Counterfactual and semi-factual thoughts in moral judgements about failed attempts to harm

People judge that an individual who attempts to harm someone but fails should be blamed and punished more when they imagine how things could have turned out worse, compared to when they imagine how things could have turned out the same, or when they think only about what happened. This moral counterfactual amplification effect occurs when people believe the protagonist had no reason for the attempt to harm, and not when the protagonist had a reason, as Experiment 1 shows. It occurs for intentional failed attempts to harm and also for accidental near-misses, as Experiment 2 shows, but not for failed attempts in which the harm occurs anyway by another cause, for both general judgments about the event and specific judgments about the individual's actions, as Experiments 3 and 4 show. The implications for understanding the role of counterfactual thoughts in moral judgement are discussed.     

Advice conditionals about tips and warnings: interpretations and inferences

Two experiments examine how people interpret and reason about advice conditionals, such as tips, for example, “if you study more your grades will improve”, and warnings, for example, “if you stop exercising you will gain weight”. Experiment 1 showed that when participants reason about whether a tip or warning could be true in different situations, their judgments correspond to a biconditional or conditional interpretation on about half of all trials, but to an enabling or tautology interpretation on many others. Experiment 2 showed that participants make few modus ponens and tollens inferences from tips and warnings, and more modus ponens inferences from tips than warnings. The implications for alternative theories are discussed.     

The effects of aging and dual task demands on language production

A digital pursuit rotor task was used to measure dual task costs of language production by young and older adults. After training on the pursuit rotor, participants were asked to track the moving target while providing a language sample. When simultaneously engaged, young adults experienced greater dual task costs to tracking, fluency, and grammatical complexity than older adults. Older adults were able to preserve their tracking performance by speaking more slowly. Individual differences in working memory, processing speed, and Stroop interference affected vulnerability to dual task costs. These results demonstrate the utility of using a digital pursuit rotor to study the effects of aging and dual task demands on language production and confirm prior findings that young and older adults use different strategies to accommodate to dual task demands.     

Anticipatory concern: a study in autism

There has been substantial research on children's empathic responsiveness towards distressed people, and on the limited responsiveness of children with autism. To date, however, there have not been experimental studies to test how far children show concern towards someone who might be expected to feel badly, when that person has not (yet) expressed any negative feelings. We tested matched groups of children with autism and learning disability, and typically developing children of similar verbal mental age (approximately 6 years), with a novel procedure in which participants witnessed one person (E1) tearing the drawing of another (E2). In a comparison condition, a blank card was torn. In the torn‐drawing condition, as predicted, fewer participants with autism orientated towards E2 with an immediate look, and as a group, they were rated as showing less concern for, and fewer concerned looks towards, E2. We discuss possible implications for theoretical perspectives on the early development of empathy in typically as well as atypically developing children.     

The Relationship of Sexual Values and Emotional Awareness to Sexual Activity in Young Adulthood

A sample of 170 college freshman completed assessments related to emotional awareness, sexual values, and levels of sexual activity. There was a significant relationship between sexual values and sexual activity. Abstinence values appear to be important in the decision to engage in sexual activity.     

More is still not better: testing the perturbation model of temporal reference memory across different modalities and tasks

The ability of the perturbation model (Jones & Wearden, 2003) to account for reference memory function in a visual temporal generalization task and auditory and visual reproduction tasks was examined. In all tasks the number of presentations of the standard was manipulated (1, 3, or 5), and its effect on performance was compared. In visual temporal generalization the number of presentations of the standard did not affect the number of times the standard was correctly identified, nor did it affect the overall temporal generalization gradient. In auditory reproduction there was no effect of the number of times the standard was presented on mean reproductions. In visual reproduction mean reproductions were shorter when the standard was only presented once; however, this effect was reduced when a visual cue was provided before the first presentation of the standard. Whilst the results of all experiments are best accounted for by the perturbation model there appears to be some attentional benefit to multiple presentations of the standard in visual reproduction.     

