Examining children's ability to delay reward: Is the delay discounting task a suitable measure?

Discounting the value of delayed rewards has primarily been measured in children with the delay of gratification task and in adolescents and adults with the delay discounting task. In the present study, we assessed the suitability of the delay discounting task as a measure of temporal discounting in children. A sample of 7- to 9-year-olds (N = 98) completed a delay discounting task, a delay of gratification task, a sensation seeking measure, and IQ measures. In addition, teacher-based assessments of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder traits were measured. The results indicated that the majority of children produced meaningful data on the discounting task and discounted rewards hyperbolically. Children with an elevated risk of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder showed a trend towards discounting future rewards on the delay discounting task more steeply than did those at low risk. However, delay discounting was unrelated to either delay of gratification or sensation seeking. We interpret these results as providing some support for the use of delay discounting as a measure of intertemporal choice in children, although the results also suggest that delay discounting and delay of gratification tasks may tap different processes in this population.     

Researchers’ Perceptions of a Responsible Research Climate: A Multi Focus Group Study

Science and Engineering Ethics - The research climate plays a key role in fostering integrity in research. However, little is known about what constitutes a responsible research climate. We...     

Variability in aphasic patients' response times

Response time studies of acquired language disorders are plagued by tremendous variability in patients' response times. In this brief report we demonstrate how variability itself may provide informative data. Lexical decision response times, generated by nine patients, illustrate how within-patient variability may estimate stability in cognitive dynamics.     

Gender is a dimension of face recognition

In an experiment, the authors investigated the impact of gender categorization on face recognition. Participants were familiarized with composite androgynous faces labeled with either a woman's first name (Mary) or a man's first name (John). The results indicated that participants more quickly eliminated faces of the opposite gender than faces of the same gender than the face they were looking for. This gender effect did not result from greater similarity between faces of the same gender. Rather, early gender categorization of a face during face recognition appears to speed up the comparison process between the perceptual input and the facial representation. Implications for face recognition models are discussed.     

Children's reasoning about the causal significance of the temporal order of events

Four experiments examined children's ability to reason about the causal significance of the order in which 2 events occurred (the pressing of buttons on a mechanically operated box). In Study 1, 4-year-olds were unable to make the relevant inferences, whereas 5-year-olds were successful on one version of the task. In Study 2, 3-year-olds were successful on a simplified version of the task in which they were able to observe the events although not their consequences. Study 3 found that older children had difficulties with the original task even when provided with cues to attend to order information. However, 5-year-olds performed successfully in Study 4, in which the causally relevant event was made more salient.     

Human cognition and 1/f scaling

Ubiquitous 1/f scaling in human cognition and physiology suggests a mind-body interaction that contradicts commonly held assumptions. The intrinsic dynamics of psychological phenomena are interaction dominant (rather than component dominant), and the origin of purposive behavior lies with a general principle of self-organization (rather than a special neurocognitive mechanism). E.-J. Wagenmakers, S. Farrell, and R. Ratcliff (2005) raised concerns about the kinds of data and analyses that support generic 1/f scaling. This reply is a defense that furthermore questions the model that Wagenmakers and colleagues endorse and their strategy for addressing complexity.     

Identification of tone duration, line length, and letter position: an experimental approach to timing and working memory deficits in schizophrenia

Patients with schizophrenia display numerous cognitive deficits, including problems in working memory, time estimation, and absolute identification of stimuli. Research in these fields has traditionally been conducted independently. We examined these cognitive processes using tasks that are structurally similar and that yield rich error data. Relative to healthy control participants (n = 20), patients with schizophrenia (n = 20) were impaired on a duration identification task and a probed-recall memory task but not on a line-length identification task. These findings do not support the notion of a global impairment in absolute identification in schizophrenia. However, the authors suggest that some aspect of temporal information processing is indeed disturbed in schizophrenia.     

Juror decision-making in a mock sexually violent predator trial: gender differences in the impact of divergent types of expert testimony

Despite widespread use of mental health testimony in cases where violence risk is at issue, relatively little is known about the impact of such information on juror decision-making. This study addressed the effects of testimony based on three types of risk assessment instrument or method (clinical opinion, actuarial assessment, and ratings of psychopathy) to examine whether they would have differential impact on jurors' perceptions of the defendant. In a mock sexually violent predator civil commitment trial, 172 undergraduates were presented a case summary that included prosecution and defense expert testimony related to violence risk based on one of the three methods noted above. Consistent with earlier research, the hypothesis that a defendant described as a "high risk psychopath" by the prosecution would be judged more severely than a defendant judged as "high risk" based on other evaluation procedures was supported, but only among female jurors. Unlike prior studies, little support was found for the hypothesis that clinical opinion testimony would be more influential than actuarially based testimony for either gender. Mechanisms that may underlie the observed gender differences are discussed, as are the potential implications of these findings for civil commitment proceedings.