Getting the gist of sex ed.

In the United States we have higher rates of teen pregnancy than in many other Western countries. We also know that our teenagers are at high risk for STIs, sexually transmitted infections. To combat these problems, we often require teens to participate in sexual education programs. However, the type of program that is most effective is still debated. This week's meme offers a humorous suggestion:

Because even the most mature adult parents can be worn down by incessant crying and endless repetition, the joke implies that if teenagers experienced these things it would be unforgettable and they would abstain from sex. The joke also implies that teaching statistics like, "six week old babies spend 30% of their awake time crying," is not necessary; instead teenagers will remember a take home message like, "babies cry a lot."

This emphasis on gist, or take home message, over specific quantitative facts is applied more formally to sexual education by Reyna and Mills (2014). These authors investigated if concepts from Fuzzy Trace Theory could make a pre-existing sex ed. curriculum more effective. Past research on Fuzzy Trace Theory suggests that better memory of ideas and better decision-making comes from understanding the the gist, the take home message, as opposed to weighing the pros and cons based on detailed facts or figures that are more forgettable. Because these gist-based thoughts are related to one's emotions and values, they allow for very rapid decision-making.

Their experiment followed more than 700 adolescents, ages 14-19, during a 16 session intervention period and for one year after its completion. The participants were randomly assigned to three types of interventions: an existing sexual education program called Reducing the Risk (RTR); a version of Reducing the Risk that had been modified to add ideas from Fuzzy Trace Theory (RTR+); a Control group focusing on communication skills unrelated to sexuality.

Reducing the Risk (RTR) teaches teens how to recognize situations of sexual risk, how to resist pressure to have sex, and how to reduce risk of pregnancy with contraception and infection by using condoms. Teens enrolled in this program should come to realize that they are personally at risk and that they possess the ability to avoid or reduce sexually related risk. The sessions usually include a factual presentation by an adult leader followed by activities such as guided role playing. For example, the leader might present detailed factual data like, "60% of teenagers report that they used condoms during their most recent sexual experience," followed by guided role play of how to reason with a partner who does not want to use a condom. This program is considered to be effective at delaying first sexual experiences and increasing the use of birth control and infection protection. However, Reyna and Mills note that there is little evidence to show if these effects are lasting.

Because Fuzzy Trace Theory predicts that gist thinking should have a lasting effect on decision making, the authors modified RTR with ideas from this theory to create RTR+. This version is identical to RTR with two additions that emphasize gist. First, at the end of every lesson students are presented with one line summaries of the take home ideas of risk from the lesson. For example, "You should use a condom every time you have sex." Second, the participants in RTR+ receive a checklist of possible values, such as, "I will use condoms every time I have sex," that they are asked to rate themselves on after every lesson. Because gist related decision making is closely influenced by our values, asking students to repeatedly clarify their values should also provoke attention to generalized risks related to sex.

All participants' sexual experience, and beliefs about sex and disease prevention were measured during the intervention, and at three months, six months, and 12 months after the intervention ended. The results demonstrated that the teenagers who had been randomly assigned to RTR and RTR+ showed overall lower risk in their behavior and beliefs than the teenagers who had been assigned to the Control condition.

When the results from RTR and RTR+ were compared, overall RTR+ was considered to be more successful. RTR+, that included Fuzzy Trace Theory's emphasis on gist, was related to:
*a lower rate of students who started having sex during that 12 month period.
*the lowest increase in the number of sexual partners during that 12 month period.
*the smallest increase in positive attitude toward sex (thinking that having sex at this age is a good idea).
*the smallest increase in beliefs that parents and peers think sex was okay for them to experience at this age.
*the highest belief that they were at risk for generalized (take home message) risks associated with sex. This is a measure of gist thinking - so it is not surprising that the teens in RTR+ demonstrated more of this.
*the highest knowledge of sex related risks lasting up to six months after the intervention.
*the highest recognition of warning signals of sexual risk.

On the other hand, RTR, the original sexual education program, was related to:
*more favorable attitudes toward condom use during that 12 month period.
*more agreement with gist-based summaries of sexual risk as measured three months after the intervention. This is another measure of gist thinking - so it IS surprising that the teens in RTR demonstrated more of this

The results were further influenced when the participants' races were taken into account. Reyna and Mills compared results from the three most prominent groups represented in their sample: African American; Hispanic; and White. Curiously, the authors decided to add data from Asian participants into the category White because the responses from those groups were similar. So data reported in relation to White participants should be understood as White and Asian. However, an improvement to this study would have been to further diversify the sample so that Asian adolescents were properly represented.

How did race influence the results? For example, RTR+:
*initially improved African American participants' attitudes toward condoms, but that effect disappeared after the intervention was over.
*increased White participants' beliefs that they could successfully use condoms.
*was related to higher sexual risk knowledge for Hispanic and White teens.
*increased African American and White participants' belief that they were at risk for generalized (take home message) risks associated with sex. This is a measure of gist thinking - so it is not surprising that some teens in RTR+ demonstrated more of this. However, it is surprising that Hispanic participants did not demonstrate more of this in RTR+.

