Distinct neuronal patterns of positive and negative moral processing in psychopathy

Psychopathy is a disorder characterized by severe and frequent moral violations in multiple domains of life. Numerous studies have shown psychopathy-related limbic brain abnormalities during moral processing; however, these studies only examined negatively valenced moral stimuli. Here, we aimed to replicate prior psychopathy research on negative moral judgments and to extend this work by examining psychopathy-related abnormalities in the processing of controversial moral stimuli and positive moral processing. Incarcerated adult males (N = 245) completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging protocol on a mobile imaging system stationed at the prison. Psychopathy was assessed using the Hare Psychopathy Checklist–Revised (PCL-R). Participants were then shown words describing three types of moral stimuli: wrong (e.g., stealing), not wrong (e.g., charity), and controversial (e.g., euthanasia). Participants rated each stimulus as either wrong or not wrong. PCL-R total scores were correlated with not wrong behavioral responses to wrong moral stimuli, and were inversely related to hemodynamic activity in the anterior cingulate cortex in the contrast of wrong > not wrong. In the controversial > noncontroversial comparison, psychopathy was inversely associated with activity in the temporal parietal junction and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. These results indicate that psychopathy-related abnormalities are observed during the processing of complex, negative, and positive moral stimuli.     

Attitude Toward Christianity and Psychological Type: A Survey Among Religious Studies Students

A sample of 367 students studying religion at A-level completed the Keirsey Temperament Sorter together with the Francis Scale of Attitude Toward Christianity. The data demonstrated that sensing types hold a more positive attitude toward Christianity than intuitive types and that judging types hold a more positive attitude toward Christianity than perceiving types. No significant differences in attitude toward Christianity were found either between extroverts and introverts, or between thinking types and feeling types.     

At what age are children most likely to be bullied at school?

Cross‐sectional questionnaire surveys of school bullying reliably find that the frequency of incidents falls with age. However, it is not clear how much of this decline is due to a real change in behaviour, and how much to children’s changing definitions of what bullying is. This paper presents the results of two retrospective studies in an attempt to assess at what ages bullying is really most likely to occur. Male and female adults aged 18–55 years (n¹ = 205 and n² = 200) completed questionnaires about their memories of being bullied at school. Results showed that bullying was most frequently remembered from around 11–13 years of age, with incidents from earlier and later childhood being reported comparatively rarely. There were no differences between the reports of younger (18–21 years) and older (22–55 years) participants or between those of males and females. Bullying memories were also compared with memories for other aspects of childhood to assess the accuracy of these memories. It is concluded that the most memorable (and therefore perhaps the most severe) bullying is that which occurs in middle childhood. Aggr. Behav. 27:419–429, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Matching the faces of robbers captured on video

Recent research has shown that unfamiliar face matching from both high‐ and low‐quality closed circuit television video images to photographs is highly prone to error, even when viewpoint and expression are matched as closely as possible. The current experiments made use of a filmed, staged reconstruction of a bank raid that was captured on CCTV and on high‐quality broadcasting video. Experiment 1 tested the ability of members of the public to match actors captured on CCTV to photo‐spreads containing similar‐looking distractors. Further experiments, each testing different groups of subjects, investigated matching ability using both high‐quality photographs (Experiment 2) and broadcast‐quality video material (Experiment 3). Experiment 3 also investigated the effect of disguising hairstyle, and varied whether or not the target was present in the photo line‐up. The results of these experiments confirm those of previous work, that matching the identity of unfamiliar faces is highly fallible, even when high‐quality footage is used. Experiments 4 and 5 tested matching ability using two‐alternative forced‐choice and single‐item verification tasks. Performance remained highly error‐prone even with the simplest question asked. The legal implications of the results are discussed. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A role for action knowledge in visual object identification

We evaluated the impact of visual similarity and action similarity on visual object identification. We taught participants to associate novel objects with nonword labels and verified that in memory visually similar objects were confused more often than visually dissimilar objects. We then taught participants to associate novel actions with nonword labels and verified that similar actions were confused moreoften th an dissimilaractions. We then paired specific objects with specific actions. Visually similar objects paired with similar actions were confused more often in memory than when these same objects were paired with dissimilar actions. Hence the actions associated with objects served to increase or decrease their separation in memory space, and influenced the ease with which these objects could be identified. These experiments ultimately demonstrated that when identifying stationary objects, the memory of how these object were used dramatically influenced the ability to identify these objects.     

