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The general answer is that interference and inhibition were abandoned as psychology rushed into the 1960s and 1970s to embrace more contextualized, constructivist views of learning. In a highly influence American Psychologist article, for example, J.J. Jenkins (1974), a prominent memory theorist, described how he had come to doubt associationistic explanations of memory and moved to contextualist ones. More than associations were involved, he argued: the quality of events greatly affects what is observed in any experiment. Using this reasoning, he and others created a host of compelling experimental and naturalistic demonstrations of how contextual variables can affect learning and memory.
(Bruning & Flowerday, 1999, 90)

Many of the most cherised cognitive goals — reading, writing, learning strategies, problem solving decision making — require expertise built on repertoires of automatized responses. Acquiring this expertise involves basic learning processes of association, repetition, and extended practice to which the concepts of interference and inhibition are especially applicable. (Bruning & Flowerday, 1999, 91)

What the neurosciences are beginning to make possible are increasingly revealing glimpses of what is happening in the black box. Researchers can now “view” internal neurological processes (at least their physiological correlates) as they occur in specific brain regions as learners grapple with simple and complex learning problems.”
(Bruning & Flowerday, 1999, 91-92)

By demonstrating the concetps’ relevance in a variety of research areas, Dempster and Corkill show that the concepts can be extended well beyond the narrow “verbal learning” and “rote memory?” niches into which many educational psychologists had tucked them.” (Bruning & Flowerday, 1999, 93)

At a more specific level, however, we are less sanguine about the utility of interference and inhibition as explanatory concetps. Taking two examples provided by Dempster and Corkill, for instance, we think that performance difficulties that occur (1) when math problem types change e.g., 3 + 6 = ? becomes 3 + ? = 9) or (2) when learners are overloaded with too much information are more satisfactorily explained by concepts other than failure of inhibition or interference.
(Bruning & Flowerday, 1999, 94)

Motivational considerations are an integral pan of their vision as writers make trade-offs between costs and benefits of various goals and ways to use resources (Flower et al., 1994; Hayes, 1996). In any writing task–from a child’s brief book report to the reading-to-write assignment of college composition–writers must negotiate between what is expected and what can be done. Students need to be motivated to enter, persist, and succeed in this ill-defined problem space we call writing.
(Bruning & Horn, 2000, 26)

Snow (1983) argued that learning to read is facilitated by oral language experiences where parents scaffold understanding by speaking in literate ways. Writing needs the same kind of structure (Bruning & Horn, 2000, 27)

Gender also appears to play a role in the development of writing efficacy. Pajares and Valiente (1997) found, for example, that fifth-grade boys and girls did not differ in their writing performance but that girls perceived writing as more useful than boys, had greater self-efficacy, and worried less about it. In a sample of ninth graders, however, girls reported lower self-efficacy than boys, even though their actual writing performance did not differ. These findings may reflect a general downward trend for girls in perceptions of their academic competence (Phillips & Zimmerman, 1990). It may also be, as Cleary (1996) argued, that secondary schools and colleges emphasize a male-biased form of discourse requiring females to adapt to structures that may be less intuitive, interesting, or intrinsically motivating.
(Bruning & Horn, 2000, 29)

Cycles of goal setting coupled with feedback regarding progress toward the goals often are necessary to activate a full capability for self-monitoring and self-regulation (Cervone, 1993). (Bruning & Horn, 2000, 30)

Even when selected for sound pedagogical reasons, writing activities often are not set within larger social or communication frames that can create interest and a sense of writing’s relevance. (Bruning & Horn, 2000, 30)

Hiebert (1994) described authentic literacy tasks as activities that involve children in the immediate use of literacy for enjoyment and communication, distinguishing them from activities where literacy skills are acquired for some unspecified future use. (Bruning & Horn, 2000, 30)

Having genuine reasons for writing almost certainly has motivational consequences. Authentic tasks would seem to afford students the opportunity to express and refine their voice (e.g., Elbow, 1994; Schiwy, 1996). Words set down on a page to a real audience for a real purpose are their own, not borrowed (Elbow, 1994). Authentic tasks are likely to help students develop one or more distinctive styles of writing and to determine if these styles are “theirs.” (Bruning & Horn, 2000, 30)

