Set size and the orthographic/phonological neighbourhood size effect in serial recognition: The importance of randomization.

The neighbourhood size effect refers to the finding of better memory for words with more orthographic/phonological neighbours than otherwise comparable words with fewer neighbours. Although many studies have replicated this result with serial recall, only one has used serial recognition. Greeno et al. (2022) found no neighbourhood size effect when a large stimulus pool was used and a reverse effect-better performance for small neighbourhood words-when a small stimulus pool was used. We reexamined these results but made two methodological changes. First, for the large pool, we randomly generated lists for each subject rather than creating one set of lists that all subjects experienced. Second, for the small pool, we randomly generated a small pool for each subject rather than using one small pool for all subjects. In both cases, we observed a neighbourhood size effect consistent with results from the serial recall literature. Implications for methodology and theoretical accounts of both the neighbourhood size effect and serial recognition are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The orthographic/phonological neighbourhood size effect and set size.

A growing number of studies have shown that on serial recall tests, words with more orthographic/phonological neighbours are better recalled than otherwise comparable words with fewer neighbours, the so-called neighbourhood size effect. Greeno et al. replicated this result when using a large stimulus pool but found a reverse neighbourhood size effect-better recall of words with fewer rather than more neighbours-when using a small stimulus pool. We report three registered experiments that further examine the role of set size in the neighbourhood size effect. Experiment 1 used the large pool from Greeno et al. and replicated their finding of a large-neighbourhood advantage. Experiment 2 used the small pool from Greeno et al. but found no difference in recall between the large and small neighbourhood conditions. Experiment 3 also used a small pool but the small pool was randomly generated for each subject from the large pool used in Experiment 1. This resulted in a typical large neighbourhood advantage. We suggest that set size is not critical to the direction of the neighbourhood size effect, with a large neighbourhood advantage appearing with both small and large pools.

Mindfulness and Imagery Enhanced Behavioral Parenting: Effectiveness Pilot of the Confident Carers Cooperative Kids Program.

Mindfulness is increasingly offered to parents of children presenting with behavioral problems, either as a stand-alone intervention, or integrated within existing behavioral parenting interventions. There is relatively modest support for mindful parenting, with small to medium effect size improvements demonstrated across child and parent outcome measures. Here we introduce a mindfulness and imagery enhanced behavioral parenting program. We argue blending mindfulness, imagery and behavioral skills could produce improved parenting engagement and perseverance, leading to stronger outcomes. Pilot data is presented from two contrasting real world clinical settings. Parents attending the 8-week Confident Carers Cooperative Kids (CCCK) group program in a university clinic setting were invited to be included in the study (n = 20). Permission was also gained to use archival data from a community organisation offering CCCK groups to parents who were at risk of child welfare involvement (n = 14). Pre- and post-intervention measures were completed across both groups on parent-reported child behavior, parent wellbeing, adaptive parenting, and mindful parenting. Parents from both groups achieved significant pre- to post-intervention improvements in child behavior problems, parent wellbeing, adaptive parenting, and mindful parenting, with large effect sizes. Larger improvements in child behavior problems were reported by parents from the community group compared with the university group. The CCCK intervention appears beneficial across child and parent outcomes, including for families most in need. A larger sample is required to replicate and extend these promising findings.

Phonological similarity in the serial recall task hinders item recall, not just order.

The phonological similarity effect in short-term memory (STM) is the finding that serial recall of lists of similar sounding items is poorer than that of dissimilar sounding items. This is traditionally argued to be due to a detrimental effect on memory for the order of the words in the list and not on memory for the words themselves. Models that propose forgetting from STM is due to interference must invoke an additional compensatory process where the shared element of the words acts as a cue to recall, in order to account for the lack of an effect on memory for the words. However, the possibility of a detrimental effect of phonological similarity on item memory when these compensatory processes are not available has not been investigated. Two experiments (n = 60 and n = 57) in which similarity is operationalized in a way that precludes usage of compensatory processes are reported. The results clearly demonstrate that item recall is poorer for similar lists than dissimilar lists when similarity is defined in this way.

The intentionality bias in schizotypy: a social matter.

