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The study reports an analysis of the drafts produced by two groups of students during an exam. Drafts were categorized as a function of some of their graphic features (e.g. their length), and of their different planning strategies used for their production (e.g. note draft, organized draft, composed draft). Grades obtained by the students on their essays related to the different categories of drafts. Results show that 2/3 of both groups of students made some kinds of draft. Drafts mostly consisted of note drafts or long composed drafts. Very few consisted of organized drafts. However, students that wrote these latter drafts obtained the best ratings. Drafting strategy was homogeneous for half of the students who used one category. The other half successively used two drafting modes. In that case they mostly associated writing with jotting down notes or with some marks of organization. Here, again, students who organized, even partially, their drafts obtained the highest grades. Very few corrections were brought to the long drafts and they concerned the surface (spelling or lexicon), not the content or the plan. This research shows that only a limited number of students used an efficient drafting (organized draft) even though such a strategy is generally associated with the highest ratings.

This study set out to test the prediction that a Cognitive Interview may increase resistance to subsequent misleading suggestions in child witness interviews. The misleading information was presented in the form of questions both prior to, and after, a cognitive or structured interview to 8 and 9 year old witnesses to a video-taped event. Use of the cognitive interview resulted in more correct responses to post-interview questions than did the structured interview eventhough there was not quite a significant effect of the cognitive interview on information recalled during the actual interview. On the basis of their interview performance the children were classified as `intruders' or `non-intruders' (i.e. those children who intruded pre-interview misleading items into the subsequent interview and those who did not). The `non-intruders' made significantly fewer errors on the post-interview questions indicating lower vulnerability to misleading information. Moreover, those children who selected the `don't know' option made fewer errors in the interview and were more accurate in their responses. Theoretical and practical implications of the data are discussed in the context of group differences in vulnerability to suggestion and techniques for increasing resistance to suggestion.

The mental model theory postulates that reasoners build models of the situations described in premises. A conclusion is possible if it holds in at least one model of the premises; it is probable if it holds in most of the models; and it is necessary if it holds in all of the models. The theory also postulates that reasoners represent as little information as possible in explicit models and, in particular, that they represent only information about what is true. One consequence is that there should be a category of illusory inferences: they will have conclusions that seem obvious, but that are wholly erroneous. Experiment 1 established the existence of such illusory inferences about probabilities. Overall, 88% of the intelligent adult subjects chose as more probable an outcome that was impossible for at least one of the illusory problems. Experiment 2 corroborated the phenomenon and showed that illusory inferences include a wide variety of problems. Finally, the paper argues that current theories based on formal rules of inference are unlikely to be able to explain the illusions.

The aim of the present study was to explore the conditions under which repeated questions would influence memory performance. Children of five and seven years of age witnessed a staged-event and were then individually interviewed with a free recall test and closed and open-form questions, some of which were repeated in the interview. Some children were warned that questions may be repeated. The older children were more accurate on both open and closed question forms than the younger children. In both groups recall improved upon second questioning with open questions whereas accuracy of responses deteriorated somewhat upon repetition of closed questions. On the basis of this data it is concluded that if closed questions are repeated in a witness interview it may lead the witness to incorrectly assume that their first response was incorrect; however the findings support the use of repeated questioning as a probe for more information to open-ended questions.

We report evidence that long term memory retains absolute (accurate) features of perceptual events. Specifically, we show that memory for music seems to preserve the absolute tempo of the musical performance. In Experiment 1, 46 subjects sang popular songs from memory, and their tempos were compared to recorded versions of the songs. Seventy-two of the subjects came within 8% of the actual tempo on two consecutive trials (using different songs), demonstrating accuracy near the perceptual threshold (JND) for tempo. In Experiment 2, a control experiment, we found that folk songs lacking a tempo standard generally have a large variability in tempo; this counters arguments that memory for the tempo of remembered songs is driven by articulatory constraints. The relevance of the current findings to theories of perceptual memory and memory for music are discussed.

The recovered memory debate exposes several traditional and recent contradictions within psychology. Building on Bowers and Farvolden, the truth of recovered memories has profoundly different meanings for therapeutic versus legal settings. Whereas memory can be distorted during the process of retrieval, certain techniques -- such as nondirective writing -- may be helpful in reducing suggestive influences in recall. Ironically, methods which have been found to produce the most accurate recollections of the past appear only subtly different from those that yield the greatest distortions. The recovered memory debate must ultimately be viewed within a cultural context, both in terms of the phenomenon and its treatment. Parallels to other explanatory and therapeutic fads related to states of nonspecific distress are discussed.

