Memory framing.

In 2004 national educational standards for chemistry were implemented in Germany. While the standards describe different competencies to be reached after grade 10, no compulsory contents are defined. The contents are defined by the different German states individually. This means that there are no defined common topics taught in all states that can be used for test items for the evaluation of the standards. As a result, two different types of test items are developed based on a model of competence. One type of items contains chemical content information that can be used to solve the task. The other type of items does not contain this information. The two types of items have different advantages and disadvantages; the first type are more dependent on the reading ability of the students, but their use leads to a fairer test across the different states, whereas the second type are more related to chemical content knowledge but are less fair. The two types of items are compared according to the item difficulty, correlations to reading skills, intelligence and chemical content knowledge. The results of this study can be generalized to other assessments using a similar design.

Four experiments compare the effect of familiarity on item, associative, and plurality recognition on self-paced and speeded tests. The familiarity of test items was enhanced by presenting a prime that matched the subsequent test item. On item and plurality recognition tests, participants were more likely to respond "old" to primed than to unprimed test items. In associative recognition, priming increased the proportion of old responses on a speeded test, but not on a self-paced test. This suggests that familiarity plays a larger role in item and plurality recognition than in associative recognition on self-paced tests. On speeded tests, priming has a similar effect on item, associative, and plurality recognition. Results suggest that item and associative recognition rely differentially on familiarity and recollection. They are also consistent with recent evidence suggesting that different processes underlie plurality and associative recognition.

Bipolar disorder (BD) is associated with impaired decision making, yet few studies have adopted paradigms from behavioral economics to decompose which, if any, aspects of decision making may be impacted. This may be particularly relevant for decision-making processes relevant to known difficulties with emotive dysfunction and corresponding reward dysregulation in BD. Participants with bipolar I disorder (BD; n = 44) and non-psychiatric healthy controls (CTL; n = 28) completed three well-validated behavioral economics decision making tasks via a remote-based survey, including loss aversion and framing effects, that examined sensitivity to probabilities and potential gains and losses in monetary and non-monetary domains. Consistent with past work, we found evidence of moderate loss aversion and framing effects across all participants. No group differences were found in any of the measures of loss aversion or framing effects. We report no group differences between bipolar and non-psychiatric groups with respect to loss aversion and framing effects using a remote-based survey approach. These results provide a framework future studies to explore similar tasks in clinical populations and suggest the context and degree to which decision making is altered in BD may be rooted in a more complex cognitive mechanism that warrants future research.

Willpower depletion and framing effects

Experimental and behavioral economics are well established branches in the economic science. This essay presents and discusses some results and behavioral regularities from these fields which are of potential importance for public policy. After a brief introduction of what experimental and behavioral economics is, some behavioral regularities as presentation and framing effects, pro-social behavior, and reciprocity are introduced and it is reported how they interact with prominent trading institutions, taxation, and social and individual well-being. Throughout some implications for public policy are discussed.

This article examines the relationship between test administration tools and item types. It firstly examines the difference in the test administration tools such as paper-based test, computer-based test, and web-based test, in particular, dealing with speaking test. The difference is relevant to item or task types. Based on the considerations of Bachman and Palmer (1996) and Chapelle and Douglas (2006) on test development, and Weir's (2005) definition of context validity, the application of computer technologies to test administration needs to be considered an important construct affecting test takers' performance. To investigate the item type difference among current speaking tests and its relationship with computer technology in administrating the tests, twelve test takers, five proctors, and two computer lab administrator participated in the phone interview and e-mail survey. Six popular speaking tests (TSE, PELT, IELTS, MATE, iBT TOEFL, ESPT) were selected to be analyzed. The data were analyzed in terms of item types, computer technology use, and test-takers perceptions. The implication is suggested for students, teachers, and language testers.

Past research showed that emotional contexts can impair recognition memory for the target item. Given that item-context congruity may enhance recognition memory, the present study aims to examine the effect of the congruent emotional encoding contexts on recognition memory. Participants studied congruent word-picture pairs (e.g., the word "cow" - a picture describing a cow) and incongruent word-picture pairs (e.g., the word "cow" - a picture describing a goat) and, subsequently, were asked to report the nature of the picture (emotional or neutral). Behavioral results revealed that emotional contexts impaired source but not item recognition, with congruent word-context mitigating this impairment and enhancing item recognition. Neural results from ERPs and theta oscillations found the recollection process, as shown by the LPC old/new effect and theta oscillations, for both item and source recognition across emotional contexts, irrespective of congruity. Meanwhile, the familiarity process as indexed by the FN400 old/new effect was found only for item recognition in congruent emotional contexts. These findings suggest that the congruent relationship of item-context could mitigate the emotion-induced source memory impairment and enhance item memory, with neural results elucidating the memory processes involved in retrieval of emotional information. Specifically, while emotion-related information generally elicits the recollection-based memory process, only congruent emotional information elicits the familiarity-based process.

