Preschoolers are able to take merit into account when distributing goods

Classic studies in developmental psychology demonstrate a relatively late development of equity, with children as old as 6 or even 8-10 years failing to follow the logic of merit--that is, giving more to those who contributed more. Following Piaget (1932), these studies have been taken to indicate that judgments of justice develop slowly and follow a stagelike progression, starting off with simple rules (e.g., equality: everyone receives the same) and only later on in development evolving into more complex ones (e.g., equity: distributions match contributions). Here, we report 2 experiments with 3- and 4-year-old children (N = 195) that contradict this constructivist account. Our results demonstrate that children as young as 3 years old are able to take merit into account by distributing tokens according to individual contributions but that this ability may be hidden by a preference for equality.     

A new "fat face" illusion

We report a novel fat face illusion that when two identical images of the same face are aligned vertically, the face at the bottom appears 'fatter'. This illusion emerged when the faces were shown upright, but not inverted, with the size of the illusion being 4%. When the faces were presented upside down, the illusion did not emerge. Also, when upright clocks were shown in the same vertically aligned fashion, we did not observe the illusion, indicating that the fat illusion does not generalize to every category of canonically upright objects with similar geometric shape as a face.     

Inclusion practices with Special Educational Needs students in a Hong Kong secondary school: teachers’ narratives from a school guidance perspective

Schools in Hong Kong are concerned about the growing enrolments of students with special educational needs (SEN) and how these students could be included in school guidance. This study examines teachers’ narratives of the inclusivity of school guidance. The study was qualitative, being a case study of a Hong Kong secondary school. School documents were collected for textual analysis and semi-structured interviews with 13 teachers were conducted, including nine guidance teachers and four other teachers who worked closely with these guidance teachers. Four dimensions for the inclusivity of school guidance were identified: the development of inclusive practices of guidance, the adoption of a proactive approach, the promotion of inclusive discipline, and the clear definition of the partnership between school guidance and professional organization offering specialised services for students with SEN. The study provides insights into contextual influences of Hong Kong education on school guidance and the development of an inclusive approach to guidance.     

Mood effects on dominated choices: Positive mood induces departures from logical rules

In two studies, we investigated the role of mood states in dominated behavioral choices. Past research has shown that mood effects on judgment and decision‐making can be pervasive. Yet, the role of mood in dominated choices has so far been neglected. The present research represents a first empirical examination of mood effects on dominated choices. We measured (Study 1) or manipulated (Study 2) mood states in participants who made a series of choices in a gambling game. In this choice task without trade‐offs, participants were provided with information about the outcomes and probabilities associated with each choice option. The strategy to maximize the expected mean outcome implied the application of a straightforward and logical rule: Always choose the dominant option with the highest expected value. It has been argued in the literature that mood should have little or no impact when preferences are clear or strong. Still, we expected that mood states would affect even these dominated choices, building on previous work that showed that positive mood states enhance flexibility, creativity, and explorative behavior. The results showed that decisions made in a happier mood were less often in accordance with the logical rule than decisions made in a sadder mood. To conclude, happier mood states are associated to a lesser extent with decisions in accordance with a rule‐based strategy that maximizes expected mean outcomes in dominated choices. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Positive emotional context eliminates the framing effect in decision-making

Dual-process theories have suggested that emotion plays a key role in the framing effect in decision-making. However, little is known about the potential impact of a specific positive or negative emotional context on this bias. We investigated this question with adult participants using an emotional priming paradigm. First, participants were presented with positive or negative affective pictures (i.e., pleasant vs. unpleasant photographs). Afterward, participants had to perform a financial decision-making task that was unrelated to the pictures previously presented. The results revealed that the presentation framed in terms of gain or loss no longer affected subjects' decision-making following specific exposure to emotionally pleasant pictures. Interestingly, a positive emotional context did not globally influence risk-taking behavior but specifically decreased the risk propensity in the loss frame. This finding confirmed that a positive emotional context can reduce loss aversion, and it strongly reinforced the dual-process view that the framing effect stems from an affective heuristic belonging to intuitive System 1. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Kaiho Seiryō on ‘What it is to be a Human Being’

