Blood donation is an act of benevolence rather than altruism.

OBJECTIVES: Blood donation is described as an archetypal altruistic behavior, and recruitment/retention campaigns emphasize altruism. Here, a benevolence hypothesis for blood donation (both the donor and recipient benefit) rather than the altruism hypothesis (only the recipient gains) is proposed. DESIGN: Three United Kingdom-based studies contrasted benevolence and altruism: (a) a 6-month prospective study of blood donor behavior (Study 1: N = 957), (b) a cross-sectional study of blood donors' intentions (Study 2: N = 333), and (c) an experimental study examining the effect of benevolent and altruistic messages on willingness to help across high- and low-cost helping behaviors for committed and noncommitted blood donors (Study 3: N = 200). MAIN OUTCOME: Donor behavior and intentions-willingness. MEASURES: Beliefs in personal and societal benefit (Time 1) and actual donations (Time 2) were assessed in Study 1; beliefs in benevolence, altruism, hedonism, and kinship along with donation intentions were assessed in Study 2; and empathy, donor commitment, and willingness to donate blood, money, fund-raise, and staff a telephone helpline were assessed in Study 3. RESULTS: Beliefs in personal rather than societal benefit predicted actual future donation. A path model showed that only beliefs in benevolence were associated with intentions to donate. Committed blood donors were more willing to donate blood when exposed to a benevolent message rather than an altruistic one. This effect was not observed for other forms of helping. CONCLUSIONS: The benevolence hypothesis is supported, suggesting that blood donor motivation is partly selfish. Blood donation campaigns should focus on benevolent rather than purely altruistic messages.     

358,534 nonwords: The ARC Nonword Database

The authors present a model of the phonotactic and orthographic constraints of Australian and Standard Southern British English monosyllables. This model is used as the basis for a web-based psycholinguistic resource, the ARC Nonword Database, which contains 358,534 monosyllabic nonwords--48,534 pseudohomophones and 310,000 non-pseudohomophonic nonwords. Items can be selected from the ARC Nonword Database on the basis of a wide variety of properties known or suspected to be of theoretical importance for the investigation of reading.     

Comorbid Substance Use and Anxiety Disorders in Adolescents

To explore the coexistence of substance use disorders and anxiety disorders in adolescents, we assessed adolescents presenting for treatment to an inpatient substance abuse treatment facility (SUH), an inpatient psychiatric treatment facility (IPH), and a community-based psychiatric facility (CMHC) for comorbid substance use and psychiatric diagnoses. Thirty subjects from each facility (N=90) were interviewed using the revised Child Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia (K-SADS) and the Structured Clinical Interview DSM-III-R (SCID-R) for substance use diagnoses. Overall, comorbidity (anxiety and substance use disorders) prevalence was 67% (20/30) of adolescents in the SUH group, 33% (10/30) of the CMHC adolescents, and 33% (10/30) of the IPH adolescents. Alcohol and marijuana were the most frequently abused substances. Anxiety disorders commonly coexist with substance use disorders in adolescents. Early identification and treatment of anxiety disorders may in fact prevent substance abuse in this population.     

Teaching Different Tasks Using Different Stimuli in a Heterogeneous Small Group

The effectiveness of a simultaneous prompting procedure was evaluated in a heterogeneous small group using different tasks and different stimuli for each student. Participants included four middle school students whose functioning levels ranged from typically developing to moderate and severe disabilities. A multiple probe design across behaviors and replicated across students was used. Observational learning maintenance, and generalization also were assessed. Results indicate that the procedure was successful in teaching all four students their targeted stimuli as well as some of the non-targeted stimuli (i.e., observational learning). Students maintained and generalized their information with a high degree of accuracy. Limitations of the study and future research implications are discussed.     

Whammies and double whammies: The effect of length on nonword reading

In the work presented here, the length effect in nonword reading aloud was investigated in order to assess whether that effect is driven by the number of letters in a string or by the number of graphemes in a string. Simulation work with the Dual-Route Cascaded (DRC) model (e.g., Coltheart, Curtis, Atkins, & Haller, 1993; Coltheart & Rastle, 1994) uncovered a surprising finding regarding the length effect; the same result was obtained in an experiment with human subjects. The results are discussed in terms of the DRC model, with particular reference to serial processing and interphoneme inhibition, two properties critical to understanding the effect reported here.