Collaboration and prospective memory: comparing nominal and collaborative group performance in strangers and couples

To perform prospective memory (PM) tasks in day-to-day life, we often enlist the help of others. Yet the effects of collaboration on PM are largely unknown. Adopting the methodology of the “collaborative recall paradigm”, we tested whether stranger dyads (Experiment 1) and intimate couples (Experiment 2) would perform better on a “Virtual Week” task when working together or each working separately. In Experiment 1, we found evidence of collaborative inhibition: collaborating strangers did not perform to their pooled individual potential, although the effect was modulated by PM task difficulty. We also found that the overall collaborative inhibition effect was attributable to both the retrospective and prospective components of PM. In Experiment 2 however, there was no collaborative inhibition: there was no significant difference in performance between couples working together or separately. Our findings suggest potential costs of collaboration to PM. Intimate relationships may reduce the usual costs of collaboration, with implications for intervention training programmes and for populations who most need PM support.     

Ageing stereotypes influence the transmission of false memories in the social contagion paradigm

ABSTRACT

These experiments are the first to investigate the impact of confederate accuracy, age, and age stereotypes in the social contagion of memory paradigm. Across two experiments, younger participants recalled household scenes with an actual (Experiment 1) or virtual (Experiment 2), older or younger confederate who suggested different proportions (0%, 33% or 100%) of false items during collaboration. In Experiment 2, positive and negative age stereotypes were primed by providing bogus background information about our older confederate before collaboration. Across both experiments, if confederates suggested false items participants readily incorporated these into their own memory reports. In Experiment 1, when no age stereotype was primed, participants adopted similar proportions of false items from younger and older confederates. Importantly, in Experiment 2, when our older confederate was presented in terms of negative ageing stereotypes, participants reported less false items and were better able to correctly identify the source of those false items.     

“Money Helps”: People who inject drugs and their perceptions of financial compensation and its ethical implications

This study documents how people who inject drugs (PWID) in rural Puerto Rico perceive payments for participating in HIV epidemiological studies. In-depth interviews were conducted among a subset (n = 40) of active PWID older than 18 years of age who had been previously enrolled in a much larger study (N = 360). Findings suggest that financial compensation was the main motivation for initially enrolling in the parent study. Then, as trust in the researchers developed, participants came to perceive compensation as part of a reciprocal exchange in which they assisted researchers by providing a trustful account of their experiences and researchers reciprocated with financial support.     

Positive and Negative Peer Interaction in 3- and 4-Year-Olds in Relation to Regulation and Dysregulation

Using a sample from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care (N = 435; 219 girls), the authors derived several measures of regulation and dysregulation that predicted, both concurrently and longitudinally, children's positive and negative peer interactions in multiple contexts. Observers rated peer interactions in child care and during dyadic play with a friend, and mothers rated peer behavior. The authors based the derived measures on resistance to temptation (36 months) and delay of gratification (54 months) tasks, as well as observations in child care of children's compliance and defiance with adults at both ages and maternal reports. Preschoolers who had better impulse control and who were more compliant and less defiant with adults engaged more often in friendly, positive, peer play and were less negative in their peer play across contexts. Associations between regulation and dysregulation and peer interaction were broader and more consistent at 54 months than at 36 months. Longitudinally, regulation at 36 months was only modestly associated with more positive and less negative peer play at 54 months. The authors discuss findings in the context of developing self-regulation and its importance for early peer relationships.     

EMPATHY AND THE EVOLUTION OF COMPASSION: FROM DEEP HISTORY TO INFUSED VIRTUE

This article poses a challenge to contemporary theories in psychology that portray empathy as a negative force in the moral life. Instead, drawing on alternative psychological and philosophical literature, especially Martha Nussbaum, I argue that empathy is related to the virtue of compassion and therefore crucial for moral action. Evidence for evolutionary anthropological accounts of compassion in early hominins provides additional arguments for its positive value in deep human history. I discuss this work alongside Thomistic notions of practical wisdom, compassion, misericordia, and the importance of reason in the moral life. The tension between “bottom up” accounts of empathy and that according to a theological interpretation of “infused” virtues also needs to be addressed. From a secular perspective, infused virtue is a projection of the ideal moral life, but from a theological perspective, it is a way of understanding how human capacities through the action of grace can reach beyond what seem to be the limits of psychological moral identity.     

