Wallace E. Lambert (1922–2009).

On August 23, 2009, psychology lost an innovative researcher with the passing, at 86, of Wallace E. Lambert. A professor of psychology at McGill University from 1954 until 1990, Wallace (“Wally”) Lambert was among the founders of psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. His highly productive career included contributions to social and cross-cultural psychology (intergroup attitudes, child-rearing values, and psychological consequences of living in multicultural societies), language education (the French immersion program), and bilingualism (measurement of language dominance, attitudes and motivation in second-language learning, and social, cognitive, and neuropsychological consequences of bilingualism). Indeed, because of the scope and influence of his work, Wally Lambert is widely considered the father of the psychological study of bilingualism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Noun and adjective imagery and order in paired-associate learning by French and English subjects.

Varied rated noun imagery (I), rated adjective I, and noun-adjective order in a paired-associate (PA) learning task. 98 10th graders learned 2 PA lists, 1 with noun-adjective (N-A) pairs and 1 with adjective-noun (A-N) pairs. Within each list rated I of both nouns and adjectives was varied factorially. Both English- and French-speaking Ss learned the lists in their own languages. Results support the predictions from an hypothesis based on mediating imagery. N-A recall was superior to A-N recall for all combinations of word I, except when nouns were low and adjectives high in I. In the latter case, A-N recall was higher. This pattern was the same for both English- and French-speaking Ss. Results are interpreted as further evidence of the important role played by imagery in verbal learning. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Pupillary dilation and mediation processes during paired-associate learning.

Describes 2 experiments with 54 undergraduates in which pupillary activity was continuously photographed during mediator-formation and paired-associate (PA) learning tasks involving nouns as items. Abstractness-concreteness of the nouns and mediation instructions (imagery, verbal, or none) were varied. The magnitude and latency of pupillary dilation as well as task performance were measured. The PA recall data confirm previous findings in showing strong positive effects of concreteness, especially as a stimulus variable. Learning was generally best under the imagery mediation set, its superiority over the verbal mediation condition being greatest in the case of pairs with abstract stimulus members. Pupil size during learning was largest when no mediation instructions were given and when stimulus members were abstract, supporting an interpretation of pupillary dilation as an index of cognitive task difficulty. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Influence of Therapist Adherence and Competence on Client Reprocessing of Child Abuse Memories.

This study follows previous research examining change processes in emotion-focused therapy for adult survivors of child abuse (N = 37). Therapist (n = 10) adherence to intervention principles and competence with an imaginal confrontation (IC) intervention were examined in the context of relationship skills. The Therapist Facilitating Scale assessed competence with IC. Therapists differed in technical (but not relationship) skills; relationship skills and IC competence (but not adherence) improved over therapy. Therapist competence predicted better client processes during IC. Relationship skills independently contributed to abuse resolution; the potency of IC (Competence x Frequency of Implementation) independently contributed to reduced interpersonal problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Imagery and synchronic thinking.

Argues that imagery involves synchronously organized informational structures that contribute to the richness of content, flexibility, and speed of thinking. By contrast, verbal processes are characterized by a higher degree of sequential constraint, which limits memory content and flexibility but contributes logical direction to thinking. Specific experimental evidence is presented on the implications of these views in regard to the encoding, storage, and retrieval of organized cognitive information. (11/2 p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Observational and theoretical terms in psychology: A cognitive perspective on scientific language.

This article presents an empirical, psychological approach to the distinction between observational and theoretical terms, a persistent and unresolved issue in the study of science. Using relevant theory and evidence from cognitive psychology, we show that the observational–theoretical distinction parallels the concrete–abstract distinction in natural language, that both follow from the dual coding assumption of distinct verbal and nonverbal cognitive systems, and that natural language research supports this view. We report similar evidence for 72 psychological terms that were rated by psychologists on observability, consistency of meaning, and other relevant attributes. The ratings correlated highly with one another and also with imagery reaction times and reports of spontaneous imagery. The evidence challenges the claim that all scientific terms are equally inferential and reliable and is consistent with empiricist views of science that emphasize the distinct properties of concrete, observational terms and abstract, theoretical terms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Some consequences of violating selection restrictions in concrete and abstract sentences.

Conducted 3 experiments with a total of 280 undergraduates in which content word constituents were reassigned arbitrarily to different sentences in lists of simple sentences. Original and substituted sentences were rated for imagery, comprehensibility, and sensibleness and, in Exps II and III, were tested also for incidental and intentional recall. Substitutions produced a greater ratings decrement for concrete than for abstract sentences, reversing in some cases a comprehensibility and sensibleness superiority found for the original concrete sentences. This finding supports the hypothesis that greater selection restrictions are associated with concrete than with abstract concepts. Consistent with the notion that imaginal coding is relatively insensitive to semantic constraint violations, smaller rating decrements were produced by substitutions under an imaginal coding set than under either a comprehension or a sensibleness set. Differences in constraints fail to account for concrete/abstract differences in recall as indicated by the finding of an unqualified recall superiority for concrete material under all conditions of substitution. (French summary) (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Audience stress, personality, and speech.

"Forty-eight children, aged 10 to 12 years, told two stories to the experimenter alone and two to an audience of six adults… . Almost every subject told a longer story in the private compared to the audience situation. Highly exhibitionistic children were least influenced in this respect whereas self-conscious children reduced the length of their stories drastically before the six observers. Children who were both highly exhibitionistic and self-conscious made the most speech errors." From Psyc Abstracts 36:02:2FC69L. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Concreteness of relational effects on recall of adjective–noun pairs.

Studied the effects of concreteness and relatedness of adjective–noun pairs on free recall, cued recall, and memory integration. The authors report on 2 experiments in which Ss read phrases or sentences containing adjective–noun pairs that vary in rated concreteness and intrapair relatedness. In Exp 1 normative ratings on imagery and relatedness were provided by 23 graduate and 20 undergraduate students. 64 undergraduates participated in the memory experiment. Exp 2 extended Exp 1 by using complete sentences rather than adjective–noun word pairs. 72 undergraduates volunteered to participate in the memory experiment and a separate group of 14 volunteered to participate in a sentence rating task. Consistent with predictions from dual coding theory and prior results with noun–noun pairs, both experiments showed that the effects of concreteness were strong and independent of relatedness in free recall and cued recall. The 2 attributes also had independent (additive) effects on integrative memory as measured by conditionalized free recall of pairs. Integration as measured by the increment from free to cued recall occurred consistently only when pairs were high in both concreteness and relatedness. Relatedness, adjective imagery, and noun imagery ratings, along with word frequencies for adjectives and nouns, and sentences with relatedness ratings are appended. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Concreteness effects on memory: When and why?

Two experiments with 194 university students studied the effects of concreteness and relatedness of noun pairs on free recall, cued recall, and memory integration. Dual-coding theory (DCT) implies that concreteness and relatedness should have independent and additive effects on memory performance, whereas relational-distinctiveness processing theory implies that the 2 variables should interact. Their effects proved to be statistically independent in cued-recall and memory integration tests in both studies. In free recall, the effects were independent in Exp 1 and interactive over subjects, but not over items in Exp 2. Results were most consistent with the DCT and, regarding integration, with the hypothesis that strong verbal relations are necessary for integrative recall of abstract pairs, whereas high imagery is sufficient for integrative recall of concrete pairs. The hypothesis resolves a long-standing issue concerning memory integration of abstract language. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)