Rare targets are less susceptible to attention capture once detection has begun

Rare or low probability targets are detected more slowly and/ or less accurately than higher probability counterparts. Various proposals have implicated perceptual and response-based processes in this deficit. Recent evidence, however, suggests that it is attentional in nature, with low probability targets requiring more attentional resources than high probability ones to detect. This difference in attentional requirements, in turn, suggests the possibility that low and high probability targets may have different susceptibilities to attention capture, which is also known to be resource-dependent. Supporting this hypothesis, we found that, once attentional resources have begun to be engaged by detection processes, low, but not high, probability targets have a reduced susceptibility to capture. Our findings speak to several issues. First, they indicate that the likelihood of attention capture occurring when a given task-relevant stimulus is being processed is dependent, to some extent, on how said stimulus is represented within mental task sets. Second, they provide added support for the idea that the behavioural deficit associated with low probability targets is attention-based. Finally, the current data point to reduced top-down biasing of target templates as a likely mechanism underlying the attentional locus of the deficit in question.     

Parental Monitoring,Association with Externalized Behavior,and Academic Outcomes in Urban African‐American Youth: A Moderated Mediation Analysis

African‐American adolescents exposed to neighborhood disadvantage are at increased risk for engaging in problem behavior and academic underachievement. It is critical to identify the mechanisms that reduce problem behavior and promote better academic outcomes in this population. Based on social disorganization and socioecological theories, the current prospective study examined pathways from parental monitoring to academic outcomes via externalizing behavior at different levels of neighborhood disadvantage. A moderated mediation model employing maximum likelihood was conducted on 339 African‐American students from 9th to 11th grade (49.3% females) with a mean age of 14.8 years (SD ± 0.35). The results indicated that parental monitoring predicted low externalizing behavior, and low externalizing behavior predicted better academic outcomes after controlling for externalizing behavior in 9th grade, intervention status, and gender. Mediation was supported, as the index of mediation was significant. Conversely, neighborhood disadvantage did not moderate the path from parental monitoring to externalizing behavior. Implications for intervention at both community and individual levels and study limitations are discussed.     

Aquinas on Quality

For Kant, Aristotle's categories are arbitrary but brilliant and they do not ultimately correspond to extramental reality. For Aquinas, however, they are rational divisions of extramental being. In this perennial and ongoing dispute, the various positions seem to dissolve upon delving into the particulars of any one category. If, however, the categories are divisions of extramental being, it should be possible to offer plausible accounts of particular categories. I offer Aquinas's unstudied derivation of quality as a test case to see how one could hold, and how Aquinas did hold, to a realism about Aristotle's categories at a highly specific level. Although Aristotle divides quality into four species and some further subspecies, unlike Aquinas, he offers no reasons for these divisions. For Aquinas each accident is a particular mode of existing, that is, it is a particular way that an accident exists in a substance. In the case of quality, this mode of existing follows substantial form and its real extramental causes or effects further divide it into four species. Aquinas's account is both compelling and original, inspired by Aristotle but also un-Aristotelian. The paper concludes by comparing Aquinas's account of quality with the best extant account of Aristotle's quality, namely, Paul Studtmann's.     

A Catholic perspective on organ sales.

In this article, I address the issue of the sale of human organs and the moral implications of a market in human organs under the aegis of Christian Bioethics. I argue that moral issues of this kind cannot be adequately be addressed from the point of view of moral frameworks, which point exclusively to procedural norms. Rather, a moral perspective must embody some substantive norms derived from a particular content-full moral or theological perspective. This substantive norms to which I appeal in this article are those of Roman Catholicism. The most important sources cited include the works of Pius XIi (1956) and the works of John Paul II (1985 and 1991). The conclusion reached is that not only is it morally permissible for Catholics to participate in a market in organ sales but it may also be prudent public policy.     

Phenomenal characteristics associated with real and imagined events: the effects of event valence and absorption

This study examined the effects of emotional valence of an event and individual differences in absorption on the phenomenal characteristics associated with real and imagined events. Each participant described four events. Two of these were real and two were imagined, with one pleasant and stressful event being generated for each category. Pleasant events (both real and imagined) contained more detail (visual detail, smell, and taste, and more information regarding location, time, etc.) than stressful events. In addition, higher levels of absorption were related to higher ratings for both real and imagined events (for both pleasant and stressful events). Discussion focused on implications for further research in source monitoring and other relevant domains. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.