The effects of accountability on bias in physician decision making: Going from bad to worse

Members of the Iowa Academy of Family Physicians participated in a survey study in which they were asked to make hypothetical decisions in either high- or low-conflict treatment conditions. In the low-conflict treatment condition the options were a common medication with a referral or a referral only. In the high-conflict treatment condition the same two options were given plus another attractive medication. In addition, we manipulated accountability by asking half of the participants to provide a written defense of their treatment options, which they would then agree to discuss at a later time. The results showed that physicians in the high-conflict condition chose the referral-only option significantly more than the physicians in the low-conflict condition, thus violating the normative rule of regularity. Moreover, that pattern was significantly amplified for physicians who were held accountable for their treatment decisions. These findings replicate and extend previous research and are discussed within the framework of reason-based choice.     

The developmental origins of cognitive vulnerability to depression: temperament, parenting, and negative life events in childhood as contributors to negative cognitive style

Cognitive models of depression have been well supported with adults, but the developmental origins of cognitive vulnerability are not well understood. The authors hypothesized that temperament, parenting, and negative life events in childhood would contribute to the development of cognitive style, with withdrawal negativity and negative parental feedback moderating the effects of negative life events to predict more depressogenic cognitive styles. These constructs were assessed in 289 children and their parents followed longitudinally from infancy to 5th grade; a subsample (n = 120) also participated in a behavioral task in which maternal feedback to child failure was observed. Results indicated that greater withdrawal negativity in interaction with negative life events was associated with more negative cognitive styles. Self-reported maternal anger expression and observed negative maternal feedback to child's failure significantly interacted with child's negative events to predict greater cognitive vulnerability. There was little evidence of paternal parenting predicting child negative cognitive style.     

Distortions in the perceived lightness of faces: the role of race categories

Although lightness perception is clearly influenced by contextual factors, it is not known whether knowledge about the reflectance of specific objects also affects their lightness. Recent research by O. H. MacLin and R. Malpass (2003) suggests that subjects label Black faces as darker than White faces, so in the current experiments, an adjustment methodology was used to test the degree to which expectations about the relative skin tone associated with faces of varying races affect the perceived lightness of those faces. White faces were consistently judged to be relatively lighter than Black faces, even for racially ambiguous faces that were disambiguated by labels. Accordingly, relatively abstract expectations about the relative reflectance of objects can affect their perceived lightness.     

Impairment and recovery in inhibitory control after traumatic brain injury in children: effect of age at injury, injury severity and lesion location

We examined the effect of traumatic brain injury (TBI) on inhibitory control, trajectories of recovery of inhibitory control, and the effect of age at injury, severity, and lesion location on recovery. Participants were 127 children with TBI aged 5-16 years and 117 controls of similar age.Latency of response inhibition was measured with the stop signal task within 1 month of the injury and again at 3, 6, 12, and 24 months.Performance of children with TBI was compared with that of controls.Growth curve analyses showed impairments in response inhibition postinjury.Compared with controls, TBI children improved over time in response inhibition. Younger TBI children recovered better on response inhibition than older TBI children. No significant effect of severity or right frontal lesion on recovery of response inhibition was found. TBI has an acute effect on inhibitory control but which recovers over time.     

Parental Control in the Etiology of Anxiety

Anxiety disorders are among the most prevalent forms of adult and childhood psychiatric disorders, and they are highly familial. However, the mechanisms of transmission remain unclear. One familial characteristic that may promote the development of anxiety is the construct of parental control. This paper provides a conceptual overview of the construct of control in the parenting and anxiety literatures, reviews existing literature on control in anxious families, and reviews current conceptual models of and developmental approaches to anxiety. Based on the current empirical literature, an elaborated model that takes child developmental level into consideration is proposed in order to provide a better understanding of the role of parental control in the development of anxiety.     

Overhearing a language during childhood

Despite its significance for understanding of language acquisition, the role of childhood language experience has been examined only in linguistic deprivation studies focusing on what cannot be learned readily beyond childhood. This study focused instead on long-term effects of what can be learned best during childhood. Our findings revealed that adults learning a language speak with a more nativelike accent if they overheard the language regularly during childhood than if they did not. These findings have important implications for understanding of language-learning mechanisms and heritage-language acquisition.     

Perceived discrimination in the context of multiple group memberships

This study examined the joint impact of gender and ethnicity on expectations of general discrimination against oneself and one's group. According to the double–jeopardy hypothesis, women of color will expect to experience more general discrimination than men of color, White women, and White men because they belong to both a low–status ethnic group and a low–status gender group. Alternatively, the ethnic–prominence hypothesis predicts that ethnic–minority women will not differ from ethnic–minority men in their expectations of general discrimination because these expectations will be influenced more by perceptions of ethnic discrimination, which they share with men of color, than by perceptions of gender discrimination. All results were consistent with the ethnic–prominence hypothesis rather than the double–jeopardy hypothesis.     

MMPI-2 personality profiles of high-functioning adults with autism spectrum disorders

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-Second Edition was administered to 20 adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) who fell in the average to above average range of intelligence and 24 age-, intelligence-, and gender-matched college students. Large group differences, with the ASD group scoring higher, were found on the L validity scale, Clinical Scales 2 (D) and 0 (Si), Content scale Social Discomfort (SOD), Supplementary scale Repression (R), and Personality Psychopathology Five (PSY-5) scale INTR (Introversion). The proportion of ASD adults scoring in the clinical range on these scales was between 25% and 35%. High scores on these scales are consistent with the clinical picture of Asperger syndrome and high-functioning autism in adulthood. Future directions and implications for identifying adults in need of a specialized autism assessment are discussed.