Naïve Diversification in the Swedish Premium Pension Scheme: Experimental Evidence

In the Swedish Premium Pension Scheme (PPS) all citizens in paid employment allocate part of their public pension savings to mutual funds. In so doing they tend to distribute their choices maximally across different stock fund categories. It is hypothesised that this reflects the naïve application of a variety‐inducing diversification heuristic. The results of two experiments simulating choices of fund categories in the PPS support this hypothesis by showing that participating undergraduates chose stock funds investing in overlapping and non‐overlapping markets or industries in a way demonstrating failure to take into account covariation among fund returns. Administrators of the PPS and similar defined‐contribution pension plans should provide participants with comprehensive advice on how to diversify their investment. Dans le régime de retraite suédois (PPS), tous les citoyens ayant un emploi salarié allouent une part de l'épargne de leur retraite publique à des fonds d'investissements. Ce faisant, ils tendent majoritairement à répartir leurs choix dans différentes catégories de fonds. On a fait l'hypothèse que cela reflète l'application naïve d'une heuristique de la diversification. Les résultats de deux expérimentations simulant des choix entre différentes catégories de fonds pour le PPS confirment cette hypothèse : les sujets (étudiants) ont choisi des fonds en actions et devaient investir sur des marchés ou dans des branches industrielles relevant ou non du même secteur économique et cela d'une façon qui mettait en évidence leur incapacitéà prendre en considération le fait que le retour sur investissement de différents fonds pouvait être lié. Les administrateurs du PPS et de plans de pensions avec versements programmés devraient fournir aux participants des conseils avisés sur la façon de diversifier leur investissement.     

Quantity discrimination by kittens of the domestic cat (Felis silvestris catus)

Animal Cognition - Quantitative abilities are well described in many species and in diverse life situations, including in the adult domestic cat. However, such abilities have been much less studied...     

Intelligence,Wellbeing and Procreative Beneficence

If Savulescu's (2001, 2009) controversial principle of Procreative Beneficence (PB) is correct, then an important implication is that couples should employ genetic tests for non‐disease traits in selecting which child to bring into existence. Both defenders as well as some critics of this normative entailment of PB have typically accepted the comparatively less controversial claim about non‐disease traits: that there are non‐disease traits such that testing and selecting for them would in fact contribute to bringing about the child who is expected to have the best life. We challenge this less controversial claim, not by arguing deductively for its falsity, but by showing that Savulescu's central argument for this presumably less controversial claim fails. Savulescu offers intelligence as the paradigm example of a testable non‐disease trait such that testing and selecting for it would increase the likelihood that the child selected would be the one who is expected to have the best life (or at least as good a life as the others). We provide a series of arguments aimed at demonstrating that Savulescu's argument from intelligence fails. If our arguments are successful, the upshot is not that PB is false, but more modestly, that the burden of proof remains squarely with Savulescu.     

Time-dependent forgetting in visual short-term memory

ABSTRACT

Whether visual short-term memory can be lost over an unfilled delay, in line with time-dependent forgetting, is controversial and prior work has yielded mixed results. The present study explored time-dependent forgetting in visual short-term memory in relation to other factors. In three experiments, participants compared single target and probe objects over a 2 s or 10 s retention interval. The objects across trials were either similar or dissimilar (Experiment 1) and had to be remembered in the presence of an additional distractor (Experiment 2) or under conditions where the amount of time separating trials varied (Experiment 3). In all experiments, the retention interval manipulation made the biggest contribution to performance, with accuracy decreasing as the retention interval was lengthened from 2 s to 10 s. These results pose problems for interference and temporal distinctiveness models of memory but are compatible with temporal forgetting mechanisms such as decay.