Resilience: enhancing well-being through the positive cognitive triad

The present study tested whether the relationships among resilience, life satisfaction, and depression could be explained by positive views toward the self, the world, and the future (positive cognitive triad). Structural equation modeling and mediation analyses were conducted based on 1,419 college students in Hong Kong. The model of positive cognitive triad as mediator between resilience and well-being fit the data (comparative fit index = .94, Tucker-Lewis index = .93, root-mean-square error of approximation = .08). Findings showed resilience to be significantly related to positive cognitions about the self, the world, and the future. Individuals who had higher level of resilience held significantly more positive cognitions and reported significantly higher levels of life satisfaction and lower levels of depression. The utility of the positive cognitive triad as the mechanism through which resilience enhances well-being was supported. Applications in cultivating resilience and positive cognitions in counseling services are discussed.     

Fabricated Humans? Human Genetics,Ethics and the Christian Wisdom Tradition1

Abstract: This article highlights the key social issues associated with genetic screening and testing. It identifies an uneasy combination of a cultural drive towards perfection alongside heightened perception of a risk society. Awareness of risk is particularly in evidence in clinical genetics, but is surprisingly silent in public discourse about stem cell research, which has tended to flounder through its unilateral focus on the status of the early embryo. This article concentrates on current practice, such as the use of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, and offers a critical analysis of current debates about ethical issues. It argues that Christian ethics can contribute positively to the debate by drawing on the tradition of prudence or practical wisdom, which goes beyond the secular alternatives of both the consequential analysis of risk and benefit and the precautionary principle.     

Beyond the Belmont Principles: A Community‐Based Approach to Developing an Indigenous Ethics Model and Curriculum for Training Health Researchers Working with American Indian and Alaska Native Communities

Individuals responsible for carrying out research within their diverse communities experience a critical need for research ethics training materials that align with community values. To improve the capacity to meet local human subject protections, we created the research Ethics Training for Health in Indigenous Communities (rETHICS), a training curriculum aligned within American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) context, culture, and community‐level ethical values and principles. Beginning with the Belmont Report and the Common Rule that defines research with human subjects (46 CFR 45), the authors convened three different expert panels (N = 37) to identify Indigenous research values and principles common across tribal communities. The resulting culturally grounded curriculum was then tested with 48 AI/AN individuals, 39 who also had recorded debriefing interviews. Using a thematic analysis, we coded the qualitative feedback from the expert panel discussions and the participant debriefings to assess content validity. Participants identified five foundational constructs needed to ensure cultural‐grounding of the AI/AN‐specific research training curriculum. These included ensuring that the module was: (a) framed within an AI/AN historical context; (b) reflected Indigenous moral values; (c) specifically linked AI/AN cultural considerations to ethical procedures; (d) contributed to a growing Indigenous ethics; and (e) provided Indigenous‐based ethics tools for decision making. Using community‐based consultation and feedback from participants led to a culturally grounded training curriculum that teaches research ethical principles and procedures for conducting research with AI/ANs. The curriculum is available for free and the community‐based process used can be adapted for other cultural groups.     

Identification of symmetry: Effects of stimulus orientation and head position

It has been argued that the perceptual advantage of symmetry depends upon the essentially symmetrical properties of the visual system. According to this explanation, the ease of identification of symmetries about different axes of orientation should decrease with increasing distance from the vertical: Reaction times to vertical symmetry should be faster than those to diagonal symmetry, which in turn should be faster than those to horizontal symmetry. Previous research demonstrating this pattern of responding employed stimuli with linear axes. In the present study, the subjects viewed tachistoscopically presented symmetrical and asymmetrical dot patterns (which had no explicit axes) in one of three head positions: upright, 45 deg left, and 45 deg right. The subjects’ performance failed to support the structural explanation: Identification of symmetry is equivalently fast for vertical and horizontal; vertical and horizontal show strong advantages over obliques, and this general advantage follows retinal coordinates. Findings are discussed in light of alternative theories of symmetry processing.