Prior task experience and comparable stimulus exposure nullify focal and nonfocal prospective memory retrieval differences

We explored the nature of focal versus nonfocal event-based prospective memory retrieval. In the context of a lexical decision task, people received an intention to respond to a single word (focal) in one condition and to a category label (nonfocal) for the other condition. Participants experienced both conditions, and their order was manipulated. The focal instruction condition was a single word presented multiple times. In Experiment 1, the stimuli in the nonfocal condition were different exemplars from a category, each presented once. In the nonfocal condition retrieval was poorer and reaction times were slower during the ongoing task as compared to the focal condition, replicating prior findings. In Experiment 2, the stimulus in the nonfocal condition was a single category exemplar repeated multiple times. When this single-exemplar nonfocal condition followed in time the single-item focal condition, focal versus nonfocal performance was virtually indistinguishable. These results demonstrate that people can modify their stimulus processing and expectations in event-based prospective memory tasks based on experience with the nature of prospective cues and with the ongoing task.     

Why a Believer Could Believe that God Answers Prayers

In a previous issue of this journal Michael Veber argued that God could not answer certain prayers because doing so would be immoral. In this article I attempt to demonstrate that Veber’s argument is simply the logical problem of evil applied to a possible world. Because of this, his argument is susceptible to a Plantinga-style defense.     

Differences in judgments of learning difficulty

Academically successful and less successful fifth graders were asked to make judgments about the ease of understanding and remembering various sentences and were given the opportunity to attempt to remember some of them before being asked to judge new sets of sentences. The results of the first experiment indicate that, at the beginning of the experiment, the successful students were much more likely than their less successful peers to realize that sentences expressing arbitrary relationships were more difficult to remember. These differences became even greater after students were given the opportunity to attempt to remember some of the sentences they had judged initially. The memory performance of the successful students also improved as they became more familiar with the experimental task, but the performance of the less successful students did not. The results of the second experiment showed that less successful students who had received appropriate training were able to use information about the arbitrariness of relationships as the basis for their judgments of learning difficulty. The training also facilitated their ability to remember. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Physiological and psychological responses to exercise with an induced attentional focus

In this study techniques were employed to induce exercising subjects to focus attention on themselves or on an external event. A total of 20 adult subjects (10 men and 10 women) were familiarized with a treadmill exercise protocol and then on two subsequent occasions performed submaximal exercise followed by a run to exhaustion under attentional conditions of self-focus (watching themselves in a mirror while listening to their breathing) and external focus (watching and listening to a movie). The order of focus conditions was counterbalanced among subjects. Analysis of postexperimental responses from subjects indicated that the procedures used to induce each type of attentional focus were successful. However, physiological and psychological responses in the two focus conditions were not always uniform for men and women, particularly during light work when men tended to have higher heart rates and significantly lower Rated Perceived Exertion while women had lower heart rates and higher Rated Perceived Exertion under self-focused conditions than under externally focused conditions. Possible explanations for the incongruence of physiological and psychological responses of men and women to the two types of attentional focus are discussed.     

A method for investigating the sequential ordering of simple movement patterns: An IBM-based application using the Tecmar Labmaster

A computer program and hardware interface are described that enable the examination of various phenomena related to the organization of simple movement patterns. Components of the program focus on the tracking of serial stimulus events; the reproduction of varied sequential, rhythmic patterns; and the production of self-initiated rhythmic patterns. The program controls the input from and output to the parallel ports of a multifunction data acquisition expansion board via a custom-built circuit board.