Three population samples of college students were found to be similar on two stratifying variables, general intelligence and knowledge of conditioning principles, before viewing a time-compressed or non-compressed videotape presentation. The amount of unprompted information recalled did not differ significantly between the time-compressed and non-compressed treatment conditions. Additionally, neither treatment condition differed significantly on a multiple-choice posttest, although both groups did differ significantly from a control group that did not view the videotape. No significant difference was found between the time-compressed and non-compressed groups on their ratings of Quality of Narrator, Interest Level of Topic, and Overall Quality of Videotape Presentation. The time-compressed group rated their presentation as significantly faster than the non-compressed group.

A mental model of the another person’s state of mind including their thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, otherwise known as Theory of Mind (ToM), can be created to better predict their behavior and optimize our own decisions. These representations can be explicitly modeled during both the development and presence of stable cooperation via communication outcomes, allowing us to understand the sophistication or depth of mental coordination, involved in an individual’s social perception and reasoning. Almost all current scientific studies of ToM take a spectatorial approach, relying on observation followed by evaluation (e.g., the Sally-Anne Task). However given evidence that social cognition fundamentally shifts during valuationally significant social encounters with others, this study adopts a second-person approach. Each participant’s actions under dynamic uncertainty influence the joint reward probabilities of both, favoring cooperation and coordination. Only Teachers have knowledge of the correct action-reward contingencies, while Learners must ascertain the Teacher’s directive and correctly adjust their actions to obtain the optimal reward. The complexity of cooperative behaviors cannot be captured with simple reinforcement learning models, however a similarity in valuation exists, probing further investigation.

There is no consensus on the relationship between working memory resources and mind wandering. The purpose of the current study is to investigate whether mind wandering requires working memory resources to be sustained. The resource-demanding view is that mind wandering requires working memory resources to sustain an internal train of thought (Smallwood, 2010). The resource-free view is that mind wandering is a result of executive control failures and this internal train of thought proceeds in a resource-free manner (McVay & Kane, 2010). Participants were presented with thought probes while they performed a Simon task in single and dual task conditions. From the resource-demanding view, individuals with high WMC should experience more Task unrelated thought (TUT) in single and dual task conditions compared to those with low WMC. From the resource-free view, individuals with high WMC should experience fewer TUT compared to low WMC individuals. Results indicated that, WML eliminated the Simon effect for high WMC and reduced it for low WMC group. Mind wandering was decreased in dual task conditions however there was no effect of working memory capacity on mind wandering. Also, mind wandering correlated with task performance measures for the low WMC but not high WMC group. The results of the current study do not provide strong support for either a resource-demanding or resource-free view and are discussed in terms of a context dependent relationship between WMC and mind wandering

This research examines how comparison of objects underlies free categorization, an essential component of human cognition. Previous results using our binomial labeling task have shown that classification probabilities are affected in a graded manner as a function of similarity, i.e., the number of features shared by two objects. In a similarity rating task, people also rated objects sharing more features as more similar. However, the effect of matching features was approximately linear in the similarity task, but superadditive (exponential) in the labeling task. We hypothesize that this difference is due to the fact that people must select specific objects to compare prior to deciding whether to put them in the same category in the labeling task, while they were given specific pairs to compare in the rating task. Thus, the number of features shared by two objects could affect both stages (selection and comparison) in the labeling task, which might explain their super-additive effect, whereas it affected only the latter comparison stage in the similarity rating task. In this experiment, participants saw visual displays consisting of 16 objects from three novel superordinate artificial categories, and were asked to generate binomial (letter-number) labels for each object to indicate their super-and-subordinate category membership. Only one object could be viewed at a time, and these objects could be viewed in any order. This made it possible to record what objects people examine when labeling a given object, which in turn permits separate assessment of stage 1 (selection) versus stage 2 (comparison/decision). Our primary objective in this experiment was to determine whether the increase in category labeling probabilities as a function of level of match (similarity) can be explained by increased sampling alone (stage 1 model), an increased perception of similarity following sampling (stage 2 model), or some combination (mixed model). The results were consistent with earlier studies in showing that the number of matching discrete features shred by two objects affected the probability of same-category label assignment. However, there was no effect of the level of match on the probability of visiting the first matching object while labeling the second. This suggests that the labeling effect is not due to differences in the likelihood of comparing matching objects (stage 1) as a function of the level of match. Thus, the present data provides support for a stage 2 only model, in which the evaluation of similarity is the primary component underlying the level of match effect on free categorization.

