What Right to Die?

This letter first discusses two meanings of a "right to die." In the popular sense, the term refers to a right to refuse life-sustaining treatment. In the strict sense, the term signifies an affirmative right to obtain death--a right to suicide. The letter then explores the legal implications of a suicide right. This right would extend to competent adults, mature minors, and probably also incompetent persons. Counselors would have to inform clients of the suicide option. Intervention to prevent suicide could trigger civil liability. Suicidal intentions would not justify involuntary commitment. Consent would become a defense to homicide.     

Decision biases in intertemporal choice and choice under uncertainty: Testing a common account

Two experiments were performed to test a psychophysical account of parallels between biases in risky choice and intertemporal choice. Experiment 1 demonstrated the common difference effect in intertemporal choice and the common ratio effect in risky choice. As was predicted, these two biases were uncorrelated with each other, although each was correlated across monetary/health domains. This result is consistent with the supposition that these two biases result from psychophysical properties of two different dimensions (time and probability, respectively). Experiment 2 examined the magnitude effect in intertemporal choice and the peanuts effect in risky choice. These two biases were correlated with each other but were uncorrelated across monetary/health domains. This result is consistent with the supposition that these two biases result from psychophysical properties of the same dimension (utility of money or health).     

List length and overlap effects in forced-choice associative recognition

Two experiments examined forced-choice associative recognition for OLAP and NOLAP test conditions. OLAP test trials consist of pairs with overlapping items (e.g., AB vs. AD), whereas NOLAP test trials contain no overlapping items (e.g., AB vs. CF). Previous results show better performance for NOLAP than for OLAP tests, contrary to the predictions of global memory models. The present experiments varied list length to examine the hypothesis that the NOLAP advantage is produced by recall-like retrieval processes. The use of longer lists either eliminated (Experiment 1) or greatly reduced (Experiment 2) the NOLAP advantage. However, a reliable OLAP advantage was not obtained. Implications for models are discussed.     

Natural paths to invention: Reinventing the wheel

Four studies explored candidate pathways underlying the invention of the “wheeled cart.” In Study 1, heuristics were abstracted from subjects’ judgements of different precursor paths to the wheeled cart. In Studies 2 and 3, these heuristics were tested for generality across different precursor paths. In Study 4, subjects ranked the order of incorporating parts into the wheeled cart. While the studies cannot “prove” that the wheeled cart developed in one of the candidate ways, they show that interesting and important heuristics of invention can be uncovered from subject’s judgements. Examining candidate paths to important inventions is a method worthy of exploration. Together, the four studies indicate that important historical inventions might be examined experimentally. Doing so yields potentially important invention heuristics.