The research on the impact of interest on writing has revealed a complex relation between knowledge, interest, and writing performance (Benton, Corkill, Sharp, Downey, & Khramtsova, 1995; Hidi & Anderson, 1992). Benton et al. (1995), for example, found that students with high topic knowledge and high interest wrote essays that included content-relevant information that was logical and well-organized, whereas writers with relatively less interest and knowledge generated more ideas unrelated to the topic. Although there was a strong relation between knowledge and interest, they were found to be separate constructs. (Bruning & Horn, 2000, 30)

Gaining and maintaining control of a writing task almost certainly are critical motivationally. No matter what the writer’s developmental stage or ability level, each act of writing poses a formidable challenge, having much in common with other ill-defined problems (Flower et al., 1990). In creating the problem space and in its later refinements, writers must balance the potential costs of various courses of action with their hypothesized benefits (Hayes, 1996). Do I need more information? Do I need to change the focus of what I’m writing? Do I have time to revise? Should I read over the paper one more time? Parameters defining this fluctuating problem space include the writer’s purposes for writing, the norms of the discourse community (as embodied by the teacher or other audiences), and the writer’s own knowledge and writing skill.
(Bruning & Horn, 2000, 31)

Students find cognitively complex learning activities inherently more interesting and demanding of mental effort (Meece & Miller, 1992); such tasks lead to higher levels of motivation because they create interest, allow for self-improvement, and afford opportunities to control one’s own learning (Turner, 1995). They prefer complex literacy assignments for much the same reasons (Miller et al., 1993). Writers need to believe, however, that if the task is complex it can be accomplished with reasonable effort. (Bruning & Horn, 2000, 31)

If anxiety rises to a high level, the result may be emotional and cognitive thrashing that disrupts writing entirely. (Bruning & Horn, 2000, 31-32)

Case study research has indicated that students respond favorably to specific and explicit ways to improve their writing (Straub, 1996, 1997); students are quite clear about their need for specific coaching about their writing. In a number of studies examining student response to teacher comments, students responded very well to comments that dealt with organization, development, and matters of form, but resisted comments that dealt with the value of their ideas or issues they did not consider germane to the writing task (Cleary, 1996; Larson, 1995; Straub, 1997). (Bruning & Horn, 2000, 32)

Students appear to be very aware of control issues in writing and recognize when the person giving feedback begins to exert too much control (Straub, 1996). (Bruning & Horn, 2000, 32)

Although we strongly believe that developing motivation to write is best conceived of as a process of building intrinsic motivation, rewards may play a productive role. Rewards can help build achievement-directed motivation when they are made contingent on student effort (Brophy, 1987; Stipek & Kowalski, 1989) and on progress in relation to short-term goals (Schunk, 1989). (Bruning & Horn, 2000, 32)

Reducing the aversiveness through reward may increase young writers’ general readiness to expend effort in goal-directed writing tasks (Eisenberger & Cameron, 1996) (Bruning & Horn, 2000, 32)

With this exposure can come feelings of loss of control and its attendant anxieties (Bandura, 1997), which can be amplified when conditions for successful performance and feedback are unclear. (Bruning & Horn, 2000, 33)

In classrooms where teachers create a climate of trust, caring, and mutual concern, students are motivated to engage (Connell & Wellborn, 1991; Wentzel, 1997). (Bruning & Horn, 2000, 34)

The Unusual Uses subtests were scored for fluency, flexibility, elaboration, and orginality by two independent raters. Reliability indices for these measures were .95 (fluency), .93 (flexibility), .94 (elaboration), and .87 (originaility). Scores on the four variables were summed for each S to provide an overall “creativity” rating, with the total score median used to determine creative and noncreative categories for analysis.
(Glover, Zimmer, and Bruning, 1980, 94)

The lack of consistent differences between creative and noncreative participants on the reading test or the essay posttest is congruent with research assessing relationships of creativity with other intellectual abilities. However, when summary and “flight of fancy” passages were analyzed, some important differences emerged between the two groupings.
The findings of significantly higher numbers of logical intrusions in both passages generated by creative Ss suggest that they may have related new information contained in the essay to existing “schemata” or previously existing knowledge structures, to a greater extent than noncreative Ss. The passages produced might, thus, be considerations of “new” and “old” information. Passages generated by the noncreative students tended, in teh main, to be less coherent and more straightforward compilations of “facts”: e.g., serial listings of essay relevent and irrelevent information.
(Glover, Zimmer, and Bruning, 1980, 95-96)

