Time of day and the representation of text

This article reports an experiment to investigate the idea that time-of-day differences in memory for text are related to type of text processing that is carried out at different times of day. In particular, it was hypothesized that subjects tested in the morning tend to retain more of the exact wording of the text, whereas those tested in the afternoon are more likely to produce a meaning-based representation. The results of a recognition test showed that, in agreement with other studies, immediate text memory is better in the morning than in the afternoon. As predicted, the subjects tested in the morning better remembered the exact wording of the original passages. However, the idea that memory for meaning is better in the afternoon than the morning was not supported by the data. The results suggest that subjects at both times of day produce a meaning-based representation of the text but, in the morning, this representation is supported by good verbatim memory, enabling accurate recall of the text at that time.     

Counselling in the enterprise culture

The way in which therapeutic models and language have been dravm upon to provide support for concepts of human flexibility and 'human resource development' in the enterprise culture ofthe 1980s and 1990s is described. The use ofhumane managerial rhetoric to mask the practice of increasingly ruthless public and private-sector organisations, and the dilemmas posedfor counsellors operating within these kinds of institutional settings, are examined.     

Long term marriages in Sweden: And some comparisons with similar couples in the United States

This international, five-country long term marriages study of couples who have been married, or unmarried and cohabiting, for 20 years or longer is designed to study, among other things, marital satisfaction. This first report of the Swedish part of the study reports on a Swedish version of the self-rating Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) used to investigate self-rated marital satisfaction. The couples describe high marital satisfaction and a high sense of coherence (SOC) compared to other groups. Contrary to other studies, no differences were found between men and women regarding SOC. The differences between them, that describe high relative to low marital satisfaction, pertain to matters of recreation, sex, life philosophy, time spent together, and frequency of quarrels. The men reported greater marital satisfaction than the women.     

Attentional effects on concurrent psychophysical discriminations: Investigations of a sample-size model

In two experiments, a concurrent discrimination paradigm was used to study the effects of visual attention on psychophysical judgments and the consistency of these effects with a sample-size model in which attention influences the variance of the internal representation used to make psychophysical judgments. Two pairs of lines were presented simultaneously—one on each side of fixation—and subjects had to indicate for each pair separately whether or not the lines had the same length. Attention was manipulated by instructing subjects to pay 100%, 75%, 50%, 25%, or 0% of their attention to the discrimination on one side, with the complementary amount of attention to the other side. In the first experiment, the relationship between attention and discrimination accuracy was consistent with the sample-size model both when attentional allocation varied from trial to trial and when it varied between blocks, and the relationship held over more widely varying attentional allocations than had previously been studied. In addition, discriminations were more accurate overall with varied than with blocked attentional allocation, suggesting that the two types of allocation do not merely differ in the degree to which attention is focused. The second experiment examined the effects of attentional allocation and stimulus variance, the latter being manipulated by randomly incrementing or decrementing line lengths. These manipulations had additive effects on total Thurstonian variance, and a version of the samplesize model gave an excellent quantitative fit to the obtained results. Besides supporting the samplesize model, the results of Experiment 2 suggest that criterion variance is at least as large as sensory variance and that criterion but not sensory variance increases with stimulus variance.     

Commentary on Guild et al. (2020): The Importance of Well-Designed Intervention Studies for Advancing Attachment Theory and its Clinical Applications

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - Guild and colleagues (this issue) report results of a long-term follow up after a randomized trial of the effectiveness of an...     