Scientific work on memory distortion has captured the attention of the the wider mental health field, of the legal profession, and of the general public. One reason is this: In the last decade, hundreds if not thousands of patients have emerged from psychotherapy accusing their fathers and mothers, their uncles and grandfathers, their former neighbors, their former teachers and therapists, and countless others, of sexually abusing them years before. The patients often claim that they have repressed or dissociated the "memories" until various therapeutic interventions excavated the mental contents and made their presence known. After recovering these new memories, patients have confronted their alleged abusers, and sometimes taken them to court, forcing them to pay sizable sums in damages. In many cases, accused people have found themselves dragged through the criminal justice system, and occasionally, to their shock, sent off to prison.

Counterfactual imaginings are known to have far reaching implications. In the present experiment, we ask if imagining events from one's past can affect memory for childhood events. We draw on the social psychology literature showing that imagining a future event increases the subjective likelihood that the event will occur. The concepts of cognitive availability and the source monitoring framework provide reasons to expect that imagination may inflate confidence that a childhood event occurred. However, people routinely produce myriad counterfactual imaginings (i.e., daydreams and fantasies) but usually do not confuse them with past experiences. To determine the effects of imagining a childhood event, we pretested subjects on how confident they were that a number of childhood events had happened, asked them to imagine some of those events, and then gathered new confidence measures. For each of the target items, imagination inflated confidence that the event had occurred in childhood. We discuss implications for situations in which imagination is used as an aid in searching for presumably lost memories.

Like the witch-hunt trials of old, people today are being accused and even imprisoned on 'evidence' provided by memories from dreams and flashbacks - memories that didn't exist before therapy. What is going on here?

Mental rotation tasks have been used to probe the mental imagery of both sighted and visually impaired people. People who have been blind since birth display a response pattern which is qualitatively similar to that of sighted people but tend to respond more slowly or with a higher error rate. It has been suggested that visually impaired people code the stimulus and its (or their own) motion in a different way from sighted people - in particular, congenitally blind people may ignore the external reference framework provided by the stimulus and surrounding objects, and instead use body-centred or movement-based coding systems. What has not been considered before is the relationship between different strategies for tactually exploring the stimulus and the response pattern of congenitally blind participants. Congenitally blind and partially sighted children were tested for their ability to learn and recall a layout of tactile symbols. Children explored layouts of one, three or five shapes which they then attempted to reproduce. On half the trials there was a short pause between exploring and reproducing the layouts. In an aligned condition children reproduced the array from the same position at which they had explored it; in a rotated condition children were asked to move 90˚ round the table between exploring and reproducing the layout. Both congenitally blind and partially sighted children were less accurate in the rotated condition than in the aligned condition. Five distinct strategies used by the children in learning the layout were identified. These strategies interacted with both visual status and age. We suggest that the use of strategies, rather than visual status or chronological age, accounts for differences in performance between children.

A beam balance is analyzed as a model that describes Weber's law. The mathematical derivations of the torques on a beam balance produce a description that is strictly compatible with that law. The natural relationship of the beam balance model to Weber's law provides for an intuitive understanding of the relationship of Weber's law to sensory and receptor systems. Additionally, this model may offer a simple way to compute perturbations that result from unequal effects on coupled steady state systems. A practical outgrowth from this work is that a relatively simple mathematical description models sensory phenomena and may aid in the understanding of sensory and receptor systems.

Evidence for the absolute nature of long-term auditory memory is provided by analyzing the production of familiar melodies. Additionally, a two-component theory of absolute pitch is presented, which conceives of this rare ability as consisting of a more common ability, pitch memory, and a separate, less common ability, pitch labeling. Forty-six subjects sang two different popular songs and their productions were compared to the actual pitches used in recordings of those songs. 40% of the subjects sang the correct pitch on at least one trial; 12% of the subjects hit the correct pitch on both trials, and 44% came within two semitones of the correct pitch on both trials. The results show a convergence with previous studies on the stability of auditory imagery and latent absolute pitch ability; further, the results suggest that individuals might possess representations of pitch that are more stable and accurate than previously recognized.