A central requirement — perhaps the central requirement — of civilo society is a willingness of its members to accept binding decisions and to view the makers of those decisions as legitimate.
(Hibbing & Alford, 2004, 62)

Since it is unrealistic to expect that legitimacy could be bought by magically increasing the resources avialable to distrituve to all residents, like a growing number of social scientists, we pay social attention to the possibility that different decision-making processes will have an impact. (Hibbing & Alford, 2004, 62)

As Popkin puts itthe prevailing wisdom is that people make judgements on the basis of “results and are generally ignorant of or indifferent about the methods by which the results are achieved.”
(Hibbing & Alford, 2004, 63)

In psychology, Tyler has led the way in demonstrating that people do “not react to the degree to which they received a personally beneficial decision. Instead, they react to how failry the decision was made by the authority…”
(Hibbing & Alford, 2004, 63)

“Some of these researchers, for example, have stressed people’s preference for relative as opposed to absolute gains. It turns out, people express high levels of satisfaction when they receive $3 from another player who keeps $3, but low levels of satisfaction when they receive $3 from another player who keeps $13. By holding constant the payoff offered to the receiver and then varying the size of the pot (and therefore the amount the other player proposes to keep), the crucial role of relativity becomes apparent (Frank 1999; Kahn and Murnighan, 1993) (Hibbing & Alford, 2004, 63)

Scholars from a variety of fields, including political science, have demonstrated the extent to which social context influences people’s reactions to decisions. People are affected by whether they have interacted (even briefly) with the decision maker prior to the decision, by whether they are likely to interact with the decicion maker again, by whether they perceive the decision maker to be a member of their “in-group,” and by whether the deciion maker is perceived to be a decent human being or to have “earned in a fair contest the right to be the decision maker… TYpically, for example, people are more willing to take a loss for themselves in order to punish someone who has behaved badly or to cooperate with someone who has behaved nobly (see, for example, Boyd and Richerson 1992; Henrich and Boyd 2001; Thaler 1992). (Hibbing & Alford, 2004, 63)

One common explnation for nonmaximizing behavior is that humans retain in their psyches a strong and innate desire for fair distributions (see Kravitz and Gunto 1992; Rawls 1971). Two problems with this explanation immediately suggest themselves: one empirical and one theoretical. In experiments, people do gravitate toward fair allocations, even if doing so is costly, but their tendency to be fair vanishes if steps are taken to protect their identity from the experimenter and, especially, from affected players (See Hoffman et al. 2000; see also Larimer 2002). people are less concerned with fairness than with the appearance of fairness. But even if this desire for fairness were more robust, we would still be left with the question of why humans woudl carry with tthem such a nonrational concern. A satisfactory theory ofr people’s behavior must go beyond the simple assertion that “this is the way people are.” (Hibbing & Alford, 2004, 64)

In brief, this theory flows from Darwinian biology and holds that, far from being an add-on, our sociality — that is, our frequent concern fro the welfare of our group and for our own place in the group, our eagerness to conform and to guage our own success by that of those around us, our desire and ability to “read” and to emphasize with other people, and out tendency to view members of outgroups with disfavor — is deeply ingrained in the human condition and has been for millions of years. (Hibbing & Alford, 2004, 64)

At a remarkably early age, babies display empathy (Pinker 2002). (Hibbing & Alford, 2004, 64)

The idea that behavior has even a modest biological basis is still upsetting to many people, including scholars. Btt upsetting or not, the evidence seems firm and is growing. Beavers know how to build a dam even when they have not seen other beavers do so; monkeys raised isolated in a lab fear a snake after viewing a videotape of another monkey’s fear of a snake buty can never be taught to be scared of other creatres and objects no matter how many videos they see of monkeys being scared of those things (Dawkins 1982; Mineka and Cook 1993). (Hibbing & Alford, 2004, 64)

