Moral Realism as a Moral Doctrine

This paper argues for the legalization of vote markets. I contend that the state should not prohibit the sale of votes under certain institutional conditions. Jason Brennan has recently argued for the moral permissibility of vote selling; yet, thus far, no philosopher has argued for the legal permissibility of vote selling. I begin by giving four prima facie reasons in favour of legalizing vote markets. First, vote markets benefit both buyers and sellers. Second, citizens already enjoy significant discretion in their use of their vote, including the ability to use their vote in ways antithetical to justice and the public interest. Third, vote markets are relevantly similar to other democratic practices that are legally permissible. Fourth, vote markets enable elections to better reflect the intensity of citizens’ preferences. Next, I reply to two counter-arguments. The first contends that vote markets will increase the political power of the wealthy; the second contends that votes must be used in the service of the public interest rather than private interests or influenced by participation in collective political deliberation. I argue that vote markets will not increase political inequalities relative to democracies without vote markets. There is little reason to expect electoral regulations to be less effective in satisfying egalitarian criteria in democracies with vote markets than in democracies without vote markets. Moreover, the claim that votes must be influenced by participation in collective deliberation or serve the common good implies counter-intuitive restrictions on political liberties beyond a ban on vote buying and selling, including an abridgement of equal suffrage.     

Intentional artificial grammar learning: When does it work?

Actively searching for the rules of an artificial grammar has often been shown to produce no more knowledge than memorising exemplars without knowing that they have been generated by a grammar. The present study investigated whether this ineffectiveness of intentional learning could be overcome by removing dual task demands and providing participants with more specific instructions. The results only showed a positive effect of learning intentionally for participants specifically instructed to find out which letters are allowed to follow each other. These participants were also unaffected by a salient feature. In contrast, for participants who did not know what kind of structure to expect, intentional learning was not more effective than incidental learning and knowledge acquisition was guided by salience.     

Measuring adaptability demands of jobs and the adaptability of military and civilians

Jobs within the military and in civil society differ in character and requirements. It is assumed that differences in job types both within civil and military domains require different dimensions of adaptability competency. The present study investigates this assumption. The Dutch Adaptability Dimensions And Performance Test (D-ADAPT) was used to measure both the adaptability demands of jobs, and of self-assessed adaptability competency of employees. In addition, the predictive value of certain personality traits (openness, neuroticism, and conscientiousness) and other relevant personal characteristics (cognitive flexibility, learning goal orientation) on various adaptability dimensions was explored. Military personnel were found to estimate their adaptability competency as higher than civilians did. With respect to the civilian jobs, the adaptability demands varied across job types. This was not found in the set of military jobs, possibly due to a smaller variety of jobs included. This study also shows that a variety of personal characteristics predict different dimensions of adaptability. Cognitive flexibility was found to be the best predictor for adaptability in general. Openness turned out to be a good predictor within the civilian group, whereas neuroticism was a better predictor within the military group. Results of this study contribute to a better understanding of work adaptability and influencing personality characteristics. Practical implications for selection and training of personnel can be derived, based on the acquisition of adaptability competency that matches the type of job.     

Understanding dieting: A social cognitive analysis of hedonic processes in self-regulation

The present paper introduces a novel approach to understanding failures of self-regulation in chronic dieters. Traditional approaches to this problem have focused on consciously controlled processes of eating regulation, such as the realisation that one has overeaten, or the experience of food cravings. We argue, however, that dieters' problem might rather lie in their sensitivity to the hedonic aspects of food and the resulting inhibition of their dieting goal. We present a goal-conflict model that integrates recent findings on hedonic sensitivity in eating regulation with social cognition research on nonconscious goal pursuit. We show that the perception of attractive food triggers hedonic thoughts about food in chronic dieters and leads to the inhibition of their dieting goal. These processes make subsequent overeating more likely, while bypassing dieters' conscious awareness. We discuss how our model can accommodate earlier research findings in this area, and we consider its implications for dieting behaviour and for our attempts to resist temptations more generally.     

Tell Me Everything You Discussed: Children's Memory for Dyadic Conversations after a 1-Week or a 3-Week Delay

In child abuse investigations, children are often asked to recount previous conversations related to the allegations (i.e., “conversational testimony”). To explore children's ability to provide conversational testimony, we staged a semi-structured novel dyadic conversation between an adult researcher and 8-year-old children (n = 90). Children's gist recall and recognition memory for their own statements, their conversational partner's statements, and question–answer pairs were tested after either a 1-week or a 3-week delay. The results revealed that children recounted a minority of the conversation, although children recalled more after a short delay (7%) than after a long delay (4%). A majority of children's free recall statements were accurate (68%); however, approximately one-third of their free recall statements were incorrect. Children almost exclusively recounted their own statements, and rarely recalled any of the adult's statements or the question–answer pairs during free recall. Reports of the adult's statements and question–answer pairs increased with cued recall questioning, but remained minimal. During recognition testing, children were able to distinguish between true and false recognition items for their own statements and the adult's statements, but performed at chance level on recognition items concerning question–answer pairs. Forensic implications of the results are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Developmental Trends in False Memory Across Adolescence and Young Adulthood: A Comparison of DRM and Memory Conformity Paradigms

Little is known about the reliability of eyewitness memory among adolescents as most memory research has focused primarily on adults and young children. A number of studies recently have emerged outlining conditions where memory suggestibility increases from early childhood to adulthood. These developmental reversals are found in semantic association tasks such as the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm and have not yet been thoroughly investigated among adolescents. In the current study, we examined DRM performance among 11–21 year olds (N = 245). Extending the work comparing children and adults, false memory on the DRM task increased with age. False memory on the DRM task was not associated with false memory on a memory conformity task. The different memory processes involved with the tasks and the implications for legal psychology are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A matter of time: rapid motor memory stabilization in childhood

Are children better than adults in acquiring new skills (‘how‐to’ knowledge) because of a difference in skill memory consolidation? Here we tested the proposal that, as opposed to adults, children's memories for newly acquired skills are immune to interference by subsequent experience. The establishment of long‐term memory for a trained movement sequence in adults requires a phase of memory consolidation. This results in substantial delayed, ‘offline’, performance gains, which nevertheless remain susceptible to interference by subsequent competing motor experience for several hours after training, unless sleep is afforded in the interval. Here we compared the gains attained overnight (delayed gains) by 9‐year‐olds and adults after training on a novel finger‐to‐thumb movement sequence, with and without subsequent interference by repeating a different movement sequence. Our results show that, in 9‐year‐olds, but not in adults, an interval of 15 min. between the training session and interfering experience sufficed to ensure the expression of delayed, consolidation phase, gains. Nevertheless, in the 9‐year‐olds, as well as in adults, the gains attained with no interference were significantly larger. Altogether, our results show that while the behavioral expressions of childhood and adult consolidation processes are similar, procedural memory stabilizes, in the waking state, at a much faster rate in children. We propose that, in children, rapid stabilization is a mechanism whereby the constraints on consolidating new experiences into long‐term procedural memory are relaxed at the cost of selectivity.