The mental representation of countries

Three studies were conducted to describe adults' knowledge of the countries of the world. Undergraduates from a selective liberal arts college recognised nearly two-thirds of nations, and about one-third were produced in a free-recall task. The use of information related to countries' locations was an important determinant of order of recall. Contiguity in free-recall output, responses in a free-association task, and the prediction of recall from recognition also provided evidence of other relations between countries, including semantic and phonetic links and membership in groups of countries. The number of times a country was mentioned in the news was a consistent predictor of recognition and recall. The relative prosperity, population density, and geographic area of countries also influenced recall.     

Pigeons see correspondence between objects and their pictures

The extent to which nonhumans recognize the correspondence between static pictures and the objects they represent remains an interesting and controversial issue. Pictures displayed on computers are used extensively for research on behavioral and neural mechanisms of cognition in birds, yet attempts to show that birds recognize the objects seen in pictures have produced mixed and inconclusive results. We trained pigeons to discriminate between two identically colored but differently shaped three-dimensional objects seen directly or as pictures, and we found clear bidirectional transfer of the learned object discrimination. Transfer from objects to pictures occurred even when pigeons were trained with 12 views and only novel views of the objects were presented in transfer. This study provides the strongest evidence yet that pigeons can recognize the correspondence between objects and pictures.     

Reexploring the connection between terror management theory and dissonance theory

Building upon suggestive earlier findings, the present study sought to test more informatively the notion that reminders of mortality can intensify efforts at dissonance reduction. Toward this end, an induced-compliance experiment was conducted in which participants were given high versus low choice to write a counterattitudinal statement regarding a boring topic under conditions of either mortality salience (MS) or uncertainty salience (control). It was predicted that although dissonance reduction (via attitude change) would be provoked in the control group, MS would significantly exacerbate this effect. These predictions were borne out empirically. The findings, obtained using the historically preeminent paradigm for assessing dissonance reduction, provide firm support for the notion that MS amplifies concerns with cognitive consistency.     

Mechanisms of belief-desire reasoning. Inhibition and bias

Biases in reasoning can provide insight into underlying processing mechanisms. We demonstrate a new bias in children's belief-desire reasoning. Children between 4 and 8 years of age were told a story in which a character was mistaken about which of three boxes contained some object. The character wanted to go to one of the boxes, but only if it did not contain the object. In this scenario, the character would be expected to avoid the box where she falsely believed the object to be, but might go to either of the remaining boxes. Though the character was equally likely to go to either box, children were biased to predict that the character would go to the box that contained the object. In a control task, the character had the same desire but did not have a false belief; in this case, children showed no bias, choosing the two correct answers equally often. The observed pattern of bias was predicted by a developmental model of belief-desire reasoning. Competent belief-desire reasoning depends on a process of selection by inhibition in which the best belief content emerges from a set of candidates.     

Convening a 407 panel for research not otherwise approvable: "Precursors to diabetes in Japanese American youth" as a case study

Subpart D of 45 CFR 46 focuses on research involving children. Section 46.407 addresses research that is not otherwise approvable. The research is not otherwise approvable because either (1) it seeks to enroll healthy children, but offers no prospect of direct benefit and entails more than minimal risk; or (2) it seeks to enroll children with a disorder or condition, but offers no prospect of direct benefit and entails more than a minor increase over minimal risk. According to 46.407, such research can be permissible if it is approved by a panel of experts. Prior to 2000, only two 407 panels had been convened, but in 2001, the Office for Human Research Protections received more than 20 protocols for 407 review. The first, entitled "Precursors to Diabetes in Japanese American Youth," serves here as a case study in human subject protections.     

Recognizing rotated views of objects: Interpolation versus generalization by humans and pigeons

Pigeons and humans were trained to discriminate between pictures of three-dimensional objects that differed in global shape. Each pair of objects was shown at two orientations that differed by a depth rotation of 90° during training. Pictures of the objects at novel depth rotations were then tested for recognition. The novel test rotations were 30°, 45°, and 90° from the nearest trained orientation and were either interpolated between the trained orientations or extrapolated outside of the training range. For both pigeons and humans, recognition accuracy and/or speed decreased as a function of distance from the nearest trained orientation. However, humans, but not pigeons, were more accurate in recognizing novel interpolated views than novel extrapolated views. The results suggest that pigeons’ recognition was based on independent generalization from each training view, whereas humans showed view-combination processes that resulted in a benefit for novel views interpolated between the training views.     

Age-related changes in the associations of social network ties with mortality risk

Age-related changes in the associations of social network ties with mortality risk were investigated using data from the Terman Life-Cycle Study (L. M. Terman, 1925; L. M. Terman & M. H. Oden, 1947, 1959). Marital status, number of living children, number of living siblings, and number of group memberships in 1940, 1950, 1960, and 1977 were reported across middle adulthood by 697 men and 544 women, with mortality follow-up as of 1991. Initial analyses confirmed previous work indicating that marital history (men only), number of children (both genders), and organizational memberships (both genders) are predictive of mortality risk. Further analyses compared the associations between these social ties and mortality prior to age 70 and at age 70 and older. Results indicated that for men, experiencing marital dissolution and subsequently remarrying is a stronger predictor of mortality risk prior to age 70 (p = .05), whereas for women, number of children (p < .05) is a stronger predictor of mortality risk after age 70. Implications of these age-related changes in social ties and mortality risk are discussed.     

Episodic priming and memory for temporal source: event-related potentials reveal age-related differences in prefrontal functioning.

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from young (M = 25) and older (M = 71) adults during a recognition memory paradigm that assessed episodic priming. Participants studied two temporally distinct lists of sentences (each with two unassociated nouns). At test, in response to the nouns, participants made old-new, followed by remember (context)-know (familiarity) and source (i.e., list) judgments. Both young and older adults showed equivalent episodic priming effects. However, compared to the young adults, the older adults showed a greater source performance decrement than item memory performance decrement. Both age groups showed equivalent posterior-maximal old-new ERP effects. However, only the young produced a frontal-maximal, late onset old-new effect that differed as a function of subsequent list attribution. Because source memory is thought to be mediated by prefrontal cortex, we conclude that age-related memory differences may be due to a deficit in a prefrontal cortical system that underlies source memory and are not likely to be due to an age-related decline in episodic priming.