In humans, people suffering from autism (a condition known to be at least partially genetic) help us to see the kinds of social skills that the vast majority of the population takes for granted. Most autistic individuals are said to lack a “theory of mind” meaning they are unable to view social situations from the perspective of another person … ; thus, they are often unable to form normal social relationships. Autistic individuals have difficulty understanding how to make other people happy since this requires empathic abilities they lack. The point is that the “sociality as a learned behavior” theory seems to suggest that all humans are first autistic but then most learn to be otherwise, a vision of human development that is not accepted by experts in the area. (Hibbing & Alford, 2004, 64)

We call individuals who follow these rulers wary cooperators since their first impulsive is to cooperate but they are ever wary of the behavior of others. (Hibbing & Alford, 2004, 65)

People thus spend much of their existence trying to avoid being perceived as a leech by those who are other-regarding and being played for a sucker by those who are self-serving.
(Hibbing & Alford, 2004, 65)

Specifically, the theory suggests that people are using decisions and decision processes to draw inferences about decision makers. Are decision makers concerned for others? Are they trying to feather their own nests? Are they driven by personal ambition? Recent public opinion research indicates that the substance of most individual political decisions is of only passing concern to most people but the traits of other people, and especially the traits of powerful other people, is of great concern (see Hibbing and Theiss-Morse 2003) As a result, other things being equal people should be more accepting of authoritative decisions when they are made by decision makers believed to be unconcerned with either acquiring power or with benefiting themselves at the expense of others. In other words, we predict that deiciosn will be more acceptable if they indicate that the decision maker is the kind of person who would help to make a viable social group.
(Hibbing & Alford, 2004, 65-66)

The framework we employ for testing the theory utilizes the so-called ultimatum game. The theoyr was first introduced by Guth, Schmittberge, and Schwarze over 20 years ago (1982).”
(Hibbing & Alford, 2004, 66)

With regard to the allocator, rather than keeping all but a modest portion of the money, the modal decision is to split the pot equally between the allocator and the receiver and the median proposal is fo rthe allocator to give up about 40% to the receiver… To be specific, offers of 30% or less are rejected better than 50% of the time (Nowak, Page, and Sigmund 2000, 1773). As one scholar colorfully described it, the attitude of receivers toward allocators is often “take your offer of epsilon and shove it” (Thaler 1992, 35)
(Hibbing & Alford, 2004, 66)

In short, while psychological and economic experimental research has pointed us in a useful new direction, designs such as the ultimatum game need to be modified if they are to help us understand the political arena generally and people’s acceptance of authoritative and unfavorable decisions specifically.
(Hibbing & Alford, 2004, 66)

Once the instrument was completed, for purposes of realism, subjects wer asked to wait a monent for their “partner” to complete the survey; then the ultimatum game began.
(Hibbing & Alford, 2004, 67)

One of the pretest questions was “how far did you travel to get to the experimental site today?” In this last option, subjects were told teh computer would calculate the differential in travel of the “two” subjects and prorate the payoff accordingly, with those traveling farthe rin relative terms receiver the greater share.
(Hibbing & Alford, 2004, 67)

What makes our results unique is that they permit us to compare this acceptance rate with that generated by allocations made via other processes. When teh allocation was ostiensibly determined by calculations of the respective distances traveled by the two players, teh acceptance rate of the same $2 (of $20) allocation jumped to 71%, and when the allocation was determined by chance, the acceptance rate of, again, a $2 (of $20) allocation was even higher — 80%.”
(Hibbing & Alford, 2004, 68)

“When we control for outcome by freezing in a payoff that is small both in absolute and relative terms, substantial and significant variation is apparent in acceptance of that payoff depending entirely on the manner in which it was derived. Too often, analyssts assume people conflate a fair outcome with a fair process. Our findings help to pull apart these two very different concepts. Few could argue that an allocation of $18 for one person and $2 for another is a fair outcome, but if tha toutcome is believd to have resulted from a fair (random) process four out of five accept it.
(Hibbing & Alford, 2004, 69)

Out expectation is that subjects who believe the allocator decided to make the decision himself will perceive the decision maker as much less fair than subjects who believe the allocator left the decision up to chance or desert…. As can be seen in Figure 2, the results are perfectly supportive of this expectation.”
(Hibbing & Alford, 2004, 69)

But the extension of this finding to the political arena may be problmatic. Earnign a position does not equal coveting a position and previous expeirmental work has never analyzed the differnce.
(Hibbing & Alford, 2004, 70)