Kaiho Seiryō (1755–1817) is probably the first Japanese thinker to proclaim the contractual nature of human relationships. I examine in this paper the view of human beings that led him to this conclusion. Giving up previous definitions of humans, Seiryō focuses on the faculty of practical reason. While this leads him to recognize a hierarchy of humans, some having more humanity than others, it also allows him to develop the most modern understanding of social relationship available in his time. His radical reinterpretation of what it is to be a human being is all the more remarkable because it was done with the concepts and ideas provided by the Chinese Classics. Establishing new connections, giving new life to ideas that were never exploited, Seiryō showed it was possible to make sense of modernity without using foreign concepts.     

Responding to allegations of scientific misconduct

Institutions in France are not yet well prepared to respond to allegations of scientific misconduct. Following a serious allegation in late 1997. INSERM,* the primary organization for medical and health-related research in France, began to reflect on this subject, aided by scientists and jurists. The conclusions have resulted in establishing a procedure to be followed in cases of alleged misconduct, and also in reinforcing the application of good laboratory practices within each laboratory. Guidelines for authorship practices and scientific assessment must also be considered. Even though each institution must remain responsible for responding to allegations of scientific misconduct within its doors, INSERM would like to see national, European, and international co-ordination about the methods of such response. Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (eng. French National Medical Research Institute) is known as INSERM. An earlier version of this paper was presented at a symposium, Scientific Misconduct: An International Perspective, organised by The Medical University of Warsaw, 16 November, 1998.     

A threat in the elder: the impact of task‐instructions,self‐efficacy and performance expectations on memory performance in the elderly

Widely used explicit memory tasks seem to overestimate age‐related differences in memory performance. Social and personal factors may buffer or undermine the effect of age on memory performance. In two studies, the performance of older adults was compared with the performance of younger adults. Tasks were presented either as memory tasks or non‐memory tasks. Older adults' performance on a memory task improved when the task‐instructions did not explicitly emphasize the memory component of the task. In the first study, results revealed that memory self‐efficacy beliefs play a moderator role on the impact of task‐instruction on memory performance, so that lower levels of memory self‐efficacy correlate with lower performance in the memory emphasizing task condition but not in the orientation emphasizing task condition. In a second study actual performance expectations were measured. For older participants only, expectations were sensitive to task‐instructions and mediated the relation between tasks‐instructions and performances. These findings suggest that observed age‐related differences in memory performance may be significantly exaggerated by the testing situation and by a low memory self‐efficacy and low memory performance expectancies prevalent among older adults. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An inner face advantage in children's recognition of familiar peers

Children’s recognition of familiar own-age peers was investigated. Chinese children (4-, 8-, and 14-year-olds) were asked to identify their classmates from photographs showing the entire face, the internal facial features only, the external facial features only, or the eyes, nose, or mouth only. Participants from all age groups were familiar with the faces used as stimuli for 1 academic year. The results showed that children from all age groups demonstrated an advantage for recognition of the internal facial features relative to their recognition of the external facial features. Thus, previous observations of a shift in reliance from external to internal facial features can be attributed to experience with faces rather than to age-related changes in face processing.     

Mood trajectories following daily life events

Little is known about the magnitude and duration of mood responses to daily negative events as a function of gender, history of mood disorder, and current substance use. Using computerized ambulatory monitoring techniques, perceived negativity of minor daily events and state affect were prospectively examined every 3 h on average for a 7-day period. Event negativity was associated with depressed mood for 6–9 h following event occurrence, and was associated with happy mood for 3–6 h. Gender and substance use moderated the relationship between event negativity and mood states concurrently, and remained influential for approximately 3 h following the event. History of mood disorder did not moderate any within- or across-day relationships between event negativity and mood. No evidence was found for mood uplifts following daily events in either within- or across-day analyses. The findings are discussed relative to assessment timing in investigations of vulnerability-stress theories.