Effects of goal-setting and feedback on memory performance and beliefs among older and younger adults

This research examined the impact of goal-setting conditions on memory beliefs and performance among older and younger adults. After baseline recall and assessment of beliefs, participants were assigned to goal-setting, goals plus feedback, or control. Then, additional recall trials were followed by repeated memory beliefs assessments. For both younger and older adults, performance, motivation, and self-efficacy were affected positively by goal-setting. The impact of goals plus feedback was mixed and varied as a function of age and dependent measure. Success rates for reaching memory goals, which were low for the older adults, may have been a factor in these results. Adults' self-set recall goals were predicted initially by baseline performance and self-efficacy. On the final trial, goals were predicted by last trial performance, self-efficacy, and control beliefs.     

Consistent responses of human mothers to prelinguistic infants: the effect of prelinguistic repertoire size

The salience of infants' vocal and visual cues was examined to evaluate the efficacy of prelinguistic vocalizations to guide adult behavior. A videotape, constructed of brief behavioral episodes from 3 infants with different-sized vocal repertoires, was played to 40 mothers of prelinguistic infants. Playback mothers' responses to the episodes were consistent, demonstrating that preverbal behavior elicits comparable reactions across unfamiliar receivers. The audio and video components of the infants' episodes were then recombined. As the vocal repertoire of the stimulus infants increased, changes in the audio component more often led playback mothers to change responses. Thus, playback mothers used vocalizations as cues as the infants' vocal repertoires became larger.     

Knowledge level learning and the power law: A soar model of skill acquisition in scheduling

Zusammenfassung. Das hier vorgestellte Modell lernt graduell, Planungsaufgaben aus der Klasse der Maschinenbelegungsprobleme (job-shop-scheduling problems) zu lösen. Mit Hilfe des Chunking-Mechanismus von Soar wird episodisches Wissen über die Belegungsreihenfolge von Aufträgen auf Maschinen memoriert. Bei der Entwicklung des Modells wurden zahlreiche qualitative (z. B. Transfereffekte) und quantitative Befunde (z. B. Bearbeitungszeiten) aus einer früheren empirischen Untersuchung berücksichtigt. In einer Validierungsstudie wurden dieselben Aufgaben von 14 Probanden und dem Modell bearbeitet. Die Passung von Simulationsdaten und empirischen Ergebnissen fiel insgesamt gut aus. Allerdings löst das Modell die Aufgaben schneller und zeigt auch einen etwas besseren Lernverlauf als die Probanden. Das Modell liefert eine Erklärung für das Rauschen, das typischerweise bei Bearbeitungszeiten zu beobachten ist: es handelt sich um erworbenes Wissen, das mehr oder weniger gut und auch unterschiedlich häufig auf neue Situationen übertragen wird. Der Lernverlauf der Probanden entspricht nur für aggregierte Daten einer Potenzfunktion (power law). Der vorgestellte Mechanismus zeigt, wie ein symbolisches Modell der Informationsverarbeitung graduelle Verhaltensänderungen generiert und wie der offensichtliche Erwerb allgemeiner Prozeduren ohne explizites Lernen von deklarativen Regeln erfolgen kann. Es wird nahegelegt, daß es sich hier um die Modellierung einer Form impliziten Lernens handelt. Summary. The model presented here gradually learns how to perform a job-shop scheduling task. It uses Soar's chunking mechanism to acquire episodic memories about the order to schedule jobs. The model was based on many qualitative (e.g., transfer effects) and quantitative (e.g., solution time) regularities found in previously collected data. The model was tested with new data where scheduling tasks were given to the model and to 14 subjects. The model generally fit these data with the restrictions that the model performs the task (in simulated time) faster than the subjects, and its performance improves somewhat more quickly than the subjects' performance. The model provides an explanation of the noise typically found in problem solving times - it is the result of learning actual pieces of knowledge that transfer more or less to new situations but rarely by an average amount. Only when the data are averaged (i.e., over subjects) does the smooth power law appear. This mechanism demonstrates how symbolic models can exhibit a gradual change in behavior and how the apparent acquisition of general procedures can be performed without resorting to explicit declarative rule generation. We suggest that this may represent a type of implicit learning.     

The puzzle of language evolution

Linguistics must again concentrate on the evolutionary nature of language, so that language models are more realistic with respect to human natural languages and have a greater explanatory force. Multi-agent systems are proposed as a possible route to develop such evolutionary models and an example is given of a concrete experiment in the origins and evolution of word-meaning based on a multi-agent approach.     

Construct-oriented Biodata Development for Selection to a Differentiated Performance Domain

This study describes the development of a multidimensional biodata form which used explicit constructs to guide item generation and rational scale development, construct validation, criterion measurement and empirical keying. These constructs were goal-orientation, teamwork, customer service, resourcefulness, learning ability and leadership. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses in both applicant and incumbent samples were used to identify and test the model which included the thirteen, more differentiated rational scales relating to these six, broader constructs. Empirical keying of the rationally developed scales was conducted against criterion construct scales conceptually related to each predictor construct. Empirical keying at the item level was found to result in higher validities and cross-validities than either empirical keying at the scale level, or rational keying. The item keyed instrument also demonstrated incremental validity over a test of cognitive ability for specific work performance domains as well as overall work performance.     

Authority,Psychotherapy and the Authority of the Therapist in the Religious Haredi Community

This article considers the meaning and significance of authority, and its relevance to the transference process, within the framework of psychotherapy in the orthodox Jewish (Haredi) community in Israel. In this community, deeply-rooted habits of obedience to the commandments of the Torah and the authority of the Rabbi are integral to maintaining an orthodox way of life. Clinical vignettes with Haredi patients are presented to illustrate the complexities that arise when both patient and therapist belong to the orthodox community, and highlight the authority-related issues that are central to the therapy. This combination of factors requires a sensitive and finely-tuned approach which will enable the therapist to maintain the treatment framework while still accommodating the orthodox way of life.     

Melancholic Response to War Destruction and the Emergence of a Group Assumption of Post-Ness

What psychological response does war and forced displacement evoke in victims? How do survivors of war communicate their experiences to their children? Finally, what culture does the psychological response to loss shape? Using data collected through interviews, psychological consultations, and children’s drawings from two sources—the ongoing Syrian civil war and the Bosnian war of 1992–1995, this paper suggests that the experience of the war generation becomes the organizing axis of their identity and that of their children. It seeks to demonstrate that survivor parents communicate their experience of loss through gesture, act, and object rather than through a coherent narrative. Whereas survivor children use metaphoric and metonymic readings of their parents’ everyday performance in order to construct meaning and form their identities as descendants of a given family. This paper argues that such an identity is characterized by ambivalence towards the self and towards others, melancholic longing for an idealized pre-war past, and the impossibility of letting it go.