Observing behavior and atypically restricted stimulus control

Restricted stimulus control refers to discrimination learning with atypical limitations in the range of controlling stimuli or stimulus features. In the study reported here, 4 normally capable individuals and 10 individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID) performed two-sample delayed matching to sample. Sample-stimulus observing was recorded with an eye-tracking apparatus. High accuracy scores indicated stimulus control by both sample stimuli for the 4 nondisabled participants and 4 participants with ID, and eye tracking data showed reliable observing of all stimuli. Intermediate accuracy scores indicated restricted stimulus control for the remaining 6 participants. Their eye-tracking data showed that errors were related to failures to observe sample stimuli and relatively brief observing durations. Five of these participants were then given interventions designed to improve observing behavior. For 4 participants, the interventions resulted initially in elimination of observing failures, increased observing durations, and increased accuracy. For 2 of these participants, contingencies sufficient to maintain adequate observing were not always sufficient to maintain high accuracy; subsequent procedure modifications restored it, however. For the 5th participant, initial improvements in observing were not accompanied by improved accuracy, an apparent instance of observing without attending; accuracy improved only after an additional intervention that imposed contingencies on observing behavior. Thus, interventions that control observing behavior seem necessary but may not always be sufficient for the remediation of restricted stimulus control.     

Developmental Precursors of Moral Disengagement and the Role of Moral Disengagement in the Development of Antisocial Behavior

The purpose of the study was to advance our understanding of the developmental precursors of Moral Disengagement (MD) and the role of MD in the development of antisocial behavior from early risk among an ethnically diverse sample of 187 low-income boys followed prospectively from ages 1.5 to 17. Results indicated associations between early rejecting parenting, neighborhood impoverishment, and child empathy and later MD. The link between some of these early constructs and later antisocial behavior was mediated by MD. Finally, in an exploratory path model both MD and biases in social information processing were found to mediate separate paths from early risk factors to later antisocial behavior. Results were partially consistent with the notion that adolescent MD was predicted by a combination of early family, neighborhood, and child risk factors, and that MD may be a mechanism underlying some boys’ risk of antisocial behavior.     

Women Athletes' Personal Responses to Sexual Harassment in Sport

The examination of sexual harassment in sport has become an active research field within the past two decades. It is especially important for sport psychology consultants to understand this issue because they have professional opportunities to influence both individual and organizational responses to it. This article uses interview data from an investigation of sexual harassment in sport to examine the personal responses of 25 elite female athletes to their experiences of sexual harassment. The athletes reacted with disgust, fear, irritation, and anger when the sexually harassing incidents occurred. They also demonstrated individual, internally focused responses to the harassment rather than collective, externally focused ones. This suggests that sport organizations have much work to do on both education and organizational change if sexual harassment is to be challenged and eradicated. The findings also indicate that sport psychology consultants have a role to play in equipping athletes with the necessary skills to avert or confront sexual harassment in sport.     

Fooled by the brain: Re-examining the influence of neuroimages

A series of highly-cited experiments published in 2008 demonstrated a biasing effect of neuroimages on lay perceptions of scientific research. More recent work, however, has questioned this bias, particularly within legal contexts in which neuroscientific evidence is proffered by one of the parties. The present research moves away from the legal framework and describes five experiments that re-examine this effect. Experiments 1 through 4 present conceptual and direct replications of some of the original 2008 experiments, and find no evidence of a neuroimage bias. A fifth experiment is reported that confirms that, when laypeople are allowed multiple points of reference (e.g., when directly comparing neuroimagery to other graphical depictions of neurological data), a neuroimage bias can be observed. Together these results suggest that, under the right conditions, a neuroimage might be able to bias judgments of scientific information, but the scope of this effect may be limited to certain contexts.     

Acceptance of Evolution and Support for Teaching Creationism in Public Schools: The Conditional Impact of Educational Attainment

Public acceptance of evolution remains low in the United States relative to other Western countries. Although advocates for the scientific community often highlight the need for improved education to change public opinion, analyses of data from a national sample of American adults indicate that the effects of educational attainment on attitudes toward evolution and creationism are uneven and contingent upon religious identity. Consequently, higher education will only shift public attitudes toward evolution and away from support for teaching creationism in public schools for those who take non‐“literalist” interpretive stances on the Bible, or to the extent that it leads to fewer people with literalist religious identities.     

Memory for Frequency of Bizarre and Common Stimuli: Limitations of the Automaticity Hypothesis

In 2 experiments, the influence of intention to process frequency on accuracy of memory for frequency of bizarre and common sentences was investigated. The results from multiple regression analyses indicated that intentional processing increased the accuracy of frequency judgments when memory for frequency was tested after a 2-min (Experiment 1) and after a 48-hr (Experiment 2) retention interval. Furthermore, the results of Experiment 2 indicated that unintentional processors tended to overestimate frequencies of bizarre relative to common items after a delay. The implications of the results are discussed with regard to L. Hasher and R. T. Zacks's (1984) automaticity hypothesis, human performance, and the accuracy of judgments of frequency of occurrence of unusual events.     

Toward Meaningful Noise Research

The present review considers a series of studies of noise conducted in collaboration with Dr. Michel Loeb. This review attempts to provide a theoretical perspective as well as to summarize the most important findings of those studies. The work reviewed shows that noise effects interact with other variables, such that a noise effect on one sex is reversed for the other, and is also reversed at different times of the day. A second experiment confirmed this finding with a different arithmetic task. Further work indicated parallels between noise and fatigue, with aftereffects depending upon both work and noise. The final experiment repeated some of these findings with a different task battery of information processing tasks while showing that noise effects further depend on the meaningfulness of the noise background.     

The Inventory of Children's Individual Differences: Development and Validation of a Short Version

The development of programmed, actuarial interpretation of personality tests, especially the MMPI, is discussed. The presentation seeks to present a synoptic overview of the topic, including its more important trends, apparent present status, and possible consequences. Several commercially available systems are described, and an example of the output of each of three of them, in interpreting the same MMPI protocol, is presented for comparative illustration.     

Kinesthetic Aftereffect and Augmenting/Reducing: A Two-Session Procedure,and Hence Identification of Stimulus-Governed Subjects,is Contraindicated

A few of the recent researchers of kinesthetic aftereffect (KAE) as an index of augmenting/reducing have continued to employ a two-session procedure. Findings that have accrued in the past decade indicate (a) The first administration of KAE is a reliable (internally consistent) and valid index of augmenting-reducing; (b) there are carry-over effects from the first to the second administration that bias the second session's preinduction scores; (c) KAE scores from sessions after the first do not relate to first-session scores (low retest reliability) and do not measure augmenting/reducing; and (d) unless special procedures are undertaken to avoid using the biased second- (or later-) session preinduction scores, a KAE procedure involving more than one session is contraindicated. When we reached a similar conclusion earlier (Baker et al., 1974), Petrie (1974) disagreed, arguing that a two-session procedure was needed to identify and eliminate an atypical subgroup, the “stimulus governed.” The case for determining which subjects are stimulus-governed is assessed and found wanting. Except in special circumstances, a one-session KAE procedure, in which all preinduction trials precede the first exposure to aftereffect induction, is indicated.