Race also influenced the results of the other intervention. For example, RTR:
*increased Hispanic and White participants' belief that parents and peers think condoms should be used when having sex.
*increased Hispanic and White participants' belief that they were at risk for generalized (take home message) risks associated with sex. This is a measure of gist thinking - so it IS surprising that some of the teens in RTR demonstrated more of this.

Taken together, the results suggest that including an emphasis on the gist of sex related risks could be a positive addition to sexuality education if we want to encourage teenagers to delay sexual experience and to use condoms to prevent infection. This statement is based on results that reached statistical significance, meaning that the differences between teens assigned to RTR and RTR+ were not simply due to chance.

Some of these differences seem substantial. For example, Reyna and Mills note that being enrolled in RTR+ was 84% more effective at delaying the start of sexual activity when compared to the Control condition. At the same time some the differences were often very small even though they reached statistical significance. For example, teens assigned to RTR+ had fewer sexual partners than teens assigned to the regular RTR program. This result seems less impressive when you read that the teens in RTR+ reported an average of  2.15 partners while the teens in RTR reported an average of 2.21. In terms of a practical difference that would be of interest to parents and educators, this is almost nothing: both groups had about two sexual partners during that year.

Another issue is that interventions need to be tailored to the characteristics of the audience to be effective. The influence of race in the present study is especially important to note because teenagers from different racial groups differ in: how old they are when they start having sex; their risk of pregnancy (or getting somebody pregnant); and their risk of contracting a sexually transmitted infection (STI). Reyna and Mills also acknowledge that further research needs to focus on how and why concepts from Fuzzy Trace Theory may impact the sexual behaviors and beliefs of adolescents from diverse backgrounds.

Further Reading:

The Reyna and Mills (2014) article can be accessed through your local college library.

Watch a lecture by Dr. Valerie Reyna (one of the authors of this week's article) on "Risky Decision Making in Adolescence." This talk, given at Cornell University, covers, "...developmental differences in the way adolescents make decisions and reviews her research regarding why adolescents perceive risks and benefits and yet take more risks."

If you are interested in decreasing adolescent pregnancy and STIs, The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy website includes statistics (state and national) and an excellent comparison of effective programs aimed at decreasing these problems. 

BONUS: The Reyna and Mills (2014) article includes a particularly cringe-worthy example used in RTR (and RTR+) as a warning sign that, "...unsafe sex may be imminent...": "being alone with a significant other, lights low and soft music playing..." (p. 1631). As goofy as that might sound to a modern teenager, I suppose that we do have evidence of its truth from the classic 1955 Disney film, "Lady and the Tramp."

Speaking French in German Class: non -- nein!

In college I double majored in Psychology and French, so I am fluent in French to this day. A few years ago my family and I spent a year in Denmark so I started to learn Danish. To my horror when I would try to speak Danish, French words would pop into my mind. More recently, I have been learning German. It is so frustrating to only find Danish words when I am searching my brain for German vocabulary! If you have ever tried to learn a foreign language this week's meme should be relatable:

If we assume that the Most Interesting Man in the World learned French first and it is making German hard for him to learn, then this is an example of proactive interference. Proactive interference is the situation when prior knowledge interrupts the learning of new information.

How can we overcome this? Past research suggests that people learning a second language have to inhibit their original languages to produce the new one. So my stories and our meme represent failures in this inhibition. 

An article by Declerck, Thoma, Koch, and Philipp (2015) supports the idea that people who are fluent in multiple languages also must use inhibition. Declerck et al. tested 18 German young adults who grew up speaking both Turkish and German as part of their everyday lives. These individuals also started to learn English in school around age ten, so they were fluent in this third language, although these skills were not as strong as their Turkish and German abilities.

In their experiment, the participants were shown slides depicting a number (1-9) and a symbol. If they saw a square they should say the number in Turkish; if they saw a diamond they should say the number in German; if they saw a triangle they should say the number in English. Each participant experienced 107 trials of this test. For some trials two cued languages alternated in sets of three (for example, German-Turkish-German) and for an equal amount of trials all three of the the cued languages cycled in sets of three (for example, German-Turkish-English). For all trials the speed and accuracy of the answers were recorded: a longer hesitation before saying the number indicated more inhibition of the previously cued language. 

Participants hesitated milliseconds more when two cued languages alternated, as compared to when all three cued languages cycled. This finding supports past research: alternating back and forth between two languages is most likely to increase the difficulty of suppressing one of the languages when using the other. This difficulty increases the response time.

All three languages created these tiny delays for speaking the next cued language, but the participants' dominant languages, Turkish and German, did this more than English. This also supports the idea of inhibition: a language that is stronger in your mind will take more effort to suppress which will slow down your response.

