Leonie M Miller

Personality change predicts self-reported mental and physical health

OBJECTIVE Personality dimensions are known to predict mortality and other health outcomes, but almost no research has assessed the effects of changes in personality traits on physical and mental health outcomes. In this article, we examined the effects of changes in the Big Five personality dimensions on health as assessed by the Short Form Health Survey (SF-36). METHOD Respondents were 11,105 Australian adults aged 20-79 years (52.7% female). Latent difference score modeling was used to examine whether personality change over a 4-year period was associated with mental and physical health, and whether these effects were moderated by birth cohort. RESULTS Increases in Conscientiousness and Extraversion were found to be associated with improved mental and physical health, whereas increased Neuroticism was linked with poorer health. The nature of these associations varied significantly by birth cohort. CONCLUSION The findings have implications for understanding how changes in personality traits over time are related to health, and could be used to aid the development of effective health promotion strategies targeted to specific personality traits and birth cohorts.

The interaction of word frequency and concreteness in immediate serial recall

Word frequency and word concreteness are language attributes that have been shown to independently influence the recall of items in verbal short-term memory (STM). It has been argued that such effects are evidence for the action of long-term memory knowledge on STM traces. However, research to date has not investigated whether these variables interact in serial recall. In two experiments, we examined the behavior of these variables under factorial manipulation and demonstrated that the effect of word frequency is dependent on the level of concreteness of items. Serial recall performance is examined with reference to two explanatory approaches: Walker and Hulme’s (1999) dual-redintegration account and language-based models of STM. The data indicate that language-based models are more compatible with the observed effects and challenge the view that frequency and concreteness effects in STM are the products of distinct mechanisms.

A constrained Rasch model of trace redintegration in serial recall

The notion that verbal short-term memory tasks, such as serial recall, make use of information in long-term as well as in short-term memory is instantiated in many models of these tasks. Such models incorporate a process in which degraded traces retrieved from a short-term store are reconstructed, or redintegrated (Schweickert, 1993), through the use of information in long-term memory. This article presents a conceptual and mathematical model of this process based on a class of item-response theory models. It is demonstrated that this model provides a better fit to three sets of data than does the multinomial processing tree model of redintegration (Schweickert, 1993) and that a number of conceptual accounts of serial recall can be related to the parameters of the model.

Serial Recall, Word Frequency, and Mixed Lists: The Influence of Item Arrangement.

Studies of the effect of word frequency in the serial recall task show that lists of high-frequency words are better recalled than lists of low-frequency words; however, when high- and low-frequency words are alternated within a list, there is no difference in the level of recall for the two types of words, and recall is intermediate between lists of pure frequency. This pattern has been argued to arise from the development of a network of activated long-term representations of list items that support the redintegration of all list items in a nondirectional and nonspecific way. More recently, it has been proposed that the frequency effect might be a product of the coarticulation of items at word boundaries and their influence on rehearsal rather than a consequence of memory representations. The current work examines recall performance in mixed lists of an equal number of high- and low-frequency items arranged in contiguous segments (i.e., HHHLLL and LLLHHH), under quiet and articulatory suppression conditions, to test whether the effect is (a) nondirectional and (b) dependent on articulatory processes. These experiments demonstrate that neither explanation is satisfactory, although the results suggest that the effect is mnemonic. A language-based approach to short-term memory is favored with emphasis on the role of speech production processes at output.

Heterogeneity among potential foster carers: an investigation of reasons for not foster caring

Abstract Although Australia is experiencing a shortage of foster carers, there is currently little understanding of why people do not become carers. This study explores the reasons given for not fostering though a survey of 897 non carers. Results indicate that, at the aggregate level, people do not become carers because they do not know anything about fostering, or because they are busy with their own children, work, or commitments to family and friends. However, if we account for heterogeneity, differences in these barriers are observed for subgroups within the sample. We investigate the structure of the market of potential foster carers by segmenting the market using cultural background as the segmentation base. Results indicate that the reasons for not fostering differ depending on the subgroup being examined. Theoretically, this suggests that heterogeneity exists within the foster care market, and that examining barriers to foster care only at the aggregate level neglects the importance of individual subsegment characteristics. Practically, results are important because they suggest that generic marketing campaigns aimed at the entire community have limited effect and that customised strategies are required to attract the particular types of carers most needed.

