bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Chancellor's memory: Rhetoric and truth in discursive remembering
Authors: Edwards Derek , Potter Jonathan 
Published: May 2007

AbstractThis paper explores the notion of truthfulness in research on conversational remembering. It argues that people's accounts of past events, before they can be taken as data on the cognitive workings of memory, need to be examined as contextualized and variable productions that perform pragmatic and rhetorical work; no one version can be taken as a person's real memory. The consequences of this discourse‐analytical perspective are examined first through a critical discussion of Ulric Neisser's study of John Dean's testimony to the senate ‘Watergate’ committee. The issues are then explored more deeply in an analysis of reportings of a different event, in which similar (Watergate‐like) issues of memory, truth and accuracy are also at issue. It is argued that: (a) all of Neisser's three kinds of memory–verbatim, gist and ‘repisodic’–involve problematical assumptions concerning their relation to some true, original event; and (b) that Dean's accounts of his memory and his displays of memory should be approached as occasioned productions oriented pragmatically to the assignment of guilt and avoidance of scapegoating. Through an analysis of newspaper reports (based on memory) of a controversial briefing given by the then British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, we then examine: (a) how discourse about what could be used as an arbiter of truth was rhetorically organized; (b) how participants' versions of events were constructed rhetorically, as parts of arguments; (c) that both sides in the dispute maintained the coherence of their positions by a form of error accounting similar to that used by Neisser with respect to Dean. It is suggested that cognitive psychologists, whether working in the laboratory or attempting to do real‐world studies of everyday remembering, need to avoid simplistic notions of true original events, and can do so by addressing the rhetorical organization of participants' memory accounts.
People's awareness of their age‐related sensory and cognitive deficits and the implications for road safety
Authors: Holland Carol A. , Rabbitt Patrick M. A. 
Published: May 2007

AbstractInevitable declines in sensory abilities may put older drivers and pedestrians at risk unless they become aware of these changes and can safeguard themselves by modifying their behaviour. A questionnaire designed to evaluate older people's awareness of their sensory abilities with regard to road use was administered to 80 individuals aged from 50 to 79 years, who were also given eyesight and hearing tests. Despite marked declines in their objective sensory efficiency, people in their 70s did not rate their sensory abilities as poor any more than did people in their 50s. Individuals of any age who did subjectively perceive declines in their sensory abilities also reported that they had made very sensible adjustments in their road‐use behaviour, for example, avoiding complex junctions. Those individuals who reported taking such precautions also reported fewer recent accidents. One month after completing the questionnaire, and being given the results of their eyesight and hearing tests, two‐thirds of individuals reported that they had made important changes in their behaviour on the roads. Many now avoided or took particular care in dangerous situations, and some had started to wear prescribed spectacles more appropriately. The implications of older people's lack of awareness of changes in their sensory abilities to their safety on the roads, and in general, are discussed. Factors causing the age‐related mismatch between actual and subjectively perceived sensory abilities are discussed.
Memory for directly and indirectly experienced events
Authors: Toglia Michael P. , Shlechter Theodore M. , Chevalier Dolores S. 
Published: May 2007

AbstractRetention was examined for an event that was experienced either directly or indirectly. In the first experiment, subjects witnessed a staged event in their classroom involving an argument between two students concerning ownership of a textbook. Subjects in a second study indirectly experienced the event as they heard an account of the book dispute. Immediately following the episode and 2 weeks later both a free‐recall test and recognition questionnaire were administered. In free‐recall those who witnessed the event remembered nearly as much on the delayed test as they had on the immediate task. For the auditory modality, however, a greater decrement in recall over the retention interval was observed. A similar pattern of results was found in recognition. Additional analyses indicated that actions were retained better than conversation and physical description, and suggested that the type of experience influences how well these aspects of the event are remembered. Interpretations of the overall findings are offered within the context of dual‐coding theory and in terms of modality differences in both encoding elaboration and selective attention.
Elaborative interrogation applied to small and large group contexts
Authors: Wood Eileen , Fler Cathy , Willoughby Teena 
Published: May 2007

AbstractThe present study examined the application of elaborative interrogation (EI), a questioning strategy, to ecologically valid classroom contexts. Instruction was provided to individuals, small groups of five, and large groups of 20. Recall performance did not differ as a function of group size. For individuals, small and large groups, EI subjects outperformed repetition control subjects.
Very long‐term memory for knowledge acquired at school and university
Authors: Conway Martin A. , Cohen Gillian , Stanhope Nicola 
Published: May 2007