How Distinctive are ADHD and RD? Results of a Double Dissociation Study

The nature of the comorbidity between Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Reading Disability (RD) was examined using a double dissociation design. Children were between 8 and 12 years of age and entered into four groups: ADHD only (n = 24), ADHD+RD (n = 29), RD only (n = 41) and normal controls (n = 26). In total, 120 children participated in the study; 38 girls and 82 boys. Both ADHD and RD were associated with impairments in inhibition and lexical decision, although inhibition and lexical decision were more severely impaired in RD than in ADHD. Visuospatial working memory deficits were specific to children with only ADHD. It is concluded that there was overlap on lexical decision and to a lesser extent on inhibition between ADHD and RD. In ADHD, impairments were dependent on IQ, which suggest that the overlap in lexical decision and inhibition is different in origin for ADHD and RD. The ADHD only group was specifically characterized by deficits in visuospatial working memory. Hence, no double dissociation between ADHD and RD was found on executive functioning and lexical decision.     

The use of aggression in primary school boys' decisions about inclusion in and exclusion from playground football games

Background Sociometric studies have shown that some aggressive boys are popular, perceived as popular or cool, dominant, and central in the peer group ( Estell, Cairns, Farmer, & Cairns, 2002 ; Milich & Landau, 1984 ; Prinstein & Cillessen, 2003 ; Rodkin, Farmer, Pearl, & Van Acker, 2006 ). This is not predicted by social information processing (SIP) models which see aggression as socially incompetent, resulting from distorted understanding of the social world (e.g. Crick & Dodge, 1994 ). However, sociologists of childhood have argued that some aggressive boys are popular because they use aggression to gain status and dominance, to undermine those of lower status, and to achieve hegemonic masculinity ( Adler & Adler, 1998 ; Ferguson, 2000 ; Renold, 2007 ). Aims This study aims to connect psychological and sociological literatures, asking whether social processes of status formation contribute to the link between popularity and aggression identified sociometrically. Sample The paper describes case studies of three boys, aged between 8 and 10 years, attending a London primary school. Methods Sociometric data on liking, disliking, and aggression are combined with ethnographic and interview data for each case study. Results The data show that one way in which aggression aids popularity and dominance is through boys' strategic use of aggression to enforce decisions about inclusion and exclusion in desirable activities. It can be difficult for individual boys to achieve acceptance without resorting to aggression. Conclusions The data provide support for sociological explanations of aggression in terms of status and inclusion, and challenge the SIP claim that aggressive children are socially incompetent and biased.     

No evidence for object alternation impairment in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)

Recent neuroimaging studies have consistently ascribed the orbito-frontal cortex (OFC) a pivotal role in the pathogenesis of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Cognitive tests presumed sensitive to this region, such as the Object Alternation Task (OAT), are considered important tools to verify this assumption and to investigate the impact of cortical dysfunction on behavior. The aim of the present study was to assess if patients with OCD show enhanced perseveration errors on the OAT relative to healthy controls taking into account several potential moderators, especially comorbid depression and OCD subtype. Thirty-five OCD patients and 18 healthy controls underwent the OAT as well as the Trail-Making Tests (TMT) A and B. In line with prior studies, OCD patients were slowed on both TMT tasks. In contrast, samples performed similarly on the OAT. While the latter finding does not invalidate the assumption that the OFC is affected in OCD, dysfunctions involving this region may be more subtle than often claimed and likely encompass only a small subset of functional domains hosted in the OFC.     

Teaching a simple meal preparation skill to adults with moderate and severe mental retardation using video modeling

We evaluated whether adults with mental retardation in the moderate or severe range would acquire simple meal preparation skills via video modeling. Training was conducted in the kitchen of the participants' day treatment setting. The intervention consisted of (i) watching a video of an adult with a developmental disability making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and (ii) receiving verbal praise for each step of the task that was performed correctly. All three participants mastered the task and demonstrated generalization across settings. All three participants also demonstrated maintenance of the skill one month following mastery. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.