Ethics Code Awareness,Perceived Ethical Values,and Organizational Commitment

This study examines the relationships among ethics code awareness, perceived corporate ethical values, and organizational commitment. Three key findings emerged. First, those aware of the existence of an ethics code in their organizations perceived their organizations as having more ethical values than those not aware of an ethics code in their organizations. Second, respondents exhibited higher levels of organizational commitment when they were aware of an ethics code in their companies. Finally, the relationship between ethics code awareness and organizational commitment was fully mediated by perceptions of an organization’s ethical values. The results suggest that ethics codes may lead to higher levels of organizational commitment by increasing the belief that their organizations have strong ethical values, as long as the existence of ethics codes are adequately communicated.     

Linear and nonlinear effects of aging on categorizing and naming faces.

Subjects aged 54-84 performed 5 separate tasks involving various aspects of face processing: structural decisions (1), familiarity decisions (2), semantic decisions (3), first-name decisions (4), and name retrieval (5). For the categorization tasks (1-4), the mean reaction times for the older subjects (over 65) were plotted against the corresponding means for the younger subjects (under 65). This produced a linear function (slope greater than 1, intercept less than 0), providing only partial support for a simple, multiplicative model of cognitive slowing with age. Reaction time distributions were also plotted for each of the 5 tasks (older vs. younger subjects). The resulting functions were almost perfectly linear, with the exception of name retrieval, which was exponential with respect to age. This was attributed to the increased probability of a tip-of-the-tongue state with age caused by insufficient activation at the level of the name information (the final state of face identification).     

Concomitant Pavlovian conditioning of heart rate and leg flexion responses in the rat

Pavlovian conditioning was studied in male Fischer 344 rats using tones as the conditioned stimulus (CS) and footshock as the unconditioned stimulus (UCS). Different groups of animals received (a) contiguous CS-UCS pairings with a 0.5 sec CS, (b) contiguous CS-UCS pairings with a 4.0 sec CS, or (c) a random sequence of noncontiguous tones and shocks using either a 0.5 sec or a 4.0 sec CS. Heart rate (HR) and leg flexion (LF) responses were recorded. Leg flexion conditioning occurred only in the 0.5 sec contiguous group. Decelerative HR CRs occurred only in the 4.0 sec contiguous group. Accelerative HR changes occurred in the other two groups but were significantly greater in the 0.5 sec contiguous group. These results are similar to but not identical to those obtained during eyeblink or nictitating membrane conditioning in rabbits, and suggest that the topography of the Pavlovian HR CR is dependent on the simultaneous occurrence of other classically conditioned responses.     

Effects of chlordiazepoxide and d-amphetamine on responding suppressed by conditioned punishment

Key pecking by two pigeons, maintained under a variable-interval two-minute schedule of food presentation, was suppressed when each response produced a five-second visual stimulus that was occasionally paired with shock. Stimulus-shock pairings occurred independently of responding according to a variable-time six-minute schedule for one bird or once per session for the other bird. The effects of chlordiazepoxide and d-amphetamine were assessed on this baseline of behavior suppressed by conditioned punishment. Chlordiazepoxide produced dose-related increases in the rate of punished responding, whereas d-amphetamine produced only decreases. In addition, chlordiazepoxide produced dose-related increases in response rate during the response-produced and response-independent stimulus presentations; d-amphetamine, however, only decreased responding during stimulus presentations.     

A unified account of the effects of distinctiveness, inversion, and race in face recognition

A framework is outlined in which individual faces are assumed to be encoded as a point in a multidimensional space, defined by dimensions that serve to discriminate faces. It is proposed that such a framework can account for the effects of distinctiveness, inversion, and race on recognition of faces. Two specific models within this framework are identified: a norm-based coding model, in which faces are encoded as vectors from a population norm or prototype; and a purely exemplar-based model. Both models make similar predictions, albeit in different ways, concerning the interactions between the effects of distinctiveness, inversion and race. These predictions were supported in five experiments in which photographs of faces served as stimuli. The norm-based coding version and the exemplar-based version of the framework cannot be distinguished on the basis of the experiments reported, but it is argued that a multidimensional space provides a useful heuristic framework to investigate recognition of faces. Finally, the relationship between the specific models is considered and an implementation in terms of parallel distributed processing is briefly discussed.     

The effect of instructions on performance in the Wason selection task

The effect of instructions on performance on the standard abstract form of Wason’s selection task was examined. Instructions to determine whether or not the statement is violated did not lead to an increase in correct responding, contrary to previous suggestions that such instructions would induce falsification strategies, but rather to an increase in verification bias. Instructions to determine whether the statement is true or false led to increased variability in performance, supporting the suggestion that such instructions are inherently ambiguous. Thus, the results demonstrate that the form of instructions can have a significant effect on performance in the selection task. Verification bias did better as an explanation of the data than did matching bias, which only fared well when its predictions coincided with those of verification bias. A substantial proportion of the data was unaccounted for by either of these strategies, which is consistent with the findings of a number of other recent studies.     

A Study of Learning Curves: III. The Relationship Between a Growth Curve and the Arc Cotangent Function

(Watson, Robert I. The Clinical Method in Psychology. New York: Harper, 1951. Pp. 779.) Reviewed by Sidney Kosofsky.