Here, the choice of how to make the allocation is Forced on Player 1…. As expected, receivers were much more willing to accept decisions made by decision makers who did not overtly crave power.
(Hibbing & Alford, 2004, 70)

Our hypothesis is that when people believe they have bene played for a sucker, little time and thinking are needed in formulating a response because the brain is hardwired to react neagatively to being played for a sucker but can afford to react to other scneariors at a more measured pace… As can be seen from Figure 4, results comform nicely to our expectations. Subjects who had been playerd for a sucker by an allocated who used his/her own discretion to keep $18 of th e$20 responded to the fairness/unfairness item relatively equickly, after just 6.6 seconds. But subjects who were not the victim of a self-serving allocator (but were simply unlucky or undeserving) took well over 10 seconds to respond to the fairness/infairness item, a different that was significant at teh .01 level.
(Hibbing & Alford, 2004, 72)

The concsensus, hwoever, certainly among economists, is that the evidence indicates a perference is a preference (whether it is monetary or not) and that the more telling issue is the size of the stakes (See Smith 2000, 16-17), which leads us to the second complaint. Results generated when $20 is at play, as was the case in our experiments, are not likely ot be similar to thsoe obtained when $200 or $2,000 is at play. We agree with this point ecompletely, and it has been amply demonstrated in previous research (see Brockner and Weisenfeld 1996; Cameron 1999).
(Hibbing & Alford, 2004, 73)

And just what do our findigns have to say about these effects? That if people are convinced the political process makes it impossible for decision makers to benefit themselves at the expense of non-decision makers, they will be surprisingly accepting of governmental decisions, even those that are unfavorable to them from a substantive point of view. This is especially true if the people believe that decision makers did not want to be decision makers in the first place.
(Hibbing & Alford, 2004, 74)

At the aggregate level, confidence in government dropped most dramatically in the late 1960s, when the economy was doing quite well, and shortly after Lane (1965, 877) declared that the new “age of affluence” woudl lead to “a reapproachment between men and their government and a decline of political alienation.” More recently, Seelye (1999, A15) notes with surprise that “most Americans still deeply distrust the Federal Government despite the end of the cold war, the robust economy, and the highest level of satisfaction in their own lives in 30 years.” There is even less support at the individual level. Cross-sectional analyses find no or only a modest relationship between poloicy satisfaction and institutional approval (Caldeira, 1986; Mueller 1973; Patterson and Caldeira 1990).
(Hibbing & Theiss-Morse, 2001, 146)

The belief that the government is out of touch with ordinary Americans is extremely common, but Figure 1 gives no indication that, on the whole, the people see government policies as out of line with their own preferences.
(Hibbing & Theiss-Morse, 2001, 147)

Kimball and Patterson (1997) find that disappointment with government is concentrated among those who expect elected officials to be honest, caring and altruistic but perceive them to be otherwise.
(Hibbing & Theiss-Morse, 2001, 147)

Again, process perceptions may explain the anomaly. Whereas people seem to believe the parties espouse different policies, they may view them as nearly identical in terms of processes. (Hibbing & Theiss-Morse, 2001, 149)

The benefit of repeated presentations of a lecture has been found by researchers using either audiotaped or videotaped instruction (Bromage & Mayer, 1986; Kiewra, Mayer, Christensen, Kim, & Risch, 1991; Mayer, 1983). In each study, recall was greater when students listened to or viewed a lecture presentation multiple times. (Kiewra, et al., 1997)

Advance organizers appear to have much the same effect as repeated presentations. Students who read an organizer in advance of a single presentation recall as many ideas as those receiving multiple presentations but no organizer (Mayer, 1983). (Kiewra, et al., 1997)

The matrix, however, was more computationally efficient (Larkin & Simon, 1987) than the outline was. One organizer is considered more computationally efficient than another if information is drawn more easily and quickly from it. (Kiewra, et al., 1997)

Authors of previous research have found an advantage for matrix organizers over linear organizers as a technique for increasing retention test performance (Benton, Kiewra, Whitfall & Dennison, 1993: Kiewra, DuBois, Christian, 8,: McShane, 1988; Kiewra, DuBois, et al., 1991: Robinson & Kiewra, 1995), with a few exceptions (e.g., Kiewra, Benton, Risch, Kim, & Christensen, 1995).
(Kiewra, et al., 1997)

