Lying to insurance companies: the desire to deceive among physicians and the public

This study examines the public's and physicians' willingness to support deception of insurance companies in order to obtain necessary healthcare services and how this support varies based on perceptions of physicians' time pressures. Based on surveys of 700 prospective jurors and 1617 physicians, the public was more than twice as likely as physicians to sanction deception (26%versus 11%) and half as likely to believe that physicians have adequate time to appeal coverage decisions (22%versus 59%). The odds of public support for deception compared to that of physicians rose from 2.48 to 4.64 after controlling for differences in time perception. These findings highlight the ethical challenge facing physicians and patients in balancing patient advocacy with honesty in the setting of limited societal resources.     

"Capacity" reconsidered: interindividual differences in language comprehension and individual alpha frequency

The influence of interindividual differences in cognitive mechanisms on language comprehension remains controversial not only due to conflicting experimental findings, but also in view of the difficulty associated with determining which measure should be used in participant classification. Here, we address the latter problem by proposing that an electrophysiological measure, individual alpha frequency (IAF), may be a suitable means of classifying interindividual differences in sentence processing. Interindividual differences in IAF have been shown to correlate with performance on memory tasks and speed of information processing. In two experiments using event-related brain potentials (ERPs), IAF-based participant groups differed systematically with regard to the processing of ambiguous sentences such that the low-IAF group showed a sustained positivity in the ambiguous region, while the high-IAF group did not. These interindividual differences were independent of whether the ambiguity was syntactic (Experiment 1) or sentence-level semantic (Experiment 2). Moreover, they were reliable only when participants were classified according to IAF, but not in classifications based on reading span, speed of processing (reaction time), or accuracy of processing (error rate).     

Perceptions of Ethical Behaviour among Business Faculty in Canada

Faculty members at Canadian business schools were surveyed regarding their ethical perceptions of behaviours related to undergraduate instruction. Fifty-five behavioural statements were listed and respondents were asked to rate the extent to which they felt each behaviour was ethical or unethical. The only item that respondents endorsed as unequivocally unethical (90% indicated it was definitely unethical) was Becoming sexually involved with an undergraduate in one of your classes. We also compared the results of our sample to those of an American sample. Overall, an interesting pattern of differences emerged between the responses obtained in Canada and the U.S. In general, the direction of the significant differences was such that Canadian professors viewed the behaviours in question as less ethical than did their American counterparts.     

Training parents to implement pediatric feeding protocols

Four different multicomponent training packages were evaluated to increase the treatment integrity of parents implementing pediatric feeding protocols. In Study 1 we exposed 3 parents to a training package that consisted of written protocols (baseline), verbal instructions, therapist modeling, and rehearsal training. Results suggested that the package was successful in increasing treatment integrity of the feeding protocols to high levels. Study 2 investigated three different parent-training packages comprised of components used in Study 1. Two parents were exposed to written protocols, verbal instructions, and modeling; 2 parents were exposed to written protocols, verbal instructions, and rehearsal; and 2 parents were exposed to written protocols and verbal instructions. Results of Study 2 showed that each parent-training package produced very high treatment integrity. Follow-up data in the clinic and home for 5 participants suggested that the results were durable for up to 3 months. These results demonstrate a first step in the transfer and application of research findings into routine clinical practice because we evaluated several methods for training parents to implement behavioral feeding protocols, and we demonstrated that these methods resulted in high levels of treatment integrity in a controlled clinical setting.     

Social antecedents of children's eyewtness testimony a single-subject experimental analysis

In a laboratory simulation, a single-subject design was used to examine the effects of two types of social influence on children's eyewitness testimony, which has not been the subject of systematic behavioral analyses. This study replicates and extends findings from group-comparison studies, and shows that a topic of pressing social importance is amenable to analysis at the individual level, and therefore, potentially, to a behavioral analysis.     

On the lateralization of emotional prosody: an event-related functional MR investigation

In order to investigate the lateralization of emotional speech we recorded the brain responses to three emotional intonations in two conditions, i.e., "normal" speech and "prosodic" speech (i.e., speech with no linguistic meaning, but retaining the 'slow prosodic modulations' of speech). Participants listened to semantically neutral sentences spoken with a positive, neutral, or negative intonation in both conditions and judged how positive, negative, or neutral the intonation was on a five-point scale. Core peri-sylvian language areas, as well as some frontal and subcortical areas were activated bilaterally in the normal speech condition. In contrast, a bilateral fronto-opercular region was active when participants listened to prosodic speech. Positive and negative intonations elicited a bilateral fronto-temporal and subcortical pattern in the normal speech condition, and more frontal activation in the prosodic speech condition. The current results call into question an exclusive right hemisphere lateralization of emotional prosody and expand patient data on the functional role of the basal ganglia during the perception of emotional prosody.     

What you get out of memory depends on the question you ask

Following study, participants received 2 tests. The 1st was a recognition test; the 2nd was designed to tap recollection. The objective was to examine performance on Test 1 conditional on Test 2 performance. In Experiment 1, contrary to process dissociation assumptions, exclusion errors better predicted subsequent recollection than did inclusion errors. In Experiments 2 and 3, with alternate questions posed on Test 2, words having high estimates of recollection with one question had high estimates of familiarity with the other question. Results supported the following: (a) the 2-test procedure has considerable potential for elucidating the relationship between recollection and familiarity; (b) there is substantial evidence for dependency between such processes when estimates are obtained using the process dissociation and remember-know procedures; and (c) order of information access appears to depend on the question posed to the memory system.     

Efficacy of telephone-administered cognitive behaviour therapy for obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders: case studies

Cognitive behaviour therapy is effective for obsessive-compulsive disorder and for obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders such as trichotillomania. Unfortunately, many people with these disorders, especially those living in rural areas, have limited access to treatment. Telephone-administered cognitive behaviour therapy may help address this problem. In a recent study of telephone treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder, we found that such treatment was often effective (42% in remission at post-treatment, and 47% in remission at 12-week follow-up). This article presents 2 case reports of the same treatment, applied to obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders (trichotillomania and compulsive skin picking). Treatment was associated with symptom reduction for both participants, although one subsequently relapsed. Possible reasons for relapse are discussed. The findings encourage further studies to identify the characteristics of people most likely to benefit from telephone treatment for spectrum disorders.     

Identification of visual stimuli is improved by accompanying auditory stimuli: the role of eye movements and sound location

Can auditory signals influence the processing of visual information? The present study examined the effects of simple auditory signals (clicks and noise bursts) whose onset was simultaneous with that of the visual target, but which provided no information about the target. It was found that such a signal enhances performance in the visual task: the accessory sound reduced response times for target identification with no cost to accuracy. The spatial location of the sound (whether central to the display or at the target location) did not modify this facilitation. Furthermore, the same pattern of facilitation was evident whether the observer fixated centrally or moved their eyes to the target. The results were not altered by changes in the contrast (and therefore visibility) of the visual stimulus or by the perceived utility of the spatial location of the sound. We speculate that the auditory signal may promote attentional 'disengagement' and that, as a result, observers are able to process the visual target sooner when sound accompanies the display relative to when visual information is presented alone.