The professional ethics course

A professional ethics program was recently developed and implemented as a comparative values course at the University of Puget Sound. This article is a report ontheprogram, “Professional Ethics fora Technological Era.”The program consists of two courses: “Ethics for a Technological Era,” and “Values: Conflict and Compromise.” The first course emphasizes skills necessary for ethical decision making. The second course follows through with an opportunity to apply these skills to a major social policy program. This article discusses the approach to ethics, and participation, and the theoretical approach, including role modeling, speakers, and reading and discussion material, for “Professional Ethics in a Technological Era.”     

Schedule-induced drinking as functions of interpellet interval and draught size in the Java macaque

Three Java monkeys received food pellets that were assigned by both ascending and descending series of fixed-time schedules whose values varied between 8 and 256 seconds. The draught size dispensed by a concurrently available water-delivery tube was systematically varied between 1.0 and 0.3 milliliter per lick at various fixed-time values during the second and third series determinations. Session water intake was bitonically related to the interpellet interval and was determined by the interaction of (1) the probability of initiating a drinking bout, which fell off at the highest interpellet intervals and, (2) the size of the bout, which increased directly with increases in interpellet interval. Variations in draught size had little effect on total session intakes, but reduced bout size at draught sizes of 0.5 milliliter and below. Thus, a volume-regulation process of schedule-induced drinking operated generally at the session-intake level, but was limited to higher draught sizes at the bout level.     

Hedonic contrast and condensation: Good stimuli make mediocre stimuli less good and less different

Loud sounds make soft sounds softer (contrast) and also make them less discriminable (which we callcondensation). We report on parallel phenomena in hedonics: Good stimuli reduce the pleasantness of less good stimuli, and also reduce people’s preferences among the less good stimuli. In Experiment 1, subjects rated the pleasantness of fruit juices diluted to approximate hedonic neutrality. Subjects who had just previously drunk and rated some good-tasting full-strength juices rated the diluted juices lower than did subjects who had not (hedonic contrast). In Experiment 2, subjects drank pairs of diluted juices and rated their preference for one juice over the other. Subjects who had just previously drunk and rated pairs of full-strength juices gave lower preference ratings between the diluted juices than did subjects who had not (condensation). Thus the same stimulus set produced contrast in Experiment 1 and condensation in Experiment 2, paralleling results in loudness.     

Biases in ratings of disruptive behavior in children: effects of sex and negative halos

OBJECTIVE: Behavior disorders are more prevalent among boys than girls, but the etiology of this difference is unclear. Studies have not tested for sex bias in ratings as a contributing factor to the differential sex prevalence rates. However, there are several studies showing "negative halo effects" in ratings of boys (i.e., the presence of one type of behavior artificially inflating ratings of another behavior). These findings have only been extended to girls in one recent study. The current study is designed to test for sex difference in (a) ratings of boys and girls who exhibit the same degree of disruptive behavior and (b) negative halo effects. METHOD: Two hundred and thirty-nine college students participated. Sex differences in ratings are not found. Nonetheless, bidirectional negative halo effects are found for boys and girls (i.e., the presence of oppositionality artificially increased ratings of inattention and hyperactivity; the presence of inattention and hyperactivity artificially increased oppositionality).     

Of two minds: forming and changing valence-inconsistent implicit and explicit attitudes

Because different processes underlie implicit and explicit attitudes, we hypothesized that they are differentially sensitive to different kinds of information. We measured implicit and explicit attitudes over time, as different types of attitude-relevant information about a single attitude object were presented. As expected, explicit attitudes formed and changed in response to the valence of consciously accessible, verbally presented behavioral information about the target. In contrast, implicit attitudes formed and changed in response to the valence of subliminally presented primes, reflecting the progressive accretion of attitude object-evaluation pairings. As a consequence, when subliminal primes and behavioral information were of opposite valence, people formed implicit and explicit attitudes of conflicting valence.     