INTRODUCTION: We aimed to investigate the association between schizotypy and intentionality bias, the tendency to interpret ambiguous actions as being intentional, for social and non-social actions separately. This bias contributes to interpersonal difficulties, and has been associated with psychotic symptoms, such as delusions. However, results have been inconsistent for an association between putative psychosis proneness, schizotypy, and intentionality bias. Further, the multidimensional nature of schizotypy has not been considered. Agreeableness was measured to examine the specificity of the relationship, and inhibition to examine its potential role as a mediator. METHODS: Two online studies are reported (n = 280 and n = 163) in which participants made intentionality judgements about ambiguous actions described in sentences. They also completed questionnaire measures of schizotypy and agreeableness, and inhibitory efficiency (a sentence completion task). RESULTS: Schizotypy was associated with perceiving ambiguous actions as intentional, particularly in social contexts, after controlling for agreeableness. The association with social intentionality was stronger for schizotypy subscales capturing paranoia and unusual beliefs. Inhibitory efficiency as not a significant predictor of intentionality bias. CONCLUSION: These finding suggest intentionality biases for social and non-social events are distinguishable. In relation to schizotypy, social situations appear to generate perceptions of intentionality. Intentionality bias represents a phenotypic cognitive risk for psychosis which should be further investigated.

Complex Scenes From the International Affective Picture System (IAPS).

Complex scenes from standardized stimuli databases such as the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) are organized dimensionally rather than discretely. Further, the potentially unique function of socially relevant scenes is often overlooked. This study sought to identify discrete categories of complex scenes from the IAPS and to explore if there were qualitative features that make the emotional content of some social scenes identifiable with higher levels of agreement. One hundred and three participants (53.4% female, mean age 24.4) judged 118 IAPS scenes as reflecting fear, happy, sad, or neutral. A second judgment study was conducted with a separate group of participants (N = 117; 79.2% female; mean age 30.41) to further characterize valid affective scenes across the full range of basic emotions. Sixty images received agreement on their emotional category from >70% of judges and were considered valid. IAPS identifier codes for these images are available for reference (along with the supplementary material from the second judgment study), organized by emotional and social content. An incidental observation was such that compared to nonsocial scenes, lower agreement rates were observed for social scenes across the board. Qualitative features of social scenes that were classified into emotional categories based on higher levels of agreement are discussed.

Semantic feature effect in verbal short-term memory.

The present study explored the influences of semantic features in immediate serial recall in order to further examine the involvement of semantic knowledge in short-term memory. The number of semantic features (NoF) was found to have a positive effect on short-term recall where high NoF words were remembered better than low NoF words (Experiment 1). This effect was replicated in a second experiment and was found to persist even after controlling for a potential confound (number of distinguishing features). It was further found that having more distinctive features facilitated recall performance of words whose representation was semantically poorer (Experiment 3). These results provide additional evidence of semantic influences in short-term memory and demonstrate that the organisation of semantic knowledge is reflected in short-term memory performance.

Attentional Bias for Threat and Anxiety: The Role of Loneliness.

Objective: There is literature to suggest that anxious individuals may be lonely. Attentional bias for threat (ABT), a mechanism implicated in the core symptoms of anxiety, has been linked to loneliness in a separate line of work. The primary aim of this study was to examine the role of loneliness in the association between ABT and anxiety. Method: An unselected sample of 260 individuals (196 Female; Mean Age = 22.43) completed measures of loneliness, ABT (a dot probe task), and anxiety. Two possible models of the role of loneliness in the ABT-anxiety link were tested using hierarchical regression analysis: (1) A moderation model (the ABT-anxiety link is moderated by loneliness), and (2) A proxy model (the ABT-anxiety link is better explained by loneliness). Results: In support of the latter model, ABT no longer predicted anxiety after the effects of loneliness had been accounted for. Additionally, ABT was associated with anxiety only when indexed using sadness-related scenes (but not fear-related scenes). Conclusions: Loneliness may be one important source of exaggerated threat appraisals which underpin the association between ABT and anxiety. Different classes of negative stimuli may be differentially sensitive to anxiety and should be a point of consideration in future research.

Forward and backward recall: Different visuospatial processes when you know what's coming.

In an immediate memory task, when participants are asked to recall list items in reverse order, benchmark memory phenomena found with more typical forward recall are not consistently reproduced. These inconsistencies have been attributed to the greater involvement of visuospatial representations in backward than in forward recall at the point of retrieval. In the present study, we tested this hypothesis with a dual-task paradigm in which manual-spatial tapping and dynamic visual noise were used as the interfering tasks. The interference task was performed during list presentation or at recall. In the first four experiments, recall direction was only communicated at the point of recall. In Experiments 1 and 2, fewer words were recalled with manual tapping than in the control condition. However, the detrimental effect of manual tapping did not vary as a function of recall direction or processing stage. In Experiment 3, dynamic visual noise did not influence recall performance. In Experiment 4, articulatory suppression was performed on all trials and manual tapping was added on half of them. As in the first two experiments, manual tapping disputed forward and backward recall to the same extent. In Experiment 5, recall direction was known before list presentation. As predicted by the visuospatial hypothesis, when manual tapping was performed during recall, its detrimental effect was limited to backward recall. Overall, results can be explained by calling upon a modified version of the visuospatial hypothesis.

