Item-specific and relational encoding effects in children's recall and recognition memory for words

This study tests the hypothesis that children's deficiency in encoding itemspecific and relational information in episodic events contributes to age differences in recall and recognition. In two experiments, grade school children and college adults were presented with word triplets varying in categorical relatedness. The processing of the item-specific and relational information in the triplets was independently manipulated. Experiment 1 assessed cued recall, and Experiment 2 assessed recognition of both the central target and incidental contextual members of each triplet. The results showed that the processing manipulations had independent and different effects on recall and recognition, on memory for the members of the different kinds of triplets, on the use of the retrieval cues, and on memory for target and incidental words. Developmental differences were found in both recall and recognition, and of both target and incidental words, that varied with triplet type and the processing manipulations and that were attributable to differences in the encoding of item-specific and relational information in the triplets. The discussion contrasts alternative accounts of children's encoding deficiency, and suggests that the distinction between automatic, age-invariant, and strategic age-sensitive encoding processes needs to be redrawn.     

The effects of recency and story content on children's moral judgments

Sixteen stories were read to children at ages 4, 7, and 11 years and to college freshmen (n = 24 per age level) to investigate the effects of recency and specific story content on the development of moral reasoning. The stories consisted of either positive or negative intention and either positive or negative consequence in one of four situations: rule breaking, property damage, property damage with peer interaction, or injury to a person. At each age level, half of the subjects heard the stories with the intention first and the consequence second, and half heard them in the reverse order. Analyses confirmed that in general younger children judged on consequence, whereas older children utilized intention, and that on stories containing intentional injury to a person, the younger child took intention into account. Recency effects were evidenced for both the 4- and 7-year-olds. In the 4-year-old group, however, the recency effects failed to override the salience of negative consequence in contexts of positive intention and negative consequence. This suggests that preschool children may respond primarily to the negative aspect of the story, whether intention or consequence.     

Children's relative number judgments: One-to-one correspondence,recognition of noncorrespondence,and the influence of cue conflict

Although one-to-one correspondence can be seen as a component of successful counting, number conservation, and relative number judgments, there is evidence of considerable discrepancies between children's competencies in these different tasks. Concerning relative number judgments there are strikingly different claims concerning the ability of young children to make one-to-one correspondence-based judgments. In part these discrepancies reflect differences in criteria. Four experiments are reported in which 5-year-olds' relative number judgments of small and large number displays with and without perceptual aids were studied. Children were found to respond to local rather than global density differences and to benefit from the provision of perceptual aids on both small and large number displays with one exception, namely, large number displays where the longer row is less numerous.     

Spontaneous versus instructed use of multiple standards for evaluating comprehension: Effects of age,reading proficiency,and type of standard

Nine- and eleven-year-old children differing in reading proficiency read and commented on brief expository passages containing three different types of embedded problems (nonsense words, prior knowledge violations, and internal inconsistencies). Half of the children were specifically instructed as to the types of standards they should apply in order to detect the problems (lexical, external consistency, and internal consistency); the remaining children were simply instructed to look for problems. Both quantitative and qualitative differences in standard use were revealed by the children's comments about all parts of the passages. Older and better readers used more different standards and they used them more frequently than younger and poorer readers. The lexical standard was more likely to be adopted spontaneously than the other two standards and it was the only standard used by a substantial proportion of both younger and poorer readers. Finally, the consistent effects of instruction type indicate that children's evaluation activities were strongly influenced by the amount of guidance received.     

Integration of melody and text in memory for songs

Two experiments examined whether the memory representation for songs consists of independent or integrated components (melody and text). Subjects heard a serial presentation of excerpts from largely unfamiliar folksongs, followed by a recognition test. The test required subjects to recognize songs, melodies, or texts and consisted of five types of items: (a) exact songs heard in the presentation; (b) new songs; (c) old tunes with new words; (d) new tunes with old words; and (e) old tunes with old words of a different song from the same presentation (‘mismatch songs’). Experiment 1 supported the integration hypothesis: Subjects' recognition of components was higher in exact songs (a) than in songs with familiar but mismatched components (e). Melody recognition, in particular, was near chance unless the original words were present. Experiment 2 showed that this integration of melody and text occurred also across different performance renditions of a song and that it could not be eliminated by voluntary attention to the melody.     

