Why do we eat? Children's and adults' understanding of why we eat different meals

In this study the author examined why children and adults think they need to eat. Preschoolers through adults were provided with physiological, social, psychological, and routine causes for eating breakfast, lunch, snack, and dinner, and were asked to either agree or disagree with the causal responses provided. A 4 Reason x 4 Meal repeated measures analysis of variance revealed significant main effects for meals and reasons, as well as significant Meal x Reason and Meal x Reason x Grade interactions. The effect sizes ranged from 0.1 to 0.7. Across all age groups, participants acknowledged physiological needs and desires (fulfilling hunger and needs to stay healthy) and routine (e.g., it is dinner time) as the primary causes for eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner. However, for snack physiological needs were the primary reason. Second-grade students onward spontaneously produced biological justifications such as the need for energy and nutrition as important reasons for food consumption. These results lend support to the developmental model that children's and adults' understanding of eating changes in middle childhood.     

What if we abandon the concept of career proactivity to move research forward?

The idea that individuals need to be proactive to successfully manage their career is predominant in current career research. Despite the great importance attached to career proactivity, the literature on the topic remains fragmented. I thus highly welcome the comprehensive literature review Career proactivity: A bibliometric literature review and future research agenda. The authors conduct a thorough and rigorous bibliometric analysis to uncover the width, evolution, and gaps in the literature on career proactivity. I also welcome their roadmap for future research. I very much agree with the issues they point out: Cleaning up concepts, integrating context, and developing new theories. But I do wonder if their specific suggestions on these issues will not tend toward status quo and further fragmentation. Questioning the agentic assumption and individualistic stance of research on career proactivity, I plea for a different and more unconventional route. Below, I reflect on the author's and my ideas on these three issues: Concept clarification, including context, and new theory.     

Why do we want to be healthy? Medicine, autonomous individualism, and the community of faith

Understanding health as empowerment to meet particular goals, we can distinguish a goal of Enlightenment individualism from a goal of creaturely dependent, as affirmed by the Christian community of faith. So argues Dennis Sansom, who traces many of the ethical problems in medical treatment to Enlightenment assumptions about health, and who therefore calls us back to distinctively Christian principles as the foundations for our conception of health and for ethical medical practice.     

Children's concepts of illness: Towards an alternative to the “Stage” approach

Abstract

Research concerned with the development of children's beliefs about health and illness has practical implications for educating children about their illness, treatment and hospital admission. Previous research has suggested that beliefs about health and illness develop through a series of systematic stages, and that children are unable to understand explanations in advance of their own cognitive level. Alternative theories which give greater emphasis to the role of experience are considered, and some implications for clinical practice drawn.     

Children's and adults' reactions to magical and ordinary suggestion: Are suggestibility and magical thinking psychologically close relatives?

In Experiment 1, 6‐ and 9‐year‐old children and adults were asked to imagine various types of objects. The experimenter then attempted to change the image of those objects in participants' minds by either suggesting that the objects may change against the participants' will, or by asking participants to change the objects as a favor to the experimenter. Two types of suggestive causation were employed: Magical‐suggestion (a magic spell was cast with the aim of changing the imagined objects) and ordinary‐suggestion (participants were told that the objects in their minds could alter against their will). Ordinary‐suggestion was as effective as magical‐suggestion in changing the participants' imagined objects. For adults, a direct request for compliance produced a stronger effect than did magical suggestion. This effect was not found in children. In Experiment 2, the two types of suggestion were tested on an alternative type of imagined objects. Adult participants were asked to imagine their futures. It was then proposed that (a) a magic spell could be cast on their futures with the aim of changing them either for the worse or for the better (magical‐suggestion), or (b) changing a numerical pattern on a computer screen could change their futures (ordinary‐suggestion). All participants denied that changing a numerical pattern on a computer screen could affect their lives, yet in their actions they demonstrated an element of belief in this possibility. As in Experiment 1, in Experiment 2 ordinary suggestion was as effective as magical suggestion. The hypothesis of an historic contiguity between magical causality and ordinary suggestion is discussed.     

Who deserves to be sick? An exploration of the relationships between belief in a just world, illness causal attributions and their fairness judgements

This research explored relationships between beliefs about justice, illness causal attributions and fairness judgements of those causes. Participants (n?=?200) completed questionnaires assessing their belief in a just world (BJW) and measuring causal attributions and fairness judgements for 42 illness causes classified into behavioural, environmental and hidden (genetic, mystic, psychosocial) categories. As predicted, BJW was correlated positively with all fairness judgements, but with none of the illness causal attributions. Behavioural causes of illness were judged to be fairer than environmental causes, which were judged fairer than hidden causes. Finally, for environmental and hidden causes (uncontrollable illness attributions), positive correlations between causal attributions and their corresponding fairness judgements were found only among participants with high BJW. Implications of these findings for decision makers and health professionals are discussed, with emphasis on the need to consider the combined effect of causal attributions and BJW on illness fairness judgements.     

What Are the Costs of Marital Conflict and Dissolution to Children's Physical Health?

