Influences of Destructive Personality Information on Decision Making1

This study examined the effects of information about a landlord's personality on juror judgments for a landlord-tenant civil trial. The personality information manipulated was specifically relevant to destructive acts. Alternative versions of witness testimony were used to describe a landlord either high or low on need for power. treating people as objects, and negative life themes. This information strongly influenced aspects of the schema for this case constructed by the individual mock jurors. Destructive personality information caused dislike of the landlord and lowered the credibility of his story. If the landlord treated people as objects, the credibility of the tenant's story and positive evaluations of the tenant increased. Juror judgments about relative fault were strongly shifted by destructive personality information. An empirical model for juror decisions indicated a dynamic interplay of story components and fault judgments.     

Racial Attitudes and the Death Penalty1

This study investigated the relationship between overt and subtle forms of racism with Whites' recommendations for capital sentencing of Black and White offenders convicted of murder. White participants (n= 104) viewed 5 other “jurors” (all Whites or 4 Whites and 1 Black) on videotape individually presenting their decisions to vote for the death penalty in the case. It was hypothesized that the bias of high prejudice-scoring participants would be overt, but that the pattern for low prejudice-scoring participants would be more complex. As predicted, among high prejudice-scoring participants, Black defendants received stronger recommendations for the death penalty than did White defendants. Among low prejudice-scoring White participants, Black offenders received stronger recommendations for the death penalty only when a Black juror advocated the death penalty.     

Inhibitory control over no-longer-relevant information: Adult age differences

Hartman and Hasher (1991) used a garden-path task in which younger and older adults generated the final word for each of a series of high-cloze sentences. Under instructions to remember the final word, the experiment included critical sentences for which the generated word was replaced by a new, to-be-remembered target. Using an implicit priming task, the first experiment replicated a basic finding: Younger adults showed priming only for the target words, whereas older adults showed priming for both the generated and target words. Two experiments explored boundary conditions. One showed that an additional sentence that interpreted the new target word enabled older adults to narrow access to only the target word. The provision of additional time following the introduction of the new target word did not. Specific information, not more time, is required for inefficient inhibitory mechanisms to clear the recent past from memory.     

The Development of the Toddler Behavior Screening Inventory

The purpose of the present study was to develop the Toddler Behavior Screening Inventory (TBSI) for rapidly assessing maternal reports of toddler behavior problems. The TBSI is a 40-item measure intended for use by pediatricians, psychologists, and other child-care professionals. A group of mothers (n = 312) rated the initial 93-item TBSI in terms of behavior frequency and parental perception of the behavior as problematic. Following item elimination, 40 items were retained due to being both frequent and problematic at all toddler age levels. Data were obtained with a new sample of mothers (n = 581) and showed the TBSI to possess good reliability and validity.     

Associations Between Clinic-Referred Boys and Their Fathers on Childhood Inattention-Overactivity and Aggression Dimensions

The question asked in this study of 70 clinically referred 6- to 12-year-old boys with behavior problems was whether or not childhood inattention-overactivity and aggression are transmitted specifically from biological fathers to sons. Fathers' self-reported childhood inattention-overactivity on a retrospectively valid measure was exclusively associated with parents' ratings of their sons' current attention problems on the Mothers' Operational Measure for Sub-grouping (MOMS), the Revised Child Behavior Checklist (RCBCL), and an approximated DSM-IV inattention dimension. Fathers' self-reported childhood aggression was not associated with ratings of their sons' aggression on the MOMS or DADS (a parallel instrument for fathers), nor on DSM-III oppositional or conduct disorder dimensions, but it was exclusively associated with RCBCL ratings of sons' aggressive and delinquent behavior. None of the nonspecific correlations (father inattention-overactivity with son aggression or father aggression with son inattention-overactivity) was significant.     

“Are False Memories Permanent?”: An Investigation of the Long-Term Effects of Source Misattributions

With growing concerns over children's suggestibility and how it may impact their reliability as witnesses, there is increasing interest in determining the long-term effects of induced memories. The goal of the present research was to learn whether source misattributions found by Ceci, Huffman, Smith, and Loftus (1994) caused permanent memory alterations in the subjects tested. When 22 children from the original study were reinterviewed 2 years later, they recalled 77% of all true events. However, they only consented to 13% of all false events, compared to the 22% false consent rate (among the same subset of children) found by Ceci et al. (1994). Additionally, while children remained accurate in their recall of true events (they maintained assents 78% of the time), they “recanted” their earlier false consents 77% of the time, after the 2-year delay. Implications of these findings for child witnesses and the legal system are discussed.     

Religion and the use of animals in research: some first thoughts

Religious traditions can be drawn on in a number of ways to illuminate discussions of the moral standing of animals and the ethical use of animals in scientific research. I begin with some general comments about relevant points in the history of major religions. I then briefly describe American civil religion, including the cult of health, and its relation to scientific research. Finally, I offer a critique of American civil religion from a Christian perspective.     

Lateralized Changes in Regional Cerebral Blood Flow during Performance of Verbal and Facial Recognition Tasks: Correlations with Performance and “Effort”

Functional neuroimaging has been used to investigate neural substrates of mnemonic processes, and cerebral blood flow (CBF) measures have been sensitive to activation with memory tasks. Studies of memory with two-dimensional¹³³Xenon clearance techniques found that word and face recognition tasks produced contralateral CBF changes in mid-temporal cortical regions. This study replicated the activation paradigm, expanding to the three-dimensional resolution of positron emission tomography (PET). Word and face recognition, and a control baseline task were administered to 19 healthy right-handed volunteers (11 men, 8 women) during successive 10 min PET¹⁵O-water measures of CBF. Quantitative CBF rates were calculated with the arterial input function and the equilibrium model. Redistributions of blood flow were compared across tasks using both absolute and relative (region/whole brain) CBF.Replicating the¹³³Xenon clearance findings, CBF was “appropriately” lateralized during task performance (left–right for words > left–right for faces) in the mid-temporal region. Contrary to predictions, the recognition tasks did not activate expected mesolimbic or prefrontal areas. The task-induced CBF changes also correlated with performance. Bilateral CBF in mid-temporal and parahippocampal gyrus regions of interest correlated with the ability to correctly identify word targets (sensitivity). Left-lateralized CBF in the amygdala and hippocampus correlated with better word sensitivity as well as specificity (ability to correctly reject foils). Complementally, right-lateralized CBF in the parahippocampal gyrus correlated with better face specificity performance. In addition, left-lateralized CBF in the amygdala and right-lateralized CBF in the parahippocampal gyrus and hippocampus correlated with “mental effort” indices (task performance relative to basal ability) for word and face memory tasks, respectively. Thus, whereas this recognition task showed the expected lateralized increase in the mid-temporal region and not in frontal and limbic areas, lateralized activation in some of these areas was associated with better performance. Exploratory analyses on other regions showed lateralized changes in one additional temporal region, the occipital-temporal, and several limbic regions.