Issues in diagnosing anxiety disorders

Research progress in the anxiety disorders is predicated on a useful classification system. In this paper, we review the reliability and validity data for theDiagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 3rd ed. (DSM-III) anxiety disorders and discuss the salient issues associated with both the conceptualization of anxiety disorders and the diagnostic criteria offered in the DSM-III. It is concluded that the diagnostic reliability for these disorders is, overall, satisfactory. A dearth of validity data, however, hinders progress in both the diagnosis and the treatment of the anxiety disorders. Nevertheless, the DSM-III work group has proposed several changes in the diagnostic criteria for the anxiety disorders. We find some of these proposed changes helpful in that they clarify current diagnostic criteria; changes in diagnostic criteria that alter the basic classification schema, however, seem to be premature.Preparation of this paper was supported in part by MIMH Research Grant 1368.On sabbatical leave from Indiana State University.     

Conceptual,methodological, and clinical issues in the assessment of anxiety disorders

Many conceptual, methodological, and clinical issues remain unresolved in the assessment of anxiety disorders. Despite the prevalence, incidence, chronicity, and severity of anxiety disorders, research efforts and funding have fallen behind with regard both to other disorders and to addressing critical issues in the field. The primary objective of this paper is to provide a scientific critique regarding a number of often ignored yet salient considerations in anxiety-disorders assessment. Critical analyses of and recommendations regarding the multidimensional nature of anxiety, comorbidity, uniformity myths, synchrony, normative comparisons, psychometric properties of measures, and treatment integrity are offered. Finally, promising areas of clinical research are presented to enhance further the current understanding of the complexities inherent in assessing anxiety disorders.Preparation of this paper was supported in part by NIMH Grant MH36299.     

The importance of assessing treatment integrity: An example in the anxiety disorders

One purpose of this investigation was to examine the importance of assessing treatment integrity in a study evaluating a treatment for specific anxiety disorders. Three subjects, two social phobics and one simple phobic, received self-instruction training (Phase I) followed by exposure and self-instruction training (Phase II) in a multiple baseline across subjects design. All subjects were assessed during a pretreatment baseline and throughout treatment using measures of treatment integrity and measures of change in phobic severity. Improvement took place at different times for different subjects. Measures of treatment integrity, which consisted of monitoring of self-statements as well as practice outside the session, indicated that treatment was not always received as intended and that improvement was correlated with practice. The usefulness of measures of treatment integrity in both clinical and research settings is highlighted.     

Variations in explicitly unpaired training are differentially effective in producing conditioned inhibition

To evaluate a contingency interpretation of conditioned inhibition (CI), rats were given “explicity unpaired” training in which the locus and duration of a CS within the inter-US (shock) interval were systematically manipulated for different groups. Summation and retardation tests in Experiment 1 indicated that stronger CI resulted from both a backward and a trace CS than from a midlocus CS of equal or greater duration. Complementing these findings, the same tests in Experiment 2 showed that, by comparison with novel-stimulus controls, CI developed to a trace CS but not to a mid-locus CS, nor to a trace CS that was accompanied by an immediate signal for the US. These findings argue against a contingency interpretation of CI and favor a contiguity interpretation stressing the short-term rehearsal of stimulus events. Such rehearsal of the US allows a backward CS, but not a mid-locus CS with an extended US-CS interval, to be discriminated as a signal for nonreinforcement, and thus to develop as a conditioned inhibitor. Similarly, excitatory conditioning to the memory trace of a CS allows the nominal trace CS to develop as a signal for nonreinforcement, and thus as a conditioned inhibitor, but not when its memory trace is overshadowed by another CS that immediately precedes the US. In short, the development of CI is facilitated when excitation is mediated by the memorial processing of either the US or a discrete CS for the US rather than by contextual cues.     

Social Activism's Possibility through Perspectives of Gloria Anzaldúa,Walter Benjamin and C. G. Jung1

This paper explores the vertices of Jung's, Anzaldúa's and Benjamin's distinct ontologies and the way in which they connect in the shared recognition that what has been estranged in human history is enigmatically lodged in the world's fabric today. Cultural distress, in other words, is the outcome of what has become repudiated in the self and the collective across time. From this perspective, the paper argues that we have a collective responsibility to listen to the claims of the dead laid bare in moments of contemporary real-world danger and it elaborates the psychical dimensions of being that are cultivated in times of danger. The author contends that these psychical presences are the dead of human history including our ancestral heritage that linger and possibly may penetrate our awareness. They haunt and hold a potential to animate our movement towards a sublimatory process that can be seen as a precursor to social responsiveness and action. The author explores this through her own experience with an example of the spawning of spiritual activism within the socio-political maelstrom of AIDS.