Do parental marital conflict and dissolution influence the risk trajectory of children's physical health risk? This paper reviews evidence addressing this question in the context of understanding how early environmental adversities may trigger a succession of risks that lead to poor health in childhood and greater risk for chronic health problems in adulthood. We first review existing evidence linking marital conflict and dissolution to offspring's physical health outcomes. Next, we provide evidence supporting biopsychosocial pathways that may link marital conflict and dissolution with accelerated health risk trajectories across the lifespan. Specifically, we posit that consequential to the stresses associated with marital conflict and disruption, parenting practices are compromised, leading to offspring deficits in affective, behavioral, and cognitive domains. These deficits, in turn, are hypothesized to increase health risk through poor health behaviors and by altering physiological stress-response systems, including neuroendocrine, cardiovascular, and neurotransmitter functioning. On the basis of the available direct evidence and theoretically plausible pathways, it appears that there is a cost of marital conflict and disruption to children's health; however, more comprehensive investigations are needed to further elucidate this relationship. In the final section, we address limitations in the current literature and identify research that is needed to better evaluate the association between marital conflict and dissolution and children's physical health.     

Can fluency be interpreted as novelty? Retraining the interpretation of fluency in recognition memory

Stimuli that are processed fluently tend to be regarded as more familiar and are more likely to be classified as old on a recognition test compared with less fluent stimuli. Recently it was shown that the standard relationship between fluency and positive recognition judgments can be reversed if participants are trained that previously studied stimuli are associated with lower levels of fluency. Under such conditions, fluent stimuli are more likely to be classified as new on a recognition test (C. Unkelbach, 2006), which suggests that the interpretation of fluency is malleable and context dependent. Five experiments investigated the resilience of this reversed fluency effect. Using 2 different fluency manipulations, the finding of a reversed fluency effect after training was replicated. However, it was also found that the reversal depends on explicit feedback during training and is specific to the particular fluency manipulation used during training. Moreover, it was found that the reversal did not generalize to similar memory judgments. The balance of experimental results suggest that the standard interpretation of fluency as indicating higher levels of familiarity is quite stable and is resistant to reinterpretation.     

Can self-reported encoding strategy and recognition skill be diagnostic of performance in eyewitness identifications?

The relationship between 3 witness factors and identification accuracy, as well as calibration and diagnosticity of confidence, was investigated. A total of 384 participants in an eyewitness experiment rated their facial recognition skill, general memory skill, and self-reported encoding strategy on a questionnaire presented after the photo-confrontation. Participants who rated themselves to be good face recognizers showed a slightly higher overall accuracy with a more diagnostic confidence-accuracy relation. Participants who reported that they relied on a holistic encoding strategy were associated with more accurate identifications and a stronger confidence-accuracy relation than those who reported an analytic encoding strategy. Degree of self-reported general memory skill was not diagnostic of identification performance.     

Can an angry woman get ahead? Status conferral, gender, and expression of emotion in the workplace

Three studies examined the relationships among anger, gender, and status conferral. As in prior research, men who expressed anger in a professional context were conferred higher status than men who expressed sadness. However, both male and female evaluators conferred lower status on angry female professionals than on angry male professionals. This was the case regardless of the actual occupational rank of the target, such that both a female trainee and a female CEO were given lower status if they expressed anger than if they did not. Whereas women's emotional reactions were attributed to internal characteristics (e.g., "she is an angry person,"she is out of control"), men's emotional reactions were attributed to external circumstances. Providing an external attribution for the target person's anger eliminated the gender bias. Theoretical implications and practical applications are discussed.     

Do children endorse psychosocial factors in the transmission of illness and disgust?

The present studies examined beliefs concerning the impact of psychosocial factors in the transmission of contagious illness, injuries, and disgust. In Studies 1 and 2, participants ranging from preschoolers through adults judged the likelihood that a character would get sick (or injured) after being contaminated by another individual who was either of no stated relation to the character or who was a best friend, a disliked person, or a family member. Studies 3 and 4 examined effects of psychosocial relatedness on judgments of disgust (a psychological response). Study 5 examined the influence of germs on judgments of disgust. Overall, preschoolers through 2nd graders judged that any type of relatedness decreased the possibility of contracting illness from another person. However, for disgust, preschoolers judged that negative contagion would have a more powerful effect, particularly in the presence of germs. Relatedness had no effect on judgments of injury transmission. These results suggest that young children treat the psychological and biological domains as distinct but mutually interacting.     

Can we correctly perceive the reaching range of others?

Little is known about our ability to predict the motor capacities of other people. This study explored how observers perceive the reaching range of another person by asking them to judge the reachability of a moving object. Experiments 1 and 2 found that observers overestimated the reaching ranges of both short and tall people. Estimates were larger when objects moved towards rather than away from the person. Experiment 3 showed that perceived reaching range depended on the observer's viewing perspective. Compared with previous findings, these results suggest that observers use different cognitive operations to mentally simulate actions for themselves vs. others. They also inform the current debate about motor imagery and action understanding.     

