A comparison of song-lyric and prose self-instruction procedures for increasing novel skills in children

We compared the effects of the effects of self-instructions in the form of prose or song lyrics in the acquisition of gross motor tasks in 4 third-grade children. We taught participants 4 pairs of gross motor tasks, with one task in each pair taught with prose self-instructions and the other taught with song lyric self-instructions. Both self-instruction procedures were effective for teaching tasks; however, acquisition was quicker with song lyric self-instruction for 4 task pairs, acquisition was quicker with prose self-instruction for 3 task pairs; and similar for 1 task pair. Participants were then able to select their preferred method of self-instruction for a novel, applied skill. Two participants selected song-lyric self-instructions and 2 participants selected prose self-instructions.     

How Secure are Unproctored Pre-Employment Tests? Analysis of Inconsistent Test Scores

Employment tests have long been scrutinized for psychometric considerations such as validity and reliability, but the extent to which cheating may occur on pre-employment tests has generally been overlooked. With the rise of unproctored, on-demand, online testing, the need has never been greater to focus on design and process considerations that can help mitigate the potential for cheating on employment tests. This paper builds on the limited existing research on the detection of inconsistent test scores on unproctored Internet testing. Job candidates (n = 4,026) completed a computer adaptive cognitive ability test under two conditions: an unproctored screening test followed by a proctored confirmation test. Analyses focused on detecting instances of inconsistent test scores based on comparison of standard errors of measure for the unproctored and proctored test scores (Guo and Drasgow, Int J Sel Assess 18:351–364, 2010). Results revealed a relatively low number of inconsistent scores and are discussed in the context of future research, application, and theory building on the nature of cheating on pre-employment tests.     

Intersubject variability in fearful face processing: the linkbetween behavior and neural activation

Stimuli that signal threat show considerable variability in the extents to which they enhance behavior, even among healthy individuals. However, the neural underpinning of this behavioral variability is not well understood. By manipulating expectation of threat in an fMRI study of fearful versus neutral face categorization, we uncovered a network of areas underlying variability in threat processing in healthy adults. We explicitly altered expectations by presenting face images at three different expectation levels: 80 %, 50 %, and 20 %. Subjects were instructed to report as quickly and accurately as possible whether the face was fearful (signaled threat) or not. An uninformative cue preceded each face by 4 s. By taking the difference between reaction times (RTs) to fearful and neutral faces, we quantified an overall fear RT bias (i.e., faster to fearful than to neutral faces) for each subject. This bias correlated positively with late-trial fMRI activation (8 s after the face) during unexpected-fearful-face trials in bilateral ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the left subgenual cingulate cortex, and the right caudate nucleus, and correlated negatively with early-trial fMRI activation (4 s after the cue) during expected-neutral-face trials in bilateral dorsal striatum and the right ventral striatum. These results demonstrate that the variability in threat processing among healthy adults is reflected not only in behavior, but also in the magnitude of activation in medial prefrontal and striatal regions that appear to encode affective value.     

Development ethics and evolving methods: a comparison of fair trade with the Millennium Villages Project

The motivations for rural and agricultural development in the twenty-first century are not different from previous centuries, but evolving technologies in the late twentieth century have altered many methods and institutional arrangements for accomplishing development. The internet has facilitated initiatives that in earlier decades would have required large, complex organizations in both donor and developing countries. We will compare the ethical and institutional strengths and weaknesses of two such initiatives in Malawi: a smallholder farmers organization involved in fair trade and the Millennium Village Project. These are two of a large array of institutions which are currently being used to benefit smallholder agricultural producers. We will examine their relative merits through the lenses of various ethical paradigms and show that the institutional arrangements of the two programs are complimentary in the evolution of agricultural trading systems linking the global north and south.     

Effects of memory instruction on attention and information processing: Further investigation of inhibition of return in item-method directed forgetting

In the item-method directed-forgetting paradigm, the magnitude of inhibition of return (IOR) is larger after an instruction to forget (F) than after an instruction to remember (R). In the present experiments, we further investigated this increased magnitude of IOR after F as compared to R memory instructions (dubbed the F > R IOR difference), in order to understand both the consequences for information processing and the purpose of the differential withdrawal of attention that results in this difference. Words were presented in one of four peripheral locations, followed by either an F or an R memory instruction. Then, a target appeared in either the same location as the previous word or one of the other locations. The results showed that the F > R IOR difference cannot be explained by attentional momentum (Exp. 1), that the spatial compatibility of the response options with target locations is not necessary for the F > R IOR difference to emerge (Exp. 2), and that the F > R IOR difference is location-specific rather than response-specific (Exp. 3). These results are consistent with the view that F > R IOR represents a bias against responding to information emanating from an unreliable source (Taylor & Fawcett, 2011).