The effort to answer questions concerning whether international law relevantly reflects the reality of international community, especially in terms of the explanatory capability, goes hand in hand with the study on the methodologies of international law. Twenty years ago, the interesting opportunity was given to seven methodologies of international law to express their respective strengths and weaknesses to handle with a given same international law questions. Positivism, policy-oriented jurisprudence, critical legal studies were invited at the feast of international law methodologies. Surprisingly, law and economics was also invited to it. Despite of its strength to explain cause and effect of international actors’ behavior through empirical approach, law and economics is not fully welcomed by international law scholars because its approach does not seem to pay due attention to the normative aspect of international law. Contrast with the passive reception of law and economics approach in the field of international law, law and economics is actively employed to improve effectiveness and efficiency of legal norms and institutions in the area of domestic law including contract law, criminal law and litigation procedure. Shared with the fundamental assumptions of neo-classical economics, law and economics explores effectiveness and efficiency of legal norms and institutions through the lens of the perfect rationality. Put it differently, law and economics usually begins its analysis on assumptions that Homo economicus has the perfect rationality which enables Homo economicus to make a rational choice at any circumstance. However, empirical and psychological experiments give much reason to doubt over assumptions of law and economics: Homo economicus is undoubtedly subject to the bounded rationality rather than the perfect rationality. With the help of cognitive psychology, behavioral law and economics based on behavioral economics fiercely challenges the unreality of law and economics. The core concepts including heuristics, framing effect, loss aversion and status quo bias are used as the powerful weapons by behavioral law and economics to expose the bounded rationality embodied in Homo economicus. As yet, international law does not appear to take behavioral law and economics seriously as a method of international law. There are lots of reasons to explain this phenomenon. Generally, the reluctance of international law scholars to apply economic analysis to international law can be suggested as the main reason. International law scholars criticize law and economics as an empty method because it does not focus on the normative nature of international law. In this sense, behavioral law and economics, which is harshly criticized by neo-classical economics, seems to have a hard time to occupy the right place in the international law methodologies. But this should not be the end of story. The main purpose of this article is to explore the usefulness of behavioral law and economics as a method of international law. Despite of its above mentioned weaknesses, advantages of behavioral law and economics clearly exist in the field of studies concerning how to design treaty text for the purpose of effective compliance, and to create a new international institutions’ mechanism to assist the cooperation of states regardless of their respective interests. Moreover, behavioral law and economics makes a bold attempt to redirect the path towards the studies of international law methodologies which is overwhelmingly dominated by the mainstream international law methodologies. In other words, behavioral law and economics discloses the hidden reason why international law scholars ardently sticks to the mainstream international law methodologies, especially positivism, despite of its incapability to address international law problems effectively. Behavioral law and economics can serve as a visible, enriching alternative and complement

Many memory theorists have assumed that forced-choice recognition tests can rely more on familiarity, whereas item (yes-no) tests must rely more on recollection. In actuality, several studies have found no differences in the contributions of recollection and familiarity underlying the two different test formats. Using word frequency to manipulate stimulus characteristics, the present study demonstrated that the contributions of recollection to item versus forced-choice tests is variable. Low word frequency resulted in significantly more recollection in an item test than did a forced-choice procedure, but high word frequency produced the opposite result. These results clearly constrain any uniform claim about the degree to which recollection supports responding in item versus forced-choice tests.

Previous work (Mayes et al., Hippocampus 12:325-340, 2002) found that patient YR, who suffered a selective bilateral lesion to the hippocampus in 1986, showed relatively preserved verbal and visual item recognition memory in the face of clearly impaired verbal and visual recall. In this study, we found that YR's Yes/No as well as forced-choice recognition of both intra-item associations and associations between items of the same kind was as well preserved as her item recognition memory. In contrast, YR was clearly impaired, and more so than she was on the above kinds of recognition, at recognition of associations between different kinds of information. Thus, her recognition memory for associations between objects and their locations, words and their temporal positions, abstract visual items or words and their temporal order, animal pictures and names of professions, faces and voices, faces and spoken names, words and definitions, and pictures and sounds, was clearly impaired. Several of the different information associative recognition tests at which YR was impaired could be compared with related item or inter-item association recognition tests of similar difficulty that she performed relatively normally around the same time. It is suggested that YR's familiarity memory for items, intra-item associations, and associations between items of the same kind was mediated by her intact medial temporal lobe cortices and was preserved, whereas her hippocampally mediated recall/recollection of these kinds of information was impaired. It is also suggested that the components of associations between different kinds of information are represented in distinct neocortical regions and that initially they only converge for memory processing within the hippocampus. No familiarity memory may exist in normal subjects for such associations, and, if so, YR's often chance recognition occurred because of her severe recall/recollection deficit. Conflicting data and views are discussed, and the way in which recall as well as item and associative recognition need to be systematically explored in patients with apparently selective hippocampal lesions, in order to resolve existing conflicts, is outlined.