How do the internal details of the object contribute to recognition?

Object recognition becomes difficult when the main axis of the object is foreshortened. It has previously been reported that this so-called foreshortened disadvantage is larger when the silhouette of the object is presented than when the line drawing of the object is presented. The pronounced foreshortened disadvantage in silhouette recognition indicates that the internal details of the object, which are absent in the silhouette, provide useful information, particularly when the main axis is foreshortened. But the role of these internal details remains controversial. One account for the pronounced disadvantage is that the internal details contribute to the derivation of the main axis. The other account is that internal details provide the distinctive features that are directly matched to the object represented in memory. The aim in the present study was to determine which of these two explanations best accounts for the differential foreshortened disadvantage between line drawings and silhouettes. To reduce the uncertainty regarding the axis orientation, a 3-D arrow indicating the orientation of the main axis was presented as a cue before the object itself was presented. As a result, the difference in the foreshortened disadvantage between silhouettes and line drawings disappeared. This indicated that the pronounced foreshortened disadvantage for silhouettes was caused by a lack of axis information. In other words, the internal details provided the information necessary for axis derivation when the axis was foreshortened.     

An ethics of suffering: does it solve the problems we want to solve?: commentary

Erich H. Loewy proposes to elevate the moral obligation to prevent and relieve suffering to the level of a prima facie moral duty by delineating which beings are of primary moral worth and which are of secondary moral worth. Sentient beings have a capacity to suffer and are therefore of primary moral worth. Beings that are insentient cannot suffer; therefore such beings are only of secondary moral worth. Objects of secondary moral worth include patients in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) and brain-dead patients. This proposal, he says, would solve a number of problems in clinical bioethics. First, it would help to clarify our moral duties at the bedside. And secondly, by creating a hierarchy of moral values, it helps to differentiate which patients are owed our primary allegiance and resources. Despite his extensive and painstaking proof, I believe several questions remain about the use of the "capacity of sentient beings to suffer" as a basis for a universal grounding in ethics.     

Do I get what you get? Learning about the effects of self-performed and observed actions in infancy

The present study investigated whether infants learn the effects of other persons' actions like they do for their own actions, and whether infants transfer observed action-effect relations to their own actions. Nine-, 12-, 15- and 18-month-olds explored an object that allowed two actions, and that produced a certain salient effect after each action. In a self-exploration group, infants explored the object directly, whereas in two observation groups, infants first watched an adult model acting on the object and obtaining a certain effect with each action before exploring the objects by themselves. In one observation group, the infants' actions were followed by the same effects as the model's actions, but in the other group, the action-effect mapping for the infant was reversed to that of the model. The results showed that the observation of the model had an impact on the infants' exploration behavior from 12 months, but not earlier, and that the specific relations between observed actions and effects were acquired by 15 months. Thus, around their first birthday infants learn the effects of other persons' actions by observation, and they transfer the observed action-effect relations to their own actions in the second year of life.     

Deep--deeper--deepest? Encoding strategies and the recognition of human faces

Various encoding strategies that supposedly promote deeper processing of human faces (e.g., character judgments) have led to better recognition than more shallow processing tasks (judging the width of the nose). However, does deeper processing actually lead to an improvement in recognition, or, conversely, does shallow processing lead to a deterioration in performance when compared with naturally employed encoding strategies? Three experiments systematically compared a total of 8 different encoding strategies manipulating depth of processing, amount of elaboration, and self-generation of judgmental categories. All strategies that required a scanning of the whole face were basically equivalent but no better than natural strategy controls. The consistently worst groups were the ones that rated faces along preselected physical dimensions. This can be explained by subjects' lesser task involvement as revealed by manipulation checks.     

Can test list context manipulations improve recognition accuracy in the DRM paradigm?

Only test-based manipulations can be used to help people distinguish accurate from false memories once events have been encoded. In two experiments we examined how the type of studied words (weak vs strong associates, or less vs more memorable associates) and nonstudied lure words (related vs unrelated lures) on the test list affect recognition accuracy in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm. False recognition of critical lures decreased substantially in the related-lure context, but so did correct recognition of studied words. False recognition was little affected by the studied-word manipulations. In general, participants claimed to recognise critical lures as often as weak associates or less memorable studied words but less often than either strong associates or more memorable studied words. The test-list context affected how participants classified their recognition experiences but it did not systematically change their overall memory accuracy.     

Can test list context manipulations improve recognition accuracy in the DRM paradigm?

Only test-based manipulations can be used to help people distinguish accurate from false memories once events have been encoded. In two experiments we examined how the type of studied words (weak vs strong associates, or less vs more memorable associates) and nonstudied lure words (related vs unrelated lures) on the test list affect recognition accuracy in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm. False recognition of critical lures decreased substantially in the related-lure context, but so did correct recognition of studied words. False recognition was little affected by the studied-word manipulations. In general, participants claimed to recognise critical lures as often as weak associates or less memorable studied words but less often than either strong associates or more memorable studied words. The test-list context affected how participants classified their recognition experiences but it did not systematically change their overall memory accuracy.