Food caching by western scrub-jays (Aphelocoma californica) is sensitive to the conditions at recovery

Western scrub-jays (Aphelocoma californica) cached perishable and nonperishable food items, which they could recover after both short and long retention intervals. When perishable items were always degraded at recovery, jays decreased the number of perishable items cached and increased their caching of nonperishable items, relative to a control group whose caches were always fresh at recovery. Jays reduced the number of nonperishable items cached, however, when highly preferred food items were degraded only after the long retention intervals. The findings are discussed in terms of the role of retrospective and prospective processes in the control of caching.     

Cortical spreading depression and involvement of the motor cortex,auditory cortex,and cerebellum in eyeblink classical conditioning of the rabbit

The interrelationships of cerebellar and cerebral neural circuits in the eyeblink paradigm were explored with the controlled application of cortical spreading depression (CSD) and lidocaine in the New Zealand albino rabbit. The initial research focus was directed toward the involvement of the motor cortex in the conditioned eyeblink response. However, CSD timing and triangulation results indicate that other areas in the cerebral cortex, particularly the auditory cortex (acoustic conditioned stimulus), appear to be critical for the CSD effect on the eyeblink response. In summary: (1) CSD can be elicited, monitored, and timed and its side effects controlled in 97% of awake rabbits in the right and/or left cerebral hemisphere(s) during eyeblink conditioning. (2) The motor cortex appears to play little or no part in classical conditioning of the eyeblink in the rabbit in the delay paradigm. (3) Inactivating the auditory cortex with CSD or lidocaine temporarily impairs the conditioned response during the first 5 to 15 days of training, but has little effect past that point.     

Ukrainian Application of the Children's Somatization Inventory: Psychometric Properties and Associations With Internalizing Symptoms

This paper examines the psychometric properties of the Children's Somatization Inventory (CSI) in 600 10–12-year old children in Kyiv, Ukraine, replicating and extending the original findings from a sample in Nashville, Tennessee (J. Garber et al. 1991). The Kyiv children had significantly lower CSI total scores and reported significantly fewer symptoms than the American children. The Kyiv mothers, however, reported significantly more somatization symptoms in their children than did the American mothers. A factor analysis of the children's data yielded four similar factors encompassing pseudoneurologic, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, and pain/weakness symptoms. Consistent with the findings from the Nashville study, the CSI was significantly related to the children's self-reports of health and depressive and anxiety symptoms and to maternal reports of child depression and anxiety symptoms. In addition, although more children with the highest CSI scores (25+) reported various illness experiences than those with 0–1 symptoms, no differences were found in the school absentee records. Thus, the results were congruent with the findings of the Nashville study, indicating that the CSI reliably measured somatization in this Ukrainian sample.     

Do amnesics exhibit cognitive dissonance reduction? The role of explicit memory and attention in attitude change

In two studies, we investigated the roles of explicit memory and attentional resources in the process of behavior-induced attitude change. Although most theories of attitude change (cognitive dissonance and self-perception theories) assume an important role for both mechanisms, we propose that behavior-induced attitude change can be a relatively automatic process that does not require explicit memory for, or consciously controlled processing of, the discrepancy between attitude and behavior. Using a free-choice paradigm, we found that both amnesics and normal participants under cognitive load showed as much attitude change as did control participants.     

Honoring the Bios in Lutheran Bioethics

Abstract:  A Lutheran bioethic honors the body by being anti‐Gnostic (and finding moral wisdom in the body's limits), by being anti‐Pelagian (and requiring the reshaping of our disordered desires), and by being anti‐Sadducean (in affirming that the new creation, though continuous with and fulfilling the old, also transforms and perfects it in ways that go beyond the earthly life we know). Such an approach to bioethics is illustrated here through discussion of the way in which new reproductive technologies may distort our understanding of the relation between the generations, thereby losing sight of the bios in bioethics.     

La Justice Procédurale comme Variable Prévisionnelle de la Motivation Intrinsèque au Travail

Although the importance of intrinsic motivation at work is already known, the relationship between organizational justice and employees’ motivation remains unexplored. Consequently, the purpose of the present study was to examine the predictive role of organizational justice on intrinsic motivation and the mediation effect of fundamental needs satisfaction in the study of organizational justice and employees’ intrinsic motivation. Key variables have been measured with a sample of 273 workers coming from numerous fields of work. Correlational analyses and multiples regression analyses have been conducted and have shown a significant positive relationship between the variables as well as a partial mediation effect of the basic psychological needs’ satisfaction in the relationship between procedural justice and intrinsic motivation. Results show significant positive relations between the three variables of interest and a partial mediation of the basic needs in the relation existing between procedural justice and intrinsic motivation. The role of justice for the development of intrinsic motivation at work is discussed.     

The illusion of external agency

People typically underestimate their capacity to generate satisfaction with future outcomes. When people experience such self-generated satisfaction, they may mistakenly conclude that it was caused by an influential, insightful, and benevolent external agent. In three laboratory experiments, participants who were allowed to generate satisfaction with their outcomes were especially likely to conclude that an external agent had subliminally influenced their choice of partners (Study 1), had insight into their musical preferences (Study 2), and had benevolent intentions when giving them a stuffed animal (Study 3). These results suggest that belief in omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent external agents, such as God, may derive in part from people's failure to recognize that they have generated their own satisfaction.     

The momentary realist

Research suggests that people initially take their subjective experience of an object as an accurate reflection of the object's properties, and only subsequently, occasionally, and effortfully consider the possibility that their experience was influenced by extraneous factors. The two studies reported here demonstrate that this is true even when the extraneous factors are the person's own dispositions. Dispositionally happy and unhappy participants were falsely told that they had been subliminally primed with words that might have influenced their moods, and were then asked to identify those words. Dispositionally happy participants were more likely than dispositionally unhappy participants to conclude that they had been primed with positive words, but only when they made these judgments under time pressure. The results are discussed in terms of correction models of human judgment.     

The Evolution and Social Dynamics of Compassion

The inner processes that make compassion possible arose from the evolutionary advantage of caring for others, especially offspring, kin and in‐group allies. This paper explores issues in defining compassion and its link to similar concepts such as altruism. It also explores compassion as a social motive and social mentality that choreographs social interactions and how the successful enactment of compassion is dependent on certain competencies such as sympathy, empathy, perspective taking, and distress tolerance (among others), as well as social contexts. As a motivational system, compassion has to compete with other socially choreographed motives, such as tribalism and individualistic competitiveness – much darker sides of the human psyche that have been harmful in human history. One of the challenges for compassion is to explore not only how it can promote personal well‐being but also how it can counteract the destructive sides of our other motives and social mentalities.