Animals, pain and morality

While it is widely agreed that the infliction upon innocents of needless pain is immoral, many have argued that, even though nonhuman animals act as if they feel pain, there is no reason to think that they actually suffer painful experiences. And if our actions only appear to cause nonhuman animals pain, then such actions are not immoral. On the basis of the claim that certain behavioural responses to organismic harm are maladaptive, whereas the ability to feel pain is itself adaptive, this article argues that the experience of pain should be viewed as the proximate cause of such occasionally maladaptive behaviour. But as nonhuman animals also display such maladaptive traits, we have reason to conclude that they feel pain. Hence, we have reason to hold that it is indeed possible to inflict needless pain on nonhuman animals, which would be immoral.     

Facilitation of receptive and productive foreign vocabulary learning using the keyword method: the role of image quality

Ellis and Beaton (1993a) reported that the keyword method of learning enhanced memory of foreign vocabulary items when receptive learning was measured. However, for productive learning, rote repetition was superior to the keyword method. The first two experiments reported here show that, in comparison with rote repetition, both receptive and productive learning can be enhanced by the keyword method, provided that the quality of the keyword images is adequate. In a third experiment using a subset of words from Ellis and Beaton (1993a), the finding they reported, that for productive learning rote repetition was superior to the keyword method, was reversed. The quality of keyword images will vary from study to study and any generalisation regarding the efficacy of the keyword method must take this into account.     

False reports of childhood events in appropriate interviews

The present study employed the "parental misinformation" paradigm to examine whether individuals report false events from their childhood even when they are interviewed in an appropriate manner by a trained interviewer. Each participant was interviewed on three occasions. By the final interview, one participant produced a "full" report, and six participants produced "partial" reports, of childhood events that did not occur. Although participants reported perceiving greater pressure to report the false events than the real events, independent judges' ratings of social pressure in the interviews did not differ as a function of what type of event participants were being asked about. Participants also reported higher confidence in their parents', compared to their own, recall of events from their childhood. False reports were also positively correlated with scores on both the full and the revised versions of the Dissociative Experiences Scale, and negatively correlated with score on the Self-Monitoring scale. These results indicate that, despite being interviewed in an appropriate manner by a trained interviewer, some participants will falsely report events from their childhoods.     

Psychometric Evaluation of 5- and 7-Year-Old Children's Self-Reports of Conduct Problems

Past research suggests that young children are incapable of reporting information about their own behavior problems. To test this, we examined the validity and the usefulness of children's self-reports in the E-Risk Study, a nationally representative birth cohort of 2,232 children. We used the Berkeley Puppet Interview to obtain children's self-reports of conduct problems when they were 5-years old and the Dominic-R when they were 7-years old. We also collected information about the children and their families by interviewing mothers, sending questionnaires to teachers, and rating examiners' observations during home visits. Results indicate that when children's self-reports are gathered with structured and developmentally appropriate instruments, they are shown to be valid measures: conduct problems reported by the children themselves were associated with known correlates including individual characteristics (e.g., IQ), related behaviors (e.g., hyperactivity), and family variables (e.g., economic disadvantages). Observed correlations closely matched effect sizes reported in the literature using adults' reports of children's behavioral problems. In addition, children's self-reports can be useful: both measures distinguished children meeting DSM-IV criteria for research diagnoses of conduct disorder. Children's reports also contributed unique information not provided by adults. For research and clinical purposes, young children's self-reports can be viewed as a valuable complement to adults' ratings and observational measures of children's behavior problems.     

