The performance of a highly literate subject, BS, was assessed on tests of short-term memory. He demonstrated a pattern of performance similar to that of patients having a phonological short-term memory deficit. His profile included an exaggerated phonological similarity effect for auditorily, but not visually presented materials, the absence of a recency effect, a reversed modality effect, and difficulty repeating non-words. In contrast to previously described phonological short-term memory patients, BS performed fairly normally in a foreign language learning task, though his acquisition rate was slower than that of control subjects. This finding is counter to current theory which suggests intact phonological short-term memory is necessary to learning of new phonological forms. Further investigation of BS's deficit suggested that his areas of preserved performance were the result of strategic reliance upon semantic, lexical or orthographic factors. Thus support is demonstrated for theories of short-term memory that propose multiple components contributing to short-term memory.

Disruption of attention is a hallmark symptom of schizophrenia, and event-related potentials have been instrumental in studying this deficit in these patients. Prior studies have shown consistent reduction of the auditory P300 in schizophrenia, while visual attention findings have been mixed. Both the auditory and visual N2b, an earlier, modality-specific attention index, are often reduced in schizophrenia, sometimes despite sparing of the visual P300. Thus there may be a dissociation between N2b and P300 attention effects in the auditory and visual modalities in schizophrenia. This study used auditory and visual oddball tasks and two bimodal tasks, each with a modality-specific target. Results showed that the N2b was differentially impacted in the patient group across modalities, while the P300 remained intact. This evidence suggests non-reduction of the P300 may be due to effortful compensation for deficits in the more vulnerable N2b component of stimulus classification in patients with schizophrenia.

The suffix effect refers to the forgetting of the last few items of a just-spoken list caused by appending a nominally irrelevant item. Several theorists hold that rememberer strategy affects only the preterminal component of the suffix effect and on this basis they have advocated a two-component theory of the effect. This theory has received significant support from the finding that rendering list length unpredictable eliminates the preterminal component while having little if any effect on the terminal component. Contrary evidence is reported here. Specifically, a robust preterminal suffix effect is demonstrated in each of three experiments regardless of list length predictability. The discrepancy with the earlier finding might be due, in part at least, to a confound in the earlier research between knowledge of list length during presentation and knowledge of list length during recall. Other evidence taken as supporting two-component theory is reviewed and similarly found wanting.

The development of a good representation of data with an auditory display requires one to choose the type of transformation between the data and auditory information and the auditory dimension to use. There is good reason to believe that using two sound dimensions in a redundant way could enhance performance compared to using the dimensions individually (Kramer, 1996). Experiments 1 and 2 showed redundancy loss when using separable dimensions in a redundant way. Experiments 3A and 4A found that duration with pitch and rate of change in pitch appear to be integral based on the Garner task. Experiment 3B, 3C and 4B used duration and the redundant combination of duration and pitch versus rate of change in pitch for the representation of numerical values. However, there was no redundancy gain found. This result could be important for auditory display designers when deciding about auditory dimensions to use in displays.

<p>Previous investigations have sought to determine how listeners might locate word boundaries in the speech signal for the purpose of lexical access. Cutler (1990) proposes the Metrical Segmentation Strategy (MSS), such that only full vowels in stressed syllables and their preceding syllabic onsets are segmented from the speech stream. I report the results of several experiments which indicate that the listener segments the minimal word, a phonologically motivated prosodic constituent, during processing of the speech signal. </p><p> These experiments were designed to contrast the MSS with two prosodic alternative hypotheses. The Syllable Hypothesis posits that listeners segment a linguistic syllable in its entirety as it is produced by the speaker. The Minimal Word Hypothesis proposes that a minimal word is segmented according to implicit knowledge the listener has concerning statistically probable characteristics of the lexicon. </p><p> These competing hypotheses were tested by using a word spotting method similar to that in Cutler and Norris (1988). The subjects' task was to detect real monosyllabic words embedded initially in bisyllabic nonce strings. Both open (CV) and closed (CVC) words were embedded in strings containing a single intervocalic consonant. The prosodic constituency of this consonant was varied by manipulating factors affecting prosodic structure: stress, the sonority of the consonant, and the quality of the vowel in the first syllable. The assumption behind the method is that word detection will be facilitated when embedded word and segmentation boundaries are coincident. </p><p> Results show that these factors are influential during segmentation. The degree of difficulty in word detection is a function of how well the speech signal corresponds to the minimal word. Findings are consistently counter to both the MSS and Syllable hypotheses. </p><p> The Minimal Word Hypothesis takes advantage of statistical properties of the lexicon, ensuring a strategy which is successful more often than not. The minimal word specifies the smallest possible content word in a language in terms of prosodic structure while simultaneously affiliating the greatest amount of featural information within the structural limits. It therefore guarantees an efficient strategy with as few parses as possible. </p>

