Maturation of EEG power spectra in early adolescence: a longitudinal study

This study investigated the fine-grained development of the EEG power spectra in early adolescence, and the extent to which it is reflected in changes in peak frequency. It also sought to determine whether sex differences in the EEG power spectra reflect differential patterns of maturation. A group of 56 adolescents were tested at age 10 years and then at two further time-points approximately 18 months apart. The EEG was recorded during both eyes-closed and eyes-open conditions and Fourier transformed to provide estimates of absolute and relative spectral power at 0.5 Hz intervals from 0.5 to 40 Hz. The peak alpha frequency for each individual at each time-point was also determined for relative spectral power. Partial Least Squares (PLS) analysis was used to determine the combination of electrodes and frequencies that showed developmental change, or differed between the sexes. As a function of age, absolute delta and theta frequencies power decreased, and relative alpha2 and beta frequencies increased, replicating the standard findings of a decrease in lower, and increase in higher, frequencies with age. A small but significant increase in peak alpha frequency with age was detected. Moreover PLS analysis performed with individual alpha frequencies aligned to 10 Hz suggested that the age-related increase seen in alpha2 relative power was driven by changes in the peak frequency. Although males demonstrated higher alpha power than females, there were no sex differences in peak frequency, suggesting that there may be more to sex differences in EEG power than simply different rates of maturation between the two sexes.     

Consequences of Economic Inequality for the Social and Political Vitality of Society: A Social Identity Analysis

Economic inequality has been found to have pernicious effects, reducing mental and physical health, decreasing societal cohesion, and fueling support for nativist parties and illiberal autocratic leaders. We start this review with an outline of what social identity theorizing offers to the study of inequality. We then articulate four hypotheses that can be derived from the social identity approach: the fit hypothesis, the wealth-categorization hypothesis, the wealth-stereotype hypothesis, and the sociostructural hypothesis. We review the empirical literature that tests these hypotheses by exploring the effect of economic inequality, measured objectively by metrics such as the Gini coefficient as well as subjectively in terms of perceptions of economic inequality, on wealth categorization (of others and the self), the desire for more wealth and status, intergroup hostility, attitudes towards immigrants, prosocial behavior, stereotyping, the wish for a strong leader, the endorsement of conspiracy theories, and collective action intentions. As we will show, this research suggests that economic inequality may have even more far-reaching consequences than commonly believed. Indeed, investigating the effects of economic inequality on citizens' sociopolitical behaviors may be increasingly important in today's turbulent political and social landscape.     

Concordance among readers of self-help books about important ideas

Amount of agreement among readers about the relevant information in a self-help psychology book was measured to assess whether readers' choices are unique or overlapping. 15 men and 14 women attended two 1-hr. sessions in which they read and marked relevant information in the first 60 pages of a self-help psychology book. Comparison of the amount and pattern of marking across pages and lines on five specific pages showed that there was a statistically significant amount of agreement on which pages contained relevant ideas and which lines contained important concepts. There were no differences between men and women.     

Task interference from event-based intentions

Task interference occurs in prospective memory tasks when an intention deleteriously affects performance on an ongoing activity in some way. Several studies have shown that task interference can manifest itself in slower latencies to perform an ongoing task. Recent evidence demonstrates that associating intentions to certain performance contexts affects prospective memory performance (see, e.g., Cook, Marsh, & Hicks, 2005). In the present study, an intention was associated with a particular stimulus class, such as pictures or words. We found that task interference could be reduced when participants could reliably predict that the material about to be processed was irrelevant to the intention. This material-specific interference effect was found on a trial-by-trial basis in a random sequence of two different kinds of materials across two experiments and with blocking manipulation in another experiment. These results demonstrate that task interference is not a monolithic construct; rather, it results from dynamic and flexible attentional allocation strategies that can change on a trial-by-trial basis.     

Walking through doorways causes forgetting: Situation models and experienced space

We investigated the ability of people to retrieve information about objects as they moved through rooms in a virtual space. People were probed withobject names that were either associated withthe person (i.e., carried) or dissociated from the person (i.e., just set down). Also, people either did or did not shift spatial regions (i.e., go to a new room). Information about objects was less accessible when the objects were dissociated from the person. Furthermore, information about an object was also less available when there was a spatial shift. However, the spatial shift had a larger effect on memory for the currently associated object. These data are interpreted as being more supportive of a situation model explanation, following on work using narratives and film. Simpler memory-based accounts that do not take into account the context in which a person is embedded cannot adequately account for the results.     

