Tests improve memory – no matter if you feel good or bad while taking them

ABSTRACT

Based on studies demonstrating that testing promotes better long-term retention than restudying (i.e., the testing effect), testing has been recommended as a powerful tool to boost knowledge acquisition in educational settings. However, a factor ubiquitous in real-life learning contexts has been ignored to date: the learner's affective state. To examine whether the learner's affective state influences the testing effect, we conducted two experiments. We employed a standard testing-effect paradigm consisting of an initial study phase and a subsequent restudy/testing phase, and induced negative, neutral, or positive affective states either before participants initially studied short expository texts (Experiment 1) or before they restudied or were tested on them (Experiment 2). After one week, memory for the texts was tested. In both experiments, previously tested material was better remembered than previously restudied material. However, in none of the experiments, did the memory advantage of testing over restudying vary as a function of affect condition. Hence, the present results suggest that testing seems to benefit long-term retention independently of the learner's affective state.     

Object specificity and personal relevance in long-term visual remembering

The personal relevance of an object is multi-faceted, each facet being capable of contributing to the effects on object memory attributed to personal relevance. An object's status as an individual object (object specificity), rather than just a category of object, is one such facet and its impact on the long-term visual remembering of everyday objects is assessed in two experiments. Images and drawings were produced under generic (e.g., “Please draw a bed”) and personal exemplar (e.g., “Please draw your bed”) instructions, and participants indicated the degree to which the image on which their drawing was based was of a specific object or a generic object. Object specificity induced a sense of time and place for a remembered object, the most recent encounter with the object being most salient. Other aspects of personal relevance collectively facilitated the retrieval of an object's category-irrelevant features (thereby increasing the vividness of the object image), the other objects with which it was seen, and a more general episodic sense of place. Against a broader theoretical perspective, it is proposed that visual episodic memory and visual knowledge are primary sources of information for specific personally relevant objects and generic objects, respectively.     

Dichotomous perception of animal categories in infancy

ABSTRACT

Although there is a wealth of knowledge on categorization early in life, there are still many unanswered questions about the nature of category representation in infancy. For example, it is unclear whether infants are sensitive to boundaries between complex categories, such as types of animals, or whether young infants exhibit such sensitivity without explicit experience in the lab. Using a morphing technique, we linearly altered the category composition of images and measured 6.5-month-olds’ attention to pairs of animal faces that either did or did not cross the categorical boundary, with the stimuli in each pair being equally dissimilar from one another across the two types of image pairs. Results indicated that infants dichotomize the continua between cats and dogs and between cows and otters, but only when the images are presented in their canonical, upright orientations. These findings demonstrate a propensity to dichotomize early in life that could have implications for social categorizations, such as race and gender.     

Ex cathedra : Teaching,transference and knowledge 1

This paper explores the ex cathedra effect in psychoanalysis. It starts with the impact of the analyst's chair (cathedra) on the ‘knowledge’ derived from the analytic exchange–in particular, the structural alignment between the analyst and the client, and the ex cathedra authority transferred to analytic interpretations. It is argued that this authority–and the compulsion to ‘know’ that underlies it–is inevitably subverted by the unconscious processes it attempts to capture (through knowledge), in particular by transference, whose embossed and hollowed out forms, and various contusive elaborations (the bezoaric, caddis, karaoke and medusa effects), vitiate the linearity and closure of a set cognitive system (knowledge). The paper then moves on to examine how this ex cathedra effect has impacted on teaching–the transferral of this knowledge in trainings, notably in universities, where psychoanalysis has become a ‘discipline’, and how transference effects have inevitably and variously subverted (some may say corrupted) the teaching process. In particular, it suggests that the academic validation of clinical trainings hides an ex cathedra dogmatism–a pretence of formal knowledge and critical assessment which forecloses creative engagement with the unconscious.     

Cultural knowledge,category label,and social connections: Components of cultural identity in the global,multicultural context

Cultural identity refers to the psychological connection between an individual's self and a culture. In this paper, we identify three components that make up an individual's cultural identity – cultural knowledge, category label, and social connections. The cultural knowledge component connects an individual with a culture through the individual's direct endorsement of what are widely known to be the culture's central characteristics. The category label component connects an individual with a culture through the individual's depersonalized membership in a cultural collective. The social connections component connects an individual with a culture through networks of specific social relationships. The three components are conceptually distinct, and yet may have interconnections in influencing the development of cultural identity. We examine the implications of the three components on cultural identification processes in the context of multiculturalism and global cultural contact.     

Knowledge of language in action

Knowledge of a language is a kind of knowledge, the possession of which enables a speaker to understand and perform a variety of linguistic actions in that language. In this paper, I pursue an agency-oriented approach to knowledge of language. I begin by examining two major agency-oriented models of knowledge of language: Michael Dummett's Implicit Knowledge Model and Jennifer Hornsby's Practical Knowledge Model. I argue that each of these models is inadequate for different reasons. I present an Acquaintance Knowledge Model, in which a speaker's knowledge of a language is a combination of the speaker's first-order linguistic ability and second-order acquaintance with his ability and actions.     

Integral approach to South African psychology with special reference to indigenous knowledge

In order to redress imbalances in South African psychological service provision, honor indigenous, transpersonal, community based perspectives, and introduce fresh insights and direction, this article presents an integral approach to psychology in South Africa. Areas highlighted for future research and praxis include integral and transpersonal psychology; spirituality; consciousness; especially moral consciousness, ancestral consciousness and reverence; indigenous knowledge systems, particularly indigenous healing; harmonisation of old and new, African, Eastern and Western forms of psychology; well-being and community development through health promotion practices and multicultural counselling.     

Order,disorder, and the absolute: An experiment in dialogue

The first section of this dialogue is excerpted from an edited conversation between Sean Kelly and the late David Bohm, and focuses on the concepts of order, disorder, and the Absolute. The second section explores these concepts in greater depth, with Bohm maintaining the impossibility of absolute knowledge and the fundamental unintelligibility of the concept of disorder, preferring instead to speak of “orders of infinite degree” which emerge out of an “unknown ground.” Kelly responds by proposing the concept of “absolute knowing” as the cognitive process within which the concepts of order and disorder, the known and the Unknown are seen as dialectically related moments of the Absolute as complex whole. The third section is Edgar Morin's response to the preceding dialogue. He begins by outlining his views on the nature and limits of rationality, maintaining, with Bohm, the superiority of the “negative modality” of speaking about “being” or “reality.” In the second part, however, he proposes the notion of nature as “chaosmos,” which he understands as a creative “dialogic” of order, disorder, and organization.     

EDGAR MORIN'S PARADIGM OF COMPLEXITY AND GÖDEL'S INCOMPLETENESS THEOREM

This article shows that in two respects, Gödel's incompleteness theorem strongly supports the arguments of Edgar Morin's complexity paradigm. First, from the viewpoint of the content of Gödel's theorem, the latter justifies the basic view of complexity paradigm according to which knowledge is a dynamic, unfinished process, and develops by way of self-criticism and self-transcendence. Second, from the viewpoint of the proof procedure of Gödel's theorem, the latter confirms the complexity paradigm's circular line of inference through which is formed the all-round knowledge of a concrete object.     

INTEGRAL LEADERSHIP FOR THE 21 st CENTURY

Current leadership theories and business models—built around modernist assumptions about winners and losers, power and control, and local rather than global interactions—are decades out of date with what is needed to lead postindustrial and postmodern enterprises. This article calls for a collaborative and socially intelligent theory for leadership development based on Integral Science. This theory incorporates and unifies appropriate elements of current leadership research for a postmodern knowledge economy and seeks answers to questions still unanswered.