Task switching: on the origin of response congruency effects

When people frequently alternate between simple cognitive tasks, performance on stimuli which are assigned the same response in both tasks is typically faster and more accurate than on stimuli which require different responses for both tasks, thus indicating stimulus processing according to the stimulus-response (S-R) rules of the currently irrelevant task. It is currently under debate whether such response congruency effects are mediated by the activation of an abstract representation of the irrelevant task in working memory or by "direct" associations between specific stimuli and responses. We contrasted these views by manipulating concurrent memory load (Experiment 1) and the frequency of specific S-R associations (Experiment 2). While between-task response congruency effects were not affected by the amount of concurrent memory load, they were much stronger for stimuli that were processed frequently in the context of a competitor task. These findings are consistent with the idea that a large portion of the congruency effects stems from direct S-R associations and they do not support a sole mediation by task-set activation in working memory.     

Visual field x response hand interactions and level priming in the processing of laterally presented hierarchical stimuli

Hemisphere-specific processing of laterally presented global and local stimulus levels was investigated by (a) examining interactions between the visual field of stimulus presentation and the response hand and (b) comparing intra- with inter-hemispheric effects of level priming (i.e. faster and more accurate performance when the target level repeats). Although in Experiment 1, which involved two-choice responses with left and right hands, performance costs occurred when the same hemisphere received the stimulus and controlled the response hand, further analyses suggest that these effects reflect spatial compatibility rather than intra-hemispheric interference. Consistent with the spatial compatibility interpretation, in Experiment 2 a similar visual field x response interaction was obtained with regard to left and right responses given with the same hand. Trial-to-trial level priming occurred in both experiments and was unaffected by the intra-hemispheric sequence of target levels. Implications regarding hemispheric processing mode are discussed.     

Adaptive non-interventional heuristics for covariation detection in causal induction: model comparison and rational analysis

In this article, 41 models of covariation detection from 2 × 2 contingency tables were evaluated against past data in the literature and against data from new experiments. A new model was also included based on a limiting case of the normative phi-coefficient under an extreme rarity assumption, which has been shown to be an important factor in covariation detection (McKenzie & Mikkelsen, 2007) and data selection (Hattori, 2002; Oaksford & Chater, 1994, 2003). The results were supportive of the new model. To investigate its explanatory adequacy, a rational analysis using two computer simulations was conducted. These simulations revealed the environmental conditions and the memory restrictions under which the new model best approximates the normative model of covariation detection in these tasks. They thus demonstrated the adaptive rationality of the new model.     

Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of the DIAL-3: What does this “developmental screener” really measure?

To examine the convergent and discriminant validity of the scales on the Developmental Indicators for the Assessment of Learning—Third Edition [DIAL-3; Mardell-Czudnowski, C., and Goldenberg, D.S. (1998). Developmental indicators for the assessment of learning—third edition. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service, Inc.], exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were performed on randomly selected subsamples of 2012 children who attended Head Start. Exploratory factor analysis yielded three factors, labeled Verbal Ability, Nonverbal Ability, and Achievement, which collectively accounted for 56% of the variance in children's performances. Confirmatory factor analysis evaluated this empirically-derived model and the conceptually-derived model of the authors of the DIAL-3 in a separate subsample of children. Although neither model explained the data extremely well, the empirically-derived model characterized children's performances better than the conceptually-derived model, e.g., CFIs = .90 and .85, RMSEAs = .07 and .10, respectively. The discussion highlights an alternative conceptualization of the DIAL-3, potential uses of the factor scores, ideas for consideration during the next revision of the DIAL-3, and the need for additional validity research.