The normative and the personal life: individual differences in life scripts and life story events among USA and Danish undergraduates.

Life scripts are culturally shared expectations about the order and timing of life events in a prototypical life course. American and Danish undergraduates produced life story events and life scripts by listing the seven most important events in their own lives and in the lives of hypothetical people living ordinary lives. They also rated their events on several scales and completed measures of depression, PTSD symptoms, and centrality of a negative event to their lives. The Danish life script replicated earlier work; the American life script showed minor differences from the Danish life script, apparently reflecting genuine differences in shared events as well as less homogeneity in the American sample. Both consisted of mostly positive events that came disproportionately from ages 15 to 30. Valence of life story events correlated with life script valence, depression, PTSD symptoms, and identity. In the Danish undergraduates, measures of life story deviation from the life script correlated with measures of depression and PTSD symptoms.

Life scripts help to maintain autobiographical memories of highly positive, but not highly negative, events.

A representative sample of 1,307 respondents between the ages of 20 and 94 was asked how old they were when they felt most afraid, most proud, most jealous, most in love, and most angry. They were also asked when they had experienced their most important event and whether this event was positive or negative. In general, there was a reminiscence "bump" for positive but not negative events. To provide data on life scripts, 87 psychology students answered the same questions for a hypothetical 70-year-old. The undergraduates were more confident in dating positive than in dating negative events, and when they were confident, the distribution of responses predicted the survey data. The results support the idea of culturally shared life scripts for positive but not negative events, which structure retrieval processes and spaced practice.

A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of intelligent tutoring systems on college students' academic learning

© 2013 American Psychological Association.This meta-analysis synthesizes research on the effectiveness of intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) for college students. Thirty-five reports were found containing 39 studies assessing the effectiveness of 22 types of ITS in higher education settings. Most frequently studied were AutoTutor, Assessment and Learning in Knowledge Spaces, eXtended Tutor-Expert System, and Web Interface for Statistics Education. Major findings include (a) Overall, ITS had a moderate positive effect on college students' academic learning (g = .32 to g = .37); (b) ITS were less effective than human tutoring, but they outperformed all other instruction methods and learning activities, including traditional classroom instruction, reading printed text or computerized materials, computer-assisted instruction, laboratory or homework assignments, and no-treatment control; (c) ITS's effectiveness did not significantly differ by different ITS, subject domain, or the manner or degree of their involvement in instruction and learning; and (d) effectiveness in earlier studies appeared to be significantly greater than that in more recent studies. In addition, there is some evidence suggesting the importance of teachers and pedagogy in ITS-assisted learning.