Counseling Mexican American Seniors: An Overview

This article examines assessment and counseling techniques that correspond to the sociocultural framework of Mexican American seniors. Acculturation, familial, and adaptation themes are delineated for ensuring appropriate interventions. Case vignettes elucidate these perspectives.     

Effects of Grammatical Categories on Letter Detection in Continuous Text

The present study focuses on the interplay between the linguistic principles and the psycholinguistic processes involved in reading. Results from 56 participants on a letter detection task reveal that readers do not process all function words in the same manner. Omission rates were highest for function words occupying the head of maximal projections such as complementizers and determiners. Prepositions were shown to occupy an intermediary position between content and function words, with omission rates varying depending on their semantic load. Together these results appear to bolster and offer a finer grained picture of the role of function words within the framework of both the Guidance Organization (Greenberg et al. in Psychon Bull Rev 11(3):428–433, 2004) and Attentional Disengagement (Roy-Charland et al. in Percept Psychophys 69(3):324–337, 2007) reading models. The results of the present study are discussed using an X-bar theory approach with the goal of refining the structural account of letter detection errors.     

The effects of increasing semantic-associate list length on the Deese–Roediger–McDermott false recognition memory: Dual false-memory process in retrieval from sub- and supraspan lists

In this study, the number of semantic associates in Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) lists was varied from 4 to 14 in a modified Sternberg paradigm. The false alarm (FA) and correct rejection (CR) reaction time (RT)/memory-set size (MSS) functions of critical lures showed a cross-over interaction at approximately MSS 7, suggesting a reversal of the relative dominance between these two responses to the critical lure at this point and also indicating the location of the boundary between the sub- and supraspan MSS. For the subspan lists, FA to critical lures was slower than CR, suggesting a slow, strategic mechanism driving the false memory. Conversely, for the supraspan lists, critical lure FA was faster than its CR, suggesting a spontaneous mechanism driving the false memory. Results of two experiments showed that an automatic, fast, and a slow, controlled process could be error-prone or error-corrective, depending on the length of the DRM memory list. Thus there is a dual retrieval process in false memory as in true memory. The findings can be explained by both the activation/monitoring and the fuzzy-trace theories.     

Acute aerobic exercise improves memory across intensity and fitness levels

ABSTRACT

The present study was designed to examine the impact of exercise intensity and aerobic fitness on free recall, judgments of learning (JOLs), and metacognitive accuracy. In Experiment 1, 30 college students engaged in either (1) no exercise, (2) light exercise (55% of predicted maximal heart rate), or (3) moderate exercise (75% of predicted maximal heart rate) on three different days. In Experiment 2, 29 high-fit students (VO₂ max?≥?70th percentile) and 28 low-fit students (VO₂ max?≤?50th percentile) completed sedentary and light exercise conditions. In both experiments, free recall scores significantly increased in the exercise conditions compared with the sedentary condition, but JOL magnitude and metacognitive accuracy were largely unaffected. These results demonstrate that exercise can improve recall at both light and high intensities, and that the benefit can be obtained by individuals regardless of their fitness level.     

Factors Influencing L2 Self-repair Behavior: The Role of L2 Proficiency,Attentional Control and L1 Self-repair Behavior

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research - Self-repairs, that is revisions of speech that speakers themselves initiate and complete (Salonen and Laakso in J Child Lang 36:859, 2009....     

Personifying the Radical

This study examines relationships among individual dispositions, news framing of civil liberties restrictions, security concerns, and political tolerance. We theorize that news frames condition the effects of individual dispositions on security and tolerance attitudes. To explore these relationships, an online‐survey experiment was conducted with 650 respondents. This experiment presented alternative versions of news stories about domestic security policies following September 11, and the policies' implications for a fringe activist group. One factor was whether the activists targeted by the government advocated for a cause supported or opposed by the respondent; another factor was whether the story framed government actions against the activists at the individual or group level. Findings show that individual framing—as opposed to group framing—made participants less tolerant of radicals they opposed and more tolerant of radicals they supported. Similar effects were observed for political ideology. Implications of personification as a framing device are discussed.     

Using Class Pass Intervention to Decrease Disruptive Behavior in Young Children

Previous research has shown that disruptive behavior can impair students’ academic success (Pierce et al. in Remedial Spec Educ 25:175–188, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1177/07419325040250030501), as well as increase teacher’s stress level (Westling in Remedial Spec Educ 31:48–63, 2010, https://doi.org/10.1177/0741932508327466). The Class Pass Intervention (CPI) is a Tier 2 intervention designed to decrease disruptive behavior and increase academic engagement; however, few studies have evaluated the efficacy of CPI. The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of CPI on disruptive behavior and academic engagement of young students who engage in disruptive behavior. This study used a non-concurrent multiple baseline design to assess experimental control. In the current study, CPI led to a decrease in disruptive behavior and an increase in academic engagement for all three participants and these levels persisted throughout schedule thinning. In addition, results of teacher and student social validity assessments indicated that the intervention was effective and easy to implement and that students preferred the intervention.