Drawing conclusions: Instructing witnesses to draw what happened to them

We reviewed the child and the adult literature on the impact of witnesses drawing what happened on the number of details recalled and the accuracy of the reported details. Most experiments reported a beneficial effect of drawing what happened (or drawing the scene) on the number of details reported primarily in free recall and sometimes also in cued recall. The consensus across studies was that drawing protocols did not negatively impact the accuracy of reported details (when accuracy was attainable) unless suggestive details were drawn. These results were largely consistent regardless of interviewer expertise or protocol used. Draw-and-tell instructions should be considered by forensic investigators for the following reasons: (1) the beneficial effect on number of details recalled with no detriment to accuracy, (2) the added benefit for children who need additional interviewer support, and (3) the ease at which the instruction can be implemented with minimal expertise or training. However, more ecologically valid research is needed to establish the efficacy of drawing (1) in forensic interviews, (2) in the presence of misinformation, (3) across instances of repeated event memory, and (4) across sequential interviews.     

Pandemic precarity: A multi-level study of neoliberal precarity and COVID-Related outcomes in the United States

Neoliberalism is the political-economic system that has characterized the United States for the past half century. Structurally, neoliberalism has involved privatization, deregulation, and government divestment from public health systems. Cultural psychologists have begun to outline the ways that neoliberalism is reflected in attitudes, ways of being, and ideologies, such as in the form of heightened individualism, justification of inequality, depoliticization, and precarity. We argue that neoliberal structures and psychologies may contribute to deleterious outcomes in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We demonstrate that neoliberalism at the US state level (n = 51) is associated with higher COVID mortality and case fatality rates, as well as lower vaccination rates (Study 1). We also demonstrate that individual-level (n = 8280) neoliberal ideology predicts less adaptive beliefs and attitudes such as the belief that the federal response to the pandemic was too fast and belief in COVID-related misinformation (Study 2). We demonstrate using multilevel modeling that state-level neoliberalism predicts individual-level COVID-related attitudes, which is explained in part by heightened neoliberal ideology in more neoliberal states (Study 2). This study contributes to an understanding of the structural and cultural psychological factors that have contributed to the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US.     

Generalization gradients of inhibition following auditory discrimination learning

A more direct method than the usual ones for obtaining inhibitory gradients requires that the dimension of the nonreinforced stimulus selected for testing be orthogonal to the dimensions of the reinforced stimulus. In that case, the test points along the inhibitory gradient are equally distant from the reinforced stimulus. An attempt was made to realize this condition by obtaining inhibitory gradients along the frequency dimension of a pure tone after discrimination training in which the nonreinforced stimulus was a pure tone (or tones), and the reinforced stimulus was either white noise or the absence of a tone. The results showed that some degree of specific inhibitory control was exerted by the frequency of the tone, although the gradients were broad and shallow in slope.

A further experiment was conducted to see whether the modification of an excitatory gradient resulting from training to discriminate neighboring tones could arise from a simple interaction of inhibitory and excitatory gradients. The results indicated that it could not, since discrimination training produced a concentration of responding in the vicinity of the reinforced stimulus which cannot be derived from any plausible gradient of inhibition.

     

Children's judgments of body size and distortion

Body size estimates of 69 children aged 5–13 years were obtained using a TV video methodology. Tasks included an adjustment procedure where children manipulated the width of their body image on a TV, and a discrete task, where they judged the accuracy of their TV image which was presented as either normal or distorted, that is, too wide or too thin. On the continuous task, judgments were more accurate on ascending trials where children had to increase the width of the image. On the discrete task, a signal detection analysis revealed older children were better in detecting size distortion in their images and that the differences were due to differences in the biological sensory system and not due to a bias to report that they were too fat or too thin. However, there were response bias differences between genders. Females were more likely to report size distortion with increasing age while males were less likely.     

Simultaneous auditory discrimination.

Stimuli in many visual stimulus control studies typically are presented simultaneously; in contrast the stimuli in auditory discrimination studies are presented successively. Many everyday auditory stimuli that control responding occur simultaneously. This suggests that simultaneous auditory discriminations should be readily acquired. The purpose of the present experiment was to train rats in a simultaneous auditory discrimination. The apparatus consisted of a cage with two response levers mounted on one wall and a speaker mounted adjacent to each lever. A feeder was mounted on the opposite wall. In a go-right/go-left procedure, two stimuli were presented on each trial, a wide-band noise burst through one speaker and a 2-kHz complex signal through the other. The stimuli alternated randomly from side to side across trials, and the stimulus correlated with reinforcement for presses varied across subjects. The rats acquired the discrimination in 400 to 700 trials, and no response position preference developed during acquisition. The ease with which the simultaneous discrimination was acquired suggests that procedures, such as matching to sample, that require simultaneous presentation of stimuli can be used with auditory stimuli in animals having poor vision.     

The moral reasoning of juvenile delinquents: A meta-analysis

To test the hypothesized immaturity of juvenile delinquents' moral reasoning, the results of 15 studies of the moral reasoning of juvenile delinquents were integrated quantitatively using meta-analysis. Hedges and Olkin (1985) methods were used to (a) compute effect sizes, (b) test the homogeneity of the obtained effect sizes, and (c) test the statistical significance of the pooled mean effect size. The results supported the hypothesis that the moral reasoning of juvenile delinquents is immature. It was concluded that several other issues are in need of investigation.     

Causal Attributions for Poorly Performing Projects: Their Effect on Project Continuation Decisions

This study examined the escalation problem within an attribution theory framework. Students read a case scenario containing causal attribution information that described a poorly performing project under their supervision. They made estimates of its future success, as well as a decision whether to continue it. Perceived stability of causality had the primary effect on expectancy of success. A project whose performance downturn was attributed to a stable cause had a lower expectancy. Locus of causality had a smaller but still significant effect. Project downturns attributed to internal causes had a lower expectancy. Expectancy of success was significantly correlated with project continuation decisions. Discrepancies between these results and those reported by Staw and Ross (1978) are accounted for in terms of Weiner's (1985, 1986) attributional analysis.