On the other hand, participants were most accurate in naming the numbers when cued to do so in English. In this case more mistakes were made when they had to speak their two strongest languages! The authors explain this counter-intuitive finding by pointing out that a person who is very strong in two languages (Turkish and German) will likely view this experiment as a test of the language that has weaker fluency (English). It is as if the participants were not so worried about being accurate in Turkish or German because those are easy-peasy for them; instead they were worried about goofing up in English so they tried harder when English was cued. This activation of English would decrease response time and also increase accuracy of naming numbers in that language.

This should make us all of us aspiring polyglots feel better. For second-language learners, don't be too hard on yourself if words from your native language pop out of your mouth in a foreign language class. This is just a problem of proactive interference and a failure of inhibition. For multilingual people, don't feel bad if you catch yourself hesitating ever so slightly as you switch between your languages. This only shows that your brain is working hard to inhibit the languages that you don't need at that moment. Moreover, the situation is going to play a role by activating a specific language which should increase your accuracy.

Further Reading:

You can access the Declerck et al. (2015) article at your local college library.

If you feel inspired to brush up on an old language or to learn a new one, two FREE apps that use cognitive psychological research for language learning are Memrise and Duolingo.

A Radiolab episode on Translation. Featuring Indiana University's Dr. Douglas Hofstadter attempts to translate a French poem into English, and other examples of how ideas can get lost, or changed, in translation.

Spring Break 2015

My students are currently on Spring Break.  Some of them took an exam before the break began - so they probably will not study this week;  some of them will have an exam on the Tuesday after break - so they will probably be studying and cursing my name.  So in honor of that second group we have this week's meme:

At first glance, professors like this one come across as over-zealous killjoys who are so obsessed with their pet subject that they cannot imagine anyone taking a break from it.  While it is true that professors really like their subjects and spend a weird amount of time thinking about those subjects (...as I type out a psychology blog during my Spring Break...) most of us do not think that our students feel the same way.  So why the homework over Spring Break?

Think about what you learn in a college class.  It is a. lot. of. information.  In fact, a 2006 review by Proctor and Williams found more than 400 terms that are common across most Introduction to Psychology textbooks (see Further Readings for this list).  Even in a basic psychology class you are asked to remember a lot!  And for right or wrong, both professors and students use exam grades to determine how much the class remembers: high scores mean that they remembered a lot.

So why would it matter if a student takes eleven days off from studying then comes back from Spring Break to take an exam?

It goes back to an idea that Hermann Ebbinghaus wrote about in 1885:  you remember more after having several practice sessions than you would by just having one big practice.  Today we would say that distributed practice allows you to remember more than massed practice.  So you will remember more and do better on tests if you practice the material on more than one day; it also means that you will not remember as much if you just try to learn the material during one long practice session.  This memory boost from distributed practice is noticeable when there is some time that passes between the last practice and when the material is tested.

How much time should go in between each of these practice sessions depends on how long it will be until that information is tested.  For example, in a study done by Küpper-Tetzel, Kaper, and Wiseheart (2014), German school children did better on vocabulary tests if they practiced the words on two days, with a one day break in between, and then took the exam seven days later.  Interestingly, the break in between the two practices had to be longer (eleven days instead of two) if the exam would occur 35 days after the second practice.

So your professors want you to succeed and part of that success is to remember the course material.  If you remember the course material you will do better on exams - something that most students want.  Practicing the material in class and then practicing material at home creates distributed practice.

The Küpper-Tetzel et al. study might suggest that if my college students have 11 days between our last class and the test, they would be making a smart choice to study on day two, take a day off, study again on day four, and then take the remaining seven days off to enjoy themselves before taking the exam.  That would be a better method than doing one big marathon study session on day four before taking those same seven days off before the test.

Now if you are reading this too late to use distributed practice, there still may be hope for you!  Cramming, which is really an example of massed practice, does increase memory if you are tested right after the cramming session.  So my students might also find success if they spend the entire day before the exam practicing the material over and over.  The only problem (beside lack of sleep and caffeine abuse) is that this sort of massed practice does not work for long-term learning.  If you want to remember material beyond one exam it is much better to stick to distributed practice!

And, if you don't want to remember the material - don't practice it at all!

Further Reading:

If you would like more study tips based on psychological research, the American Psychological Association's graduate student magazine offers this article.

Here is the Proctor and Williams (2006) list of terms that are common in Introduction to Psychology textbooks.  It is a paper from the Society for the Teaching of Psychology's (APA Division 2) Office of Teaching Resources in Psychology.  Derrick Proctor and Alisa Williams are affiliated with Andrews University in Michigan.

A draft of the Küpper-Tetzel et al. study, "Contracting, equal, and expanding learning schedules: The optimal distribution of learning sessions depends on retention interval," can be viewed on Dr. Küpper-Tetzel's webpage.  The published journal article can be accessed at your local university library.

Die-hard history of psychology fans can read more about Ebbinghaus' original thoughts on repetition and memory on Christopher Green's website archive:  Classics in the History of Psychology.