A model for removing the increased recall of recent events from the temporal distribution of autobiographical memory

The reminiscence bump is the tendency to recall relatively many personal events from the period in which the individual was between 10 and 30 years old. This effect has only been found in autobiographical memory studies that used participants who were older than 40 years of age. The increased recall of recent events possibly obscures the reminiscence bump in the results of younger participants. In this study, a model was proposed that removes the increase for recent events from the temporal distribution. The model basically estimates a retention function based on the 10 most recent years from the observed distributions and divides the observed distributions by predictions derived from the estimated retention function. The model was examined with three simulated data sets and one experimental data set. The results of the experiment offered two practical examples of how the model could be used to investigate the temporal distribution of autobiographical memories

Childhood emotional trauma and cyberbullying perpetration among emerging adults: a multiple mediation model of the role of problematic social media use and psychopathology

Research suggests that a small minority of social media users experience problems as a result of their online use. The purpose of the present study was to examine the association of cyberbullying perpetration and problematic social media use with childhood emotional trauma, Cluster B (narcissistic, histrionic, antisocial, and borderline) personality traits, dissociative experiences (DEs), depression, and self-esteem in a nonclinical undergraduate sample. A total of 344 university students volunteered to complete a questionnaire that included measures on the aforementioned dimensions. Thirty-eight percent of the participants had emotional neglect and 27% had emotional abuse, while 44% of them demonstrated at least one cyberbullying perpetration behavior. Results indicated that cyberbullying perpetrators had higher scores on problematic social media use, dissociative experiences, Cluster B traits, depression and childhood emotional trauma, and lower on self-esteem. Path analysis demonstrated that, while adjusting for gender and age, childhood emotional trauma was directly and indirectly associated with cyberbullying perpetration via Cluster B traits. Moreover, depression and dissociation were directly associated with problematic social media use. The findings of this study emphasize the important direct role of childhood emotional trauma and pathological personality traits on cyberbullying perpetration

The Effects of Visual Information on Users' Mental Models: An Evaluation of Pathfinder Analysis as a Measure of Icon Usability

Research has shown that individuals' knowledge structures change as a result of learning and experience. This article investigates the possibility that the content of graphical user interfaces can play a role in determining the nature of the knowledge structures users develop. Users employed either concrete, abstract, or arbitrary icon sets in a computer-based problem-solving task. The effects of these icons were assessed using standard measures of performance. On the basis of the assumption that users' mental models should be better if appropriate icons were presented on the interface, Pathfinder analysis was used to elicit users' knowledge structures as they gained experience with the interface. The efficacy of this measure was then compared with performance measures. Our findings show that users' knowledge structures do depend on the nature of the graphical information presented at the interface but do not rely as much on the use of the visual metaphor as previously thought. Although most measures were sensitive to initial differences between icon sets, only some measures were sensitive to the long-term differences that remained after users had gained experience with the icon set. The implications of these findings for interface design are discussed

The Effects of Visual Information on Users' Mental Models: An Evaluation of Pathfinder Analysis as a Measure of Icon Usability

Research has shown that individuals' knowledge structures change as a result of learning and experience. This article investigates the possibility that the content of graphical user interfaces can play a role in determining the nature of the knowledge structures users develop. Users employed either concrete, abstract, or arbitrary icon sets in a computer-based problem-solving task. The effects of these icons were assessed using standard measures of performance. On the basis of the assumption that users' mental models should be better if appropriate icons were presented on the interface, Pathfinder analysis was used to elicit users' knowledge structures as they gained experience with the interface. The efficacy of this measure was then compared with performance measures. Our findings show that users' knowledge structures do depend on the nature of the graphical information presented at the interface but do not rely as much on the use of the visual metaphor as previously thought. Although most measures were sensitive to initial differences between icon sets, only some measures were sensitive to the long-term differences that remained after users had gained experience with the icon set. The implications of these findings for interface design are discussed

Further evidence on the abstraction of linguistic ideas

Three accounts of the processes underlying the retention of connected sentences expressing complex linguistic ideas were empirically compared: an integrationist model, an imagery model, and a tally model. The reaction time in a test of recognition memory was found to be independent of the number of components expressed by a sentence, which was inconsistent with the tally model. Concrete ideas and abstract ideas both showed complete integration, which was inconsistent with the imagery model. The integrationist approach was regarded as the most useful model of the abstraction of complex linguistic ideas