AbstractRecent research into the very long‐term retention of knowledge originally acquired during the process of formal education at school and university has demonstrated that such knowledge may be retained at high levels over very long retention intervals. The pattern of retention typically takes the form of a comparatively short period marked by forgetting (lasting between 1 and 6 years) followed by a long period of stable retention (usually longer than 30 years). For courses taken at school the level attained over a series of courses (e.g. in learning a foreign language or studying mathematics) is an important determinant of long‐term retention. Students who attain moderate or advanced levels of learning show high levels of retention with very little forgetting, whereas students who attain only lower levels of learning show steady forgetting, and after a period of 6 years retain very little knowledge. Similar patterns of retention are present for university students taking single courses in science and literature subjects, and students with higher grades retain more knowledge although the reliable relationship here, between grade obtained and amount remembered, is weak and accounts for only small portions of the variance in retention. Taken together these findings suggest that the retention of knowledge acquired through formal education persists over longer periods of time than popularly believed. Recent theory proposes that these long‐lasting effects of education are partly related to the types of learning schedules followed during acquisition and partly related to the nature of the to‐be‐acquired knowledge, and to whether or not knowledge can be represented schematically.
Are two heads better than one? Experimental investigations of the social facilitation of memory
Authors: Meudell Peter R. , Hitch Graham J. , Kirby Petty 
Published: May 2007

AbstractThe hypothesis that two people collaborating in recall would remember more than a single person was examined in a series of four experiments. All the experiments used variations on the same ‘sequential’ design where, in social conditions, people recalled alone initially and then recalled jointly in pairs: as a control for reminiscence, some people recalled alone on two separate occasions. On the second recall in all of the experiments two people always recalled more than one, but this was simply due to the independent statistical summation of two people's memories: no evidence whatsoever was found for the pairs of people generating new information that was not available to either member of the pair. This surprising result was not attributable to artefacts linked to the complexity or familiarity of stimulus material, nor was it linked to variations in people's cognitive perspectives. No evidence of social facilitation of memories was therefore found: two people recalling together certainly pool their separate memories so as to outperform individuals but the social interaction does not appear to generate previously unavailable memories.
Collusion after a collision: Witnesses' reports of a road accident with and without discussion
Authors: Underwood Geoffrey , Milton Hugh 
Published: May 2007

AbstractIn a study of the accuracy of recall of witnesses to a road accident, subjects watched a video recording of a natural scene for a few minutes. Two vehicles collided, and reports from the witnesses were taken using a version of the report form used by officers investigating road accidents in the UK. Witnesses were asked questions about the scene of the accident, about each of the two vehicles, and about the timing of the collision relative to a traffic signal. Does the accuracy of report depend upon the isolation of the witness? The study investigated this question by having some witnesses watch the video recording and complete the questionnaire alone, while other witnesses were encouraged to discuss their perceptions and recollections both while watching the recording and during an interval of a few minutes prior to administration of the questionnaire. All witnesses completed their reports in isolation. As a check on witnesses' expectancies, some of them, both individual and group witnesses, were informed prior to seeing the video recording that they would see a road accident and that they would be asked about it. The ‘uninformed’ witnesses were told to expect questions about the road scene. There was no overall difference between the recall accuracy of individual and group witnesses, but there was an interaction between groups and expectancy. When expecting to see a collision the group witnesses were more accurate than the individuals. Social facilitation in recall was restricted to occasions when the witnesses could anticipate the focus of the questions to be asked.
Effects of text structure on the impact of heard news
Authors: Berry Colin , Scheffler Andreas , Goldstein Caroline 
Published: May 2007

AbstractIn two experiments, audio re‐recordings of texts transcribed from television newscasts were presented to independent groups, one group in each case hearing a ‘bulletin’ with original text structures (as broadcast), the other with key stories revised in accord with story‐grammar notions and restoring chronological sequence in the narrative. In Experiment 1 the middle item in a three‐story bulletin was subjected to text structure manipulation. After hearing the bulletin, subjects were questioned on information in the texts. In Experiment 2, subjects heard two stories with original or restructured text. In addition to being tested for retention they also rated for bias and quality of writing. Text restructuring improved learning in both studies, especially of information central to the main points of stories. In Experiment 2, such text revision also affected judgements of bias without altering assessment of writing quality. It is suggested that attention to assuring more coherent story structures in newscast texts could counter the problems of poor comprehension and perceived bias on the part of audiences which result from current production priorities and practices.
Musical notation for the keyboard: An examination of stimulus‐response compatibility
Authors: Biel Gary A. , Carswell C. Melody 
Published: May 2007