Family secrecy: a comparative study of juvenile sex offenders and youth with conduct disorders

The reported research was designed to compare adjudicated male juvenile sexual offenders and youth with conduct disorders on five aspects of family secrecy and deception. Twenty-nine male juvenile sex offenders and 32 comparison youth from three child welfare agencies in New York State participated in the study. Research assistants, blind to the hypotheses of the study and status of the youth, coded agency records for five variables identified a priori as a basis of comparison. Analyses revealed that the two groups were different on three of the five and on the total number of items scored. Families of juvenile sex offenders told more lies, had more family myths, and were more likely to be involved in taboo behavior. Logistic regression revealed that this factor of family deception significantly increased the odds of sexual offending over and above other measures of family pathology. These data support the hypotheses of the study and have implications for both clinical practice and future research in this area.     

On rejecting emotional lures created by phonological neighborhood activation

The authors conducted 2 experiments to assess how phonologically related lures are rejected in a false memory paradigm. Some phonological lures were emotional (i.e., taboo) words, and others were not. The authors manipulated the presence of taboo items on the study list and reduced the ability to use controlled rejection strategies by dividing attention and forcing a short response deadline. The results converge on the idea that participants reduce false alarms to emotional lures by setting more stringent recognition criteria for these items based on their expected memorability. Additionally, emotional lures are less familiar than nonemotional lures because emotional lures have affective and semantic features that mismatch studied nonemotional items.     

Detecting event-based prospective memory cues occurring within and outside the focus of attention

Event-based prospective memory cues are environmental stimuli that are associated with a previously established intention to perform an activity. Such cues traditionally have been placed in materials that receive focal attention during an ongoing activity. This article reports a direct comparison of event-based cues that occurred either within the focus of attention or at the periphery of such attention. When the cue occurred outside focal attention, manipulating that cue changed event-based prospective memory. The identical manipulation had no effect on event-based responding if the cue occurred within focal attention. These results suggest that cue characteristics can compensate for attention being directed away from an aspect of an ongoing task that contains event-based prospective memory.     

Working memory and situation model updating

Situation model updating requires managing the availability of information as a function of its relevance to the current situation. This is thought to involve some aspect of working memory. The present study assesses the relation between updating ability and various measures of working memory span or capacity. In addition, a primitive general measure of situation model processing, a situation model identification test, and its relation to updating ability was also assessed. The present experiment used a version of a paradigm developed by Glenberg, Meyer, and Lindem (1987) to assess updating. Although updating was observed in both anaphoric reading time and recognition test accuracy measures, the reading time measure was relatively weak. Importantly, the updating effect on the recognition test was unrelated to working memory capacity. In contrast, updating was related to performance on the situation model identification task. Specifically, people who were good at model processing were better able to keep associated objects available than were people who were less adept. There were no differences in the maintenance of dissociated objects. These results suggest that the relationship between situation model processing and working memory capacity is relatively weak.     

The Relation between Sovereignty and Guilt in Nietzsche's Genealogy

This paper interprets the relation between sovereignty and guilt in Nietzsche's Genealogy. I argue that, contrary to received opinion, Nietzsche was not opposed to the moral concept of guilt. I analyse Nietzsche's account of the emergence of the guilty conscience out of a pre‐moral bad conscience. Drawing attention to Nietzsche's references to many different forms of conscience and analogizing to his account of punishment, I propose that we distinguish between the enduring and the fluid elements of a ‘conscience’, defining the enduring element as the practice of forming self‐conceptions. I show that for Nietzsche, the moralization of the bad conscience results from mixing it with the material concepts of guilt and duty, a process effected by prehistoric religious institutions by way of the concept of god. This moralization furnishes a new conception of oneself as a responsible agent and holds the promise of sovereignty by giving us a freedom unknown to other creatures, but at the price of our becoming subject to moral guilt. According to Nietzsche, however, the very forces that made it possible have spoiled this promise and, under the pressures of the ascetic ideal, a harmful notion of responsibility understood in terms of sin now dominates our lives. Thus, to fully realize our sovereignty, we must liberate ourselves from this sinful conscience.