La Bella Figura: The role of a cultural philosophy on Italian consumerism

The La Bella Figura concept extends to many Italian cultural dimensions including physical appearance, perception of self, and behaviours. La Bella Figura plays an essential role in shaping Italian consumer behaviour and consumerism. The current study sought to understand how women living in Italy conceptualize La Bella Figura and how it affects their day‐to‐day lives, attitudes, and consumption behaviours. This research extracted concepts from Consumer Culture Theory to construct a qualitative codebook and structure thematic data analyses. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 30 women aged 18–50 years living in Florence, Italy. Participants were recruited through study flyers, social media, and snowball sampling. Open and axial coding were facilitated by HyperRESEARCH 4.0.1 software to generate key themes. Data were collected and analyzed by trained researchers living in Florence, Italy, who utilized grounded theory techniques to identify emergent themes. Results indicated various components of La Bella Figura contributed to consumer behaviour, namely its influence on identity (i.e., appearance, confidence), lifestyle goals (i.e., health, consumerism), and social norms (i.e., perceptions of others, media). Findings offer practical recommendations for marketers and retailers to appeal to the Italian market through effective and informed mediums.     

Computer-Presented Video Prompting for Teaching Microwave Oven Use to Three Adults with Developmental Disabilities

We evaluated the use of a video prompting procedure for teaching three adults with developmental disabilities to make popcorn using a microwave oven. Training, using a 10-step task analysis, was conducted in the kitchen of the participant’s vocational training program. During baseline, participants were instructed to make popcorn, but were given no further instructions or prompts. Video prompting consisted of first watching a video clip of a step being performed and then giving participants the opportunity to imitate that step. This prompting procedure was introduced in a delayed multiple-probe across subjects design. Following acquisition, video prompting was removed and maintenance in the absence of video prompting was assessed at 2, 6, and 10 weeks. Two of the three participants acquired the task when video prompting was introduced and performed at 80–100% correct during follow-up sessions. These data suggest that video prompting may be an effective instructional strategy for teaching daily living skills to adults with developmental disabilities.     

Language-experience facilitates discrimination of /d-th/ in monolingual and bilingual acquisition of English

To trace how age and language experience shape the discrimination of native and non-native phonetic contrasts, we compared 4-year-olds learning either English or French or both and simultaneous bilingual adults on their ability to discriminate the English /d-th/ contrast. Findings show that the ability to discriminate the native English contrast improved with age. However, in the absence of experience with this contrast, discrimination of French children and adults remained unchanged during development. Furthermore, although simultaneous bilingual and monolingual English adults were comparable, children exposed to both English and French were poorer at discriminating this contrast when compared to monolingual English-learning 4-year-olds. Thus, language experience facilitates perception of the English /d-th/ contrast and this facilitation occurs later in development when English and French are acquired simultaneously. The difference between bilingual and monolingual acquisition has implications for language organization in children with simultaneous exposure.     

Positive and Negative Effects of Monitoring Popular Films for Historical Inaccuracies

History educators often use popular films in the classroom to teach critical thinking through an exercise that involves identifying historical inaccuracies in the films. We investigated how this exercise affects the acquisition of true and false historical knowledge. In two experiments, subjects studied texts about historical topics and watched clips from corresponding films. Each film contained one piece of information that contradicted the text (i.e. misinformation). Some subjects received instructions to monitor for inaccuracies in the films. After a delay, they were tested on the texts. Monitoring instructions did not reduce subjects' acquisition of misinformation, and even when subjects successfully detected the inaccuracies, they sometimes still reproduced the misinformation. However, when they received feedback about the inaccuracies, the production of misinformation was substantially reduced. Overall, these findings indicate that educators should provide feedback when using popular films for this critical thinking exercise so that students do not acquire false knowledge. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Discrimination of coronal stops by bilingual adults: the timing and nature of language interaction

The current study was designed to investigate the timing and nature of interaction between the two languages of bilinguals. For this purpose, we compared discrimination of Canadian French and Canadian English coronal stops by simultaneous bilingual, monolingual and advanced early L2 learners of French and English. French /d/ is phonetically described as dental whereas English /d/ is described as alveolar. Using a categorial AXB task, the performance of all four groups was compared to chance and to the performance of native Hindi listeners. Hindi listeners performed well above chance in discriminating French and English /d/-initial syllables. The discrimination performance of advanced early L2 learners, but not simultaneous bilinguals, was consistent with one merged category for coronal stops in the two languages. The data provide evidence for interaction in L2 learners as well as simultaneous bilinguals; however, the nature of the interaction is different in the two groups.     

