Two hundred and ninety-two participants from 126 urban and rural locations across Australia responded to a questionnaire assessing levels of environmental concern and behaviour. The environmental concern items consisted of the Thompson and Barton ecocentric, anthropocentric, and apathy scales, together with the items in the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) revised scale. The broad picture in terms of sociodemographic variables was that female gender, better education, and being older were associated with higher levels of ecocentric concern for the environment and reporting more ecological behaviours. In regard to concern measures, reported frequency of environmental behaviours was positively associated with levels of ecocentric concern and endorsement of the NEP scale, and negatively associated with levels of anthropocentric concern and apathy. A combination of scores on the Thompson and Barton scales and demographic variables accounted for 36% of the variability in reported ecological behaviours.

This study, using an information processing model of memory, made a detailed examination of the possible locus (loci) of any memory change in gravid and postpartum women using a battery of seven objective memory tests: implicit, incidental, explicit, semantic, short-term, working, and prospective memory. In addition, links were sought both between (a) self-reported data on sleep, health, and memory performance, and (b) these variables and objective memory performance. Five groups of women were tested (n = 22/23 per group), (1) primigravid, (2) multigravid, (3) postpartum, (4) non-pregnant parents with children, and (5) never been pregnant, on self-report and objective memory tests. The gravid and postpartum groups reported significantly more everyday forgetting than the non-pregnant groups but on the objective tests performed no differently from the non-pregnant groups on all tests. Sleep loss was a significant predictor of reported memory change, but not of any memory test performance, and may contribute to a perceived memory change. Pregnant women and new mothers generally should be confident of performing to their normal cognitive capabilities, but may be more affected than usual by a high cognitive load.

This study investigated the belief held by over 50% of parous women that they are more forgetful during pregnancy and postpartum relative to other times. Comparisons were made between both the reported and objective memory performances of three groups of women (n = 20 per group), (1) primigravid, (2) primiparous (baby younger than 12 months), and (3) never been pregnant, matched on age and education levels. Participants completed a questionnaire on demographic, health, and sleep details, the Inventory of Memory Experiences, and tests of implicit, explicit, and working memory. The groups did not differ on self-rated levels of physical or emotional health, or anxiety level. The primigravid and primiparous groups reported overall poorer memory performance since pregnancy relative to controls. The primigravid group also reported significantly more sleep disruption, with this being a significant predictor of reported memory change. On the objective tests, there were no differences between groups on the implicit and explicit memory tests, but the primigravid and primiparous groups scored significantly lower on a test of working memory. Self-reports of memory change during pregnancy and postpartum may be related to life changes, such as sleep change, and may reflect changed perceptions rather than objective changes.

Four partial replications of Chumbley's (1986) speeded category verification experiments were performed in order to test the generality of his finding that category dominance, but not typicality, uniquely accounted for highly significant amounts of category verification reaction time (RT) for both exemplar-category' (E-C) and category-exemplar (C-E) orders. The multiple regression results for yes responses revealed that, contrary to Chumbley's findings, typicality produced significant effects in the 12 conditions used over the 4 experiments, whether C-E or E-C conditions. However, category dominance produced significant effects only in conditions using an E-C order, consistent with Loftus (1973). Familiarity was the strongest unique predictor of RT for no responses. These findings, in combination with Chumbley's, demonstrated that typicality is a likely, but not certain, unique predictor of category verification RT, and that the category verification task is extremely sensitive to a large number of task parameters. I am much indebted to James Chumbley for considerable assistance with many areas of the experimental work, including detailed comments on an earlier version of this article, and for advice on the focus of the studies. I also gratefully acknowledge comments and suggestions from James Hampton and Michael McCloskey on drafts of this article.

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