AbstractA recent stimulus‐response compatibility model was used to provide a performance evaluation of an experimental notation for the keyboard in which pitch varies horizontally in visual space. One hundred and twenty subjects performed a choice reaction time task using either the horizontal notation or a more traditional vertical notation. Half the subjects in each notation group received white noise and half received pitch‐varying feedback with responses. A horizontal display advantage was revealed when rules of the model were applied to data analyses. Further, the horizontal display advantage was not dependent on the nature of the feedback. In a second experiment, performance of musicians and non‐musicians was compared using the horizontal and vertical notations. Musicians' performance was uniformly better than that of non‐musicians, and did not differ with notation orientation. The findings support the use of non‐traditional horizontal notations for novice performance on a keyboard instrument.
Conversational remembering: Story recall with a peer versus for an experimenter
Authors: Hyman Ira E. 
Published: May 2007

AbstractThis research investigated the role social context plays in determining the content and organization of remembered information. As a manipulation of social context, subjects talked about a short story either with another subject (dyads) or for an experimenter (experimenter‐tested). In addition, the instructions were manipulated: Subjects were asked about their memory of the story or their personal reactions to it. Regardless of instructions, the dyad subjects spoke more about their evaluations of the story, included more comments linking the story to a larger knowledge frame (metacomments), and more often used remembered details to support their positions. In contrast, the experimenter‐tested subjects more often included story details and interpretations in narrative accounts of the story. The dyad subjects included in their recalls information that is part of story memory but seldom evidenced by single subjects remembering for an experiment. Thus conversational remembering often relies on a nonnarrative retrieval strategy. Regardless of social context, personal reaction instructions led to more meta‐comments and evaluations, and less narrative than memory instructions. The organization and content of non‐narrative conversational remembering may be explained by the dual demands of conforming to conversational rules and of establishing social bonds through self‐revealing comments.
Metacognition and mathematics strategy use
Authors: Carr Martha , Alexander Joyce , Folds‐Bennett Trisha 
Published: May 2007

AbstractThe role of children's metacognitive knowledge in their mathematics strategy use was studied by a longitudinal examination of second graders' effort attributions, metacognition for mathematics, and strategy use while solving mathematics problems. Children's correct use of retrieval, internal and external strategies, and the prevalence of strategy use were assessed in September and the following January. Effort attributions for success and failure were also assessed at both points in time. In January, metacognitive knowledge about mathematics strategies was measured. Second graders possess metacognitive knowledge about mathematics strategies, and this knowledge is correlated most strongly with the tendency to use internal strategies in September and correct internal strategy use in September. Effort attributions measured at both timepoints were significantly related to metacognition. Effort attributions in January also correlated with the tendency to use internal strategies in January. In general, the results are consistent with self‐system theories, which posit that metacognition, motivation, and strategy use work together to promote learning.
‘Earwitness’ voice recognition: Factors affecting accuracy and impact on jurors
Authors: van Wallendael Lori R. , Surace Amy , Parsons Deborah Hall , Brown Melissa 
Published: May 2007

AbstractTwo studies were conducted examining voice recognition testimony and its impact on jurors. In the first experiment, subjects listened to a tape recording of a brief sales pitch. After a retention interval of either 0, 7 or 14 days, subjects were unexpectedly asked to pick the salesperson's voice out of a five‐voice taped lineup. Retention interval did not have a significant effect on hit rates or false alarms. Accuracy and pre‐lineup confidence were not significantly correlated, although accuracy was related to post‐lineup willingness to testify. In the second experiment, undergraduate subjects were asked to read a summary of a trial, describing a situation similar to that studied in experiment 1; the independent variables were the presence of an earwitness, the gender and confidence of the earwitness, and the retention interval. Only the presence of an earwitness had a significant main effect upon mock jurors' verdicts. However, there was a significant interaction between witness confidence and witness gender when an earwitness identification was presented.
The effects of chronic sleep reduction on the performance of cognitive tasks sensitive to sleep deprivation
Authors: Blagrove Mark , Alexander Carol , Horne James A. 
Published: May 2007