Emotional Stroop task results have been shown to be inconsistent throughout the literature due to a multitude of factors including both stimulus and population factors. There are also several theories to explain the emotional Stroop effects, including the attentional control theory (Eysenck et al., 2007). This theory states that anxiety consumes attentional and memory resources, resulting in impairment in executive functions, and thus cognitive performance is lowered. Recently, Owens et al. (2014) reported that the effects of anxiety on cognitive performance might be moderated by working memory capacity (WMC). The present study explored whether Owens et al.'s (2014) paradigm fit the Stroop data. It also explored the role that WMC had in recognition memory for emotional and neutral words. Processing efficiency during the Stroop task and anxiety was expected to show a positive relationship for High WMC and a negative relationship for Low WMC. Furthermore, memory for emotional words were expected to be better for Low WMC due to longer processing times for emotional words. The results showed that WMC did not improve the model for both the emotional Stroop and the surprise recognition memory task, thereby contradicting Owens et al.'s (2014) proposed paradigm. Furthermore, an increase of anxiety scores showed a decrease in memory for emotional words but only for Low WMC.

In the human services field little is known about the impact of coping strategies on the problem of burnout for primary caregivers of delinquent youth in placement. The purpose of this correlational research was to examine the relationship between coping strategies, youth psychopathology, and burnout. This study was based on Maslach's theory of burnout and Lazarus and Folkman's transactional model of stress and coping. To assess the prevalence of burnout and coping strategies, 82 primary caregivers of adjudicated youth in placement in the state of Michigan, completed self-report questionnaires: the Maslach Burnout Inventory, the Brief COPE Inventory, and the Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths Instrument. Survey packets were hand-delivered to the directors of nine facilities to be dispersed to primary caregivers and retrieved two weeks later. The collected data were analyzed using correlation and regression analysis models. Significant positive correlations were found between emotional exhaustion and emotion-focused and dysfunctional coping as well as depersonalization and dysfunctional coping. Dysfunctional coping was a significant predictor of burnout. Coping strategies mediated the relationship between the psychopathology of the residents and burnout. Social change implications include educating directors of facilities about the detrimental impact of burnout and the value of supporting primary caregivers by offering training programs on effective coping strategies. These findings offer insight for primary caregivers regarding the use of problem-focused coping strategies to reduce vulnerability to burnout, thereby promoting their health and well-being, and their ability to be more productive.

The current study uses a lottery-based paradigm to examine how risk taking is affected by two specific types of good and bad experiences, luck and fortune. Though the terms are often used interchangeably, we suggest that they refer to two separate aspects of risk. Fortune refers to the overall positivity or negativity of the overall context, whereas luck refers to the probability of a better or worse outcome. To make the lottery context fortunate or unfortunate, a set of mixed-valence control lotteries were surrounded by all gain (good fortune) or all loss lotteries (bad fortune). To make the lotteries lucky or unlucky, the proportion of better outcomes received was fixed to be well above (good luck) or well below (bad luck) 50%. Results of the study suggest that, fortune, but not luck, had a significant influence on risk taking behaviors. Participants who experienced good fortune decreased risk taking, and those who experienced bad fortune increased risk taking. When asked, however, participants were unable to differentiate between the luck and fortune manipulations. Gains and losses due to fortune were undifferentiated from gains and losses due to luck. Yet, it was found that the number of gain outcomes received, which was determined by the luck-fortune combination, largely determined subjective experiences of luck and fortune. Consistent with the somatic marker and hedonic editing hypotheses, more gain outcomes led to a heightened sense of good luck and good fortune. Following on SPA (security/ potential aspiration) theory, we suggest that these differences in risk taking behavior in response to fortune may be due to increased attention to goals emphasizing security versus potential.

Cognitive research with human non-smokers has demonstrated that nicotine generally enhances performance on tasks of attention but, working memory does not appear to be affected. In contrast, nicotine has been shown to produce robust enhancements of working memory in non-human animals. To address this disparity, the present study investigated the effects of nicotine (2mg, 4mg nicotine gum, and placebo) on the performance of 30 non-smokers (15 male) completing a working memory task developed for rodents (the odor span task, OST). Nicotine has been reported to enhance OST performance in rodents and the present study sought to determine whether the effect is generalizable to human performance. In addition to completing the OST, participants completed a cognitive battery of clinical and experimental tasks assessing working memory and attention. This allowed for a direct comparison of OST performance to other commonly used measures of human cognition. Findings showed that nicotine was associated with dose dependent enhancements in sustained attention, as evidenced by increased hit accuracy on the rapid visual information processing (RVIP) task. However, nicotine failed to produce main effects on OST performance or on alternative measures of working memory (digit span, spatial span, letter-number sequencing, 2-back) or attention (digits forward, 0-back). Interestingly, enhancement of RVIP performance occurred concomitant to significant reductions in self-reported attention/concentration. Human OST performance was significantly related to N-back performance and, as in rodents, OST accuracy declined with increasing memory load. Given the similarity of human and rodent OST performance and the strong association observed between OST and visual 0-back accuracy, the OST may be particular useful for preclinical studies of conditions characterized by inattention.

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