Perceptual similarity in autism

People with autism have consistently been found to outperform controls on visuo-spatial tasks such as block design, embedded figures, and visual search tasks. Plaisted, O'Riordan, and others (Bonnel et al., 2003; O'Riordan & Plaisted, 2001; O'Riordan, Plaisted, Driver, & Baron-Cohen, 2001; Plaisted, O'Riordan, & Baron-Cohen, 1998a, 1998b) have suggested that these findings might be explained in terms of reduced perceptual similarity in autism, and that reduced perceptual similarity could also account for the difficulties that people with autism have in making generalizations to novel situations. In this study, high-functioning adults with autism and ability-matched controls performed a low-level categorization task designed to examine perceptual similarity. Results were analysed using standard statistical techniques and modelled using a quantitative model of categorization. This analysis revealed that participants with autism required reliably longer to learn the category structure than did the control group but, contrary to the predictions of the reduced perceptual similarity hypothesis, no evidence was found of more accurate performance by the participants with autism during the generalization stage. Our results suggest that when all participants are attending to the same attributes of an object in the visual domain, people with autism will not display signs of enhanced perceptual similarity.     

A note on time-frequency analysis of finger tapping

Finger tapping involves 3 important features: time, spatial amplitude, and frequency. In classical analysis, investigators examine timing parameters; in spectral analysis, they examine frequency parameters. Both types of analysis are based on stationary tap information. The authors propose that time-frequency analysis is a useful tool for analyzing nonstationary finger tapping. They describe the method and give examples of frequency modulation, age difference, and speed transition that demonstrate additional insights one can gain by using this analysis.     

Regulatory fit as input for stop rules

Three experiments show that the motivational effects of regulatory fit (consistency between regulatory state and strategic means) are context dependent. With no explicit decision rule about when to stop (Experiment 1) or an explicit enjoyment stop rule (Experiments 2 and 3), participants exerted more effort on tasks when experiencing regulatory fit than when experiencing regulatory nonfit. With an explicit sufficiency stop rule (Experiments 2 and 3), participants exerted less effort when experiencing regulatory fit than when experiencing regulatory nonfit. The interactive effect of regulatory fit and stop rules can be explained by misattribution of rightness feelings from regulatory fit; the effect was eliminated by drawing participants' attention to an earlier event as a source of rightness feelings (Experiments 1 and 3).     

The effectiveness of early head start for 3-year-old children and their parents: lessons for policy and programs

Early Head Start, a federal program begun in 1995 for low-income pregnant women and families with infants and toddlers, was evaluated through a randomized trial of 3,001 families in 17 programs. Interviews with primary caregivers, child assessments, and observations of parent-child interactions were completed when children were 3 years old. Caregivers were diverse in race-ethnicity, language, and other characteristics. Regression-adjusted impact analyses showed that 3-year-old program children performed better than did control children in cognitive and language development, displayed higher emotional engagement of the parent and sustained attention with play objects, and were lower in aggressive behavior. Compared with controls, Early Head Start parents were more emotionally supportive, provided more language and learning stimulation, read to their children more, and spanked less. The strongest and most numerous impacts were for programs that offered a mix of home-visiting and center-based services and that fully implemented the performance standards early.     

Dissemination and evaluation of marriage education in the Army

The effectiveness of marriage education was evaluated in two separate samples of primarily married couples in which at least one member of the couple was on active duty in the U.S. Army. The intervention was delivered by Army chaplains. Effects replicated well in the two samples, and demonstrated that marriage education was well received by this population and resulted in improvements in relationship functioning. Changes in relationship quality were examined separately for males and females, and also for couples in which both members of the couple were Caucasian as compared with all other couples. There were no significant differences in changes over time (i.e., from pre- to postmarriage education) among males and females or among couples with different ethnic makeup. These results have important implications for the generalizability of marriage education to diverse samples in nontraditional contexts.