The Double Life of Double Effect

The U.S. Supreme Court's majorityopinion in Vacco v. Quill assumes thatthe principle of double effect explains thepermissibility of hastening death in thecontext of ordinary palliative care and inextraordinary cases in which painkilling drugshave failed to relieve especially intractablesuffering and terminal sedation has beenadopted as a last resort. The traditionaldoctrine of double effect, understood asproviding a prohibition on instrumental harmingas opposed to incidental harming or harming asa side effect, must be distinguished from otherways in which the claim that a result is notintended might be offered as part of ajustification for it. Although double effectmight appropriately be invoked as a constrainton ordinary palliative care, it is not clearthat it can be coherently extended to justifysuch practices as terminal sedation. A betterapproach would reconsider double effect'straditional prohibition on hastening death as ameans to relieve suffering in the context ofacute palliative care.     

Weathering the storm: children's long-term recall of Hurricane Andrew

Children who experienced a highly stressful natural disaster, Hurricane Andrew, were interviewed within a few months of the event, when they were 3-4 years old, and again 6 years later, when they were 9-10 years old. Children were grouped into low, moderate, or high stress groups depending on the severity of the experienced storm. All children were able to recall this event in vivid detail 6 years later. In fact, children reported over twice as many propositions at the second interview as at the first. At the initial interview, children in the high stress group reported less information than children in the moderate stress group, but 6 years later, children in all three stress groups reported similar amounts of information. However children in the high stress group needed more questions and prompts than children in the other stress groups. Yet children in the high stress group also reported more consistent information between the two interviews, especially about the storm, than children in the other stress groups. Implications for children's developing memory of stressful events are discussed.     

Providing misleading and reinstatement information a year after it happened: effects on long-term memory

The question addressed here is whether misleading suggestions made to children a year after target events had occurred will alter long-term recall. One group (3-13 years old when injured and treated in a hospital Emergency Room) were given both misleading and accurate reinstating information a year later, and recall of target events assessed both 1 week and another year later (i.e., 2 years post-injury). A control group had recall assessed both 1 and 2 years post-injury. Misleading had little effect on children's recall 1 week later, although a few misled details were reported. However, a year later virtually none of the misleading information was incorporated into long-term recall. Rather, children were more, not less, accurate when recalling details about which they had been misled. Results were attributed to target events having been highly memorable and well rehearsed via previous recalls, and detection of discrepancies between memory and misleading information focusing attention on targeted details.     

Opposing effects of phonological similarity on item and order memory of words and nonwords in the serial recall task

This study shows that the classical phonological similarity effect (PSE) in immediate serial recall is critically affected by the lexicality of list items, the type of phonological similarity involved, and the scoring procedure. PSE was present in the serial recall score when phonologically distinct words were compared to words that share the middle vowel and end consonant (rhyming lists). PSE was absent in the serial recall score when phonologically distinct words were compared to words that share the initial and final consonants (consonant frame lists). There was a reversal of PSE in serial recall of nonwords when comparing distinct lists to both types of similar lists. Recall accuracy on the other hand was higher for distinct lists regardless of lexicality. Item errors dominated in relation to order errors in the case of nonwords, whereas order errors dominated in relation to item errors in the case of words. Furthermore, order errors were more common for phonologically similar lists, whereas item errors were more common for phonologically distinct lists. This may be the result of intra-list and inter-list interference, respectively. The dominance of the former error type may cause a classical PSE, whereas the dominance of the latter error type may cause a reversal of PSE. Finally, an item identification task yielded no evidence of an association between intra-list interference and discriminability of items in a list.     

The effect of midazolam on implicit and explicit memory in category exemplar production and category cued recall

Transfer-appropriate processing theory (Roediger, Weldon, & Challis, 1989) proposes that dissociations between performance on explicit and implicit memory tests arise because these tests often rely on different types of information processing (e.g., perceptual processing vs conceptual processing). This perspective predicts that implicit and explicit memory tasks that rely primarily on conceptual processing should show comparable results, not dissociations. Numerous studies have demonstrated such similarities. It is, however, possible that these results arise from explicit memory contamination of performance on implicit memory tasks. To address this issue, an experiment was conducted in which participants were administered the sedative midazolam prior to study. Midazolam is known to create a temporary, but dense, period of anterograde amnesia. The effects of blocking stimulus materials by semantic category at study and generation at study were investigated on category exemplar production and category-cued recall. The results of this study demonstrated a dissociation of the effects of midazolam on category exemplar production and category-cued recall. Specifically, midazolam reduced the effect of blocking stimulus materials in category-cued recall, but not in category exemplar production. The differential effect of midazolam on explicit and implicit memory is at odds with transfer-appropriate processing theory and suggests that theories of memory must distinguish the roles of different types of conceptual processing on implicit and explicit memory tests.     

