Is spacing really the 'friend of induction'?

Inductive learning takes place when people learn a new concept or category by observing a variety of exemplars. Kornell and Bjork (2008) asked participants to learn new painting styles either by presenting different paintings of the same artist consecutively (massed presentation) or by mixing paintings of different artists (spaced presentation). In their second experiment, Kornell and Bjork (2008) showed with a final style recognition test, that spacing resulted in better inductive learning than massing. Also, by using this style recognition test, they ruled out the possibility that spacing merely resulted in a better memory for the labels of the newly learned painting styles. The findings from Kornell and Bjork's (2008) second experiment are important because they show that the benefit of spaced learning generalizes to complex learning tasks and outcomes, and that it is not confined to rote memory learning. However, the findings from Kornell and Bjork's (2008) second experiment have never been replicated. In the present study we performed an exact and high-powered replication of Kornell and Bjork's (2008) second experiment with a Web-based sample. Such a replication contributes to establish the reliability of the original finding and hence to more conclusive evidence of the spacing effect in inductive learning. The findings from the present replication attempt revealed a medium-sized advantage of spacing over massing in inductive learning, which was comparable to the original effect in the experiment by Kornell and Bjork (2008). Also, the 95% confidence intervals (CI) of the effect sizes from both experiments overlapped considerably. Hence, the findings from the present replication experiment and the original experiment clearly reinforce each other

Does intuition cause cooperation?

Recently, researchers claimed that people are intuitively inclined to cooperate with reflection causing them to behave selfishly. Empirical support for this claim came from experiments using a 4-player public goods game with a marginal return of 0.5 showing that people contributed more money to a common project when they had to decide quickly (i.e., a decision based on intuition) than when they were instructed to reflect and decide slowly. This intuitive-cooperation effect is of high scientific and practical importance because it argues against a central assumption of traditional economic and evolutionary models. The first experiment of present study was set up to examine the generality of the intuitive-cooperation effect and to further validate the experimental task producing the effect. In Experiment 1, we investigated Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) workers' contributions to a 4-player public goods game with a marginal return of 0.5 while we manipulated the knowledge about the other players' contribution to the public goods game (contribution known vs. contribution unknown), the identity of the other players (humans vs. computers randomly generating contributions) and the time constraint (time pressure/intuition vs. forced delay/reflection). However, the results of Experiment 1 failed to reveal an intuitive-cooperation effect. Furthermore, four subsequent direct replications attempts with AMT workers (Experiments 2a, 2b, 2c and Experiment 3, which was conducted with naïve/inexperienced participants) also failed to demonstrate intuitive-cooperation effects. Taken together, the results of the present study could not corroborate the idea that people are intuitively cooperative, hence suggesting that the theoretical relationship between intuition and cooperation should be further scrutinized

Why wait if you can switch? A short term testing effect in cross-language recognition.

Taking a memory test after an initial study phase produces better long-term retention than restudying the items, a phenomenon known as the testing effect. We propose that this effect emerges because testing strengthens semantic features of items’ memory traces, whereas restudying strengthens surface features of items’ memory traces. This novel account predicts that a testing effect should be observed even after a short retention interval when a language switch occurs between the learning phase and the final test phase. We assessed this prediction with Dutch-English bilinguals who learned Dutch Deese-Roediger-McDermott word lists through restudying or through testing (retrieval practice). Five minutes after this learning phase, they took a recognition test in Dutch (within-language condition) or in English (across-language condition). We observed a testing effect in the across-language condition, but not in the within-language condition. These findings corroborate our novel account of the testing effect

Power of a randomization test in a single case multiple baseline AB design

A randomization test can be used to statistically test hypotheses in multiple baseline designs to complement the commonly used visual inspection analysis. A crossed factor simulation study was performed to investigate the power of a randomization test in an multiple baseline design. The results sho

Development and individual differences in transitive reasoning: A fuzzy trace theory approach

Fuzzy trace theory explains why children do not have to use rules of logic or premise information to infer transitive relationships. Instead, memory of the premises and performance on transitivity tasks is explained by a verbatim ability and a gist ability. Until recently, the processes involved in transitive reasoning and memory of the premises were studied by comparing mean performance in fixed-age groups. In this study, an individual-difference model of fuzzy trace theory for transitive reasoning was formulated and tested on a sample (N = 409) of 4- to 13-year-old children. Tasks were used which differed with respect to presentation ordering and position ordering. From this individual- difference model expectations could be derived about the individual performance on memory and transitivity test-pairs. The multilevel latent class model was used to fit the formalized individual-difference fuzzy trace theory to the sample data. The model was shown to fit the data to a large extent. The results showed that verbatim ability and gist ability drove the activation of verbatim and gist traces, respectively, and that children used combinations of these traces to solve memory tasks (testing memory of the premises) and transitivity tasks. Task format had a stronger effect on transitivity task performance than on memory of the premises. Development of gist ability was found to be faster than development of verbatim ability. Another important finding was that some children remembered the premise information correctly but were not able to infer the transitive relationship, even though the premises provided all the necessary information. This contradicts Trabasso’s linear ordering theory which posits that memory of the premises is sufficient to infer transitive relationships

