Things that go bump in the light: On the optical specification of contact severity.

Psychologists are intrigued with the idea that optical variables can specify not only the time until an object impacts an observer but also the severity of the impact. However, the mapping between the optical variables (τ and τ?) and the kinematic variables (velocity, acceleration) has been misstated, erroneously implying that there exist critical values of the optical variables used for locomotion and control. In this commentary, the mathematical relationship between the optical and kinematic variables is reexamined and the erroneous assumptions that have led to the proposal of critical values are shown. Also examined are the empirical data on deceleration to approach (particularly from active control paradigms) to assess whether the proposed optical variables are likely candidates for control strategies. Finally, problems associated with numerical approximations to dynamic systems, particularly when analytic solutions exist, are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Things that go bump in the light: On the optical specification of contact severity": Correction.

Reports an error in the original article by M. K. Kaiser and A. V. Phatak (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 1993[Feb], Vol 19[1], 194–202). Corrections are provided for Equation A3, the last entry in Table 1, and the 3rd to last line on page 194. (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 1993-20218-001.) Psychologists are intrigued with the idea that optical variables can specify not only the time until an object impacts an observer but also the severity of the impact. However, the mapping between the optical variables (τ and t) and the kinematic variables (velocity, acceleration) has been misstated, erroneously implying that there exist critical values of the optical variables used for locomotion and control. In this commentary, the mathematical relationship between the optical and kinematic variables is reexamined and the erroneous assumptions that have led to the proposal of critical values are shown. Also examined are the empirical data on deceleration to approach (particularly from active control paradigms) to assess whether the proposed optical variables are likely candidates for control strategies… (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Extending the study of autobiographical memory: Thinking back about life across the life span.

By combining a life perspective with a life span perspective, the authors present a basic framework for extending the study of autobiographical memory. The life perspective suggests not only the consideration of individual episodes of memory but how they are strung together into a life. The life span perspective takes into account the chronological age and life context of individuals and how these factors might affect abilities and motivations related to the use of autobiographical memory. The authors discuss how these 2 perspectives are combined to yield a useful framework for studying autobiographical memory and present 2 examples of work done using this framework. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sampling autobiographical memory reports in adolescents.

28 college students (CSs) and 28 young adolescents (As) were presented with single-word prompts to elicit autobiographical memories. Ss' memories were then used as stimuli to collect additional memories. CSs but not As responded more slowly to affective prompts than to action prompts. Also, As made more frequent use of a same-event strategy in reporting 2nd memories than did CSs, who more frequently responded to a single feature of the original memory. (3 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

New perspectives on autobiographical memory: The integration of narrative processing and autobiographical reasoning.

Researchers from diverse psychological subdisciplines have increasingly turned their attention to the storied aspect of human thought. Narrative processing and autobiographical reasoning are 2 forms of this conscious thought. Narrative processing is the tendency to create thought units that use vivid imagery, sequential plots, characters, and salient goals. Autobiographical reasoning consists of interpreting and evaluating remembered experiences. Both forms of thought are discussed in D. P. McAdams's (see record 2001-06545-002) personality theory and D. B. Pillemer's (see record 2001-06545-003) cognitive research. S. Bluck and T. Habermas (see record 2001-06545-004) highlight developmental aspects of narrative processing and autobiographical reasoning, particularly in adolescent identity formation. U. M. Staudinger (see record 2001-06545-005) illustrates how autobiographical reasoning about memories and life stories serves as a springboard for wisdom at different stages of the life cycle. Implications for integrating subdisciplines of psychology are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Multimodal cuing of autobiographical memory in semantic dementia.

Objective: Individuals with semantic dementia (SD) have impaired autobiographical memory (AM), but the extent of the impairment has been controversial. According to one report (Westmacott, Leach, Freedman, & Moscovitch, 2001), patient performance was better when visual cues were used instead of verbal cues; however, the visual cues used in that study (family photographs) provided more retrieval support than do the word cues that are typically used in AM studies. In the present study, we sought to disentangle the effects of retrieval support and cue modality. Method: We cued AMs of 5 patients with SD and 5 controls with words, simple pictures, and odors. Memories were elicited from childhood, early adulthood, and recent adulthood; they were scored for level of detail and episodic specificity. Results: The patients were impaired across all time periods and stimulus modalities. Within the patient group, words and pictures were equally effective as cues (Friedman test; χ2 = 0.25, p = .61), whereas odors were less effective than both words and pictures (for words vs. odors, χ2 = 7.83, p = .005; for pictures vs. odors, χ2 = 6.18, p = .01). There was no evidence of a temporal gradient in either group (for patients with SD, χ2 = 0.24, p = .89; for controls, χ2     

Overgeneral autobiographical memory and traumatic events: An evaluative review.

