Investigation of collaborative inhibition for key-term definitions

Collaborative inhibition is the counterintuitive finding that learners working in a group recall less information compared with the combined nonredundant output of the same number of learners working individually (Weldon & Bellinger, 1997). Although research has shown that collaborative inhibition occurs for a variety of to-be-learned material, no research has evaluated whether the effect emerges for key-term definitions. In two experiments, learners individually studied key-term definitions during an initial study phase. Learners then completed a retrieval practice phase, which occurred either collaboratively or individually. After a delay, all learners individually completed a final test phase. Performance during the retrieval practice phase is of greatest interest for present purposes. Results established collaborative inhibition such that recall was lower for learners in the collaborative group versus the individual group, which provides novel evidence to the collaborative memory literature by demonstrating that the effect emerges with key-term definitions.     

协作抑制的多机制解释:来自编码加工方式和编码相似性的证据

协作抑制是指小组提取的信息量比等量个体单独提取的信息总量要少。对于协作过程降低小组成员提取潜能的机制解释,不同研究之间仍有争论。本研究实验1使用经典的生存加工范式,实验2使用联想记忆训练法,分别考察编码加工方式和编码相似性对协作提取成绩的影响,从而检验提取抑制和策略破坏机制是否能分别影响协作抑制。研究结果表明,被试在生存和非生存(愉悦度和自我经历)加工条件下都出现协作抑制现象,而生存加工条件下的协作抑制量显著小于非生存加工条件;在使用联想记忆训练法之后,相同学习顺序组没有出现协作抑制,而不同学习顺序组出现了经典的协作抑制。本研究结果为协作抑制的可能存在的多机制解释提供了证据。     

Confidence in Dyadic Decision Making: The Role of Individual Differences

Groups typically express more confidence than individuals, yet how individual‐level confidence combines during collaborative decision tasks is not well understood. We prescreened 686 community members using a novel confidence measure (a true/false trivia test) intentionally designed to be difficult (accuracy rates were not significantly better than chance) and randomly assigned 72 individuals to collaborate on a matched version of the same test in dyads composed of two low‐confidence individuals, two high‐confidence individuals, or one of each (“mixed”). Consistent with past research, we found that the confidence expressed by dyads was higher than the confidence expressed by individuals; importantly, however, this pattern varied markedly by dyad type, with low‐confidence dyads showing the largest increase, mixed dyads showing a moderate increase, and high‐confidence dyads showing no increase—despite the fact that all dyads showed similarly low accuracy (about 55%). These results highlight the conditions under which groups express greater confidence than individuals and offer insights for the composition of collaborative decision‐making teams. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Moderation Role of Self‐perceived Maternal Empathy in Observed Mother–Child Collaborative Problem Solving

Based on L. S. Vygotsky's sociocultural theory, previous scaffolding studies have examined some factors associated with adjustment of parental support during collaborative problem solving. However, a factor that remains unexplored in the literature is the potential relationship between parental empathy and parental support in collaborative problem solving. The present study addresses this question through the observation of 45 preschool children and their mothers cooperating in a problem‐solving task with two levels of difficulty. Teachers rated the children's fine motor skills, and sampled mothers reported their empathy levels towards their children. Consistent with the notion of scaffolding, negative correlations were found between observed maternal verbal support (cognitive, autonomy, and emotional) and child age, and between observed maternal cognitive support and teacher reports of child motor skills. An analysis of covariance revealed significant empathy‐by‐difficulty interactions for physical and cognitive support after controlling for the effect of child motor skills. Implications of these findings are discussed in terms of the role of child motor skills and the importance of parental empathy in collaborative problem solving. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Enhancing individual and collaborative eyewitness memory with category clustering recall

Most crimes have multiple eyewitnesses. The police typically interview co-witnesses separately. In time-sensitive investigations, this could slow down evidence accumulation. Having co-witnesses collaboratively recall a crime could potentially expedite evidence accumulation. However, past research shows that collaborative group members often have conflicting retrieval strategies that disrupt each other, degrading overall recall. This cost could potentially be overcome by aligning group members’ retrieval strategies with category clustering recall (CCR), which is a retrieval strategy where information is recalled from a series of forensically relevant categories (e.g., recalling the protagonists’ appearance, then actions). This study examined the costs and benefits of collaborative eyewitness memory by having collaborative pairs of strangers, nominal pairs (i.e., two individuals whose recall is pooled) and lone individuals watch a crime and recall it using free recall or CCR. The collaborative pairs recalled the crime faster than the nominal pairs. They also recalled more correct information than individuals but less than nominal pairs, irrespective of the retrieval method. There is therefore a speed-recall completeness trade-off when collaborative groups recall crimes. Importantly, all participants recalled more correct information when using CCR. This provides initial evidence suggesting that CCR is superior to free recall. Further research examining CCR’s benefits is recommended.     

Differentiation of self,religious coping,and subjective well-being

This study examined the relationships between differentiation of self (DoS), religious coping, and subjective well-being in a sample of undergraduate students at a religiously affiliated university. Intrapersonal DoS or the ability to (1) experience emotions, but (2) not be forced to respond to them is an important capacity for self-regulation with important implications for well-being and spiritual maturity. In this study, DoS was a potential method for understanding one’s emotional experience, and perhaps facilitated respondents’ use of a more collaborative religious coping style to manage this experience.     

Public and Private Meaning in Hume: Comments on Ted Morris’ “Meaningfulness without Metaphysics: Another Look at Hume’s Meaning-Empiricism”

This paper raises questions concerning Ted Morris’ interpretation of Hume’s notion of meaning and investigates the private and public aspects of Hume’s notion of meaning.

A New Task for Philosophy of Science

This paper argues that we philosophers of science have before us an important new task that we urgently need to take up. It is to convince the scientific community to adopt and implement a new philosophy of science that does better justice to the deeply problematic basic intellectual aims of science than that which we have at present. Problematic aims evolve with evolving knowledge, that part of philosophy of science concerned with aims and methods thus becoming an integral part of science itself. The outcome of putting this new philosophy into scientific practice would be a new kind of science, both more intellectually rigorous and one that does better justice to the best interests of humanity.