Age-related changes in event-related prospective memory performance: a comparison of four prospective memory tasks

The primary purpose of the study was to identify event-based prospective-memory tasks that provide sensitive and reliable tools for assessing effects of normal aging in prospective-memory performance. Four prospective-memory tasks were selected from the literature or were newly developed, with the tasks differing on various dimensions that, for theoretical reasons or based on previous evidence, might determine task sensitivity to age effects on prospective-memory performance: perceptual saliency of prospective target events, frequency of occurrence of prospective target events, complexity of prospective-memory instructions, and provision of feedback after prospective-memory errors. Two of the four tasks yielded large and robust age effects on prospective-memory performance. Correlational analyses suggested that these age effects on prospective-memory performance were mediated, at least in part, by a reduced ability of older adults to maintain prospective intentions in a highly activated state and not by age effects on basic mental speed alone.     

Marital conflicts in the home when children are present versus absent

Characteristics of marital conflict when children (8-16 years) were present versus absent were compared on the basis of 47 mothers' and fathers' reports during a 15-day period. Mothers described 669 incidents of marital conflict, and fathers described 551 incidents. About two thirds of the conflicts occurred in children's absence. Contrary to predictions, conflicts in which children were present were more negative (e.g., more negative emotions, more destructive conflict tactics) and more often about children than were child-absent conflicts. Although parents may attempt to protect children from conflict exposure, children tend to be exposed to a relatively hostile and emotionally negative subset of the marital conflicts that occur in the home.     

Contributions of endothermy to huddling behavior in infant Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) and Syrian golden hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus)

Infant Syrian golden hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus) do not exhibit endogenous heat production before 3 weeks of age and do not huddle effectively during cold exposure, gaining little thermoregulatory benefit from the presence of multiple littermates. In contrast, infant Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) produce heat endogenously and are effective at maintaining elevated body temperatures by huddling. Therefore, the ineffective huddling of infant hamsters may be due to the absence of endogenous heat production. The huddling behavior of infants in mixed huddles of 8-day-old hamsters and weight-matched 4-5-day-old rats was observed to explore this possibility. The results indicate that hamsters, even when cold, effectively gain access to heat-producing rats, supporting the idea that endothermy contributes to the behavior of huddling by providing heat to each individual and thermal stimuli to other infants to support aggregation.     

Life Design: A Paradigm for Career Intervention in the 21st Century

A new paradigm is implicit within the constructivist and narrative methods for career intervention that have emerged in the 21st century. This article makes that general pattern explicit by abstracting its key elements from the specific instances that substantiate the new conceptual model. The paradigm for life design interventions constructs career through small stories, reconstructs the stories into a life portrait, and coconstructs intentions that advance the career story into a new episode.     

The Deep Structure of Group Life: Unconscious Dimensions

There is a reconsideration and renaissance of interest in expanded conceptions of unconscious processes as they affect individuals and groups (Grotstein, 1999). Recent focus on social unconscious (Hopper, 1996) and cultural unconscious processes (Henderson, 1988) and the nature of intersubjectivity (Harwood and Pines, 1998) raise questions about the location of group analysis. This paper considers the deep structure of group life by examining four functions of the unconscious: repressive, conservative, creative, and mythopoetic (Ellenberger, 1970). On an individual level of analysis, these functions are equated respectively with formative ideas about the: personal–subjective, social–political, intersubjective–cultural and collective–objective unconscious. Group level analogs, as they develop and affect groups and their members, are explored as synthetic, shared, symbolicy and synchronous unconscious processes.     

In Defence Of Weak Psychological Egoism

Weak psychological egoism is the doctrine that anything an agent does intentionally, that agent does at least expecting thereby to realize one of her self-regarding ends. (Strong psychological egoism, by contrast, is the doctrine that agents act always intending thereby to realize a self-regarding end.) Though weak psychological egoism is a doctrine ultimately answerable to empirical evidence, we presently have excellent a priori reasons for accepting it and attempting to construct psychological theories that include it as an organizing principle. These reasons have mainly to do with the idea that to understand the motivation behind an action, we need to understand the force of the consideration that motivates the agent, and the way to do this is to find a self-regarding end associated in the agent's mind with acting on that consideration.     

Ambiguity in Our Technical Society

The spiritual situation at the turn of the millennium can be interpreted through Paul Tillich's appropriation of modernity, by analysis of the determinative structures and decisive trends of our age. The methods and organization of industry determine modern society. Spiritually, this situation results in the proliferation of means without ends, the objectification of natural structures, and the reduction of persons to things. Extrapolating from Tillich's analysis, the spiritual situation at the turn of the millennium can be understood as a quasi-religious struggle between the movements of liberal individualism and multiculturalism, both of which lose the sense of ambiguity. The communitarian movement and related interpretations remain the minority voice offering a mediating position.     

Williams, Truth-Aimedness and the Voluntariness of Judgement

I contend that while at least one of the arguments advanced by Bernard Williams in his paper 'Deciding To Believe' does establish that beliefs, or more precisely, judgements cannot be decided upon 'at will', the notion of truth-aimedness presupposed by that argument also, ironically, provides the key to understanding why judgements are necessarily voluntary.     

Parallel neural systems for classical conditioning: Support from computational modeling

Classical conditioning has been explained by two main types of theories that postulate different learning mechanisms. Rescorla and Wagner (1972) put forth a theory in which conditioning is based on the ability of the US to drive learning through error correction. Alternatively, Mackintosh (1973) put forth a theory in which the ability of the CS to be associated with the unconditioned stimulus is modulated. We have proposed a reconciliation of these two mechanisms as working in parallel within different neural systems: a cerebellar system for US modulation and a hippocampal system for CS modulation. We developed a computational model of cerebellar function in eyeblink conditioning based on the error correction mechanism of the Rescorla-Wagner rule in which learningrelated activity from the cerebellum inhibits the inferior olive, which is the US input pathway to the cerebellum (Gluck et al., 1994). We developed a computational model of the hippocampal region that forms altered representations of conditioned stimuli based on their behavioral outcomes (Gluck & Myers, 1993; Myers et al., 1995). Overall, computational modeling and empirical findings support the idea that, at least in the case of eyeblink conditioning, there may be two different neural systems: the cerebellum which mediates US-based error correction and hippocampus which alters representations of CSs.     

User-controlled photographic animations, photograph-based questions, and questionnaires: Three Internet-based instruments for measuring drivers’ risk-taking behavior

The Internet has been exploited successfully in the past as a medium for behavioral research. This paper presents a series of studies designed to assess Internet-based measures of drivers’ risk-taking behavior. First, we compared responses from an Internet sample with a traditional pencil-and-paper sample using established questionnaire measures of risk taking. No significant differences were found. Second, we assessed the validity of new Internet-based instruments, involving photographs and photographic animations, that measured speed, gap acceptance, and passing. Responses were found to reflect known demographic patterns of actual behavior to some degree. Also, a roadside survey of speeds was carried out at the locations depicted in the photographic measure of speeding and, with certain exceptions, differences between the two appeared to be constant. Third, a between-subject experimental manipulation involving the photographic animation measure of gap acceptance was used to demonstrate one application of these techniques.