Correction to: Serial reconstruction of order and serial recall in verbal short-term memory.

The author acknowledges an honest error in the tables of the appendix of this article. Table 4 actually refers to the results of Experiment 3, and Table 5 refers to the results of Experiment 2.

Serial reconstruction of order and serial recall in verbal short-term memory.

We carried out a series of experiments on verbal short-term memory for lists of words. In the first experiment, participants were tested via immediate serial recall, and word frequency and list set size were manipulated. With closed lists, the same set of items was repeatedly sampled, and with open lists, no item was presented more than once. In serial recall, effects of word frequency and set size were found. When a serial reconstruction-of-order task was used, in a second experiment, robust effects of word frequency emerged, but set size failed to show an effect. The effects of word frequency in order reconstruction were further examined in two final experiments. The data from these experiments revealed that the effects of word frequency are robust and apparently are not exclusively indicative of output processes. In light of these findings, we propose a multiple-mechanisms account in which word frequency can influence both retrieval and preretrieval processes.

A Web-Based Adolescent Positive Psychology Program in Schools: Randomized Controlled Trial.

BACKGROUND: Adolescent mental health is characterized by relatively high rates of psychiatric disorders and low levels of help-seeking behaviors. Existing mental health programs aimed at addressing these issues in adolescents have repeated inconsistent results. Such programs have generally been based on techniques derived from cognitive behavioral therapy, which may not be ideally suited to early intervention among adolescent samples. Positive psychology, which seeks to improve well-being rather than alleviate psychological symptoms, offers an alternative approach. A previous community study of adolescents found that informal engagement in an online positive psychology program for up to 6 weeks yielded significant improvements in both well-being and depression symptoms. However, this approach had not been trialed among adolescents in a structured format and within a school setting. OBJECTIVE: This study examines the feasibility of an online school-based positive psychology program delivered in a structured format over a 6-week period utilizing a workbook to guide students through website content and interactive exercises. METHODS: Students from four high schools were randomly allocated by classroom to either the positive psychology condition, "Bite Back", or the control condition. The Bite Back condition consisted of positive psychology exercises and information, while the control condition used a series of non-psychology entertainment websites. Both interventions were delivered online for 6 hours over a period of 4-6 weeks during class time. Symptom measures and measures of well-being/flourishing and life satisfaction were administered at baseline and post intervention. RESULTS: Data were analyzed using multilevel linear modeling. Both conditions demonstrated reductions in depression, stress, and total symptom scores without any significant differences between the two conditions. Both the Bite Back and control conditions also demonstrated significant improvements in life satisfaction scores post intervention. However, only the control condition demonstrated significant increases in flourishing scores post intervention. CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest that a structured online positive psychology program administered within the school curriculum was not effective when compared to the control condition. The limitations of online program delivery in school settings including logistic considerations are also relevant to the contradictory findings of this study. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry: ACTRN1261200057831; https://www.anzctr.org.au/Trial/Registration/TrialReview.aspx?id=362489 (Archived by Webcite at http://www.webcitation.org/6NXmjwfAy).

Not so fast! Talker variability in serial recall at standard presentation rates.

In serial recall tasks, presenting items in alternating female and male voices impairs performance relative to the single-voice presentation. This phenomenon, termed the talker-variability effect (TVE), was recently reexamined by Hughes, Marsh, and Jones (2009, 2011), who used the effect as confirmatory evidence for their perceptual-gestural account of serial recall performance. Despite the authors' claim of generalisability, the serial recall paradigm employed did not reflect the standard parameters more generally adopted in verbal short-term memory research. Specifically, the presentation rate of the stimuli was almost 3 times that typically used. We sought to determine if the TVE, as observed by Hughes et al., was generalisable to the standard serial recall task by directly comparing recall performance in talker-variable conditions at fast and slow stimulus presentation rates. Experiment 1 employed a systematic replication of the foundational study undertaken by Hughes et al. (2009). Utilising a novel stimulus set, Experiment 2 provided a subsequent test of the generalisability of the TVE, examining the influence of item properties. Both experiments showed a robust TVE at the atypical fast presentation rate; however, for the slower item presentation, the TVE was unreliable. Furthermore, error analysis suggests that item recall also contributes to the TVE, contrary to the current explanation proposed by Hughes et al. (2009, 2011). The challenge of the present data to the perceptual-gestural account of the TVE is explored. Alternative accounts that focus on the resource cost of categorical speech perception in the context of talker variability are posited.

