Proactive interference plays a role in the word-length effect

The word-length effect is the advantage that lists of short words show over lists of long words in immediate recall. Typically, the word-length effect is used as strong support for decay-based theories of immediate retention. However, the present two experiments show that the traditional word-length effect emerges only after several trials in an experimental session, a result reminiscent of earlier findings in distractor-based short-term forgetting experiments. These results suggest that any complete account of the word-length effect will need to consider a role for proactive interference.     

Does retrieval fluency contribute to the underconfidence-with-practice effect?

Judgments of learning (JOLs) made during multiple study-test trials underestimate increases in recall performance across those trials, an effect that has been dubbed the underconfidence-with-practice (UWP) effect. In 3 experiments, the authors examined the contribution of retrieval fluency to the UWP effect for immediate and delayed JOLs. The UWP effect was demonstrated with reliable underconfidence on Trial 2 occurring for both kinds of JOL. However, in contrast to a retrieval-fluency hypothesis, fine-grained analyses indicated that the reliance of JOLs on retrieval fluency contributed minimally to the UWP effect. Our discussion focuses on the status of the retrieval-fluency hypothesis for the UWP effect.     

Assessing personality disorders using a systematic clinical interview: evaluation of an alternative to structured interviews

The aim of this study was to assess interrater reliability and provide initial data bearing on the validity of a method of assessing personality disorders (PDs) that does not presume that patients can accurately self-report personality pathology. In a sample of 24 outpatients, two clinician-judges independently applied the Shedler-Westen Assessment Procedure-200 (SWAP-200; Westen & Shedler, 1999a, 2000), a 200-item Q-sort procedure for assessing personality pathology, to data from the Clinical Diagnostic Interview (Westen, 2002), a systematic clinical interview that mirrors and standardizes methods used by experienced clinicians to diagnose personality. In 16 of the 24 cases, the treating clinician also independently described the patient using the SWAP-200 Q-sort, based on longitudinal knowledge of the patient over the course of treatment, blind to the interview data. Interrater reliability was uniformly high, with median correlations between interviewers at r > .80. Interviewer-treating clinician correlations were also high, with median convergent validity coefficients at r > .80. Diagnostic overlap (discriminant validity) was moderate for dimensional DSM-IV diagnoses, reflecting extensive comorbidity among disorders, but minimal for empirically derived diagnoses identified in prior research. Treating clinicians' dimensional PD diagnoses using this method also strongly predicted interviewer-rated measures of adaptive functioning. The findings provide preliminary support for the reliability and validity of an alternative to structured interviews for diagnosing personality pathology, and suggest that the way to improve validity of personality diagnosis may not be to minimize clinical inference but to quantify it using psychometric instruments.     

The effect of commitment on relative left frontal cortical activity: tests of the action-based model of dissonance

The action-based model of dissonance and recent advances in neuroscience suggest that commitment to action should cause greater relative left frontal cortical activity. Two experiments were conducted in which electroencephalographic activity was recorded following commitment to action, operationalized with a perceived choice manipulation. Perceived high as compared to low choice to engage in the action, regardless of whether it was counterattitudinal or proattitudinal, caused greater relative left frontal cortical activity. Moreover, perceived high as compared to low choice caused attitudes to be more consistent with the action. These results broaden the theoretical reach of the action-based model by suggesting that similar neural and motivational processes are involved in attitudinal responses to counterattitudinal and proattitudinal commitments.     

Intrinsic motivations and the non-profit health sector: Evidence from Ethiopia

Economists have traditionally assumed that individual behavior is motivated exclusively by extrinsic incentives. Social psychologists, in contrast, stress that intrinsic motivations are also important. In recent work, economic theorists have started to build psychological factors, like intrinsic motivations, into their models. Besley and Ghatak (2005) propose that individuals are differently motivated in that they have different “missions”, and their selection into sectors or organizations with matching missions enhances organizational efficiency. We test Besley and Ghatak’s model using data from a unique cohort study. We generated two proxies for intrinsic motivations: a survey-based measure of the health professionals philanthropic motivations and an experimental measure of their pro-social motivations. We find that both proxies predict health professionals’ decision to work in the non-profit sector. We also find that philanthropic health workers employed in the non-profit sector earn lower wages than their colleagues.     

Psychometric properties of the Social Skills Questionnaire: Portuguese adaptation of the student form (grades 7 to 12)

The present study aims to analyze the psychometric properties of the student form (Grades 7 to 12) of the Social Skills Questionnaire authored by Gresham and Elliott (1990), on a sample of Portuguese adolescents. Participants included 573 students, both female and male, aged 14 to 19. Reliability was assessed through Cronbach's alpha and was .87 for the total scale, ranging from.58 to .72 for the subscales. A confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the main adjustment indices presented unexpected values. A principal components analysis indicated that several items of the cooperation subscale correlated with other factors. Adequate adjustment indices were found when cooperation was removed from the model. Semantic dualities due to cultural factors and difficulties assuming the cooperation dimension as an independent dimension might explain the results observed. The reorganization of the SSQ offers a reliable and valid instrument for research within the Portuguese population.     

Part-list cuing in speeded recognition and free recall

The primary question was whether part-list cuing decrements would occur in a speeded yes/no recognition task and free recall. After studying category exemplars, participants were tested either after re-presentation of a subset of the exemplars (cues) or without re-presentation. Free recall of all study items followed the recognition task in each trial. Across two experiments, results demonstrated part-list cuing impairment in two ways: significant slowing of target recognition and lower free recall of target items in cued than in uncued trials. These findings extend the limited research on part-list cuing in recognition and support retrieval inhibition and retrieval competition interpretations of the phenomenon. Moreover, despite arguments for the necessity of the presence of cues for part-list inhibition, the present experiments demonstrate that the negative effects of cues can persist in their absence.     

Domain familiarity as a cue for judgments of learning

Students differ in how much they already know about topics within and across their courses. Few studies, however, have examined the relationship between participants’ levels of knowledge across topics (i.e., their “domain familiarity”) and their learning of information from those topics, their study choices related to those topics, and their subjective self-assessments of their learning about the topics. As such, in two studies we had participants (Study 1, college students; Study 2, Mturk workers) rank their domain familiarity for several to-be-studied domains (e.g., chemistry, history), rate their efficacy and interest in those domains, study and make judgments of learning (JOLs) for facts from each domain, and finally complete a short-answer test over those facts. Participants’ efficacy and interest ratings for the topics were linearly related to their topic rankings, as were their recall of and JOLs for facts from those domains. Although the JOLs were consistently overconfident, they were more overconfident for better-known than for lesser-known topics. Participants’ study times were not related to their topic rankings (Studies 1 and 2), but participants did use domain familiarity to strategically decide which domains to restudy before the test (Study 2). Participants typically chose to restudy their least-familiar topics, but chose to restudy their best-known topic under extremely limited restudy conditions. As a whole, the results suggest that participants effectively use their domain familiarity as a basis for their JOLs and restudy choices, but to some extent overuse this factor to assess their learning, and underuse it to guide initial study.