Researchers have noted sex differences in verbal memory performance with females showing a memory superiority effect. Research paradigms have largely incorporated experimenter-timed materials. ...Therefore, the extent to which self-regulating study time influences this pattern of sex differences is unclear. The researcher reexamined data from a published paper to determine whether sex differences in multitrial verbal learning are minimized when individuals self-regulate their study time, or if sex differences would still remain. The results from this study showed that females outperformed males on subsequent test trials, and they allocated more study time. Controlling for the influence of study time allocation reduced or eliminated sex differences in memory performance, and only study time allocation was related to whether items were gained or lost across trials. These findings suggest the importance of self-regulated learning in reducing sex differences on a verbal memory task and the contribution of study time allocation to memory performance.
Immunity decreases with age, which leads to reactivation of varicella zoster virus (VZV). In human subjects age-associated immune changes are usually measured in blood leukocytes; however, this might ...not reflect alterations in tissue-specific immunity.
We used a VZV antigen challenge system in the skin to investigate changes in tissue-specific mechanisms involved in the decreased response to this virus during aging.
We assessed cutaneous immunity based on the extent of erythema and induration after intradermal VZV antigen injection. We also performed immune histology and transcriptomic analyses on skin biopsy specimens taken from the challenge site in young (<40 years) and old (>65 years) subjects.
Old human subjects exhibited decreased erythema and induration, CD4+ and CD8+ T-cell infiltration, and attenuated global gene activation at the site of cutaneous VZV antigen challenge compared with young subjects. This was associated with increased sterile inflammation in the skin in the same subjects related to p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase–related proinflammatory cytokine production (P < .0007). We inhibited systemic inflammation in old subjects by means of pretreatment with an oral small-molecule p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase inhibitor (Losmapimod; GlaxoSmithKline, Brentford, United Kingdom), which reduced both serum C-reactive protein levels and peripheral blood monocyte secretion of IL-6 and TNF-α. In contrast, cutaneous responses to VZV antigen challenge were increased significantly in the same subjects (P < .0003).
Excessive inflammation in the skin early after antigen challenge retards antigen-specific immunity. However, this can be reversed by inhibition of inflammatory cytokine production that can be used to promote vaccine efficacy and the treatment of infections and malignancy during aging.
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Parentification is a role-reversal phenomenon in which boundary violations occur such as children being their parents’ physical or emotional caretakers. Researchers have shown that childhood ...parentification can produce anxiety, but locus of control (LOC) moderates this relationship. We sought to examine the influence of LOC on the parentification-anxiety relationship in father–daughter dyads, as this dyad is under-represented in the parentification literature. One hundred and eighty-one undergraduate women completed an anxiety measure, parentification questionnaire, and an LOC inventory. Higher levels of parentification and lower levels of internal LOC were associated with higher reports of anxiety, but internal LOC did not appear to moderate the anxiety-parentification relationship. For individuals residing at home, parentification predicted anxiety, whereas internal LOC predicted anxiety among those not residing at home. These results further the paternal parentification literature, as well as show the relationship between childhood parentification and women’s anxiety for those currently living at home.
Assistive technology (AT) helps bridge the gap between students with learning disabilities (LD) and their peers without LD. However, this implies a need for teachers to become well-trained and ...proficient in the use of AT. There are established AT competencies for educators, and AT services professionals must be knowledgeable about AT to select and recommend specific technology to individual education program teams. Professionals should also be well-versed with AT to be able to train students in its use. There is a significant need for research on teachers’ knowledge and perceptions of AT (i.e., interest in using it and barriers to incorporating it) as well as the best ways to provide AT training. To investigate these areas, a survey was administered to teachers of students with LD at the elementary and middle school levels. Our results indicated that completing an AT course in college along with self-reported AT proficiency in iPad reading apps were associated with higher ratings of AT knowledge. Additionally, higher AT proficiency ratings and completing AT college course work were associated with perceptions of college preparation of AT, but these factors did not predict perceptions of workplace preparation. Teachers were clearly interested in utilizing AT but felt their college did not adequately prepare them in AT, and funding issues were the most common barriers to implementing AT. Our findings suggest a need for an emphasis on AT training in college courses.