Recent study,but not retrieval,of knowledge protects against learning errors

Surprisingly, people incorporate errors into their knowledge bases even when they have the correct knowledge stored in memory (e.g., Fazio, Barber, Rajaram, Ornstein, & Marsh, 2013). We examined whether heightening the accessibility of correct knowledge would protect people from later reproducing misleading information that they encountered in fictional stories. In Experiment 1, participants studied a series of target general knowledge questions and their correct answers either a few minutes (high accessibility of knowledge) or 1 week (low accessibility of knowledge) before exposure to misleading story references. In Experiments 2a and 2b, participants instead retrieved the answers to the target general knowledge questions either a few minutes or 1 week before the rest of the experiment. Reading the relevant knowledge directly before the story-reading phase protected against reproduction of the misleading story answers on a later general knowledge test, but retrieving that same correct information did not. Retrieving stored knowledge from memory might actually enhance the encoding of relevant misinformation.     

Pitch direction ability predicts melodic perception in autism

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) often present atypical auditory perception. Previous work has reported both enhanced low-level pitch discrimination and superior abilities to detect local pitch structure on higher-level melodic tasks in ASD. However, it is unclear how low and high levels of auditory perception are related in ASD or typical development (TD), or how this relationship might change across development and stimulus presentation rates. To these aims, in the present study, children with ASD and TD were tested on a low-level pitch direction discrimination task and a high-level melodic global-local task. Groups performed similarly on both of these auditory tasks. Moreover, individual differences in low-level pitch direction ability predicted performance on the higher-level global-local task, with a stronger relationship in ASD. Age did not affect the relationship between low-level and high-level pitch performance in either ASD or TD. However, there was a more positive effect of age on the high-level global-local task performance in TD than ASD. Finally, there was no effect of stimulus rate on the relationship between low-level and high-level pitch performance in either group. These findings provide a better understanding of how perception is associated across levels of processing in ASD versus TD. This work helps to better understand individual differences in auditory perception and to refine ASD phenotypes.     

Age differences in suggestibility to contradictions of demonstrated knowledge: the influence of prior knowledge

People maintain intact general knowledge into very old age and use it to support remembering. Interestingly, when older and younger adults encounter errors that contradict general knowledge, older adults suffer fewer memorial consequences: Older adults use fewer recently-encountered errors as answers for later knowledge questions. Why do older adults show this reduced suggestibility, and what role does their intact knowledge play? In three experiments, I examined suggestibility following exposure to errors in fictional stories that contradict general knowledge. Older adults consistently demonstrated more prior knowledge than younger adults but also gained access to even more across time. Additionally, they did not show a reduction in new learning from the stories, indicating lesser involvement of episodic memory failures. Critically, when knowledge was stably accessible, older adults relied more heavily on that knowledge compared to younger adults, resulting in reduced suggestibility. Implications for the broader role of knowledge in aging are discussed.     

Using verification feedback to correct errors made on a multiple-choice test

A key educational challenge is how to correct students' errors and misconceptions so that they do not persist. Simply labelling an answer as correct or incorrect on a short-answer test (verification feedback) does not improve performance on later tests; error correction requires receiving answer feedback. We explored the generality of this conclusion and whether the effectiveness of verification feedback depends on the type of test with which it is paired. We argue that, unlike for short-answer tests, learning whether one's multiple-choice selection is correct or incorrect should help participants narrow down the possible answers and identify specific lures as false. To test this proposition we asked participants to answer a series of general knowledge multiple-choice questions. They received no feedback, answer feedback, or verification feedback, and then took a short-answer test immediately and two days later. Verification feedback was just as effective as answer feedback for maintaining correct answers. Importantly, verification feedback allowed learners to correct more of their errors than did no feedback, although it was not as effective as answer feedback. Overall, verification feedback conveyed information to the learner, which has both practical and theoretical implications.     

Using verification feedback to correct errors made on a multiple-choice test

A key educational challenge is how to correct students’ errors and misconceptions so that they do not persist. Simply labelling an answer as correct or incorrect on a short-answer test (verification feedback) does not improve performance on later tests; error correction requires receiving answer feedback. We explored the generality of this conclusion and whether the effectiveness of verification feedback depends on the type of test with which it is paired. We argue that, unlike for short-answer tests, learning whether one's multiple-choice selection is correct or incorrect should help participants narrow down the possible answers and identify specific lures as false. To test this proposition we asked participants to answer a series of general knowledge multiple-choice questions. They received no feedback, answer feedback, or verification feedback, and then took a short-answer test immediately and two days later. Verification feedback was just as effective as answer feedback for maintaining correct answers. Importantly, verification feedback allowed learners to correct more of their errors than did no feedback, although it was not as effective as answer feedback. Overall, verification feedback conveyed information to the learner, which has both practical and theoretical implications.