Does trauma exposure impair retrieval of autobiographical memories? Many theorists have suggested that the reduced ability to access specific memories of life events, termed overgenerality, is a protective mechanism helping attenuate painful emotions associated with trauma. The authors addressed this question by reviewing 24 studies that assessed trauma exposure and overgenerality, examining samples with posttraumatic stress disorder, acute stress disorder, depression, traumatic event exposure, and other clinical disorders. Limitations are discussed, including variations in assessment of events, depression, and overgenerality and the need for additional comparison groups. Across studies, there was no consistent association between trauma exposure and overgenerality, suggesting that trauma exposure is unlikely to be the primary mechanism leading to overgenerality. Instead, psychopathology factors such as depression and posttraumatic stress appear to be more consistently associated with overgenerality. Alternative overgenerality theories may help identify key overgenerality mechanisms, improving current understanding of autobiographical memory processes underlying psychopathology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and autobiographical memory: Dissociating episodic from semantic retrieval.

Cognitive aging research documents reduced access to contextually specific episodic details in older adults, whereas access to semantic or other nonepisodic information is preserved or facilitated. The present study extended this finding to autobiographical memory by using a new measure: the Autobiographical Interview. Younger and older adults recalled events from 5 life periods. Protocols were scored according to a reliable system for categorizing episodic and nonepisodic information. Whereas younger adults were biased toward episodic details reflecting happenings, locations, perceptions, and thoughts, older adults favored semantic details not connected to a particular time and place. This pattern persisted after additional structured probing for contextual details. The Autobiographical Interview is a useful instrument for quantifying episodic and semantic contributions to personal remote memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Remote memory: Recalling autobiographical and public events from across the lifespan.

Examined the recall of autobiographical (ATB) and public events across the lifespan among 24 middle-aged (40–55 yrs old) and 24 older (aged 65–75 yrs) individuals. Ss were asked to recall events from specific time periods across their lifespan. The 4 tasks differed in their nature of the episodes requested (ATB or public) and whether recall was word-cued or nonword-cued. Verification of public events was assessed archivally, while ATB events were verified by relatives of a subgroup of the Ss and reported events. Memory for public events decreased with increased age of Ss, but this effect generally did not occur for the recall of ATB events. Older Ss recalled an equal number of ATB episodes from all life segments, whereas recall of news events tended to decrease with remoteness of the episode. Findings suggest that generalizations regarding age or time-related deficiencies are unwarranted. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Gender differences in autobiographical memory for childhood emotional experiences.

Research to date has paid remarkably little heed to gender differences in autobiographical memory. To redress this, the author examined memory for childhood events in adult men and women remembering back to childhood, and in children themselves. Five studies were conducted, and results revealed that females consistently recalled more childhood memories than males did and were generally faster in accessing the memories recalled. Furthermore, the gender difference observed was specific to memories of events associated with emotion and was apparent across a diverse range of emotions experienced by both the self and others. The overall pattern of findings obtained is consistent with the proposition that gender-differentiated socialization processes influence the content and complexity of representations of autobiographical emotional events in memory. To some extent, then, autobiographical memory appears to be a socially constructed phenomenon. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Explaining category interference effects in associative memory.

Two studies with 220 undergraduates investigated the effects of categorization on the acquisition and long-term retention of AB word pairs using modeling techniques that factor the contributions of various storage and retrieval factors. In Exp I, each S memorized 1 of the 4 basic types of lists: unrelated cues/unrelated targets, categorized cues/unrelated cues, unrelated cues/categorized targets, and categorized cues/categorized targets. Ss in Exp II memorized 24-item AB lists to criterion. Acquisition data showed that there was a crossover interaction such that the effects of increasing the degree of cue or target relatedness depended on the nature of the comparison items. In contrast with the results of previous studies, the effects were larger when categorization was manipulated on the target side of AB pairs than when it was manipulated on the cue side. The degree of categorization affected retrieval difficulty but not storage difficulty. Long-term retention data indicated that, contrary to the acquisition data, the effects of categorization on retention were uniformly positive. Categorization decreased the amount of forgetting primarily by reducing the rate at which traces were lost from memory (storage failure) during the retention interval. Results are discussed in terms of modern unitary-trace theories of associative memory. (French abstract) (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Explaining age differences in temporal working memory.

To determine the cognitive mechanisms underlying age differences in temporal working memory (WM), the authors examined the contributions of item memory, associative memory, simple order memory, and multiple item memory, using parallel versions of the delayed-matching-to-sample task. Older adults performed more poorly than younger adults on tests of temporal memory, but there were no age differences in nonassociative item memory, regardless of the amount of information to be learned. In contrast, a combination of associative and simple order memory, both of which were reduced in older adults, completely accounted for age-related declines in temporal memory. The authors conclude that 2 mechanisms may underlie age differences in temporal WM, namely, a generalized decline in associative ability and a specific difficulty with order information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Looking back in time: Self-concept change affects visual perspective in autobiographical memory.

People who change often report that their old selves seem like "different people." Correlational (Study 1) and experimental (Studies 2 and 3) studies showed that participants tended to use a 3rd-person observer perspective when visualizing memories of actions that conflicted with their current self-concept. A similar pattern emerged when participants imagined performing actions that varied in self-concept compatibility (Study 4). The authors conclude that on-line judgments of an action's self-concept compatibility affect the perspective used for image construction. Study 5 shows applied implications. Use of the 3rd-person perspective when recalling past episodes of overindulgent eating was related to optimism about behaving differently at an upcoming Thanksgiving dinner. The authors discuss the effect of self-concept compatibility on cognitive and emotional reactions to past actions and consider the role of causal attributions in defining the self across time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Role of autobiographical memory in social problem solving and depression.