Медицинские и педагогические аспекты проблемы сохранения здоровья детей

Изложены актуальные вопросы состояния здоровья детей Украины. Приведены медицинские и педагогические аспекты решения проблемы сохранения здоровья детей.Urgent issues of children's health in Ukraine are reported. Medical and pedagogical aspects of solving the problem of children's health protection are described

Accounting for individual differences in the development of verbal and visual short term memory processes in children

In developmental research on memory, the model of working memory of Baddeley and Hitch (1974, Baddeley, 1986) is the theory most often referred to. This theory has played an important role in studies on human learning in general. However, it is not clear how the verbal and visual short term memory systems develop. In order to investigate this development, we argue that some important issues should be taken into account; a longitudinal research design and individual differences between children. The current study is a follow-up study in which we investigated the transitions that a subsample of 30 children made between verbal and visual processing during the course of one year. Our results showed that the children showed large variation in STM processes and did not move from one type of processing to another in a consistent manner. This implies that the development of the verbal and visual STM systems may be less predictable than expected based on the literature, stressing the importance to be cautious when individual differences between children are not taken into account

Registered Replication Report: Rand, Greene & Nowak(2012)

In an anonymous 4-person economic game, participants contributed more money to a common project (i.e., cooperated) when required to decide quickly than when forced to delay their decision (Rand, Greene & Nowak, 2012), a pattern consistent with the “social heuristics” hypothesis proposed by Rand and colleagues. The results of studies using time pressure have been mixed, with some replication attempts observing similar patterns (e.g., Rand et al., 2014) and others observing null effects (e.g., Tinghög et al., 2013, Verkoeijen et al., 2014). This Registered Replication Report (RRR) assessed the size and variability of the effect of time pressure on cooperative decisions by combining 21 separate, pre-registered replications of the critical conditions from Study 7 of the original paper (Rand et al., 2012). The primary planned analysis used data from all participants who were randomly assigned to conditions and who met the protocol inclusion criteria (an intent-to-treat approach that included the 65.9% of participants in the Time Pressure condition and 7.5% in the Forced Delay condition who did not adhere to the time constraints), and observed a difference in contributions of -0.37 percentage points, compared to an 8.6 percentage point difference calculated from the original data. Analyzing the data as the original paper did, including data only for participants who complied with the time constraints, the RRR observed a 10.37 percentage point difference in contributions compared to a 15.31 percentage point difference in the original study. In combination, the results of the intent-to-treat analysis and the compliant-only analysis are consistent with the presence of selection biases and the absence of a causal effect of time pressure on cooperatio

Testing a single-case experimental design to study dynamic light exposure in people with dementia living at home

Most people with dementia live at home supported by informal caregivers, but disturbed sleep patterns may induce a heavy burden of care. The beneficial effects of bright light on their sleep, health, and well-being have been demonstrated in clinical settings, but not in a home situation. We evaluated a dynamic lighting system in a real-life longitudinal single-case experimental design (SCED) with people with dementia living at home. Eleven people with dementia and their informal caregivers were included in this study with four 4-week periods of alternating exposure and nonexposure in an introduction–withdrawal setup (ABAB). Objective light exposure data were collected and analyzed. The used study design seems applicable for this population and suitable for home use. Participant dropout did occur, but was due to health conditions rather than participant burden. The lighting system led to more light in the homes of the participants, as well as to higher actual individual light exposures, although the latter increased only moderately and not consistently across all participants, seasons, and times of day. The participants appreciated the lighting system even after 6 months. We reflect on individual differences, seasonal and daypart influences, and differential light effects. Recommendations and lessons learned are discussed

A Practical Illustration of Methods to Deal with Potential Outliers: A Multiverse Outlier Analysis of Study 3 from Brummelman, Thomaes, Orobio de Castro, Overbeek, and Bushman (2014)

Recently, Brummelman, Thomaes, Orobio de Castro, Overbeek, and Bushman (2014: Study 3) demonstrated that inflated praise benefits challenge seeking of children with high self-esteem, but harms challenge seeking of children with low self-esteem. In the present paper, we examined the original data set on model-fit and prediction outliers according to various reasonable criteria and norms. Subsequently, we carried out a multiverse outlier re-analysis on the data of Brummelman and colleagues’ Study 3, employing the same analytical approach as the original authors did but excluding outliers. Out of the twelve re-analyses in the multiverse, six demonstrated that removing only a small number of outliers rendered the originally reported crucial interaction effect between self-esteem and type of praise non-significant and produced a sizeable reduction of the effect size. The present paper illustrates the use of reporting outlier analyses, which lies in allowing a critical evaluation of the empirical evidence and offering a more complete picture that enhances future studies in the field