Sources of Bias in Health Commission and Tobacco Industry Surveys in Australia

Recently, the attitudes held by Australians towards tobacco company advertising and sponsorship have become the focus of much public discussion and the concern of psychological researchers and opinion pollsters. Community attitude surveys have been commissioned by both supporters and opponents of the tobacco industry. Paradoxically, the data obtained from these surveys allow each protagonist to state that the majority of Australians agree with their viewpoint The present authors have identified several sources of possible bias in two surveys as causes of contradictory research findings. A questionnaire was designed which attempted to reduce the sources of bias and which incorporated other methodological refinements. The data obtained highlight how the form of the questions may substantially influence responses in attitude surveys.     

Classes,collections, and distinctive features: Alternative strategies for solving inclusion problems

This study analyzed the strategies that children ages 5 through 8 years used on two modified versions of Inhelder and Piaget's (The early growth of logic in the child. New York: Norton, 1964) class inclusion task. In two experiments, children were tested on Wilkinson's (Cognitive Psychology, 1976, 8, 64–85) “percept” inclusion task in which distinctive features marked both supraordinate and subclasses. It was hypothesized that children who fail standard Piagetian inclusion tasks succeed on the “percept” task by counting and comparing mutually exclusive features rather than using features as markers for classes and subclasses. The hypothesis was supported by children's performances on “percept” tasks in which solutions based on feature counting conflicted with solutions based on consideration of class inclusion relations. In two other experiments, children answered part-whole and part-part comparison questions in which both terms were described as classes and/or subclasses, or in which one of the two terms was described as a collection (e.g., a bunch of grapes). These experiments contrasted Markman and Seibert's (Cognitive Psychology, 1976, 8, 561–577) “organization” hypothesis that the greater psychological integrity of collections facilitates reasoning on part-whole comparison problems with the hypothesis that the faciltative effect results from the “large number” connotation of collective nouns. Results on collection problems in which parts were described as collections supported the “large number” hypothesis. Results were discussed in terms of their implications for Piaget's theory.     

Anxiety and the spelling and use in sentences of threat/neutral homophones

The disambiguation of threat/neutral homophones was investigated in high- and low-trait anxiety subjects who had been exposed to either a positive or a negative mood manipulation procedure. Subjects were required first to spell each auditorily presented word and second, to generate and speak a sentence using the word. Difference indices were calculated for the spelling and the sentence usage data, i.e. the number of threat minus neutral interpretations. Examination of these indices revealed that subjects exposed to the negative mood manipulation procedure produced relatively more threat than neutral interpretations (for both spelling and sentence usage) than did subjects exposed to the positive mood manipulation procedure. Multiple regression analyses revealed that both the trait anxiety and mood manipulation variables contributed significantly to the prediction of the difference index on the spelling task. In the analysis of the use of homophones in sentences, only the mood manipulation variable contributed significantly to the prediction of the difference index on the sentence usage task.     

Parent-infant resemblance for general and specific cognitive abilities in the Colorado adoption project

Previous publications emanating from the Colorado Adoption Project have reported significant relationships between parental general cognitive ability (g) and infant Bayley MDI scores. The present study compared infant Bayley factor scores representing separable dimensions of infant cognition with parental general and specific cognitive abilities for 182 adoptive families and 164 nonadoptive families. Parent/offspring correlations between 12-month Bayley factors and parental cognitive abilities suggest only minimal relationships for both parental g and specific abilities. At 24 months, more parent/offspring resemblance was present; moreover, Bayley factors that were related to parental cognition tended to be related to parental g, not to specific abilities. The finding of significant parent/offspring relationships at 24 months between biological parents and their adopted-away infants, as well as between nonadoptive parents and their infants, suggests some genetic continuity from infancy to adulthood.     

Attribute coding at different levels of processing

Schoolchildren, aged 16 years showed poorer incidental learning for nouns if the orienting task was one of finding rhymes for the items compared to assigning each word to a semantic category. On a recognition task including homophone and synonym foils, rhyming subjects made significantly more phonemic errors, whereas categorizing subjects produced a significantly greater number of semantic confusions. Subjects instructed to construct images for each of the nouns showed a performance pattern similar to the categorizing group. The results are interpreted in terms of Herriot's (1974) view that different levels of processing are associated with the coding of different clusters of stimulus attributes.     

Hemispheric differences in processing visual patterns

The dichotomies verbal/visuospatial, serial/parallel and analytic/holistic are reviewed with respect to differences in hemispheric processing. A number of experimental parameters may be varied in such tasks, and together with certain frequently-occurring weaknesses of experimental design may account for the often discrepant results hitherto reported. The above factors are systematically reviewed, and three further experiments are reported which attempt to fill in the missing designs. Further evidence is given in support of the hypothesis that right-hemisphere superiority is most apparent in processes leading to identity matching. It is quantitative rather than qualitative, and may depend upon operations on the entire gestalt, such as holistic matching, mental rotation, reflection, distortion, etc., rather than, e.g., simultaneous (parallel) processing of discretely analysed or isolated features or elements. On the other hand left-hemisphere involvement in visuospatial processing is thought to reflect analysis of the configuration into its separable components; such processing may be either serial or parallel, and may frequently lead to a judgement different.     

The knower and the known

This paper is a presentation and discussion of Spinoza's view on the knower, or the mind, as an agent. The knower is on his view to be regarded as an active or generative complex cognitive experience. Imagination, reason and intuition are the cognitive principles. On account of their intrinsic relation to “the first law of nature”, that of selfpreservation, together with the thesis of the mind as constituted by ideas or knowledge, these principles function at the same time as moral principles. Consequently, it makes sense to speak of an individual's moral attitude toward everything be knows. A discussion of imagination, reason and intuition mainly as cognitive principles is followed by some concluding remarks on the cognitive and moral relation between human beings: To know another human being is to know his knowledge. The moral attitude of individuals to each other is a function of their mutual knowledge of knowledge.     

Monitoring Perceptions of Social Progress and Pride of Place in a South African Community

A social indicators community project was conducted in 2007 to monitor living standards and quality of life in Rhini, a low-income suburb of Grahamstown, Makana Municipality, South Africa. Since 1994, under democratic rule, considerable progress has been made in service delivery to the formerly disadvantaged in South African society in terms of access to housing, infrastructure, and a social safety net to mitigate the high rate of unemployment. A representative cross-sectional household study (n 1020) conducted in 2007 in Rhini found that a positive assessment of the household’s situation and personal life satisfaction did not reflect better living conditions. Lack of income and employment opportunities appeared to dilute gains from higher living standards. The project also inquired into attitudes to place names and a proposed name change for the city under discussion at the time of the survey. It is argued that a place name with which one can identify may be as important as service delivery to enhance community satisfaction and overall quality of life. Dissatisfied residents who had limited access to services and expressed less civic pride were more likely than others to opt for a proposed name change for the city of Grahamstown that would better reflect the country’s new identity and multicultural heritage. It is concluded that a useful pursuit for community quality-of-life studies in countries undergoing social transformation will be to inquire into the complex combination of factors that drive perceptions of material and symbolic progress.