Personality change predicts self-reported mental and physical health.

OBJECTIVE: Personality dimensions are known to predict mortality and other health outcomes, but almost no research has assessed the effects of changes in personality traits on physical and mental health outcomes. In this article, we examined the effects of changes in the Big Five personality dimensions on health as assessed by the Short Form Health Survey (SF-36). METHOD: Respondents were 11,105 Australian adults aged 20-79 years (52.7% female). Latent difference score modeling was used to examine whether personality change over a 4-year period was associated with mental and physical health, and whether these effects were moderated by birth cohort. RESULTS: Increases in Conscientiousness and Extraversion were found to be associated with improved mental and physical health, whereas increased Neuroticism was linked with poorer health. The nature of these associations varied significantly by birth cohort. CONCLUSION: The findings have implications for understanding how changes in personality traits over time are related to health, and could be used to aid the development of effective health promotion strategies targeted to specific personality traits and birth cohorts.

Conditional recall and the frequency effect in the serial recall task: an examination of item-to-item associativity.

The frequency effect in short-term serial recall is influenced by the composition of lists. In pure lists, a robust advantage in the recall of high-frequency (HF) words is observed, yet in alternating mixed lists, HF and low-frequency (LF) words are recalled equally well. It has been argued that the preexisting associations between all list items determine a single, global level of supportive activation that assists item recall. Preexisting associations between items are assumed to be a function of language co-occurrence; HF-HF associations are high, LF-LF associations are low, and mixed associations are intermediate in activation strength. This account, however, is based on results when alternating lists with equal numbers of HF and LF words were used. It is possible that directional association between adjacent list items is responsible for the recall patterns reported. In the present experiment, the recall of three forms of mixed lists-those with equal numbers of HF and LF items and pure lists-was examined to test the extent to which item-to-item associations are present in serial recall. Furthermore, conditional probabilities were used to examine more closely the evidence for a contribution, since correct-in-position scoring may mask recall that is dependent on the recall of prior items. The results suggest that an item-to-item effect is clearly present for early but not late list items, and they implicate an additional factor, perhaps the availability of resources at output, in the recall of late list items.

Serial recall, word frequency, and mixed lists: the influence of item arrangement.

Studies of the effect of word frequency in the serial recall task show that lists of high-frequency words are better recalled than lists of low-frequency words; however, when high- and low-frequency words are alternated within a list, there is no difference in the level of recall for the two types of words, and recall is intermediate between lists of pure frequency. This pattern has been argued to arise from the development of a network of activated long-term representations of list items that support the redintegration of all list items in a nondirectional and nonspecific way. More recently, it has been proposed that the frequency effect might be a product of the coarticulation of items at word boundaries and their influence on rehearsal rather than a consequence of memory representations. The current work examines recall performance in mixed lists of an equal number of high- and low-frequency items arranged in contiguous segments (i.e., HHHLLL and LLLHHH), under quiet and articulatory suppression conditions, to test whether the effect is (a) nondirectional and (b) dependent on articulatory processes. These experiments demonstrate that neither explanation is satisfactory, although the results suggest that the effect is mnemonic. A language-based approach to short-term memory is favored with emphasis on the role of speech production processes at output.

The interaction of word frequency and concreteness in immediate serial recall.

Word frequency and word concreteness are language attributes that have been shown to independently influence the recall of items in verbal short-term memory (STM). It has been argued that such effects are evidence for the action of long-term memory knowledge on STM traces. However, research to date has not investigated whether these variables interact in serial recall. In two experiments, we examined the behavior of these variables under factorial manipulation and demonstrated that the effect of word frequency is dependent on the level of concreteness of items. Serial recall performance is examined with reference to two explanatory approaches: Walker and Hulme's (1999) dual-redintegration account and language-based models of STM. The data indicate that language-based models are more compatible with the observed effects and challenge the view that frequency and concreteness effects in STM are the products of distinct mechanisms.

A constrained rasch model of trace redintegration in serial recall.

The notion that verbal short-term memory tasks, such as serial recall, make use of information in long-term as well as in short-term memory is instantiated in many models of these tasks. Such models incorporate a process in which degraded traces retrieved from a short-term store are reconstructed, or redintegrated (Schweickert, 1993), through the use of information in long-term memory. This article presents a conceptual and mathematical model of this process based on a class of item-response theory models. It is demonstrated that this model provides a better fit to three sets of data than does the multinomial processing tree model of redintegration (Schweickert, 1993) and that a number of conceptual accounts of serial recall can be related to the parameters of the model.