Depressed patients frequently exhibit deficiencies in social problem solving (SPS). A possible cause of this deficit is an impairment in patients' ability to retrieve specific autobiographical memories. A clinically depressed group and a hospital control group performed the Means-End Problem-Solving (MEPS; J. J. Platt & G. Spivack, 1975a) task, during which they were required to attend to the memories retrieved during solution generation. Memories were categorized according to whether they were specific, categoric, or extended and whether the valence of the memories was positive or negative. Results support the general hypothesis that SPS skill is a function of autobiographical memory retrieval as measured by a cuing task and by the types of memories retrieved during the MEPS. However, the dysfunctional nature of categoric memories in SPS, rather than the importance of specific memories, was highlighted in the depressed group. Valence proved to be an unimportant variable in SPS ability. The cyclical links among autobiographical memory retrieval, SPS skills, and depression are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reduced autobiographical memory specificity and rumination in predicting the course of depression.

Reduced autobiographical memory (AM) specificity is a known vulnerability factor for depression. AM specificity was investigated as a predictor of depression with the Autobiographical Memory Test (J. M. G. Williams & K. Broadbent, 1986). When baseline depression scores were partialed, reduced AM specificity to negative cue words predicted higher levels of depression at 7-month follow-up. Once rumination was taken into account by means of the Rumination on Sadness Scale (M. Conway, P. A. R. Csank, S. L. Holm, & C. K. Blake, 2000), AM specificity no longer predicted depression, suggesting that the predictive value of AM specificity observed in previous studies might be--at least partly--explained as an effect of rumination. Further mediation analyses indeed revealed support for rumination as a mediator of the relation between reduced AM specificity and poor outcome of depression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of motives in the content and structure of autobiographical memory.

Findings from 4 studies suggest that differentiation and integration are used by individuals high in agency and communion to structure motive-related information in episodic memory. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that agentic and communal individuals recalled more emotional experiences related to their motives, and that agentic individuals used more differentiation whereas communal individuals used more integration to structure these memories. Study 3 showed that agentic and communal individuals used more differentiation and integration to structure memories about social separation and connection, respectively. Study 4 demonstrated a similar pattern of recall in an experimentally controlled retrieval task. For a motive-congruent topic, agentic individuals recognized more differentiated information and had fewer differentiation recognition errors, and communal individuals freely recalled more integration. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of suppressing a negative autobiographical memory on concurrent intrusions and subsequent autobiographical recall in dysphoria.

Depressed individuals endeavor to suppress intrusive thoughts and memories as a form of mood control. Two predictions from this literature were examined. The 1st was that attempts to suppress a preselected negative memory during a stream-of-consciousness (SOC) task in dysphoric individuals, relative to a no-suppress condition, would lead to relatively speeded access to other negative but not positive memories on a subsequent cue-word recall task. No such effects were predicted for nondysphoric controls. The 2nd prediction was that, across all participants who were asked to suppress memories, higher levels of depressed mood would be associated with more intrusions of the to-be-suppressed memory during the SOC and that this association would be stronger than the comparable relation in participants who were not asked to suppress memories. Results support both predictions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy reduces overgeneral autobiographical memory in formerly depressed patients.

Previous research on depressed and suicidal patients and those with posttraumatic stress disorder has shown that patients' memory for the past is overgeneral (i.e., patients retrieve generic summaries of past events rather than specific events). This study investigated whether autobiographical memory could be affected by psychological treatment. Recovered depressed patients were randomly allocated to receive either treatment as usual or treatment designed to reduce risk of relapse. Whereas control patients showed no change in specificity of memories recalled in response to cue words, the treatment group showed a significantly reduced number of generic memories. Although such a memory deficit may arise from long-standing tendencies to encode and retrieve events generically, such a style is open to modification. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Experiences of intimacy and power: Relationships between social motives and autobiographical memory.

Collected open-ended recollections of autobiographical memories from 142 undergraduates in 2 studies. The memory protocols were coded for themes of interpersonal intimacy (love and friendship, reciprocal communication or sharing, helping others and being helped, and tender interpersonal touching) and personal power (perceived strength, powerful inspiration, having impact, vigorous activity, and increased fame or recognition). Ss' intimacy and power motive scores were obtained by prior administration of the TAT. Ss scoring higher in intimacy motivation recalled specific peak experiences, great learning experiences, and (to a lesser extent) satisfying experiences that contained a preponderance of intimacy themes; Ss scoring lower on the intimacy motive did not. A similar relationship between power motivation and power themes in peak experiences and satisfying experiences was obtained. In addition, a positive correlation was found between the power motive and expressed feelings of anger in reports of unpleasant experiences. (49 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Therapist as life coach: Transforming your practice.

Review of book, Patrick Williams and Deborah Davis (Aus.) Therapist as Life Coach. New York: Norton, 2002. 216 pp. ISBN 0-393-70341-X. Reviewed by Ronald E. Fox. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)