AbstractIn four sleep loss experiments we aimed, first, to compare performance during long‐term sleep reduction with performance during short‐term total sleep deprivation, and second, to measure the effects of both methods of sleep loss on ability to ignore distracting irrelevant stimuli, using a finding embedded figures test (FEFT). Logical reasoning, auditory vigilance and finding embedded figures tasks were shown to be significantly sensitive to one night's sleep deprivation. However, in one sleep reduction study subjects reduced to a mean of 5.2 hours sleep per night for 4 weeks showed no performance deficits on logical reasoning. In a second sleep reduction study subjects reduced to a mean of 4.3 hours sleep per night for 4 nights, and subjects reduced to a mean of 5.3 hours sleep per night for 18 nights, showed no performance deficits on logical reasoning or auditory vigilance, despite their reports of severe increases in subjective sleepiness and reduced concentration. Both these sleep reduction groups, though, did show decrements on the FEFT, which we interpret in terms of dearousal increasing distractibility, which the sleep‐reduced subjects could not overcome with effort, as they did with the other tests.
Graphics in written directions: Appreciated by readers but not writers
Authors: Wright P. , Lickorish A. , Hull A. , Ummelen N. 
Published: May 2007

AbstractThis series of studies investigated the ability of literate adults to exploit communications options that are available to writers but have no counterpart in speech. Specifically it examined people's use of sketches when giving written directions to help a stranger cross town. When writing an informal letter to a friend most directions were given in prose paragraph style (Experiment 1). Almost no‐one included a sketch, even if given a street map as an aid. Yet most subjects could draw adequate sketch maps (Experiment 2), and everyone said yes when asked whether they would include a sketch in a letter. So the previous choices were not constrained either by graphic skill or by judgements concerning the appropriateness of a sketch, When people were asked to 'design' the back page of a leaflet they still did not include a sketch (Experiment 3). Experiment 4 showed that any bias in the instructions was towards rather than against the use of sketches. The need to generate the sketch was removed in Experiment 5 where subjects composed the leaflet page from pre‐formed sections that included alternative routes in both words and diagrams. Nearly all subjects now included a sketch in their directions. In case subjects previously, in haste, had not considered the possibility of including a sketch map, they were made aware of the drawing option by rating the usability of route information in a variety of communication styles immediately before writing their own directions (Experiment 6). People rated directions that included diagrams as significantly more usable, but still most subjects did not include a sketch in the directions they gave. So the communication styles that readers recognized as successful were not determining their choices as writers. It is suggested that, when giving written directions, inexperienced writers rely too heavily on how they would respond as speakers.
Testing the multiplicative hypothesis of intensifiers
Authors: Wright Daniel B. , Gaskell George D. , O'muircheartaigh Colm A. 
Published: May 2007

AbstractThe way in which intensifiers affect the meaning of the phrases to which they are applied is investigated. Previous research demonstrates that they often have little impact in between‐subject designs. Here we present research which demonstrates that their effects in within‐subject designs do not conform to the multiplicative hypothesis. Both the psychological mechanisms employed and the implications for survey methodologists are discussed.
False memories of childhood experiences
Authors: Hyman Ira E. , Husband Troy H. , Billings F. James 
Published: May 2007

AbstractWe conducted two experiments to investigate if college students would create false memories of childhood experiences in response to misleading information and repeated interviews. In both experiments we contacted parents to obtain information about events that happened to the students during childhood. In a series of interviews we asked the students to recall the parent‐reported events and one experimenter‐created false event. In the second experiment we varied the age at which we claimed the false event occurred. In both experiments we found that some individuals created false memories in these circumstances and in the second experiment we found no effect of age of attempted incorporation. In the second experiment we also found that those who discussed related background knowledge during the early interviews were more likely to create a false recall. Generalizations to therapy contexts are discussed.
On the nature and development of conditional reasoning in early adolescence
Authors: Verzoni Kathryn , Swan Karen 
Published: May 2007

AbstractTwo studies investigated the conditional reasoning capabilities of eighth grade learners. In Study 1, we analysed conditional reasoning performances for differences in learners' abilities to solve problems correctly and propensities to be tricked into responding to problems in a biconditional manner. There seemed to be a developmental progression in conditional reasoning ability. Most young adolescents reason using memory of domain‐specific memories. However, pragmatic inferential rules may serve as an intermediate level of abstration in reasoners as they progress from the ability to reason using only domain‐specific experience to the ability to use content‐free syntactic rules. In addition, correlation between scores on the Test of Logical Thinking and conditional reasoning performances suggested that ability to reason deductively using inferential rules at progressively higher levels of abstraction is related to cognitive development. In Study 2, we assessed the effectiveness of an instructional application of pragmatic inferential rule theory for development of conditional reasoning abilities. Pragmatic reasoning skill was developed throug engagement in Prolog programming activities involving hierarchical knowledge domains.