Schema‐driven source misattribution errors: remembering the expected from a witnessed event

When recollection is difficult, people may use schematic processing to enhance memory. Two experiments showed that a delay between witnessing and recalling a visual sequence increases schematic processing, resulting in stereotypic memory errors. Participants watched a slide show of a man and a woman performing stereotype‐consistent and stereotype‐inconsistent actions, followed by an immediate or delayed memory test. Over a two‐day delay, stereotype‐inconsistent actions were increasingly misremembered as having been performed by the stereotype‐consistent actor (Experiment 1). All the source errors increased, regardless of stereotype consistency, when the wrong actor was suggested. When we merely suggested that ‘someone’ performed an action (Experiment 2), only stereotype‐consistent source errors were increased. Although visual scenes are typically well remembered, these results suggest that when memory fades, reliance on schemata increases, leading to increased stereotypic memory errors. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Inaugural Address: Why There Couldn't Be Zombies

Philosophical zombies are exactly as physicalists suppose we are, right down to the tiniest details, but they have no conscious experiences. (It is presupposed that all explicable physical events are explicable physically.) Are such things even logically possible? My aim is to contribute to showing not only that the answer is 'No', but why. (I concede that systems superficially like human beings might exist and lack consciousness.)
My strategy has two prongs: a fairly brisk argument which demolishes the zombie idea; followed by an attempt to throw light on how something can qualify as a conscious perceiver. The argument to show that zombies are impossible exploits the point that in order to be able to detect our own 'qualia' we should have to be somehow sensitive to them; which the zombie idea rules out. The attempt to make clear why my zombie twin must be conscious exploits the idea that we have a reasonably clear grasp of a 'Basic Package' of psychological concepts.     

Suicide Among Health Care Practitioners and Technicians in Colorado: An Epidemiological Study

Suicide is a public health concern with risks that vary between occupation groups. Many suicide victims with a health care occupation die by poisoning, but few studies have epidemiologically studied this association. The objective of this study was to quantify the increased risk of suicide death by poisoning among health care professionals in Colorado. Eleven years (2004–2014, N = 8,753) of suicide deaths in Colorado were compiled from the Colorado Violent Death Reporting System. A retrospective cohort study using multivariate logistic regression was conducted to examine the risk associated with having a health care occupation and eventual suicide death by poisoning, compared independently to firearm and hanging methods. Suicide victims with a health care occupation were more likely to die by poisoning rather than by hanging (RR 1.54, 95% CI: 1.41–1.68) or firearm (RR 1.79, 95% CI: 1.60–2.01), when compared to suicide victims without a health care occupation. The association between health care occupation and suicide method was significantly (p = .032) modified by gender. The results show that health care workers who die by suicide have an increased risk of eventual suicide death by poisoning rather than by firearm or hanging. These results can be used to inform tailored suicide prevention efforts in health care professionals.     

Social comparison and adjustment to breast cancer: an experimental examination of upward affiliation and downward evaluation.

In a study designed to evaluate the divergence of social comparison activities under health threat, breast cancer patients (n = 94) were assigned randomly to listen to an audiotaped interview in which the target's psychological adjustment and disease prognosis were manipulated to reflect good, poor, and unspecified psychological and physical health status. Results supported hypotheses regarding downward self-evaluative and upward affiliative comparison activity, as well as predictions regarding the influences of comparison dimension. With regard to desire for affiliation, participants demonstrated a greater desire for information and emotional support from the well-adjusted target than from the poorly adjusted target. Self-evaluation of adjustment and prognosis varied as a function of target characteristics, although a pervasive tendency toward downward comparison in self-evaluation also was noted.