Moral judgment in relation to behavioral and cognitive disorders in adolescents

The capacity for formulating moral judgments shown by 20 emotionally disturbed, cognitively delayed adolescents was related to their social behaviors as observed in a classroom situation. Adolescents reported by their teachers to be shy and submissive were less capable of reasoning about moral issues than were adolescents who were seen as more assertive and socially engaged. The level of moral judgment was not a function of intelligence or ability to understand concrete operations. The implication that social engagement is a critical determinant of moral judgment for these adolescents is discussed.     

W sprawie terminów nieostrych

Allatum est die 27 Decembris 1957     

Effects of three methods of career counselling on vocational maturity and vocational preference

Three types of career counselling — Individual Career Counselling, the Vocational Exploration Group, and the Future Group — were compared to a placebo group and a no-treatment control group. All groups were evaluated in terms of changes in pre- and post-test scores on the Attitude scale of Crites' Career Maturity Inventory and on the ten scales of the Kuder Preference Record. The study showed the Future Group as compared to the no-treatment control to have a significant increase on the Musical Preference scale. The Future Group also had a significant increase on the Literary Preference scale as compared to the no-treatment control and individual counselling groups. The Future Group participants significantly increased in career maturity compared to participants from the no-treatment control and individual career counselling groups. The implications for career counselling as well as for additional research investigations are discussed.     

The control of movement in the preferred and non-preferred hands

The nature of the difference in skill between the preferred and non-preferred hands was investigated using a peg-board task. The first experiment examined the effects of varying movement amplitude and target tolerance on performance. The difference between hands was found to be related to tolerance rather than movement amplitude. The second study analysed a film record of well-practised subjects, confirming the hypothesis that most of the difference between hands is due to relative slowness of the non-preferred hand in the positioning phase involving small corrective movements. Analysis of the type and number of errors further suggested that this result is not due to differences in duration of movements but to their increased frequency, implying greater accuracy of aiming with the preferred hand. Thus whilst the initial gross analysis implicated feedback processing in skill differences the more detailed analysis suggests that motor output of the nonpreferred hand is simply more variable.     

The social psychological power of photography: can the image‐freezing machine make something of nothing?

Sontag ( 1990 ) proposed that taking a photograph imparts social significance to the moment being captured. Two experiments were conducted to examine how the experience of being photographed affects the social relations of those who are photographed. In Experiment 1 (N=92), unacquainted members of dyads who were photographed together and then saw the resulting image displayed greater social self‐categorization and greater affinity for each other than did dyads who were not photographed (p<0.05). In Experiment 2 (N=282), pairs of photographed strangers also displayed greater social self‐categorization and mutual affinity than pairs of nonphotographed strangers (p<0.05). This effect occurred whether pair members were explicitly framed together in photographs or not. This result was unaffected by whether the photographed strangers were shown or were not shown their photograph. Merely opening and closing the shutter of a camera was sufficient for the development of a photo‐bonding effect. Results are discussed in terms of how the experience of being photographed can affect interpersonal perception and relationship formation. The significance of being photographed (Milgram, 1977 ; Sontag, 1990 ) apparently is so strong that it promotes social self‐categorization (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987 ) both when people are photographed simultaneously and sequentially. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Multimodal access to verbal name codes

Congruent information conveyed over different sensory modalities often facilitates a variety of cognitive processes, including speech perception (Sumby & Pollack, 1954). Since auditory processing is substantially faster than visual processing, auditory-visual integration can occur over a surprisingly wide temporal window (Stein, 1998). We investigated the processing architecture mediating the integration of acoustic digit names with corresponding symbolic visual forms. The digits "1" or "2" were presented in auditory, visual, or bimodal format at several stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs; 0, 75, 150, and 225 msec). The reaction times (RTs) for echoing unimodal auditory stimuli were approximately 100 msec faster than the RTs for naming their visual forms. Correspondingly, bimodal facilitation violated race model predictions, but only at SOA values greater than 75 msec. These results indicate that the acoustic and visual information are pooled prior to verbal response programming. However, full expression of this bimodal summation is dependent on the central coincidence of the visual and auditory inputs. These results are considered in the context of studies demonstrating multimodal activation of regions involved in speech production.     

Fishing For Feelings? Hooking Viewers Helps!

To better understand individual variation in emotional responses to advertising, the authors recommend considering 3 general factors: characteristics of the individual who sees the ad, characteristics of the ad itself, and the nature of the ad–individual interface. This article examines 1 aspect of the individual, affect intensity (AI); one aspect of the ad, the degree to which the ad tells a story; and 1 aspect of the ad–individual interface, whether the individual is hooked by the ad. Experimental results reveal that an individual's being hooked by an ad has a positive relation with upbeat and warm feelings, a negative relation with disinterested feelings, and significantly enhances the viewer's attitude toward the ad. We find that AI has a positive relation with upbeat and warm feelings, and AI moderates the effect of being hooked on upbeat and warm feelings. Findings also reveal that narrative ad structure has a positive relation with upbeat and warm feelings, a negative relation with disinterested feelings, and that being hooked moderates the effect of narrative ad structure on upbeat and warm feelings responses.