The Influence of Prior Handling on the Effective CS-US Interval in Long-Trace Taste-Aversion Conditioning in Rats

The Psychological Record - In conditioned taste aversion (CTA), a taste, the conditioned stimulus (CS), is paired with an illness-inducing stimulus, the unconditioned stimulus (US), to produce...     

Student ethics in an era of personal entitlement

397 students arriving to take an exam in a junior level Principles of Management course were clearly warned on several occasions to keep cell phones outside the testing area or receive a failing test grade if the policy was violated. Just before the examination was administered, with all students sitting in their assigned seats, the professor made a final announcement that anyone still in possession of a cell phone would have one last opportunity to come forward and place it in a box at the front of the testing room. After eight students accepted this final "opportunity," the professor produced a hand-held metal detector, demonstrated how it could detect cell phones placed inside clothing, and informed the class that random screening of students would be conducted as they handed in their examinations. He then added that, as a special favor, he would allow a two-minute amnesty period during which any student could bring a cell phone to the front of the room for storage during the test. 38 students responded by turning in cell phones they had retained in direct violation of course policy. Implications of this cell phone dishonesty for creating viable business ethics and the role of perceived entitlement in shaping the behavior of these future business leaders were discussed.     

Priming correct information reduces the misinformation effect

The misinformation effect is a well-established phenomenon in the false memory literature, although the mechanisms that underlie it are debated. In the present study, we explored one aspect of the controversy, the fate of the original memory. We began from an activation-based view of memory, capitalizing on the well-understood processes of associative priming and spreading activation, to test the hypothesis that true and suggested information can coexist in memory. After exposure to misinformation, participants were unknowingly primed with associates of either the true or a suggested item. Misled participants who were primed for the true item performed better on a final memory test than did misled participants primed for neutral information. The results indicated that true and suggested information coexist and that retrieval is influenced by each concept's activation level at test. Implications for theories of the misinformation effect were discussed.     

Errors in identifying and expressing emotion in facial expressions, voices, and postures unique to social anxiety

The purpose of the present study was to see if 7-10-year-old socially anxious children (n = 26) made systematic errors in identifying and sending emotions in facial expressions, paralanguage, and postures as compared with the more random errors of children who were inattentive-hyperactive (n = 21). It was found that socially anxious children made more errors in identifying anger and fear in children's facial expressions and anger in adults' postures and in expressing anger in their own facial expressions than did their inattentive-hyperactive peers. Results suggest that there may be systematic difficulties specifically in visual nonverbal emotion communication that contribute to the personal and social difficulties socially anxious children experience.     

Able but unintelligent: including positively stereotyped black subgroups in the stereotype content model

The stereotype content model (SCM) posits that warmth and competence are the key components underlying judgments about social groups. Because competence can encompass different components (e.g., intelligence, talent) different group members may be perceived to be competent for different reasons. Therefore, we believe it may be important to specify the type of competence being assessed when examining perceptions of groups that are positively stereotyped (i.e., Black athletes and musical Blacks). Consistent with the SCM, these subgroups were perceived as high in competence-talent but not in competence-intelligence and low in warmth. Both the intelligence and talent frame of competence fit in the SCM's social structural hypothesis.     

Delay discounting: I'm a k, you're a k

Delay discounting is the decline in the present value of a reward with delay to its receipt. Across a variety of species, populations, and reward types, value declines hyperbolically with delay. Value declines steeply with shorter delays, but more shallowly with longer delays. Quantitative modeling provides precise measures to characterize the form of the discount function. These measures may be regarded as higher-order dependent variables, intervening variables, or hypothetical constructs. I suggest the degree of delay discounting may be a personality trait. In the end, the ontological status of measures of delay discounting is irrelevant. Whatever delay discounting may be, its study has provided the field of behavior analysis and other areas measures with robust generality and predictive validity for a variety of significant human problems. Research on moderating the degree of delay discounting has the potential to produce substantial societal benefits.