Age-related binding deficits and the content of false memories

The authors examined effects of age-related binding deficits on feature information in false memories for imagined objects (e.g., lollipop) that were similar in shape to seen objects (e.g., magnifying glass). In Experiment 1, location memory for seen objects was lower in older than younger adults and lower still in old-old than young-old adults. Imagined objects, when falsely called seen, were less likely to be attributed to the location of similar seen objects (i.e., congruent attributions) by old-old than young-old adults. In Experiment 2, for younger adults, displaying seen objects for less time (1 s vs. 4 s) reduced both location memory for seen objects and congruent attributions for false memories. Thus, binding deficits may influence the specific content of false memories.     

Does Barbie make girls want to be thin? The effect of experimental exposure to images of dolls on the body image of 5- to 8-year-old girls

The ubiquitous Barbie doll was examined in the present study as a possible cause for young girls' body dissatisfaction. A total of 162 girls, from age 5 to age 8, were exposed to images of either Barbie dolls, Emme dolls (U.S. size 16), or no dolls (baseline control) and then completed assessments of body image. Girls exposed to Barbie reported lower body esteem and greater desire for a thinner body shape than girls in the other exposure conditions. However, this immediate negative impact of Barbie doll was no longer evident in the oldest girls. These findings imply that, even if dolls cease to function as aspirational role models for older girls, early exposure to dolls epitomizing an unrealistically thin body ideal may damage girls' body image, which would contribute to an increased risk of disordered eating and weight cycling.     

Influence of consonantal context on the reading of vowels: evidence from children

When college students pronounce nonwords, their vowel pronunciations may be affected not only by the consonant that follows the vowel, the coda, but also by the preceding consonant, the onset. We presented the nonwords used by Treiman and colleagues in their 2003 study to a total of 94 first graders, third graders, fifth graders, and high school students to determine when these context influences emerge. According to some theories of reading development, early decoding is characterized by context-free links from graphemes to phonemes. However, we found that even children reading at the first-grade level (6-year-olds) were influenced to some extent by a vowel's context. The effect of context on vowel pronunciation increased in strength up to around the fifth-grade reading level (8- and 9-year-olds), and sensitivity to coda-to-vowel associations emerged no earlier than did sensitivity to onset-to-vowel associations. A connectionist model of reading reproduced this general pattern of increasing context effects as a function of training.     

Reasoning, emotions, and delusional conviction in psychosis

The aim of the study was to elucidate the factors contributing to the severity and persistence of delusional conviction. One hundred participants with current delusions, recruited for a treatment trial of psychological therapy (PRP trial), were assessed at baseline on measures of reasoning, emotions, and dimensions of delusional experience. Reasoning biases (belief inflexibility, jumping to conclusions, and extreme responding) were found to be present in one half of the sample. The hypothesis was confirmed that reasoning biases would be related to delusional conviction. There was evidence that belief inflexibility mediated the relationship between jumping to conclusions and delusional conviction. Emotional states were not associated with the reasoning processes investigated. Anxiety, but not depression, made an independent contribution to delusional conviction.     

Ratings of speech naturalness of children ages 8-16 years

The focus of this cross-sectional study was the investigation of Speech Naturalness (speech that sounds normal or natural to the listener) of 60 normal speaking children and adolescents between the ages of 8 and 16 years. 26 naive adult listeners rated the naturalness of videotaped and computer-presented speech samples, using a 9-point-Likert rating scale (1: highly natural sounding speech and 9: highly unnatural sounding speech). The children and adolescents who participated as speakers were distributed among 5 age groups (8, 10, 12, 14, and 16 yr.) with 6 boys and 6 girls in each group. Each child demonstrated normal articulation, language, voice, and speech fluency skills. Age and sex comparisons indicated boys' and girls' speech was rated comparably; however, 8-yr.-olds' speech was rated as significantly less natural than those of 12-, 14-, and 16-yr.-olds. Preliminary ratings of Speech Naturalness for normal speaking children were presented. Suggestions for the clinical application of the findings as a target criterion in treatment programs with communicatively impaired children were suggested. Replication with a larger and more representative sample is in order.     

Engagement and arousal: optimism's effects during a brief stressor

Optimism is usually associated with better psychological and physiological adjustment to stressors, but some contradictory findings exist. The purpose of this study was to investigate how optimism could result in negative immunological changes following difficult stressors. Because optimists are likely to see positive outcomes as attainable, they may invest greater effort to achieve their goals. It is proposed that such engagement would be more physiologically demanding when pursuing difficult goals. Participants (N = 54) worked on 11 difficult or insoluble anagrams. Optimism when combined with high self-awareness increased time spent working on the anagrams and skin conductance and salivary cortisol during the recovery period. The results support the notion that the increased engagement that arises from optimism may lead to short-term physiological costs.     

Perceived Threat,Controlling Parenting,and Children's Achievement Orientations

Maternal perceptions of threat in the environment were examined as concomitants of controlling (vs. autonomy supportive) parenting. Forty mothers and their third-grade children were videotaped while completing homework-like tasks together. Maternal controlling (vs. autonomy supportive) behavior was measured both attitudinally by questionnaire, and behaviorally by coding of the videotapes. Mothers reported on their perceptions of environmental threat (worry, instability, scarcity). Results indicated that perceptions of threat were positively associated with controlling behaviors exhibited during the tasks, and negatively associated with children's motivation. Further, the relation between perceived instability and children's motivation was mediated by controlling parenting. Controlling parenting is associated with parental perceptions of threat and is one pathway through which threat may be associated with children's achievement goals.     

Memory for contextual details: effects of emotion and aging

When individuals are confronted with a complex visual scene that includes some emotional element, memory for the emotional component often is enhanced, whereas memory for peripheral (nonemotional) details is reduced. The present study examined the effects of age and encoding instructions on this effect. With incidental encoding instructions, young and older adults showed this pattern of results, indicating that both groups focused attention on the emotional aspects of the scene. With intentional encoding instructions, young adults no longer showed the effect: They were just as likely to remember peripheral details of negative images as of neutral images. The older adults, in contrast, did not overcome the attentional bias: They continued to show reduced memory for the peripheral elements of the emotional compared with the neutral scenes, even with the intentional encoding instructions.     

Effects of verbal and nonverbal interference on spatial and object visual working memory

We tested the hypothesis that a verbal coding mechanism is necessarily engaged by object, but not spatial, visual working memory tasks. We employed a dual-task procedure that paired n-back working memory tasks with domain-specific distractor trials inserted into each interstimulus interval of the n-back tasks. In two experiments, object n-back performance demonstrated greater sensitivity to verbal distraction, whereas spatial n-back performance demonstrated greater sensitivity to motion distraction. Visual object and spatial working memory may differ fundamentally in that the mnemonic representation of featural characteristics of objects incorporates a verbal (perhaps semantic) code, whereas the mnemonic representation of the location of objects does not. Thus, the processes supporting working memory for these two types of information may differ in more ways than those dictated by the "what/where" organization of the visual system, a fact more easily reconciled with a component process than a memory systems account of working memory function.