The influence of verbal and imagery strategies on processing figurative language

Four experiments on metaphor functions were designed to test a functionally orientated problem-solving approach, where act, content, and experience are treated as three aspects of cognition. Two experiments showed imagery strategies to be superior to verbal strategies as regards comprehension and production of metaphors. However, the results of the two other experiments showed no differences between imagery and verbal strategies.
Metaphor performance was uncorrelated with performance on general intelligence tests. The intercorrelations between different metaphor tasks were also generally low. The highest positive correlation was found with a measure of imagery control under imagery processing conditions. Aptness ratings of metaphors were unrelated to level of metaphor memory. However, comprehension of metaphors was observed to correlate positively with metaphor memory.
The results show that attitude factors are important for comprehension and production of metaphors, and that alternative memorization strategies may work equally well. In order to explain the observations a multi-level coding model was suggested.     

Not only encoding and retrieval: The enactment effect as a function of task preparation

Three experiments examined the implications of adding a fourth preparation stage to the encoding-retention-retrieval stage analysis of memory. Action memory was selected as the research domain. The results demonstrated that systematic variation of the preparation stage yields new insights about enactment effects in memory. Together with effects of enactment in the preparatory stage, enactment was also shown to give differential effects in encoding and retrieval, with interactions between these three factors. The experimental results were discussed in relation to a strategy processing interpretation of action memory.     

Strategies or similarities—what determines mastery of figurative language?

Six experiments examined different determinants of metaphor performance. Special focus was placed on tenor-vehicle similarities and on visual-verbal strategy operations. The results showed that use of specified strategy operations tended to favour verbal operations, whereas previous research demonstrated that unspecified visual strategies improve metaphor comprehension. The deviating observations were interpreted as due to differences in levels of strategy specification. In the new experiments metaphors were shown to be less easily transformed under visual than under verbal processing conditions. The number of detected similarities between tenor and vehicle terms are shown to be only modestly related to metaphor performance. Findings suggested that similarities are more easily found with visually encoded metaphors, whereas an alternative tenor term is easier to find with the metaphor verbally encoded.     

Actions,contexts, memory—what is the relation?

Whole list contexts have been found to influence action memory differently than item-specific contexts. Usually there is no recall enhancement with item-specific contexts, but considerable improvement with whole-list contexts. Three experiments investigated the effect of both kinds of context upon action memory. The results showed that whole-list contexts gave the beneficial effect, probably through their ability to string together actions within a common frame. Contrary to expectation the effects of item-specific contexts were not found to differ between motor and nonmotor encoding conditions, irrespective of whether these contexts were self-generated or provided by the experimenter. The experimental results suggest that the function of item-specific contexts has more to do with helping item differentiation than relational encoding. Since action events possess a high degree of distinctiveness, there is not much to gain by the addition of item-specific contexts in action memory tasks.     

Psychometric properties of the Type D scale (DS14) in Norwegian cardiac patients

Bergvik, S., Sørlie, T., Wynn, R. & Sexton, H. (2010). Psychometric properties of the Type D scale (DS14) in Norwegian cardiac patients. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology. The combination of negative affectivity (NA) and social inhibition (SI) – the Type D Personality – is associated with poor outcomes in coronary artery disease (CAD) patients. A Norwegian translation of the standard instrument measuring Type D (DS14) was tested on 432 CAD patients receiving coronary revascularization treatment. Factor analysis produced two factors with high inter‐item reliability, indicating that the Norwegian DS14 has acceptable psychometric properties. Eighteen percent were classified as Type D, lower than has been reported elsewhere. Type D was associated with anxiety, depression, and passive coping. NA correlated positively with depression, anxiety, and passive coping. SI correlated positively with depression and anxiety, and negatively with active coping. The prevalence of Type D was higher among women, and negatively correlated with time since treatment. The variation in Type D prevalence among studies needs further elucidation as does the predictive power of continuous scoring of the Type D trait.     

Automatic thoughts and meta‐cognition as predictors of depressive or anxious symptoms: A prospective study of two trajectories

The purpose of this prospective study was to explore the Automatic Thought Questionnaire Negative (ATQ‐30‐N) and the Meta‐cognitions Questionnaire (MCQ‐30) as predictors in the development of depressive or anxious symptoms. A sample (N = 201) completed the ATQ‐30‐N, MCQ‐30, and the Hopkins Symptom Checklist‐25 (HSCL‐25) twice with a three month interval. The HSCL‐25 measures both depressive and anxiety symptoms. Separate multiple hierarchical regression analyses indicated that the ATQ‐30‐N was a positive predictor for levels of depressive symptoms, while the MCQ‐30 was a predictor of both levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms, at follow‐up, when controlling for gender, age and pre‐test levels of symptoms. However, the MCQ‐30 did not predict future levels of depressive symptoms, when levels of automatic negative thoughts measured by the ATQ‐30‐N were statistically controlled for. The findings suggested that the ATQ‐30‐N predicts future levels of depressive symptoms, while the MCQ‐30 primarily predicts future levels of anxiety.     

Active and passive memory: States, attitudes, and strategies

Six experiments examined the effect of active and passive processing strategies upon recall of verbal and figural material. The strategies were induced at three levels of instructional specificity, referred to as strategy states, strategy attitudes, and specified strategies. The defining attributes of active strategies were a high degree of task control combined with a high degree of self-involvement, whereas passive strategies were conversely defined by low degrees of task control and self-involvement. The tasks, including free and serial recall lists, text reproduction and reasoning tasks, varied in familiarity. In line with the expectations the results showed active strategies to be superior with moderately familiar tasks, and with reasonably precise strategy instructions. With unspecified strategy instructions, and with highly familiar and highly unfamiliar tasks, less difference between active and passive strategies was obtained. The superiority of active processing was thus found to depend both on type of task and on the specificity level of the strategies induced.     

Serial position phenomena: Memory for acts, contents and spatial position patterns

The influence of functional control operations on serial position effects was examined in a series of four experiments. When recall was required of performed operations as well as of the information operated upon, the result generally turned out to be absence of recency effects and presence of primacy effects. Primacy effects were found to be more prominent with active execution of operations than with passive list reception. Simultaneous presence of spatial and temporal position cues was shown to coincide with disruption of the ordinary primacy-recency pattern. The findings were taken to prove the importance of functional factors, and were interpreted as in agreement with a two-stage analysis of serial learning where the first stage is assumed to involve the differentiation of list items and the second stage the integration of differentiated items. The experiments were claimed to indicate that memory is better understood from a problem-solving than from an information-processing point of view.     

Attempts to predict intelligent behavior: III. The relative importance of divergent and convergent production

Scores on a test built on Raaheim's (1974) theory of problem solving and intelligence (the Family Test, Part I) were correlated with scores of divergent and convergent production within the same ideational area (the Family Test, Parts II and III). The results indicate that both divergent and convergent production contribute to the solution of the problem-solving tasks. To expand the findings to a broader field of intelligence research scores on the tests of divergent and convergent production were correlated with school achievement. Multiple correlations of 0.61 (males) and 0.67 (females) were found between school achievement and the two tests. Comparisons of groups with scores above and below the means of the two tests show that school achievement depends on the combination of divergent and convergent production, suggesting that, although the two types of production reflect two different aspects of intellectual activity, as a rule they work together in the process of intelligent adjustment.