Comparison of fundus autofluorescence and minimum-motion measurements of macular pigment distribution profiles derived from identical retinal areas

The optical density of macular pigment was measured at twelve retinal locations in ten subjects by minimum motion photometry, comparing 460 nm with 580 nm or 550 nm. Fundus autofluorescence images were obtained for the same subjects with a scanning laser ophthalmoscope. Optical density was computed from mean calibrated grey-scale values for a central circular field and for annular segments, identical to areas tested psychophysically, and for complete annuli. Psychophysical assessments of optical density were similar irrespective of whether 550 nm or 580 nm was used. Optical density values derived psychophysically showed a linear correlation with assessments based on identical sampled areas of annular segments (slope = 0.98, r2 = 0.97) or complete annuli (slope = 0.89, r2 = 0.96) in autofluorescence images.     

The composition of category conjunctions

In three experiments, the authors investigated the impression formation process resulting from the perception of familiar or unfamiliar social category combinations. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to generate attributes associated with either a familiar or unfamiliar social category conjunction. Compared to familiar combinations, the authors found that when the conjunction was unfamiliar, participants formed their impression less from the individual constituent categories and relatively more from novel emergent attributes. In Experiment 2, the authors replicated this effect using alternative experimental materials. In Experiment 3, the effect generalized to additional (orthogonally combined) gender and occupation categories. The implications of these findings for understanding the processes involved in the conjunction of social categories, and the formation of new stereotypes, are discussed.     

Do unto others as they do unto you: reciprocity and social identification as determinants of ingroup favoritism

Predictions from the bounded and unbounded reciprocity hypotheses and from social identity theory (SIT) were examined in a minimal group experiment in which ingroup outcome dependence, outgroup outcome dependence, and the strength of social identity were orthogonally manipulated. Both ingroup and outgroup outcome dependence affected reward allocations. Participants made more ingroup-favoring reward allocations across all conditions. The identification manipulation produced hypothesized effects on social identification measures and marginal effects of identification on reward allocations in the no-dependence condition. Support was found for both an unbounded and bounded version of the reciprocity hypothesis and marginal support for a SIT approach to intergroup discrimination. The study highlights insufficiencies of both theoretical approaches and suggests possibilities for integration and elaboration.     

Stress-induced progesterone secretion and progesterone receptor immunoreactivity in the paraventricular nucleus are modulated by pubertal development in male rats

Male rats show a differential adrenocortical response to stress before and after pubertal development, such that prepubertal animals have a more prolonged stress-induced corticosterone response compared to adults. Whether pubertal maturation affects other adrenocortical responses to stress is currently unknown. To address this question, we assessed stress-induced progesterone secretion in both intact and gonadectomized prepubertal (28 days of age) and adult (77 days of age) male rats either before or after exposure to a 30 min session of restraint stress. We found that prepubertal males show a greater and more prolonged stress-induced progesterone response compared to adults. We also found a similar effect in castrated prepubertal and adult males, indicating the differential stress-induced progesterone response is not gonadal in origin. We also examined progesterone receptor (PR) levels by immunohistochemistry in the paraventricular nucleus (PVN) of the hypothalamus, a key regulatory nucleus of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, and found lower PR protein expression in the PVN of prepubertal compared to adult males. These data indicate that in addition to corticosterone, stress-induced adrenocortical progesterone levels are differentially affected by pubertal maturation. Furthermore, these data raise the possibility of different progesterone sensitivity of the PVN before and after puberty. The significance of this differential response is presently unknown. However, given the pleiotropic effects of progesterone on male physiology and behaviour, it is likely that the disparate post-stress exposure to progesterone affects the prepubertal and adult male differently.     

Personal disturbance scale: factor structure confirmed in a large nonclinical sample

The two-component structure of anxiety and depression items of the short form Personal Disturbance Scale, reported in an earlier clinical study of 480 adult psychiatric patients, was substantially replicated in a large nonclinical sample of 758 adults.     

The General Health Questionnaire and Eysenck's three-dimensional model of personality

A sample of 115 men and women between the ages of 20 and 60 completed the 30-item General Health Questionnaire together with the short-form Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. The data indicate psychological distress so assessed is correlated .43 (p <.001) with Neuroticism and -.26 (p <.01) with Introversion but is unrelated to Psychoticism scores.