Inner speech and bilingual autobiographical memory: a Polish-Danish cross-cultural study.

Thirty years after fleeing from Poland to Denmark, 20 immigrants were enlisted in a study of bilingual autobiographical memory. Ten "early immigrators" averaged 24 years old at the time of immigration, and ten "late immigrators" averaged 34 years old at immigration. Although all 20 had spent 30 years in Denmark, early immigrators reported more current inner speech behaviours in Danish, whereas late immigrators showed more use of Polish. Both groups displayed proportionally more numerous autobiographical retrievals that were reported as coming to them internally in Polish (vs Danish) for the decades prior to immigration and more in Danish (vs Polish) after immigration. We propose a culture- and language-specific shaping of semantic and conceptual stores that underpins autobiographical and world knowledge.     

Belief System Disintegration: Evolutionary Insights from Bergman’s Det sjunde inseglet

Paradigm transitions come with tremendous risk, as societies can come undone when people stop believing in the imaginary constructs that unite us. The Black Plague’s devastation resulted not only from its lethality, but from how its ensuing crisis in faith triggered evolved cognitive systems that lead to tribalism, self-destructive despair, and attacks on authorities and minorities. This article examines Bergman’s film through the lens of evolutionary theory to illustrate the mechanisms that cause people to wreck havoc when we no longer share a vision for the future. The crisis of the 1300s has been compared to challenges we face today.     

The Role of Adolescent IQ and Gender in the Use of Cognitive Support for Remembering in Aging

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of adolescent IQ (AIQ) and gender in older adults' ability to use cognitive support to enhance memory. Subjects were 269 mid-1940s graduates of the same high school. Adolescent IQ scores were gathered from archives, and subjects' memory for words was tested with tasks that provided increasing cognitive support. Overall, subjects benefited from support; women recalled more words than men; and persons with a high AIQ remembered more words than persons with a lower AIQ. However, while all subjects showed gains from cognitive support, men with a lower AIQ performed worse than men with a high AIQ. Women's performance was not dependent on their AIQ. Analysis of qualitative memory indicators suggested that women and persons with a high AIQ had better encoding and retrieval operations. Men with a lower AIQ appear to be particularly vulnerable to memory deficits in aging. This may be due to low “cognitive reserve” or generally poorer episodic memory function.     

What people believe about memory

Two representative samples of adult Norwegians (n=2000) were asked a set of general and specific questions regarding their beliefs and opinions about human memory. The results indicate that on many questions, such as time of the earliest memories, inhibiting effects of collaboration, and memory for dramatic versus ordinary events, the views of the general public concurred with current research findings, and people in general had realistic views about their own memory performance. On other questions, such as the reliability of olfactory as compared with visual and auditory memory, the memory of small children in comparison with that of adults, the likelihood of repression of adult traumatic memories, and on more general questions such as the possibility of training memory and the capacity limitations of long-term memory, a large proportion of the participants expressed views that are less supported by scientific evidence. Implications of these findings are briefly discussed.     

Memory for a staged criminal event witnessed live and on video

Memory for a staged robbery was tested in two groups of participants witnessing the event either live (n = 62) or on video (n = 64). Immediately after the event participants filled out a questionnaire probing memory with emphasis on the timing of the event and robber characteristics. The results showed that participants who watched a video recording of the event reported more details and with a higher accuracy than participants who were present on the scene, but the pattern of memory errors were similar in the two conditions. It is concluded that laboratory experiments may overestimate the memory of eyewitnesses but are otherwise able to simulate essential aspects of memory performance in naturalistic contexts.     

Conscientiousness and (un)healthy eating: The role of impulsive eating and age in the consumption of daily main meals

The present study aims to explore the relationship between conscientiousness and the consumption of healthy versus unhealthy main meals. Impulsive eating was tested as a mediator in this relationship, as well as direct effects of age on those constructs. A nationwide representative sample of 1,006 Norwegian adults (18–70 years) within a prospective design was used to test a theoretical model. The structural equation model (SEM), in combination with bootstrapping procedures in AMOS, was the principal analytical method. Conscientiousness was negatively associated with unhealthy and impulsive eating. Impulsive eating was a partial mediator between conscientiousness and unhealthy eating and a full mediator between conscientiousness and healthy eating. Age was positively correlated with conscientiousness and this relationship had an inverted U‐shape form. Finally, age was negatively associated with unhealthy and impulsive eating, and positively associated with healthy eating. This study confirmed the relevance of conscientiousness for healthy, unhealthy, and impulsive eating.     

Flux and permanence of risk perceptions: Tourists' perception of the relative and absolute risk for various destinations

The present investigation is a cross‐sectional, multi‐national, quantitative, and quasi‐experimental comparison of tourists’ risk perceptions regarding different destinations throughout the past decade. Over 10,000 tourists to Norway from 89 different countries filled in a questionnaire rating the perceived risk for various destinations. Data were collected during 2004, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2015 and allow for a comparison of perceived risk across time, place and nationality. Results show that while absolute risk judgments for different destinations fluctuate somewhat over the years, relative risk judgments remain constant. Findings also reveal a “home‐is‐safer‐then‐abroad‐bias” with tourists consistently perceiving their home country among the safest destinations. The current investigation is rare because it looks at more than one destination at a time. Insights gained from the present findings diverge from what would have been concluded from employing case studies, that is, looking at one destination at a time.     

Further evidence for mixed emotions

Emotion theorists have long debated whether valence, which ranges from pleasant to unpleasant states, is an irreducible aspect of the experience of emotion or whether positivity and negativity are separable in experience. If valence is irreducible, it follows that people cannot feel happy and sad at the same time. Conversely, if positivity and negativity are separable, people may be able to experience such mixed emotions. The authors tested several alternative interpretations for prior evidence that happiness and sadness can co-occur in bittersweet situations (i.e., those containing both pleasant and unpleasant aspects). One possibility is that subjects who reported mixed emotions merely vacillated between happiness and sadness. The authors tested this hypothesis in Studies 1-3 by asking subjects to complete online continuous measures of happiness and sadness. Subjects reported more simultaneously mixed emotions during a bittersweet film clip than during a control clip. Another possibility is that subjects in earlier studies reported mixed emotions only because they were explicitly asked whether they felt happy and sad. The authors tested this hypothesis in Studies 4-6 with open-ended measures of emotion. Subjects were more likely to report mixed emotions after the bittersweet clip than the control clip. Both patterns occurred even when subjects were told that they were not expected to report mixed emotions (Studies 2 and 5) and among subjects who did not previously believe that people could simultaneously feel happy and sad (Studies 3 and 6). These results provide further evidence that positivity and negativity are separable in experience.     

Client Accounts of Hope in Early Counseling Sessions: A Qualitative Study

Hope enables individuals to envision a future in which they wish to participate ( Jevne, 1994 ) and is foundational to counseling practice. However, there has been little research examining client accounts of hope in session. Using basic interpretive inquiry, this case study examines clients' accounts of hope during counseling using video‐assisted recall. Three categories emerged: hope‐fostering counseling relationship, supportive identity development, and perspective change. Implications for counseling are discussed.