Interaction between superconductor and ferromagnetic domains in iron sheath: Peak effect in MgB2/Fe wires

Interaction between the superconductor and ferromagnet in MgB2∕Fe wires results in either a plateau or a peak effect in the field dependence of transport critical current, Ic(H). This is in addition to magnetic shielding of external field. Current theoretical models cannot account for the observed peak effect in Ic(H). This letter shows that the theoretical explanation of the peak effect should be sought in terms of interaction between superconductor and magnetic domain structure, obtained after the remagnetization of the iron sheath by the self-field of the current. There is a minimum value of critical current, below which the remagnetization of the iron sheath and peak effect in Ic(H) are not observed.

Serial reconstruction of order and serial recall in verbal short-term memory

We carried out a series of experiments on verbal short-term memory for lists of words. In the first experiment, participants were tested via immediate serial recall, and word frequency and list set size were manipulated. With closed lists, the same set of items was repeatedly sampled, and with open lists, no item was presented more than once. In serial recall, effects of word frequency and set size were found. When a serial reconstruction-of-order task was used, in a second experiment, robust effects of word frequency emerged, but set size failed to show an effect. The effects of word frequency in order reconstruction were further examined in two final experiments. The data from these experiments revealed that the effects of word frequency are robust and apparently are not exclusively indicative of output processes. In light of these findings, we propose a multiple-mechanisms account in which word frequency can influence both retrieval and preretrieval processes.

The phonological neighbourhood effect on short-term memory for order

ABSTRACT There is a growing body of literature that suggests that long-term memory (LTM) and short-term memory (STM) structures that were once thought to be distinct are actually co-dependent, and that LTM can aid retrieval from STM. The mechanism behind this effect is commonly argued to act on item memory but not on order memory. The aim of the current study was to examine whether LTM could exert an influence on STM for order by examining an effect attributed to LTM, the phonological neighbourhood effect, in a task that reduced the requirement to retain item information. In Experiment 1, 18 participants completed a serial reconstruction task where neighbourhood density alternated within the lists. In Experiment 2, 22 participants completed a serial reconstruction task using pure lists of dense and sparse neighbourhood words. In Experiment 3, 22 participants completed a reconstruction task with both mixed and pure lists. There was a significant effect of neighbourhood density with better recall for dense than sparse neighbourhood words in pure lists but not in mixed lists. Results suggest that LTM exerts an influence prior to that proposed by many models of memory for order.

Psychological Reactance and Information Systems Adoption

According to Brehm (1966), if a person’s freedom to behave as they choose is threatened in some way, then they will become motivationally aroused to either reestablish the lost freedom, or to ensure that there is no further loss. This hypothetical motivational state is referred to as psychological reactance. While resistance is defined as behavior against compliance, psychological reactance is a motive to behave to recover a lost freedom, and may result in behavior against compliance. It is argued that negative behaviors, which contribute to the poor record of information system implementation, likely contain some element of psychological reactance and that the latter may be brought about by threats directly or indirectly related to the implementation at hand. Therefore, an understanding of the interactions between system implementation, broader contextual influences, such as organizational climate and the formation of reactance, offer an opportunity to base interventions in strategies that avoid or minimize the motive to adopt negative behaviors, and therefore enhance the implementation of information systems in organizational settings.

Framing advertisements to elicit positive emotions and attract foster carers: An investigation of high cognitive elaboration donations

ABSTRACT Advertisements that elicit negative emotions (e.g., guilt) have been found effective in prompting socially desirable behaviors, such as making monetary donations to charity. This study investigates whether this principle generalizes to a specific case of high-cognitive-elaboration donations: fostering a child. Results from an advertising experiment conducted with 470 respondents indicate that this is not the case. Rather, positive emotions caused stronger reactions to the advertisements, with processing motivation and preexisting attitudes playing a critical role. Implications for marketing foster care—and possibly other, similar high-cognitive-elaboration donations—include that ongoing communication and elicitation of positive emotions is essential to first form the right processing motivations and attitudes, which then more likely will lead to behavioral change on later advertising exposures.