CT scan and neuropsychological correlates of Alzheimer's disease and Huntington's disease

"Cortical" and "subcortical" dementia syndromes differ in areas of primary neuropathology and clinical characteristics. Conventional CT scan interpretation, visual inspection of pictures, has not been useful in studying dementia. Recent studies of the digitally stored CT attenuation values have found systematic variations with normal aging and aphasia subtypes. In this study of numerical CT scan information in four Alzheimer's Disease and two Huntington's Disease patients, a double dissociation of frontal and temporal lobe density values was found, and a significant correlation was found between left temporal lobe density and verbal ability measures in the Alzheimer's Disease patients.     

Two investigations of “female modesty” in achievement situations

Two experiments examined motivations underlying the common finding that females present themselves more modestly than males in achievement situations. In Study 1, 388 first-year college students, primarily European-Americans, predicted their first semester grade point averages (GPAs) in one of 3 public and 2 private conditions, which varied the salience of modesty concerns and/or concerns about the others' feelings. In the public conditions combined, but not in the private conditions, women's predictions were lower than men's, although there were no gender differences in actual GPA. The public condition in which the others' feelings and modesty concerns were made salient accounted for this difference between men and women. In Study 2, 230 first-year college students predicted their first-semester GPAs in private, in public to a “nonvulnerable” other, or in public to a “vulnerable” other (someone who supposedly had earned a low GPA). Women's estimates were lower than men's in the latter condition only and lower than their estimates in the other conditions. These results suggest that relational motivations, rather than a simple lack of self-confidence or modesty alone, are a factor in gender differences in self-presentation of achievement.     

Ingroup and outgroup inferences: when ingroup bias overwhelms outcome bias

Two experiments investigated conditions under which participants drew outcome-biased inferences about ingroups and outgroups. Participants read about ingroup and outgroup targets whose success or failure was influenced by an arbitrary decision rule. In Experiment 1, ingroup and outgroup members experienced two inconsistent outcomes (first success and then failure, or vice versa) despite almost identical performances. After reading about the first performance participants made outcome-biased inferences, but when the role of the decision rule became obvious inferences became group-serving. That is, outcomes continued to influence inferences when they cast the ingroup in a positive light (as when initial failure was followed by success) but failed to affect inferences when they were detrimental to the ingroup (as when initial success was qualified by later failure). In contrast, inferences about outgroups were outcome-biased when failure followed success, but not when success followed failure. The results of Experiment 2 showed that outcome biases influenced inferences when decision rules produced outcomes that promoted the ingroup but not when they produced outcomes that hurt the ingroup. No such benefit occurred for outgroups. The results confirm the impact of motivational concerns such as ingroup bias on the occurrence of outcome biases in inferences. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

BUCKLE: a model of unobserved cause learning

Dealing with alternative causes is necessary to avoid making inaccurate causal inferences from covariation data. However, information about alternative causes is frequently unavailable, rendering them unobserved. The current article reviews the way in which current learning models deal, or could deal, with unobserved causes. A new model of causal learning, BUCKLE (bidirectional unobserved cause learning) extends existing models of causal learning by dynamically inferring information about unobserved, alternative causes. During the course of causal learning, BUCKLE continually computes the probability that an unobserved cause is present during a given observation and then uses the results of these inferences to learn the causal strengths of the unobserved as well as observed causes. The current results demonstrate that BUCKLE provides a better explanation of people's causal learning than the existing models.     

Ongoing physical activity advice by humans versus computers: the Community Health Advice by Telephone (CHAT) trial.

PURPOSE: Given the prevalence of physical inactivity among American adults, convenient, low-cost interventions are strongly indicated. This study determined the 6- and 12-month effectiveness of telephone interventions delivered by health educators or by an automated computer system in promoting physical activity. DESIGN: Initially inactive men and women age 55 years and older (N = 218) in stable health participated. Participants were randomly assigned to human advice, automated advice, or health education control. MEASURES: The validated 7-day physical activity recall interview was used to estimate minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity. Physical activity differences by experimental arm were verified on a random subsample via accelerometry. RESULTS: Using intention-to-treat analysis, at 6 months, participants in both interventions, although not differing from one another, showed significant improvements in weekly physical activity compared with controls. These differences were generally maintained at 12 months, with both intervention arms remaining above the target of 150 min per week of moderate to vigorous physical activity on average. CONCLUSION: Automated telephone-linked delivery systems represent an effective alternative for delivering physical activity advice to inactive older adults.     

How Sweetness Plays Sweetly in Persuasion

Three experiments explored how sweetness metaphors affect individuals’ attitudes. The results indicated that sweetness metaphors led to positive responses to the target advertisement and the advertised product, both when the sweetness was actually experienced (Experiment 1) and when the sweetness experience was imagined (Experiment 2 and 3). In Experiment 1, participants who directly experienced a sweet taste evaluated a mineral water advertisement more positively than those who did not experience a sweet taste. Experiment 2 showed that an imagined sweet taste generated favorable attitudes toward the same targets as in Experiment 1. Results of Experiment 3, which used advertisements of various product categories, were similar to those of the previous two experiments, where both direct experience and mental imagination of sweetness were advantageous for forming favorable attitudes.     

Feminist justice and the case of undocumented migrant women and children: a critical dialog with Benhabib,Nussbaum, Young,and O'Neill

In recent years, scholars and researchers have discovered a new trend in the migration of unauthorized people into the United States: while the total numbers of unaccompanied migrant children crossing the border have grown exponentially in the past few years, human rights violations against migrant women have also increased significantly. This unfortunate trend is not unrelated to the intensifying border militarization and the criminalization of all unauthorized migrants. This paper attempts to provide an ethical solution to the political conundrum of undocumented migration by engaging a critical discourse with major feminist theorists of justice, including Seyla Benhabib, Martha Nussbaum, Iris Marion Young, and Onora O'Neill. I develop an argument in the paper that the US government's political appropriation of forgiveness is the most justifiable and practical solution for resolving the precarious situation of undocumented migrant women and children.     

Goal projection in public places

Three studies investigated the phenomenon of goal projection in everyday life considering three moderators: goal commitment, the perceived similarity of the target person, and goal attainment. Moviegoers' (Study 1) highly committed to see a particular movie projected this goal onto other movie patrons. Commuters (Study 2) highly committed to catch a certain train projected this goal onto other commuters, given that these commuters were perceived as similar. Shoppers (Study 3) projected buying a particular item when both their goal commitment and the perceived similarity of another shopper were high, and the goal was not yet attained. The results imply that goal projection is part of our everyday life and is fostered by high‐goal commitment, perceiving others as similar, and ongoing goal striving.     

An individual's work values in career development

This study examined the mediation effect of career decision self‐efficacy in relation to work values and career decision status. The authors surveyed 308 college students about their own intrinsic (e.g., helping others) and extrinsic (e.g., high income) work values and those of significant others, career decision self‐efficacy, and career decision status. The results indicated that the intrinsic and extrinsic work values of significant others were related to the intrinsic and extrinsic work values of the self and that intrinsic work values were more adaptive than extrinsic work values in career development.