Long-term memory of haptic and visual information in older adults

ABSTRACT

The present study examined haptic and visual memory capacity for familiar objects through the application of an intentional free-recall task with three-time intervals in a sample of 78 healthy older adults without cognitive impairment. A wooden box and a turntable were used for the presentation of haptic and visual stimuli, respectively. The procedure consisted of two phases, a study phase that consisted of the presentation of stimuli, and a test phase (free-recall task) performed after one hour, one day or one week. The analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) indicated that there was a main effect only for the time intervals (F (2,71) = 12.511, p = .001, η² = 0.261), with a lower recall index for the interval of one week compared to the other intervals. We concluded that the memory capacity between the systems (haptic and visual) is similar for long retrieval intervals (hours to days).     

Sexual Assault in Intimate Relationships: Introduction to Special Issue

ABSTRACT

The 13 articles in this special issue draw from the experience of women and men in Australia, Canada, Denmark, India, Micronesia, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Vietnam, and the US to shed light on the complex problem of accounting for Intimate Partner Sexual Violence (IPSV) in a globalizing world. As a collection, the articles draw from qualitative methodologies in social science and humanities privileging local narratives drawn through interviews, focus groups, participant observation and historical surveys. This special issue presents articles from multiple disciplinary vantage points that seek to bring to the fore insight drawn from the close reading of sexual violence in varied global cultural contexts. The collection of articles challenges the idea that there is a universal way to understand and measure IPSV. Together the articles demonstrate key elements of the disconnect between local understandings and the assumed universality of concepts that undergird most sexual violence research. Congruent with our previous work, the challenge of the work in the cross-cultural perspective taken by this special issue lies in the acknowledgement that the ways we account for and define sexual violence in intimate (dating, cohabiting and marital) relationships is culturally-situated and must be contextualized as such. This cross-cultural perspective values the conceptual insight that can be drawn from cultural difference and pushes against a homogenization of notions of sexual violence in studies within global societies as well as those that work to compare them.     

The Directed Forgetting Effect in Word-fragment Completion: An Application of the Process Dissociation Procedure

In three experiments, subjects were asked to remember and forget study words. In line with previous studies, a directed forgetting effect was observed in a word-fragment completion task: Instructions to remember increased the completion of target fragments compared with instructions to forget (Experiment 1). Using the process dissociation procedure (Jacoby, 1991), it appeared that instructions to remember increased the estimates of intentional influences of memory but did not affect the estimates of automatic uses of memory (Experiments 1, 2 and 3). This suggests that directed forgetting effects in word-fragment completion reflect the surreptitious influence of explicit memory in a nominally implicit memory task. However, a meta-analysis indicated that directed forgetting instructions affected automatic and intentional influences of memory in opposite directions. This finding casts doubt on the assumption of independence between automatic and intentional uses of memory. The implications for use of the process dissociation procedure are discussed.     

Considerations Regarding Online Methods for Suicide‐Related Research and Suicide Risk Assessment

Frequent advances in technology provide new and exciting opportunities for conducting suicide research and suicide risk assessments. However, to the authors' knowledge, best practices for using technology, specifically the Internet, to conduct research protocols involving suicide risk assessments have not been examined. In research contexts, the use of technology for research on suicidal behavior and suicide risk assessment can offer benefits relative to other forms of data collection. These advantages, which include increased validity, feasibility, and efficiency, as well as improvements in data collection and management, are presented. Considerations regarding the implementation of an online system for suicide risk assessment as well as limitations and future directions are discussed.     

Developing a Capped Model for Combining Ideals

Philosophia - This work motivates the Combined Model for Combining Ideals, which Larry Temkin introduces in “sketch” form in Rethinking the Good, and goes on to begin filling in the...