ABSTRACTOlder adults have considerable impairment in associative recognition despite minimal age differences in item recognition. The magnitude of this associative deficit varies by type of stimuli, strategy utilization, and other mediators and moderators (Old & Naveh-Benjamin, 2008, Psychology and Aging, 23, 104–118). Name pair stimuli have not been used to test the associative deficit hypothesis (ADH), although tests using name–face stimuli support the ADH. Additionally, metacognitive awareness of the ADH has not been investigated. We tested the ADH with word and name pair stimuli, and predicted that age-related associative deficits would be larger for words than names because names, unlike most common nouns, lack certain semantic properties that could be used to bind pairs of names together. Results supported the ADH for words but not names: Younger and older adults recognized equivalently fewer names on the associative test relative to the item test. As predicted, self-efficacy was higher for younger than older adults. Surprisingly, self-efficacy for the associative test was higher than for the item test but post-test estimates of performance success (postdictions) were higher for the item test than for the associative test, suggesting sensitivity by participants to different task demands in the item and associative tests following recognition attempts. Metacognitive accuracy was better for words than names and for the item test than associative test, and equivalent between age groups. Overall, participants overestimated their name recognition abilities. Our findings extend support for the ADH to a conceptually important and ecologically valid domain (names) and provide new data on metacognitive aspects of the ADH.

The present study investigated whether we first remember an item (e.g., a word itself) and then its source (e.g., position on the screen) or whether the retrieval of item and source information can (partially) overlap. Participants were tested on the source either in immediate sequence to item recognition (as standard in source-monitoring research) or following as a separate block after full completion of the item recognition test to separate these processes in time, providing a baseline. Using the mouse-tracking procedure during the item and source tests, we analyzed how item and source decisions unfolded qualitatively over time. Despite no significant difference in the aggregated trajectory curvatures, more thorough analyses based on the individual trajectories revealed differences across the test formats. In the standard format, trajectories were less curved in the source than in the item test. In contrast, in the blocked format, this difference was in the other direction with source showing more curved trajectories than item. Alternative interpretations of mouse-trajectory curvatures on the source-monitoring paradigm and what their difference may imply for item and source processing are discussed.

This paper explores the multifaceted nature of digital marketing strategies by integrating microeconomic and behavioral economics theories to understand consumer decision-making processes. Traditional microeconomics elucidates consumer behavior through structural elements such as pricing and demand elasticity, while behavioral economics emphasizes psychological mechanisms, including bounded rationality and framing effects. The efficacy of digital marketing is examined through both economic tools and psychological influences. Utilizing eye-tracking technology, this study assesses consumer focus on specific information in digital environments, revealing how visual attention, user interface design, promotional messaging, and product placement affect decision-making at both conscious and intuitive levels. The findings suggest the limitations of rational choice models in the digital context, highlighting that decision-making is profoundly influenced by environmental cues and cognitive constraints. By synergizing microeconomic analysis with behavioral insights, this research proposes the development of digital marketing strategies that enhance consumer welfare, improve decision quality, and maintain ethical standards. Ultimately, the aim is to provide a more nuanced and holistic understanding of consumer behavior in the digital age.

This article gives an overview of recent discussions on behavioral economics and its importance both in reevaluating known instruments of environmental policy and in figuring out new instruments in this policy area. In reporting on recent discussions in behavioral economics, a distinction is made between (mostly experimentally) observed effects (e.g. the framing effect or the endowment effect) and concepts which try to generalize these effects theoretically (prospect theory and concepts of bounded rationality, for instance). Against this backdrop, contributions of behavioral economics which already take environmental instruments into account are systematized according to the instrument they focus on and according to the addressees they have in mind. On this basis, an assessment as regards the most important behavioral effects and insights in discussing issues of environmental policy is presented. This is accomplished by evaluating that part of the insights made in recent research of behavioral economics that have not yet been applied to the issue of environmental policy. It is here in particular that the concepts mentioned above come into play; going beyond a mere modification of canonical subjective utility theory then becomes a key analytical strategy in figuring out and assessing environmental instruments. Finally, the article sketches out potential avenues for further research towards a refreshed conceptual and instrumental framework for environmental policy.

In recent work, researchers have shown that source-recognition memory can be incorporated in an extended signal detection model that covers both it and item-recognition memory (A. Hilford, M. Glanzer, K. Kim, & L. T. DeCarlo, 2002). In 5 experiments, using learning variables that have an established effect on item recognition, the authors tested further implications of that extended model. The results establish 6 source-recognition regularities that support the model. An important regularity in that set is the linkage of source and item recognition: Any learning variable that increases item recognition increases source recognition.