The objective of this experimental observation is to show how the use of a standard word processor changes the writing strategies devised by advanced users during the production of short texts. Empirical research has indicated that word processors, in fact, have a negative impact on writing strategies. Analysis of the conditions under which "man-machine" dialogue takes place, has shown that screen size and linear management both have an effect on writing. Before determining the ways in which a word processor can disrupt common writing practices, we must gain a better understanding of how a text is actually composed in real time, with or without a computer. Although the various writing processes have been clearly identified, the functional scenario describing the succession of writing phases and accompagnying activities is still poorly defined. The marks produced by writers on paper, whether linguistic (words, sentence fragments, sentences) or non-linguistic (arrows, underlining, indexation, diagrams, etc.), reflect the planning, translating, and revising processes being carried out by the writer. Sharples and Pemberton (1990) describe the exact functions of these marks in the elaboration of the ideas to be translated into text form (levels of organization). However, more knowledge about their frequency of use at the different stages of text composition is required. This is one of the goals of the present experimental observation. For the most part, such marks cannot be displayed and manipulated on the screen of a standard word processor as they can on paper. It is therefore crucial that we observe the means employed by writers to adapt their use of these necessary devices to word processing. The main results indicate that writers who use a word processor still resort to "pencil and paper" for the initial planning. The small amount of text preparation done by computer users (manifested by chronological and hierarchical organization marks) compared to writers who produce without a word processor is compensated by extensive revision on the screen. However, while writing strategies are highly dependent on production conditions, the quality of the texts produced does not vary significantly. The possibility of eliminating one of the important drawbacks of computer-assisted writing i. e. the fact that the information must be displayed linearly on the screen, is currently being studied by designers of planning aids that accompagny word processors. Before such aids can actually be developed, however, more knowledge is needed of the phases of writing and the marks used by writers throughout the production process.

Repression is one of the most haunting concepts in psychology. Something shocking happens, and the mind pushes the experience into some inaccessible corner of the unconscious. Later, the memory may rise up and emerge into consciousness. Repression is one of the major foundation stones on which the structure of psychoanalysis rests. Recently there has been a rise in a particular type of repressed memory, namely reported claims of childhood sex abuse that were allegedly repressed for many years. With recent changes in legislation, people with recently-unearthed memories are suing alleged perpetrators for events that happened 20, 30, 40 or more years earlier. Juries and judges are now learing about repression. These new developments give rise to a number of questions 1) How common is it for memories of child abuse to be repressed? 2) How are juror and judges likely to react to these repressed memory claims? 3) When the memories surface, what are they like? and 4) How authentic are the memories?

We are reviewing and summarizing evidence for the processes of acquisition of information outside of conscious awareness (processing information about covariations, nonconscious indirect and interactive inferences, self-perpetuation of procedural knowledge). A considerable amount of data indicates that as compared to consciously controlled cognition, the nonconscious information-acquisition processes are not only much faster but also structurally more sophisticated in the sense that they are capable of efficient processing of multidimensional and interactive relations between variables. Those mechanisms of nonconscious acquisition of information provide a major channel for the development of procedural knowledge which is indispensable for such important aspects of cognitive functioning as encoding and interpretation of stimuli and the triggering emotional reactions.

An examination format assessing the intraverbal repertoire of individuals in psychology is described and results using it reported. The Associate Test is easy to prepare, to take, and to grade. Its reliability measures are satisfactory; its ability to predict later behavior is reported upon. The Associate Test is computer friendly, and its methods can be applied for examination in any field, and at any level.

A series of experiments is summarized, in historical rather than logical order. The results of these experiments indicate that one type of verbal operant, the notate, a discriminated verbal response [For the usage of the terms response and stimulus, see stimulus (3), in the writers glossary (Verplanck, 1957). See also, Stimulus III (Verplanck, 1954); and Gibson (1960).] by a subject to stimuli experimentally presented, occurs in at least four kinds of situations, "concept-identification," "problem-solving," "association" and "conditioning." In two of these it becomes chained with other such operants, to form the notant--a fuller verbal statement about the environment, or the monent--a self-administered instruction, that is, an SD for further behavior. All three classes of operant, each behaving slightly differently from one another in behavior, seem to constitute the behavioral basis of statements about "hypotheses." Unlike "mediating responses," or "processes," these verbal behaviors are not theoretically inferred, or indirectly manipulated, but rather are subject to direct experimental investigation. The relationship of their strength to the strength of the behaviors that they control is demonstrable.

Revising is an evaluating and editing process that is an essential part of text production. Is text revising facilitated by the use of word processors? After examining the related research, it is difficult to conclude with certainty that the use of word processors is always effective in improving writers' revising skills, or that their use necessarily leads to the production of higher quality texts. Their effectiveness depends on a large number of parameters (computer equipment, writing skills, task execution conditions) which psychologists are now starting to measure.

Past research has demonstrated that reading efficiency is lower from standard computer displays of the 1980s than from paper. In the present experiments, subjects read or skimmed stories, sometimes from a high-quality CRT (cathode ray tube) and sometimes from a book. Skimming was 41% slower from the CRTs than from the book. Possible reasons for this finding are discussed. Reading speed and comprehension were equivalent for the high-quality CRTs and the book. The paperless office may be imminent after all.

