Sending memorable messages to the old: age differences in preferences and memory for advertisements

Socioemotional selectivity theory holds that people of different ages prioritize different types of goals. As people age and increasingly perceive time as finite, they attach greater importance to goals that are emotionally meaningful. Because the goals that people pursue so centrally influence cognition, the authors hypothesize that persuasive messages, specifically advertisements, would be preferred and better remembered by older adults when they promise to help realize emotionally meaningful goals, whereas younger adults would not show this bias. The authors also predict that modifying time perspective would reduce age differences. Findings provide qualified support for each of these predictions.     

Discrimination and Puerto Rican children's and adolescents' mental health

Two studies of Puerto Rican youths' development on the U.S. mainland examined the consequences of perceived racial/ethnic discrimination on mental health. In Study I, children were found to have a low likelihood of perceiving discrimination, whereas in Study 2, nearly half of the adolescent sample reported perceiving racial/ethnic discrimination. Although both groups scored high on multiple indicators of mental health, perceiving discrimination and worrying about discrimination were negatively associated with some dimensions of self-esteem and positively associated with depression and stress. Adolescents were aware of negative stereotypes about Puerto Ricans, and nearly half of them related discriminatory instances. Results suggest that both perceiving discrimination and anxiety regarding discrimination can serve as risk factors for the mental health of this population.     

Introduction to the special section on Resources for Enhancing Alzheimer's Caregiver Health (REACH)

This article provides background information and an overview on Resources for Enhancing Alzheimer's Caregiver Health (REACH) a multisite intervention trial for caregivers of persons with Alzheimer's disease designed to reduce caregiver burden and depression. REACH is the largest randomized controlled clinical trial to date, involving 1,222 caregiver and care recipient dyads recruited from 6 different sites in the United States. The authors describe the design of the study, summarize the interventions implemented at each site, and provide an overview of the 4 articles in this special section.     

Psychometric analysis of the Revised Memory and Behavior Problems Checklist: factor structure of occurrence and reaction ratings

A modified version of the Revised Memory and Behavior Problems Checklist (RMBPC; L. Teri et al., 1992) was administered across 6 different sites to 1,229 family caregivers of community-dwelling adults with dementia. The total sample was divided randomly into 2 subsamples. Principal components analyses on occurrence responses and reaction ratings from the first subsample resulted in a 3-factor solution that closely resembled the originally proposed dimensions (memory-related problems, disruptive behaviors, and depression). Confirmatory factor analyses on data from the second subsample indicated adequate fit for the 3-factor model. Correlations with other caregiver and care-recipient measures supported the convergent and discriminant validity of the RMBPC measures. In addition, female caregivers and White caregivers reported more problems, on average, than male caregivers and African American caregivers, respectively.     

Interval estimation for the intraclass correlation in dirichlet-multinomial data

When the underlying distribution is discrete with a limited number of categories, methods for interval estimation of the intraclass correlation which assume normality are theoretically inadequate for use. On the basis of large sample theory, this paper develops an asymptotic closed-form interval estimate of the intraclass correlation for the case where there is a natural score associated with each category. This paper employs Monte Carlo simulation to demonstrate that when the underlying intraclass correlation is large, the traditional interval estimator which assumes normality can be misleading. We find that when the number of classes is 20, the interval estimator proposed here can generally perform reasonably well in a variety of situations. This paper further notes that the proposed interval estimator is invariant with respect to a linear transformation. When the data are on a nominal scale, an extension of the proposed method to account for this case, as well as a discussion on the relationship between the intraclass correlation and a kappa-type measure defined here and on the limitation of the corresponding kappa-type estimator are given.The authors wish to thank the Editor, the Associate Editor, and the three referees for many valuable comments and suggestions to improve the clarity of this paper. The works for the first, the third, and the fourth authors were partially supported by grant #R01AR43025-01 from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases.     

Reframing the question of forbidden knowledge for modern science

In this paper I use the concept of forbidden knowledge to explore questions about putting limits on science. Science has generally been understood to seek and produce objective truth, and this understanding of science has grounded its claim to freedom of inquiry. What happens to decision making about science when this claim to objective, disinterested truth is rejected? There are two changes that must be made to update the idea of forbidden knowledge for modern science. The first is to shift from presuming that decisions to constrain or even forbid knowledge can be made from a position of omniscience (perfect knowledge) to recognizing that such decisions made by human beings are made from a position of limited or partial knowledge. The second is to reject the idea that knowledge is objective and disinterested and accept that knowledge (even scientific knowledge) is interested. In particular, choices about what knowledge gets created are normative, value choices. When these two changes are made to the idea of forbidden knowledge, questions about limiting or forbidding lines of inquiry are shown to distract attention from the more important matters of who makes and how decisions are made about what knowledge is produced. Much more attention should be focused on choosing directions in science, and as this is done, the matter of whether constraints should be placed on science will fall into place.     

The authorship list in science: Junior physicists’ perceptions of who appears and why

A questionnaire probing the distribution of authorship credit was given to postdoctoral associates (“postdocs”) in order to determine their awareness of the professional society’s ethical statement on authorship, the extent of communication with their supervisors about authorship criteria, and the appropriateness of authorship assignments on submitted papers. Results indicate a low awareness of the professional society’s ethical statement and that little communication takes place between postdocs and supervisors about authorship criteria. A substantial amount of authorship credit given to supervisors and other workers is perceived by the postdocs to violate the professional society’s ethical statement.     

Haptic perception of linear extent

The perception of linear extent in haptic touch appears to be anisotropic, in that haptically perceived extents can depend on the spatial orientation and location of the object and, thus, on the direction of exploratory motion. Experiments 1 and 2 quantified how the haptic perception of linear extent depended on the type of motion (radial or tangential to the body) when subjects explored different stimulus objects (raised lines or solid blocks) varying in length and in relative spatial location. Relatively narrow, shallow, raised lines were judged to be longer, by magnitude estimation, than solid blocks. Consistent with earlier reports, stimuli explored with radial arm motions were judged to be longer than identical stimuli explored with tangential motions; this difference did not depend consistently on the lateral position of the stimulus object, the direction of movement (toward or away from the body), or the distance of the hand from the body but did depend slightly on the angular position of the shoulder. Experiment 3 showed that the radial-tangential effect could be explained by temporal differences in exploratory movements, implying that the apparent anisotropy is not intrinsic to the structure of haptic space.