No abstract

This study investigates the role of task demands on children's ability to inhibit irrelevant information using a block‐cued directed‐forgetting task. Recall performance was compared in a block‐cued directed‐forgetting task in which task demands had been decreased by presenting blocks of semantically related words with that in which unrelated words were presented. Inhibition patterns of recall were found at a younger age in the task that contained the related words than in the task that contained the unrelated words. These results suggest that previous results charting the development of cognitive inhibition may not have been exclusively the product of the development of inhibition, but rather a product of both the difficulty of the task and the development of inhibition.

This study examined the effectiveness of the commercial Web site, The Psychology Place (http://psychologyplace.com) in helping students learn course material in an introductory psychology course. This site consists of linked pages that contain tutorials, readings, and links to relevant sites. All participants in this study attended conventional course lecture. In addition, half of the participants completed assignments from this Web site. Students who completed assignments from The Psychology Place and attended lecture demonstrated better understanding and retention of course material than students who had only attended lecture. This finding is noteworthy for instructors because incorporating this site into a course was minimally time consuming.

The authors hypothesized that retrieval inhibition in list method directed forgetting could be improved by presenting a task that maximized the segregation step of the retrieval-inhibition process. In Experiment 1, they presented lists of semantically related words in a list method directed-forgetting task to maximize retrieval inhibition. Contrary to predictions, this manipulation eliminated the directed-forgetting effect. The authors further investigated the results of Experiment 1 in Experiments 2 and 3 by manipulating recall instructions and by presenting lists that contained both a categorized and an unrelated list-half. They found directed-forgetting effects for semantically related word lists when participants were asked to recall only the TBR (to-be-remembered) items but not when participants were asked to recall both the TBF (to-be-forgotten) and TBR items. They also found that directed-forgetting effects were not produced when categorized items were presented in the 1st list.

The purpose of the studies reported here was to test the hypothesis that college students from cultures that emphasize strong family ties experience familial tethering or a pull to remain connected to home, which then has negative consequences on the student's ability to connect to and succeed at the university. In Study 1, it was found that students of Appalachian origin, women, and students from large families were more likely to report pressure from their families to return home frequently and less connection to and more isolation from the university. An expanded assessment of familial tethering which measured social, externalized, and ecological tethering was investigated in Study 2. It was found that Appalachian students experienced more externalized tethering. Women and individuals from larger families experienced more social tethering. Externalized tethering was found to be associated with a lower grade point average, while there were no negative correlates of social tethering. The most negative student outcomes including lower grade point average and high levels of fear of success and isolation was found in students who experienced ecological tethering. Implications for student persistence and retention, especially that of college students experiencing ecological tethering, are discussed.