Background Researchers from diverse theoretical backgrounds have studied workplace interruptions in healthcare, leading to a complex and conflicting body of literature. Understanding pre-existing viewpoints may advance the field more effectively than attempts to remove bias from investigations. Objective To identify research traditions that have motivated and guided interruptions research, and to note research questions posed, gaps in approach, and possible avenues for future research. Methods A critical review was conducted of research on interruptions in healthcare. Two researchers identified core research communities based on the community’s motivations, philosophical outlook, and methods. Among the characteristics used to categorise papers into research communities were the predominant motivation for studying interruptions, the research questions posed, and key contributions to the body of knowledge on interruptions in healthcare. In cases where a paper approached an equal number of characteristics from two traditions, it was placed in a blended research community. Results A total of 141 papers were identified and categorised; all papers identified were published from 1994 onwards. Four principal research communities emerged: epidemiology, quality improvement, cognitive systems engineering (CSE), and applied cognitive psychology. Blends and areas of mutual influence between the research communities were identified that combine the benefits of individual traditions, but there was a notable lack of blends incorporating quality improvement initiatives. The question most commonly posed by researchers across multiple communities was: what is the impact of interruptions? Impact was measured as a function of task time or risk in the epidemiology tradition, situation awareness in the CSE tradition, or resumption lag (time to resume an interrupted task) in the applied cognitive psychology tradition. No single question about interruptions in healthcare was shared by all four of the core communities. Conclusions Much research on workplace interruptions in healthcare can be described in terms of fundamental values of four distinct research traditions and the communities that bring the values and methods: of those research traditions to their investigations. Blends between communities indicate that mutual influence has occurred as interruptions research has progressed. It is clear from this review that there is no single or privileged perspective to study interruptions. Instead, these findings suggest that researchers investigating interruptions in healthcare would benefit from being more aware of different perspectives from their own, especially when they consider workplace interventions to reduce interruptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In three experiments, literate English-speaking adults learned either to identify or to extract meaning from either logographs (Blissymbols or Chinese characters) or English words written in an unfamiliar alphabetic code. Performance was substantially and reliably better in the logographic conditions than in the alphabetic conditions. Vocabulary sized ranged from 30 to 240 words per condition. In a fourth experiment, learning was slower with inconsistent mapping of graphemes to phonemes (similar to English) than with consistent mapping. These results indicate that, under a reasonably wide range of conditions, logographic writing systems may be easier to learn to read than alphabetic writing systems.

Two experiments were carried out to find an optimal electronic text display method given limited display space. The display formats tested fell into two categories: Times Square, in which text is scrolled from right to left; and rapid, serial, visual presentation (RSVP), in which text is presented one or several words at a time to a fixed location in the display. Previous studies have indicated that Times Square format is not as efficient as page format display or, by extrapolation, as RSVP. These studies, unlike the present experiments, did not include a smooth-scrolling (pixel-by-pixel) condition. In Experiment 1, a comparison was made between multiple-word RSVP and three versions of Times Square format, differing only in the size of steps by which the display was scrolled. Except for the largest step-size, comprehension was as high in the Times Square conditions as in the RSVP condition. The subjects expressed a significant preference for smooth scrolling Times Square over any other condition. Experiment 2 showed that comprehension for smooth scrolling Times Square was at least as high as that for RSVP at presentation rates ranging from 100 to 300 words per minute. Times Square reading is discussed in terms of optokinetic nystagmus (OKN).

The ability of rats (a) to acquire a generalized neophobia and (b) to maintain total daily fluid intake (by increasing intake of plain water) during the neophobia, was assessed. Rats trained to drink on a 23 1/2-hr water deprivation schedule were presented with a series of novel-flavored drinking solutions at 4-day intervals. Fifteen min of exposure to the novel flavor was followed first by 15 min of access to plain water, and then by an injection of lithium chloride. A saline-injected group and a noncontingent lithium chloride-injected group served as controls. Re-exposure to flavors did not occur between presentations of novel flavors. The rats in the group receiving novel flavors paired with toxicosis not only showed suppressed intake of all subsequent novel flavors after several pairings, but also eventually showed suppressed intake of plain water, which was limited to the days of novel-flavor presentation.

To determine whether the development of novel stimulus-response associations by the mother during the periparturient period is attributable to a general facilitation of learning produced by the hormonal milieu during that period, learning ability under various reproductive conditions was assessed in two tasks unrelated to the periparturitional situation. The two tasks, selected because they equalized the various groups for motivation and performance variables, were acquisition of a water-maze escape (including two reversals), and acquisition and retention of an unsignalled shuttlebox shock avoidance. The groups tested in the water maze were a midpregnant group, an immediately prepartum group, and an immediately postpartum group. In the shuttlebox, the same conditions (different rats) were compared, together with a nonpregnant estrus condition, and a nonpregnant diestrus condition. The results of both experiments indicate that although learning occurred, the characteristics of acquisition and retention were not influenced by reproductive condition.