<p> Previous empirical research demonstrated that major depressive disorder (MDD) had a profound impact on adults. What remained unaddressed in the research was the ability of those with MDD to form positive responses during challenging life events. The purpose of this exploratory quantitative study was to examine the cognitive ability of MDD patients to form positive responses on a standardized psychological assessment. This study, guided by Beck's cognitive theory of depression, was designed to determine whether depressed individuals were prone to negativity and had decreased ability to form positive responses to challenging situations. A 2x2 ANOVA was used to analyze 116 participants who voluntarily completed the Changes in Outlook Questionnaire (CiOQ). Results indicated that the group diagnosed with MDD scored significantly lower than a control group on the positive response scale of the CiOQ and that men diagnosed with MDD scored significantly lower than women diagnosed with MDD on the positive response scale of the CiOQ. This research has positive social change implications in that practitioners may use the findings in developing more effective treatments to help those with MDD to learn to form positive responses in the midst of challenging life events. Practitioners may also develop their ability to recognize when men with MDD are depressed by using the CiOQ to obtain written responses from individuals who do not verbalize depression. This research may also be useful for future research and application within the field.</p>

The nature of the rehearsal mechanism that supports short-term memory span (STM), and the role of lexical and semantic knowledge in list recall was evaluated. Forty university students (aged 17-29 years) recalled lists of words varied in syllable-length (SL), articulatory duration (AD), phonological similarity (PS), semantic relatedness (SR) and frequency of occurrence (FO). Auditory and visual presentation, vocal and picture-pointing recall, and concurrent articulation conditions were included. Nonword recall was evaluated using stimuli varied in SL and PS was also evaluated using a repetition task. Word length effects were found for word stimuli varied in SL but were absent or reversed for stimuli varied in AD. A non-articulatory basis for rehearsal is suggested. The influence of long-term semantic and lexical knowledge in recall is inconclusive due to a lack of SR. Nonword repetition ability reflects STM capacity in adult subjects and correlates with other measures of STM span.

<p> The paucity of effective alternative or augmentative treatments available for OCD coupled with the emerging potential of mindfulness-based treatments indicate that exploring the potential utility of such interventions for the OCD population is a useful area of inquiry. In addition, although more general examinations of the mechanisms by which mindfulness contributes to positive change have been conducted, those mechanisms of action have never been theoretically linked with the mechanisms of action believed to underlie the mental processes in OCD. The current study will include a critical analysis of the existing literature covering the cognitive and biological bases for understanding the etiology and maintenance of OCD symptomatology, empirical findings on the efficacy and effectiveness of various biological and psychosocial treatments for OCD, research on the effectiveness of augmenting traditional treatments with mindfulness for various psychiatric disorders, and an exploration of the mechanisms of action posited in dismantling studies of mindfulness treatments for various clinical and non-clinical populations. Through an integration of the findings, hypotheses regarding the mechanisms for change are offered along with clinical recommendations for how this understanding might be applied to treating client suffering from OCD. This study's methodology is informed by Pawson's realist synthesis method, whose goal is explanatory rather than summative, making it well suited to carrying out syntheses to develop working explanatory models in areas where data are insufficient to identify and test relationships (Pawson, 2006). The final process of this research involves making logical connections between the proposed components of mindfulness and OCD, developing an explanatory model, and applying such theoretical concepts to clinical practice.</p>

<p> Recent theories of attitudes and cognition have made a distinction between explicit attitudes that are conscious, deliberate judgments people make when asked to do so, and implicit attitudes, or those that are made automatically and without conscious effort (Greenwald and Banaji, 1995). This study integrated research and theory of implicit attitudes about smoking with the Transtheoretical Model's understanding of the process individuals go through as they quit smoking, to test the moderating effect of motivation to change on implicit smoking attitudes and to evaluate the indirect (mediated) effects of implicit smoking attitudes on cigarette demand through explicit smoking attitudes. Participants were <i>N</i>=283 daily smokers who completed an online survey that measured characteristics of their smoking, motivational Readiness to change, decisional balance considerations (Pros and Cons of smoking), and demand for cigarettes (Cigarette Purchase Task), before completing the Smoking Implicit Association Test. Results of multiple regression analyses indicated that as implicit attitudes about smoking became more positive, smokers reported on average more explicit positive attitudes (Pros of smoking) about smoking and less negative explicit attitudes (Cons of smoking) about smoking, beyond the effect Readiness for change had on those explicit smoking attitudes. Readiness to change did not moderate the effect of implicit smoking attitudes on decisional balance considerations. Decisional balance considerations were important predictors of smoker's responses on the smoking purchase task and accounted for the relationship between implicit smoking attitudes and choices on a hypothetical smoking purchase task. More positive implicit smoking attitudes indirectly predicted that smokers would purchase cigarettes at higher average prices before consumption dropped to zero, greater average maximum financial expenditure on cigarettes, and higher average price at which expenditure was maximized. These results may be useful for understanding how cigarette prices affect attitudes about smoking and increase the likelihood that people will quit.</p>

<p> Survival processing posits that our memories become enhanced when faced with a survival situation. The current study investigates how the survival processing effect is influenced by two memory processes well-known for enhancing memory, the self-referential effect and cueing.</p><p> One key question that can be posed is whether self survival provides a richer ("deeper") memory cue than imagining survival of an other (a third person). Depth of processing in relation to the participants' (self vs. other) perspective is manipulated to understand the role perspective and the self-referential effect play in the survival processing advantage.</p><p> The current study found that indeed the self survival scenario does provide a significantly better memory cue than the third person "other" perspectives. This highlights the possibility that the survival processing advantage is not a unique process so much as the combination of other known processes.</p>