Browsing by Author "Rubin, DC"

Now showing 1 - 20 of 112
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    51 properties of 125 words: A unit analysis of verbal behavior
    (Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1980-01-01) Rubin, DC
    Values for 125 words were obtained for 51 scales including measures of orthography, pronunciation, imagery, categorizability, association, number of attributes, age-of-acquisition, word frequency, goodness, emotionality, autobiographical memory, tachistoscopic recognition, reading latency, lexical decision, incidental and intentional recall, recall using a mnemonic pathway, paired-associate learning, and recognition. Six factors emerged: Spelling and Sound, Imagery and Meaning, Word Frequency, Recall, Emotionality, and Goodness. Implications for current methodology and theory are discussed, including the claims: that multivariate research is a necessary addition to the study of verbal behavior; that a unidimensional concept such as depth does not do justice to the complexity of recall; and that associative frequency, emotionality, and pronunciability are among the best predictors of our commonly used tasks. © 1980 Academic Press, Inc.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    A basic-systems approach to autobiographical memory
    (Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2005-04-01) Rubin, DC
    Memory for complex everyday events involving vision, hearing, smell, emotion, narrative, and language cannot be understood without considering the properties of the separate systems that process and store each of these forms of information. Using this premise as a starting point, my colleagues and I found that visual memory plays a central role in autobiographical memory: The strength of recollection of an event is predicted best by the vividness of its visual imagery, and a loss of visual memory causes a general amnesia. Examination of autobiographical memories in individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) suggests that the lack of coherence often noted in memories of traumatic events is not due to a lack of coherence either of the memory itself or of the narrative that integrates the memory into the life story. Rather, making the traumatic memory central to the life story correlates positively with increased PTSD symptoms. The basic-systems approach has yielded insights into autobiographical memory's phenomenology, neuropsychology, clinical disorders, and neural basis. Copyright © 2005 American Psychological Society.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    A depth aftereffect caused by viewing a rotating Ames window.
    (Perception, 1982-01) Rubin, DC
    After a rotating Ames window has been viewed, a normal test window held diagonal to the subject's line of sight appears to be distorted, having a larger back than front. The effect does not occur if a normal window is rotated or if the test window is held perpendicular to the subject's line of sight.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    A halo visual illusion.
    (Perception, 1977-01) Rubin, DC; Rebson, DJ
    A visual illusion consisting of transparent halos extending beyond the boundaries of rotating discs is reported. The effect can be obtained by rotating a variety of black-and-white discs at moderate speeds. It is not due solely to rods, as opposed to cones, and does not appear to be explainable in terms of intermittent stimulation of portions of visual fields of fixed visual angle.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    A schema for common cents.
    (Mem Cognit, 1983-07) Rubin, DC; Kontis, TC
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    A simple design for an impossible triangle.
    (Perception, 1979-01) Brouwer, JR; Rubin, DC
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    A simple method for producing figures for publication
    (Behavior Research Methods and Instrumentation, 1976) Rubin, DC
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    A Study of Gender Differences in Autobiographical Memory: Broken Down by Age and Sex
    (Journal of Adult Development, 1999-12-01) Rubin, DC; Schulkind, MD; Rahhal, TA
    Data from 40 older adults who produced autobiographical memories to word cues and to the request to list five important memories, and data from 60 older adults who answered factual multiple-choice questions for events spread across their lives, were analyzed for gender differences. In spite of considerable statistical power, there were no gender differences in the distribution of autobiographical memories over the lifespan, in the distribution of important memories, in various ratings provided to these memories, or in the distribution of knowledge for events. The only gender difference found was that men performed better on factual questions about current events and baseball. Thus, counter to what might be expected from Darwinian theory and some behavioral data, gender differences were minimal.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    A tale of three functions: The self-reported uses of autobiographical memory
    (Social Cognition, 2005-02-01) Bluck, S; Alea, N; Habermas, T; Rubin, DC
    Theories hold that autobiographical memory serves several broad functions (directive, self, and social). In the current study, items were derived from the theoretical literature to create the Thinking About Life Experiences (TALE) questionnaire to empirically assess these three functions. Participants (N = 167) completed the TALE. To examine convergent validity, they also rated their overall tendency to think about and to talk about the past and completed the Reminiscence Functions Scale (Webster, 1997). The results lend support to the existence of these theoretical functions, but also offer room for refinements in future thinking about both the breadth and specificity of the functions that autobiographical memory serves.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    A unit analysis of prose memory
    (Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1978-01-01) Rubin, DC
    Four stories were divided into function word units. These units were assigned dependent variable values determined by the scoring of subjects' recalls and independent variable values determined by measures of gist, imagery, repetition, frequency of occurrence, serial position, grammatical connectedness, centrality in a propositional net, and subjects' intuitions of which units would be remembered. The independent variables were all statistically significant predictors of recall. Subjects' intuitions and gist were the best predictors of the more structured stories, while repetition and serial position were the best predictors of the less structured stories. For each story, the underlying rank ordering of function word units from most to least likely to be remembered was the same for all subjects (i.e., scalable). While changes in the retention interval, subject population, and motivation level affected the amount recalled, these changes had little affect on the rank ordering of the units from most to least likely to be remembered. Changes in the retrieval task from free recall to prompted recall and recognition affected both the amount and rank ordering of units. © 1978 Academic Press, Inc.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Accounting for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptom Severity With Pre- and Posttrauma Measures: A Longitudinal Study of Older Adults.
    (Clin Psychol Sci, 2016-03) Ogle, CM; Rubin, DC; Siegler, IC
    Using data from a longitudinal study of community-dwelling older adults, we analyzed the most extensive set of known correlates of PTSD symptoms obtained from a single sample to examine the measures' independent and combined utility in accounting for PTSD symptom severity. Fifteen measures identified as PTSD risk factors in published meta-analyses and 12 theoretically and empirically supported individual difference and health-related measures were included. Individual difference measures assessed after the trauma, including insecure attachment and factors related to the current trauma memory, such as self-rated severity, event centrality, frequency of involuntary recall, and physical reactions to the memory, accounted for symptom severity better than measures of pre-trauma factors. In an analysis restricted to prospective measures assessed before the trauma, the total variance explained decreased from 56% to 16%. Results support a model of PTSD in which characteristics of the current trauma memory promote the development and maintenance of PTSD symptoms.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Adaptation-level theory and the free recall of mixed-frequency lists
    (Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 1982-01-01) Rubin, DC; Corbett, S
    Subjects learned a list containing both high-frequency (common) and low-frequency (rare) words after learning five lists of either high-or low-frequency words. As predicted by adaptation-level theory, preexposure to lists at one frequency made words at that same frequency more difficult to learn relative to words at other frequencies. © 1982, Psychonomic Society, Inc.. All rights reserved.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Associative asymmetry, availability, and retrieval.
    (Mem Cognit, 1983-01) Rubin, DC
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Autobiographical memory across the lifespan
    (1986) Rubin, DC; Wetzler, SE; Nebes, RD
  • No Thumbnail Available
    ItemOpen Access
    Autobiographical memory and aging
    (2000) Rubin, DC
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access