Intelligence as the efficiency of cue-driven retrieval from secondary memory

Complex-span (working-memory-capacity) tasks are among the most successful predictors of intelligence. One important contributor to this relationship is the ability to efficiently employ cues for the retrieval from secondary memory. Presumably, intelligent individuals can considerably restrict their memory search sets by using such cues and can thereby improve recall performance. We here test this assumption by experimentally manipulating the validity of retrieval cues. When memoranda are drawn from the same semantic category on two successive trials of a verbal complex-span task, the category is a very strong retrieval cue on its first occurrence (strong-cue trial) but loses some of its validity on its second occurrence (weak-cue trial). If intelligent individuals make better use of semantic categories as retrieval cues, their recall accuracy suffers more from this loss of cue validity. Accordingly, our results show that less variance in intelligence is explained by recall accuracy on weak-cue compared with strong-cue trials.     

The Elusive Notion of “Argument Quality”

We all seem to have a sense of what good and bad arguments are, and there is a long history—focusing on fallacies—of trying to provide objective standards that would allow a clear separation of good and bad arguments. This contribution discusses the limits of attempts to determine the quality of arguments. It begins with defining bad arguments as those that deviate from an established standard of good arguments. Since there are different conceptualizations of “argument”—as controversy, as debate, and as justification—and since arguments in each of these senses can be used for different purposes, a first problem is that we would need a large variety of standards for “good” arguments. After this, the contribution focuses in particular on proposals made in the literature on how to assess the quality of arguments in the sense of justification. It distinguishes three problems of assessment: How to determine (1) whether reasons are acceptable, (2) whether reasons are sufficient to justify the conclusion, and (3) how to identify arguments in real-world speech acts and texts? It is argued that limitations of argument assessment result from unavoidable relativism: The assessment of many—if not most—arguments depends on the epistemic situation of the evaluator.     

Contributions of pre-Fitts researchers to goal-directed aiming studies

The author aimed to review some of the early research on goal-directed aiming and reaching. R. S. Woodworth's (1899) well known, and often referenced, paper is only one of the research papers, prior to the revolutionary paper of P. M. Fitts ( 1954 ), which had a significant effect on knowledge of human movements. When Fitts' work was published, much of the previous work was forgotten, as the new paradigm paved the way for a better theoretical basis for the understanding of human movement and, in particular, movement times. There was research prior to Woodworth and between Woodworth and Fitts that has made a contribution to understanding of aimed movements. Woodworth gave results that can still be of use today and made a number of postulations about the way that movements are performed. His and other data are reanalyzed in light of modern models, taking regard of the limitations in those experiments.     

Psychoanalytisch begründete Ans?tze in der forensischen Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie

After many years where manualized mainly behaviour treatments dominated in forensic settings, psychodynamic therapies are gaining acceptance and are performed and evaluated more and more in forensic hospitals and in prisons. This encompasses individual, couple, family and group therapies. Individual and group analysts are starting to perform these tasks again, mostly as workers in forensic settings but also as external therapists and supervisors. All staff members are important in creating a therapeutic community based on group analytic principles. They are therefore required to build up a therapeutic attitude supported by regular external case and team supervision. Delictogenic situations occur in everyday life as well as in professional settings and are analysed mainly in group therapies, considering situations of the past and the effect on other people. Modern manualized analytical concepts, such as transference-focussed psychotherapy (TFP) and mentalization-based therapy (MBT) depthen the quality of therapeutic work of all professionals in forensic settings. The multimorbid and sometimes dangerous patients require good ethical and professional attitudes. The psychoanalytic concepts of defence and resistance, transference and countertransference are essential parts of changing internalization and corrective emotional experience, important parts of useful forensic treatments.     

Behavioral and physiological responses of young horses to different weaning protocols: a pilot study

In this study, effects of weaning on behavioral and physiological stress parameters in young horses (foals) were determined. Foals were weaned either simultaneously without the presence of adult horses (group A, n?=?6), or in the presence of two adult females familiar but unrelated to the foals (group B, n?=?5), or weaned consecutively by removing two mother horses per day (group C, n?=?6). Behavior, locomotion, salivary cortisol concentration, beat-to-beat (RR) interval, heart rate variability (HRV) and weight were determined. Group A foals lost weight for 2 days (mean?±?SEM) -?8.3?±?1.6?kg, p?相似文献   

Are boycott motives rationalizations?

Previous models of boycott motivation are incomplete because they only consider beliefs and attitudes. This article argues that consumers' proximity to the consequences of the critical actions of a company is the primary trigger of the desire to boycott. As consumers need to justify this desire, they search for supportive arguments. Thus, the arguments consumers give to explain why they are boycotting or not are pre‐decisional rationalizations rather than independent rational considerations. Consequently, the paper suggests that scholars need to respecify the antecedents identified in prior studies. These constructs are mediator variables of the indirect influence of proximity on boycott participation. The paper tests the assumptions on the basis of survey data gathered from 544 consumers using the example of a real boycott that was called in response to factory relocation. The model proposed was tested by means of partial least squares regression analysis. The mediation hypotheses were examined using simple and multiple mediation tests. The empirical study confirms that boycott motives are mainly rationalizations of a pre‐existing desire to boycott, which is contingent on proximity. Managerial implications and avenues for further research are proposed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Subjective Difficulty of Movements With Ongoing Visual Control

Objective difficulty of a single-component visually controlled movement may be defined by Fitts's (1954) Index of Difficulty, which is a measure of difficulty in the sense that movement time is linearly related to the objective measure. For movements that have multiple components, it becomes difficult to determine an objective measure of task difficulty due to unknown interactions between components of the movement and interactions with other factors. Thus, it may be necessary to use indirect methods for allocating a measure of task difficulty. The purpose of the study was to determine whether participants could validly construct a subjective measure of the movement difficulty and whether this measure was related to the known objective measure of difficulty. Experiments showed that for single-component movements, there was a close relationship between measures of subjective and objective difficulty. With two-component visually controlled movements it was found that subjective difficulty could be related to objective difficulty, but not as simply as for single-component tasks.