Two experiments showed that older adults were worse than younger adults at judging the accuracy of their responses on source identification (i.e., who said what) and cued-recall tests. It is ...important to note that this age-related metamonitoring impairment occurred even after older and younger adults were matched on overall source accuracy and cued-recall accuracy. By contrast, older and younger adults showed comparable metamonitoring capacities when assessing the likely accuracy of old-new recognition judgments and responses to questions about general knowledge. These experiments are consistent with the misrecollection account of cognitive aging, which suggests that age-related memory impairments are due to older adults' vulnerability to making high-confidence errors when answering questions that require memory for specific details about recently learned events.
Summary
Few studies have investigated eyewitnesses' ability to predict their later lineup performance, known as predecision confidence. We applied calibration analysis in two experiments comparing ...predecision confidence (immediately after encoding but prior to a lineup) to postdecision confidence (immediately after a lineup) to determine which produces a superior relationship with lineup decision accuracy. Experiment 1 (N = 177) featured a multiple‐block lineup recognition paradigm featuring several targets and lineups; Experiment 2 featured an eyewitness identification paradigm with a mock‐crime video and a single lineup for each participant (N = 855). Across both experiments, postdecision confidence discriminated well between correct and incorrect lineup decisions, but predecision confidence was a poor predictor of accuracy. Moreover, simply asking for predecision confidence weakened the postdecision confidence–accuracy relationship. This implies that police should exercise caution when interviewing eyewitnesses, as they should not be asked to predict their ability to make an accurate lineup decision.
We used the eyewitness suggestibility paradigm to investigate the hypothesis that cognitive aging is associated with an increase in misrecollections--confidently held but false memories of past ...events. When younger and older adults were matched on their overall memory for experienced events, both groups showed comparable rates of suggestibility errors in which they claimed to have seen events in a video that had only been suggested in a subsequent questionnaire. However, older adults were--alarmingly--most likely to commit suggestibility errors when they were most confident about the correctness of their response. By contrast, their younger, accuracy-matched counterparts were most likely to commit these errors when they were uncertain about the accuracy of their response. The elderly adults' propensity to make high-confidence errors fits our misrecollection account.
Although increased age is associated with greater errors in spatial memory tasks, it is unclear if there are age differences in error types. To investigate this, 334 participants (ages 22-88) ...completed a task in which they remembered object locations across multiple study-test trials. Far and close error types were categorized based on the spatial proximity of recalled objects to their actual location. Younger adults showed a greater difference in the proportion of close and far errors, and middle-aged adults showed this pattern to a lesser extent. However, older adults committed close and far errors at an equal rate. Results revealed that all age groups reduced their far errors across trials, and task complexity similarly affected older and younger adults' error-type rates. Study time did not appear to predict error types. Overall, these results suggest that increased age is associated with more far errors, but that a reduction in these error types can occur through repeated learning trials.
Interparental conflict has been shown to have a negative effect on the academic success of children and adolescents. This study examined the relationship between college students' (N = 143) perceived ...levels of interparental conflict, their living arrangement, and their current self‐reported grade point average. Participants who experienced more interparental conflict, specifically female students and those living away from home, reported a lower grade point average. Implications for college counselors are discussed.
Past studies have suggested that study time allocation partially mediates age relations on memory performance in a verbal task. To identify whether this applied to a different material modality, ...participants ages 20-87 completed a spatial task in addition to a traditional verbal task. In both the verbal and the spatial task, increased age was associated with poorer utilization of study time, suggesting that age differences in study time allocation are qualitatively similar across material modality. Furthermore, age differences in how individuals allocated their study time partially mediated the age relations on memory performance in both tasks, indicating the importance of effective regulation of study time when learning information. Finally, age differences in study time allocation did not appear to be due to differences in awareness of performance. When a subset of participants was asked about their prior performance, awareness of previous performance was not associated with study time allocation on either task. Interestingly, asking participants about their prior performance tended to decrease recall performance. Overall, these results illustrate that how one allocates study time is related to subsequent memory performance in both a verbal and spatial modality, but knowledge about prior performance is not associated with study time utilization, and inquiring about past performance during study may disrupt rather than facilitate learning.
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