Toward the bigger picture: Concrete and abstract thinking about a transgression,and the role of time in interpersonal forgiveness

Rumination is commonly considered detrimental to forgiveness. In contrast, we propose that different forms of post-transgression thinking are differentially effective for forgiveness, depending on their timing. Concrete thinking focuses on event details, whereas abstract thinking abstracts from details and views the event in a broader context. Following construal level theory, we propose that concrete thinking is increasingly ill-matched, and abstract thinking better matched, to the construal abilities and motivation afforded by psychological distance. Hence, over time, concrete thinking would be negatively, and abstract thinking positively, associated with forgiveness. Two correlational recall studies, with time since transgression measured (Study 1) or manipulated (Study 2), demonstrated that with greater temporal distance concrete thinking was more negatively, and abstract thinking more positively, related to forgiveness. Study 3 employed a prospective-longitudinal methodology over five time-points; intra-individual decrease in concrete thinking and increase in abstract thinking over time were related to higher levels of forgiveness.     

Adolescent Psychopathy and Personality Theory—the Interpersonal Circumplex: Expanding Evidence of a Nomological Net

The construct validity of psychopathy was examined in a sample of 114 male and female young offenders (M_age = 15.16) at a southeastern detention center. The interpersonal circumplex served as a framework of general personality from which to examine the construct of adolescent psychopathy. A supplementary analysis of the psychopathy measures and the Big 5 factors of personality was also conducted using a matrix approach. Measures included: (a) Antisocial Process Screening Device (P. J. Frick & R. D. Hare, 2001); (b) Child Psychopathy Scale (D. R. Lynam, 1996); (c) Psychopathy Checklist—Youth Version (A. E. Forth, D. S. Kosson, & R. D. Hare, 2003); and (d) Interpersonal Adjective Scales Revised—Big 5 Version (P. Trapnell & J. S. Wiggins, 1991; J. S. Wiggins, 1995). Results showed substantial convergence among the three psychopathy measures. In addition, meaningful associations between psychopathy and constructs within the interpersonal circumplex and broader domains of the Big 5 were obtained. Two psychopathy scales correlated to a higher degree than expected with neuroticism. These findings provide evidence linking personality theory to the concept of child and adolescent psychopathy, thereby adding to its construct validity. However, they do so with the caveat that youth may also be displaying some characteristics of neuroticism, suggesting that worry and anxiety may accompany psychopathic features in earlier developmental stages. The implications of the current study are discussed.     

A structural analysis of working memory and related cognitive skills in young children

The aim of this study was to investigate the functional organisation of working memory and related cognitive abilities in young children. A sample of 633 children aged between 4 and 6 years were tested on measures of verbal short-term memory, complex memory span, sentence repetition, phonological awareness, and nonverbal ability. The measurement model that provided the best fit of the data incorporates constructs that correspond to the central executive, phonological loop, and episodic buffer subcomponents of working memory, plus distinct but associated constructs associated with phonological awareness and nonverbal ability.     

Psychopathy and comorbidity in a young offender sample: taking a closer look at psychopathy's potential importance over disruptive behavior disorders

The authors examined the construct of psychopathy as applied to 130 adolescent offenders using 3 psychopathy measures and a broad range of DSM-TV Axis I diagnoses and psychosocial problems. Measures used in the study included the following: (a) Psychopathy Checklist-Youth Version, (b) Antisocial Process Screening Device, (c) a modified version of the Self-Report Psychopathy-II scale, and (d) the Adolescent Psychopathology Scale. Results from this study offer incremental support for the construct validity of psychopathy in youth. Psychopathy evidenced better convergent and discriminant validity results than did the disruptive behavior disorders (DBDs) such as oppositional-defiant disorder (ODD) and conduct disorder (CD). Despite this finding, psychopathy scales nonetheless correlated with other forms of psychopathology at a higher rate than was expected, suggesting that comorbidity is high even when psychopathy is used as a classification scheme. Also, hierarchical multiple regression was used to determine whether psychopathy offered an improvement in the prediction of previous violent and nonviolent offenses. The results for the current study were mixed, with only the PCL-YV significantly predicting previous violent and nonviolent offenses beyond the DBDs. The findings indicate that psychopathy may offer incremental improvement over DBDs with regard to level of comorbidity and perhaps even prediction. However, simply extending the adult construct of psychopathy to youth without considering the array of psychopathology that may accompany adolescent psychopathy could be misleading.