Organización y mantenimiento de un estabulario de ratas para la investigación en psicología (I)

Resumen

En este trabajo se argumenta la necesidad de disponer de un estabulario propio en los centros donde se lleva a cabo investigación básica en Psicología, para asegurar unas condiciones óptimas de los animales y, así, obtener una alta fiabilidad en los resultados de la experimentación. Hemos dividido el trabajo en dos partes: en esta primera se dan las principales orientaciones y normas para organizar y mantener adecuadamente un estabulario de ratas, referidas concretamente a la infraestructura, sistemas de apareamiento, condiciones psicofísicas, higiene y, finalmente, se dan algunas características fisiológicas de la rata Wistar.     

Organización y mantenimiento de un estabulario de ratas para la investigación en psicología (II)

Resumen

El presente articulo, segunda parte de Organización y mantenimiento de un estabulario de ratas para la investigación en Psicología (I). Trata de la rata como fuente de variación en los experimentos psicológicos, de cómo puede el psicólogo inferir que los sujetos de un experimento están en buenas condiciones. Trata también de cómo conseguir esas buenas condiciones en el sujeto experimental a través de dietas correctas; se hace un repaso a las enfermedades carenciales más notorias. Finalmente se explican métodos estandarizados para privar de aliment os o bebida, métodos de administración de fármacos y algunas alternativas para controlar el estrés en la rata de estabulario.     

Social Value Orientation and information search in social dilemmas: An eye-tracking analysis

Previous work has demonstrated that Social Value Orientation (SVO) is related to cooperative behavior in social dilemmas. However, little is known concerning the underlying processes. In two eye-tracking studies investigating decisions in money allocation tasks (Experiment 1) and Public Good Dilemmas (Experiment 2), we show that differences in SVO are accompanied by consistent differences in information search. Decision time, number of fixations, the proportion of inspected information, the degree of attention towards the others’ payoffs, and the number of transitions from and towards others’ payoffs gradually increase with absolute SVO deviation from a pure selfish orientation. Overall these effects seem to be similar for individuals caring positively (i.e., cooperative) or negatively (i.e., competitive) about others. The fact that changes are gradual instead of abrupt indicates that differences in SVO seem to be related to gradual changes in weights given to outcomes for self and others.     

The child's sense of existence and the fatal attraction of identification

This paper gives special emphasis to the widening and modification of the sense of existence in relation to the unconscious processes of identification. In our ‘post‐modern’ society there are some parents who, while taking care of their children, use subtle projective identification against them, so as to produce in them a sort of pathological introjective identification, which denies their Self. Ferenczi's thought, which deals with the sense of ‘not‐existing’ in some children, helps us to go into depth in understanding their difficulties and pathologies.     

Role‐Induced Bias in Court: An Experimental Analysis

Criminal procedure is organized as a tournament with predefined roles. We show that assuming the role of a defense counsel or a prosecutor leads to role‐induced bias even if participants are asked to predict a court ruling after they have ceased to act in that role and if they expect a substantial financial incentive for being accurate. The bias is not removed either if participants are instructed to predict the court ruling in preparation of plea bargaining. In line with parallel constraint satisfaction models for legal decision making, findings indicate that role‐induced bias is driven by coherence effects, that is, systematic information distortions in support of the favored option. This is mainly achieved by downplaying the importance of conflicting evidence. These distortions seem to stabilize interpretations, and people do not correct for this bias. Implications for legal procedure are briefly discussed. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Learning the Ropes: The Protective Role of Mentoring in Correctional Police Officers’ Socialization Process

Formal mentoring is an individualized and contextualized socialization tactic to enhance newcomers’ learning—acknowledged as essential in the early career stage—that can be of particular value when entering a fairly unpredictable and stressful workplace. This research aims to understand the moderating role of formal mentoring in the relationship between organizational socialization and 2 adjustment indicators, a positive 1 (commitment) and a negative 1 (turnover intention). A questionnaire was administered to 117 correctional police officer newcomers, as prisons are especially critical work contexts for newcomers. The results show a direct effect from both socialization and mentoring on commitment and turnover, and an interaction between socialization and mentoring on turnover, although not on commitment. When the socialization process progresses steadily, both socialization and mentoring contribute to good adjustment, but when traditional tactics go wrong, a different learning source (formal mentoring) exerts a protective function, limiting newcomers’ intention to quit. These findings give support to the usefulness of mentoring in a law enforcement context and provide some insight into defining formal mentoring programs.     

Sex differences in aversive memory in rats: Possible role of extinction and reactive emotional factors

Studies usually show better spatial learning in males and stronger emotional memory in females. Spatial memory differences could relate to diverse strategies, while dissimilar stress reactions could cause emotional memory differences. We compared male and female rats in two emotional (classical emotional conditioning and aversive discrimination memory) and two emotionally “neutral” tasks: (1) plus-maze discriminative avoidance, containing two open and two enclosed arms, one of which presenting aversive stimuli (light/noise). No differences were found in learning, retrieving, or basal emotional levels, while only male rats presented extinction of the task; (2) contextual fear conditioning – a cage was paired to mild foot shocks. Upon reexposure, freezing behavior was decreased in females; (3) spontaneous alternation – the animals were expected to alternate among the arms of a four-arm maze. No differences between genders were found and (4) open-field habituation was addressed in an arena which the rats were allowed to explore for 10 min. Habituation was similar between genders. Differences were found only in tasks with strong emotional contexts, where different fear responses and stress effects could be determinant. The lack of extinction of discriminative avoidance by females points out to stronger consolidation and/or impaired extinction of aversive memories.     

Coherence shifts in probabilistic inference tasks

The fast‐and‐frugal heuristics approach to probabilistic inference assumes that individuals often employ simple heuristics to integrate cue information that commonly function in a non‐reciprocal fashion. Specifically, the subjective validity of a certain cue remains stable during the application of a heuristic and is not changed by the presence or absence of another cue. The parallel constraint satisfaction (PCS) model, in contrast, predicts that information is processed in a reciprocal fashion. Specifically, it assumes that subjective cue validities interactively affect each other and are modified to coherently support the favored choice. Corresponding to the model's simulation, we predicted the direction and the size of such coherence shifts. Cue validities were measured before, after (Experiment 1), and during judgment (Experiments 2 and 3). Coherence shifts were found in environments involving real‐world cue knowledge (weather forecasts) and in a domain for which the application of fast‐and‐frugal heuristics has been demonstrated (city‐size tasks). The results indicate that subjective cue validities are not fixed parameters, but that they are interactively changed to form coherent representations of the task. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.