The Pique Technique: Overcoming Mindlessness or Shifting Heuristics?

An unusual request can increase compliance in situations in which the typical response to the request is refusal. This procedure, called the pique technique, is said to be effective because the unusual request causes people to give mindful consideration to it. We tested this explanation in 2 studies. Passersby were asked for either a common amount of change or 37 cents. Participants who inquired about the unusual amount were given either a specific or an uninformative reason. The pique technique increased compliance, but only when participants stopped to ask about the request. These participants gave more money, regardless of the reason provided. The findings failed to support the notion that an unusual request leads to a mindful consideration of it.     

Gender differences in smoking behavior in a university workplace

Behavioral approaches to smoking intervention benefit from an understanding of smoking behavior. We investigated gender differences in smoking behavior by observing 292 men and 648 women smoking in a university workplace. Although men smoked more cigarettes in longer break times than women, there were no gender differences in the time individual cigarettes were lit or time in the mouth. However, men inhaled significnatly more than women. The social environment differed with male smokers talking to equal numbers of men and women, while female subjects talked to more females than males while smoking. In smoking lounges, more women than men held the cigarettes near their face (38 vs. 28%). With increasing age, male smokers took longer breaks, had cigarettes lit for less time, and talked to more men, whereas with increasing age female smokers took fewer puffs and talked to fewer men. Thus men take longer breaks, smoke more cigarettes, and inhale more often than women in a university workplace setting.     

A content analysis of sexual themes in Playboy cartoons

Critics of pornography have argued that the way men and women are portrayed in these media create images that can result in harmful gender socialization. The cartoons from all 1985 issues of Playboy were coded for the presence or absence of four themes that have been identified by these critics. It was found that, when these themes appeared, women were more often the victim of sexual coercion, were more often depicted as sexually naive and childlike, and were more often shown with a more attractive body than were the men in the cartoons.The authors wish to thank Mike Chambers, Bruce Healy, Cathy Thompson and Micheala Wilczynski for their help with the project.     

Overshadowing of subsequent events and recovery thereafter

Four experiments using a conditioned lick suppression preparation with rats were conducted to examine whether overshadowing of subsequent events could be obtained in Pavlovian backward conditioning (i.e. unconditioned stimulus [US] before conditioned stimulus [CS]), and to determine whether such overshadowing could be reversed without further training with the overshadowed CS, as has been reported in overshadowing of antecedent events. In Experiment 1, a backward-conditioned CS overshadowed a second backward-conditioned CS. Two posttraining manipulations, extinction of the overshadowing CS (Experiment 2) and shifting of the temporal relationship of the overshadowing CS to the US (Experiment 3), increased responding to the overshadowed CS. These results constitute the first unambiguous demonstration of stimulus competition between subsequent events using first-order conditioning, and they show that, like overshadowing with forward conditioning, such overshadowing is due, at least in part if not completely, to a failure to express information that had been acquired.     

Defensive aggression in terns: Discrimination and response to individual researchers

The defensive responses of roseate terns (Sterna dougallii) were studied during the middle of the breeding season when all reproductive stages (incubation, chick-hatching, chick-rearing) were represented, to determine the factors affecting levels of nest defense and whether terns responded differently towards a familiar versus an unfamiliar researcher. Defensive aggression generally varied as a function of researcher identity, time of day, section or location in the colony and nest density. These variables explained from 60 to 66% of the variation in defensive aggression. More terns mobbed one researcher with more dive attacks than the other researcher. Terns were more aggressive in areas where the chicks had just hatched and were most vulnerable. © 1993 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Thrombolytic treatment of acute cerebral infarction

Stroke is a common cause of death and disability throughout the world. Acute neurologic deficits due to ischemic injury deserve rapid recognition and diagnosis in order to provide effective therapy. Intravenous tissue plasminogen activator (t-PA) provided to carefully selected patients that can be treated within 3 hours of stroke onset results in improved outcome in these patients. Intra-arterial administration of t-PA within a 6-hour window is performed at several academic centers in patients with middle cerebral and other intracranial artery occlusions based on results of one randomized clinical trial and numerous case reports. Although acute therapy of ischemic stroke has received much attention since the approval of intravenous t-PA, only a small percentage of individuals suffering a stroke actually receive t-PA. This article will review the optimal management of the acute stroke patient and discuss thrombolytic clinical trials that have been completed as well as those that are in progress.     

Effet du niveau d’études sur les performances en mémoire épisodique chez des adultes âgés : rôle médiateur de la métamémoire

Educational level is a factor of cognitive reserve and older adults with a higher level of formal education have a better memory performance than those having a lower educational level (Angel et al., 2010; Van Der Elst, Van Boxtel, Van Breukelen, & Jolles, 2005). Memory functioning can also be modulated by the beliefs and knowledge of a person about his/her own memory, that is, by his/her metamemory (Hultsch, Hertzog, & Dixon, 1987). The objective of this study was to examine the role of metamemory as a potential mediator of the effect of educational level on memory performance. Eighty-three older adults (60–80 years) participated in the experiment, they have been divided into two subgroups according to their educational level (high: 14.36 years and low level: 9.85 years). Episodic memory was evaluated with a cued recall task and metamemory by the Metamemory in Adulthood questionnaire (MIA). As shown by previous studies, results indicated that educational level had a significant effect on memory and metamemory, higher educational level was associated to better memory and metamemory capacities. At the MIA questionnaire, older adults with a high educational level affirmed using more internal and external strategies for learning, having higher motivation and perceiving less memory change with aging than older adults with a lower educational level. They also showed that the metamemory dimensions associated to the memory performance differed according to the educational level. For participants with a lower educational level, memory performance was correlated to the participants’ perception about their memory capacity and their knowledge about memory tasks, while for participants with a higher educational level, memory performance was correlated to the dimensions linked to memory control (strategies and motivation). Finally, the group effect was mediated by metamemory, specifically by the use of internal strategies. These results suggest that a prolonged educative experience would be associated to a better capacity to implement adapted strategies, which led individuals to maintain an optimal memory performance.     

Worker Well-Being: What it Is,and how it Should Be Measured

Applied Research in Quality of Life - Worker well-being is a hot topic in organizations, consultancy and academia. However, too often, the buzz about worker well-being, enthusiasm for new programs...