The basic-level convergence effect in memory distortions

Abstract— Whereas most previous findings suggest that memory may become more abstract over time, so that memory for gist outlasts verbatim memory, there are findings suggesting that abstract information may sometimes be instantiated in more specific terms. In this study, we examined the hypothesis that retained information tends to converge at an intermediate level of abstractness—the basic level. In two experiments, we found bidirectional, symmetrical shifts in the memory for story material: Participants presented with either subordinate terms (e.g., sports car) or superordinate terms (e.g., vehicle) tended to falsely report basic-level terms (e.g., car) instead. This pattern emerged for both recall and recognition memory tests, at both immediate and delayed testing, and under free and forced reporting. The results suggest that the basic level, which has been considered cognitively optimal for perception, categorization, and communication, is also the preferred level for retaining episodic information in memory.     

Dietary ethyl-eicosapentaenoic acid but not soybean oil reverses central interleukin-1-induced changes in behavior, corticosterone and immune response in rats

Omega (n)-3 and n-6 fatty acids are important membrane components of neurons and immune cells, and related to psychiatric and inflammatory diseases. Increased ratio of n-6/n-3 in the blood has been reported in depressed patients and in students following stress exposure. The n-3 fatty acid, eicosapentaenoic acid (ethyl-EPA) suppresses inflammation and has antidepressant properties. Interleukin (IL)-1beta can stimulate corticosterone secretion, induce anxiety and stress-like behavior and inflammatory responses. This study was to evaluate the effect of diets enriched with coconut oil, ethyl-EPA and soybean oil on central IL-1beta induced stress and anxiety-like behavior, induced changes in the concentration of prostaglandin (PG) E2 and corticosterone and the release of IL-10. Groups of rats were fed with either 5% coconut oil (as control diet), 0.2% EPA with 4.8% coconut oil or 1% EPA with 4% coconut oil and 5% soybean oil for 7 weeks. The central administration of IL-1beta induced sickness, stress and anxiety-like behavior as indicated by a reduction in body weight, decreased time spent, and the number of entries, into the open arms of the elevated plus maze and decreased exploration and entry into the central zone of the "open field" apparatus. IL-1beta also increased PGE2 and corticosterone concentrations and decreased the release of IL-10 from leucocytes. Food enriched with ethyl-EPA but not soybean oil, significantly attenuated most of these changes. These results demonstrate that ethyl-EPA has anti-inflammatory, anti-stress and anti-anxiety effects in rats.     

Factor validation of the addiction severity index scale structure in persons with concurrent disorders

Confirmatory factor analysis was used to test the scale structure of the Addiction Severity Index (ASI) in a sample of 1,802 substance abusers (43% alcohol dependent) with a concurrent psychiatric disorder (46% with mood disorders). The fit of the original composite score model based on the work of P. L. McGahan, J. A. Griffith, R. Parente, and A. T. McLellan (1990) was compared with the evaluation indices (EIs) developed by A. I. Alterman et al. (1998). The 5-dimensional model based on the EIs was an overall better fit to the data. Internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha) for the EIs ranged from.66 (family domain) to.75 (legal domain). The 5 EIs were moderately correlated (rs =.42-.72) with the interviewer severity ratings from the ASI. Evaluation studies involving concurrent disordered substance abusers should use the EIs as summary measures of change.     

The influence of sex versus sex-related traits on long-term memory for gist and detail from an emotional story

Recent findings demonstrate sex-related differences in the neurobiological mechanisms by which emotional arousal influences memory, and raise questions about the extent to which memory for emotional events may differ between males and females. Here we examine whether sex-related differences exist in the recall of central (gist) information and peripheral detail from an emotional story. Healthy subjects viewed a brief, narrated slide-show containing emotional elements in its middle section. One week later, they received an incidental multiple-choice recognition test for the story. Following the test, each subject completed the BEM Sex-Role Inventory, an assessment of sex-related masculine and feminine traits. The results reveal no differences in recall of either central or peripheral story information when considering the performance of actual men and women, but a significant difference when considering male and females as determined by their BEM test scores. "BEM" males (subjects with net male BEM scores) showed significantly enhanced recall of central emotional information. "BEM" females did not. Both groups showed significantly enhanced recall of peripheral emotional information, although this effect appeared larger in BEM females than in BEM males. The influences of "BEM" sex and type of information (central, peripheral) significantly interacted to influence emotional memory performance. These findings confirm the existence of sex-related influences in the recall of emotional information, and suggest that sex-related traits, rather than actual sex per se, may be a more sensitive indicator of these influences.     

Very clever homunculus: Compound stimulus strategies for the explicit task-cuing procedure

In two experiments, subjects were given arbitrary letter cues or meaningful word cues that specified the task to be performed on a subsequent target stimulus. Letter and word cues were presented in separate blocks. There were two cues of each type for each task. Three kinds of transitions separated tasks:cue repetitions, in which both the cue and the task repeated;task repetitions, in which the cue changed but the task repeated; andtask alternations, in which both the cue and the task changed. Responses were faster for cue than for task repetitions for both cue types. With word cues, task repetitions were not reliably faster than task alternations. With letter cues, task repetitions were reliably faster than task alternations in the first block but not in the second block. The results suggest that subjects responded to the compound of the cue and the target rather than switching task set between trials.