggesting continuity rather than asymmetry of prediction for these memory processes.     

Traversing boundaries: clinical ethics,moral experience,and the withdrawal of life supports

While many have suggested that to withdraw medical interventions is ethically equivalent to withholding them, the moral complexity of actually withdrawing life supportive interventions from a patient cannot be ignored. Utilizing interplay between expository and narrative styles, and drawing upon our experiences with patients, families, nurses, and physicians when life supports have been withdrawn, we explore the changeable character of boundaries in end-of-life situations. We consider ways in which boundaries imply differences – for example, between cognition and performance – and how the encounter with boundaries can generate altered meanings important for understanding decisions and actions in these contexts. We conclude that the reliance on mere roles to support the moral weight of withdrawing medical interventions is inadequate. Roles that lead us to such moments are exceeded by the responsibility encountered in such moments. And here, we suggest, is the momentous character of withdrawal: it presents the grave astonishment, the trembling awe, in the not-being-there of the other in death.     

The negative compatibility effect: unconscious inhibition influences reaction time and response selection

In the negative compatibility effect (NCE) a masked prime arrow, pointing left or right, is followed by an unmasked (visible) target arrow. The task is to press the left or right switch corresponding to the visible arrow. Surprisingly, reaction time is longer (slowed) when the prime and target indicate the same, rather than different, responses. By contrast, the effect of an unmasked prime is positive-opposite to the NCE. This indicates that the NCE is not attributable to incomplete masking; to the extent that the prime is visible, the NCE would be reduced by this positive influence. Thus, the NCE appears to result from unconscious processing of the prime and, in that sense, may be a form of subliminal perception. Additional findings show that the NCE is due to inhibition of a response code, that it is automatic in that it occurs even if the information in the prime and target could be ignored, and that it also influences response selection.     

Experimental evidence for serial models of lexical access: a judgment task

The hypothesis that the lemma and lexeme levels of lexical access are in a feed-forward serial relation is supported. Subjects judge the degree of semantic relatedness of pairs of words. Stimuli are all functionally synonymous; they are pairs of words implicated in natural word blends. Half the stimuli are phonologically related and the other half are not. In one experiment the pairs are presented in a sentential context and in the other no context is provided. In both the experiments the phonologically unrelated pairs are judged closer in meaning than the phonologically related pairs. This is interpreted as support for serial models of lexical access.     

Nonlinear,near photo-realistic caricatures using a parametric facial appearance model

A mathematical model previously developed for use in computer vision applications is presented as an empirical model for face space. The term appearance space is used to distinguish this from previous models. Appearance space is a linear vector space that is dimensionally optimal, enables us to model and describe any human facial appearance, and possesses characteristics that are plausible for the representation of psychological face space. Randomly sampling from a multivariate distribution for a location in appearance space produces entirely plausible faces, and manipulation of a small set of defining parameters enables the automatic generation of photo-realistic caricatures. The appearance space model leads us to the new concept of nonlinear caricatures, and we show that the accepted linear method for caricature is only a special case of a more general paradigm. Nonlinear methods are also viable, and we present examples of photographic quality caricatures, using a number of different transformation functions. Results of a simple experiment are presented that suggest that nonlinear transformations can accurately capture key aspects of the caricature effect. Finally, we discuss the relationship between appearance space, caricature, and facial distinctiveness. On the basis of our new theoretical framework, we suggest an experimental approach that can yield new evidence for the plausibility of face space and its ability to explain processes of recognition.     

Modifying Violent Communities by Enhancing Altruism: A Vision of Possibilities

A model for diagnosing and treating violent communities is outlined. The treatment consists of enhancing a form of pragmatic altruism by building relationships and mutual understanding between community leaders who are derived from task groups called community stabilizing systems, defined as groups essential for peaceful, creative stability in a community. Two examples of an intervention derived from this theory are described.     

Is the Term 'Spirituality' a Word that Everyone Uses,But Nobody Knows What Anyone Means by it?

An investigation into what is entailed by the term 'spirituality' among professionals drawn primarily from the big five religious traditions-priests, rabbis, monks, temple presidents, etc.-reveals that while a great deal of difference exists about what is entailed, a basic set of characteristics seems to emerge. Spirituality was not found to be dependent on belonging to a religion, it was more dependent on three criteria: some form of continuous religious or comparable experience, particular maintained effort or practice, and the experience of love. Protestant Christian professionals demonstrated the greatest variety of views; and while differences are shown to exist between the terms 'religiousness' and 'spirituality', the overall view appears to be that the two terms have similar meanings.     

Work and motherhood: preliminary report of a psychoanalytic study

This paper reports preliminary findings of a systematic inquiry into the manifest experience of conflict between paid work and motherhood. Psychoanalytic principles inform the design of a questionnaire and a research interview and the interpretation of data derived from both sources. An initial review of material from 140 questionnaires and 65 clinical interview series suggests that women vary tremendously in the ease or difficulty with which they navigate real obstacles to the integration of paid work and motherhood. The quality of a woman's relationship with her mother emerges as a singularly powerful influence on her experience of work-family balance.