The study evaluates a semester-long workbook curriculum approach to teaching a college level introductory statistics course. The workbook curriculum required students to read content before and during class and then work in groups to complete problems and answer conceptual questions pertaining to the material they read. Instructors spent class time answering students' questions. The 59 students who experienced the workbook curriculum completed the Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics (SATS) on the first and last day of the course. These students' post course ratings on the subscales of cognitive competence, affect and difficulty were all significantly higher than their pre course ratings. Additionally, the 59 students' post course ratings for these 3 subscales were also significantly higher than those provided by a comparison group of statistics students (sample size 235). The results indicated that the students experiencing the workbook curriculum (1) had more confidence in their ability to perform and understand statistics, (2) liked statistics more, and (3) thought statistics was more difficult than the comparison group. Additionally, these students' attitude scores were positively correlated with both GPA and performance on a comprehensive final exam. We discuss the various methodological problems faced by classroom researchers and suggest that, in some cases, assessing students' attitudes can be an effective solution to these methodological problems. We conclude that the workbook approach holds promise for teaching introductory statistics courses.

The purpose of this research was to develop and validate a new measure of undergraduate student cynicism-the Cynical Attitudes Toward College Scale (CATCS). In Study 1, the authors split data collected from 1,049 students representing 3 diverse college populations into development and confirmation samples. Using confirmatory factor analysis, the authors (a) developed an 18-item measurement model reflecting 4 reliable dimensions of student cynicism-policy, academic, social, and institutional; (b) demonstrated cross-sample generalizability; and (c) established convergent and discriminant validity. In Study 2, the authors showed the CATCS's ability to discriminate among diverse groups of students predicted to differ on the 4 subscales as well as to predict future academic outcomes. Practical applications of the CATCS are discussed.

In three experiments we studied human ability to use statistical contingencies between visual stimuli (flankers and targets) to improve performance in a letter-digit classification task. We compared the performance of explicitly informed subjects with that of subjects who were told nothing of the contingencies. Simultaneous presentation offlankers and targets (Experiment 1) produced evidence of unintentional contingency use by both informed and uninformed subjects. When stimuli on trial n predicted target stimuli on trial n + 1 (Experiment 2) there was no evidence of unintentional processes, but informed subjects showed strong evidence of using intentional prediction strategies. When flanker onset preceded target stimuli presentation (Experiment 3), evidence of contingency use by both informed and uninformed subjects was found, but the data illustrated qualitative differences in response style (e.g., speed-accuracy tradeoffs) between the two groups. Intentional and unintentional uses of contingencies between perceptual events are qualitatively distinct with respect to the time frame in which they can be applied and the performance patterns they produce. Finally, we argue that the unintentional processes studied here are implicit in nature.

Humorous material tends to be recalled at higher rates than non-humorous material however it is not clear why this occurs. The present study evaluated semantic elaboration, incongruity resolution, and perceived humor explanations of this memory phenomenon. Participants rated either inspirational or humorous properties of stimuli and recalled photographs, keywords and phrases. Results were most consistent with the perceived humor hypothesis. Participants' ratings of humor predicted recall performance even when semantic elaboration and incongruity resolution were controlled.

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