In the present study, we compared matrix and linear organizers to each other and to a conventional organizer. We examined the three organizers in conjunction with repeated presentations of a lecture. We developed three dependent measures, each to tap a learning outcome that was considered appropriate to particular experimental treatments. We used a fact test that asked participants to respond true or false to 20 discrete facts about the lecture, a relational test that asked participants to compare old and new methods of radar across steps of the radar process, and a recall test that asked participants to recall all that they could about each radar step.
(Kiewra, et al., 1997)

The conventional organizer was more effective in enhancing overall recall, and particularly the recall of general topic information, as evidenced by analyses of the recall test scores. These results can be explained by the theory of transfer-appropriate processing (Morris, Bransford, & Franks, 1977). Performance was facilitated when information was processed in a manner consistent with the criterion task. The linear and matrix organizers, which emphasized relationships within and across topics, enhanced relational learning; in contrast, the conventional organizer, which provided general topic information, enhanced recall of associated topic information.
(Kiewra, et al., 1997)

Self-eficacy was the strongest predictor of spelling performance at all grade levels; attribution for ability entered into the regression for grade 4 students, while outcome expectations for school and writing were most important in grades 7 and 10. (Rankin, Bruning, & Timme, 1994, 213)

Individuals’ ratings of self-efficacy have been shown to relate strongly to general academic achievement (Schunk, 1984), reading (Bruning, Shell, and Colvin, 1987; Nicholls, 1979; Paris and Oka, 1986; Shell, Murphy and Bruning, 1989), writing (McCarthy, Meier, and Rinderer, 1985; Rankin, Bruning, Timme, and Katkanant, 1993; Shell et al, 1989), and spelling (Rankin et al, 1993). (Rankin, Bruning, & Timme, 1994, 214)

Causal attributions, like other belief variables, have also been shown to exert a powerful influence on expectations for future performance (Weiner, 1977, 1979, 1986); attributions for ability and effort have been shown to be among the most influential of these. Ability is considered to be a failry stable factor, while effort is presumably more changeable due to the belief that it is under an individual’s voluntary control (Schunk, 1984). Causal attributions reflecting an internal locus of control have been found to relate to perceptions of reading ability (NIcholls, 1979) and reading achievement (Paris and Oka, 1986).
(Rankin, Bruning, & Timme, 1994, 214)

Directions were read orally to all groups; individual items were read orally to the grade 4 students only. (Rankin, Bruning, & Timme, 1994, 217)

Attributions of effort or ability did not relate to actual spelling performance for these students. However, effort was related to spelling self-efficacy for grade 7 and 10 students, indicating that students who judge effort (Trying hard to spell correctly) to be important to good spelling tend to be those who have greater confidence in their ability as spellers. (Rankin, Bruning, & Timme, 1994, 223)

At grades 7 and 10, however, outcome expectancies, entered significantly into the prediction fo spelling performance. At both grades, outcome expectancy for school was a negative predictor of spelling performance (partial rs of -.188 and -.316 for grades 7 and 10, respectively), while outcome expectancy for writing was a positive predictor (partial rs of .174 and .150, respectively) (Rankin, Bruning, & Timme, 1994, 225)

Specifically, we show that inferences of competence, based solely on the facial appearance of political candidates and with no prior knowledge about the person, predict the outcomes of elections for the U.S. Congress.
(Todorov, et al., 2005, 1623)

Yet, from a psychological perspective, rapid automatic inferences from the facial appearance of political candidates can influence processing of subsequent information about these candidates. (Todorov, et al., 2005, 1623)

As shown in Table 1, the candidate who was perceived as more competent won in 71.6% of the Senate races and in 66.8% of the House races (13). Although the data for the 2004 elections were collected before the actual elections (14), there were no differences between the accuracy of the prospective predictions for these elections and the accuracy of the retrospective predictions for the 2000 and 2002 elections (15). (Todorov, et al., 2005, 1624)

Our findings have challenging implications for the rationality of voting preferences, adding to other findings that consequential decisions can be more “shallow” than we would like to believe (31, 32). Of course, if trait inferences from facial appearance are correlated with the underlying traits, the effects of facial appearance on voting decisions can be normatively justified. (Todorov, et al., 2005, 1625)