The Integrity Of Uk Academic Research Under Commercial Threat

The Troubled Helix: Social and Psychological Implications of the New Human Genetics, edited by Teresa Marteau and Martin Richards, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, 359 pages, hardback £37.50.     

Understanding spatial transformations: similarities and differences between mental rotation and mental folding

Mental rotation and mental folding, two widely used measures of spatial ability, both require the dynamic spatial transformation of objects with respect to their internal spatial structure. Traditionally, however, these two skills have been considered quite distinct, based primarily on factor analyses of psychometric data. This paper reviews the similarities and differences between mental rotation and mental folding from a variety of perspectives, including their definitions, component cognitive processes, neurological bases, developmental trajectories, malleability, predictive validity, and psychometric properties. We conclude that mental rotation and mental folding are similar in many respects. However, the tasks differ in whether they require rigid or non-rigid transformations of objects. In addition, mental rotation shows robust sex-related differences whereas mental folding does not. We also identify specific questions for which research is lacking.     

Victims of Intimate Partner Violence: Arrest Rates Across Recent Studies

Efforts by women's rights activists, concomitant with results of research studies and court cases, have prompted legal reforms in public policy that include recently implemented mandatory arrest and prosecution laws. A review of the recent research since the advent of these laws suggests that arrests of women have increased by 25–35%, while the most liberal estimate is that only 1–7% of all IPV arrests are of actual female primary batterers, suggesting that victim arrests are on the rise. Various factors contribute to officers arresting not only primary batterers but victims as well, creating confusion and resentment over mandatory arrest policies. The negative implications of this arrest pattern are far-reaching because errant arrests hold negative consequences for victims, including legal, financial, employment, and familial repercussions.     

A review of career anchors in use

Abstract

As organizations respond to the competitive pressures of today, so their management structures become leaner and fitter. In this process, the nature of the career opportunities change as does the organization's perspective of the individual and his or her career. An employer for life is a thing of the past. The corollary to this is that companies now want their people to be less dependent on their employer and to take more responsibility for ensuring their career path is right for them. To do this, people must be provided with the tools to take on this mantle. They need to understand themselves better. Their decisions are now even more critical. Career Anchors is one such tool and its applications are reviewed in this article. It provides an effective insight for individuals and enables them to recognize their talents, values, and motives.     

Implementing an equal opportunities audit,gaining support,and implementing the findings

Abstract

An introduction to “Managing Diversity: Using an Equal Opportunities Audit to Maximize Career Potential and Opportunities in a UK Bank” by Valerie J. Sutherland and Marilyn J. Davidson     

Parental rearing behavior prospectively predicts adolescents’ risky decision‐making and feedback‐related electrical brain activity

The present study examined the role of parental rearing behavior in adolescents’ risky decision‐making and the brain's feedback processing mechanisms. Healthy adolescent participants (n = 110) completed the EMBU‐C, a self‐report questionnaire on perceived parental rearing behaviors between 2006 and 2008 (T1). Subsequently, after an average of 3.5 years, we assessed (a) risky decision‐making during performance of the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART); (b) event‐related brain potentials (ERPs) elicited by positive (gain) and negative feedback (loss) during the BART; and (c) self‐reported substance use behavior (T2). Age‐corrected regression analyses showed that parental rejection at T1 accounted for a unique and significant proportion of the variance in risk‐taking during the BART; the more adolescents perceived their parents as rejecting, the more risky decisions were made. Higher levels of perceived emotional warmth predicted increased P300 amplitudes in response to positive feedback at T2. Moreover, these larger P300 amplitudes (gain) significantly predicted risky decision‐making during the BART. Parental rearing behaviors during childhood thus seem to be significant predictors of both behavioral and electrophysiological indices of risky decision‐making in adolescence several years later. This is in keeping with the notion that environmental factors such as parental rearing are important in explaining adolescents’ risk‐taking propensities.     

Religious Orders Study: Overview and Change in Cognitive and Motor Speed

The Religious Orders Study is a longitudinal, clinical-pathologic study of aging and Alzheimer’s disease in older Catholic nuns, priests, and brothers. In the first section of the paper, we describe the overall design and methods of the Religious Orders Study and summarize published findings. In the second section, we present new longitudinal analyses of change in summary measures of motor, perceptual, and verbal speed in 800 Religious Orders Study participants examined annually for a mean of approximately 5 years. In each domain, speed declined about 2% per year. There were wide individual differences, however, and rates of slowing in each domain were only moderately intercorrelated and were predicted by different factors. The results suggest age-related slowing is more person-specific and domain-specific than previously supposed.     

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) transfer tokens repeatedly with a partner to accumulate rewards in a self-control task

There has been extensive research investigating self-control in humans and nonhuman animals, yet we know surprisingly little about how one’s social environment influences self-control. The present study examined the self-control of chimpanzees in a task that required active engagement with conspecifics. The task consisted of transferring a token back and forth with a partner animal in order to accumulate food rewards, one item per token transfer. Self-control was required because at any point in the trial, either chimpanzee could obtain their accumulated rewards, but doing so discontinued the food accumulation and ended the trial for both individuals. Chimpanzees readily engaged the task and accumulated the majority of available rewards before ending each trial, and they did so across a number of conditions that varied the identity of the partner, the presence/absence of the experimenter, and the means by which they could obtain rewards. A second experiment examined chimpanzees’ self-control when given the choice between immediately available food items and a potentially larger amount of rewards that could be obtained by engaging the token transfer task with a partner. Chimpanzees were flexible in their decision-making in this test, typically choosing the option representing the largest amount of food, even if it involved delayed accumulation of the rewards via the token transfer task. These results demonstrate that chimpanzees can exhibit self-control in situations involving social interactions, and they encourage further research into this important aspect of the self-control scenario.