Are children moral objectivists? Children's judgments about moral and response-dependent properties

Researchers working on children's moral understanding maintain that the child's capacity to distinguish morality from convention shows that children regard moral violations as objectively wrong (e.g. Nucci, L. (2001). Education in the moral domain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). However, one traditional way to cast the issue of objectivism is to focus not on conventionality, but on whether moral properties depend on our responses, as with properties like icky and fun. This paper argues that the moral/conventional task is inadequate for assessing whether children regard moral properties as response-dependent. Unfortunately, children's understanding of response-dependent properties has been neglected in recent research. Two experiments are reported showing that children are more likely to treat properties like fun and icky as response-dependent than moral properties like good and bad. Hence, this helps support the claim that children are moral objectivists.     

Goal attribution in chimpanzees

Does the chimpanzee attribute goals to others? Recent infant studies using the looking time measure have been interpreted as evidence that human infants attribute goals. An experiment modeled on these studies was carried out on chimpanzees, and the chimpanzees responded the way infants do. This indicates that chimpanzees also attribute goals and hence that this capacity is not distinctively human.     

Using HyperCard to administer a figural test on the Apple Macintosh

To date, applications of automated assessment techniques in personality testing have largely been limited to objective personality instruments with text stimuli; few assessment applications have involved graphic stimuli. Although projective personality instruments generally include ambiguous graphic or pictorial stimuli, computer applications with these procedures have been limited to automated scoring and interpretation, administration of sentence completion devices employing text stimuli, and the use of mechanical methods rather than computer graphics to display visual stimuli. In the present report, we describe a Macintosh HyperCard application for administering an objective personality test with visual stimuli, the Barron-Welsh Revised Art Scale of the Welsh Figure Preference Test. This test consists of a series of figural stimuli and a binary “like”/“dislike” response format, and it thus represents an administration procedure between standard objective self-report inventories involving text stimuli and a “true”/“false” response or variant, and tests such as the Rorschach or TAT that are both figural and free-response. The HyperCard language provides a variety of promising techniques useful for microcomputer test administration.     

Other-Initiated Motivational Climate and Youth Hockey Players’ Good and Poor Sport Behaviors

This study's purpose was to simultaneously examine the relationships between perceived coach-, peer-, and parent-initiated motivational climate and youth hockey players’ good and poor sport behavior (GPSB). Participants (N = 243) represented PeeWee, Bantam, and Midget hockey levels (11–17 years old). Hierarchical regression showed that hockey players’ goal orientations, perceived ability, and other-initiated motivational climate explained 22.6% (PeeWee) and 18.5% (Bantam/Midget) of the variance in Poor Sport Behavior while explaining 27.1% (PeeWee) and 34.6% (Bantam/Midget) of the variance in good sport behavior. Results provide perspective for how influential the social environment is to both GPSBs in youth hockey.     

Sibling Teenage Pregnancy and Clinic-Referred Girls’ Condom Use: The Protective Role of Maternal Monitoring

Younger sisters of teenage parents have elevated rates of engaging in unprotected sex. This may result from changes in parenting behavior after a sibling becomes pregnant or impregnates a partner, and be particularly pronounced for girls seeking mental health treatment. The current study examines condom use over time in 211 African-American girls recruited from outpatient psychiatric clinics. Findings indicate that having a sibling with a teenage pregnancy history predicts less consistent condom use 2 years later. After accounting for earlier condom use and mental health problems, maternal monitoring moderates condom use such that for girls with a sibling with a pregnancy history, more vigilant maternal monitoring is associated with increased condom use, while for girls with no sibling pregnancy history, maternal monitoring is unrelated to adolescents’ condom use 2 years later. Findings suggest that targeted interventions to increase maternal monitoring of high-risk teens may be beneficial for girls with a sibling history of teenage pregnancy.     

The Effect of Selective Serotonin Releasing Agents in the Chronic Mild Stress Model of Depression in Rats

Chronic exposure to mild unpredictable stress has been found to depress the consumption of, and preference for, highly palatable sucrose solution in rats. Stress-induced behavioral deficits may be maintained for a long time, however chronic administration of clinically effective antidepressants can restore normal behavior. This is the first report showing that Sprague-Dawley rats can be used in this model. A preference deficit in this strain of rats took at least 7 weeks to develop; about twice the time required when hooded Lister or Wistar rats are used in this model. Water consumption was not effected by chronic exposure to the mild stress regime and/or by chronic administration of the selective serotonin (5-HT) releasing agent MMAI (5-methoxy-6-methyl-2-aminoindan). The stress-induced deficit in sucrose intake was completely reversed by chronic treatment with MMAI (5 mg/kg, 2 x day) over 3 weeks in the two-bottle tests. In single-bottle tests, chronic treatment with the selective 5-HT releasers, MMAI (5 mg/kg, 2 x day) or MTA (p-methylthioamphetamine; 5 mg/kg, 2 x day), reversed the deficit in rewarded behavior (anhedonia) measured as a decrease in the consumption of 1% sucrose solution in the chronic mild stress model of depression in rats. With the experimental procedure employed, and at a dose of 10 mg/kg/day of 5-HT releasers, the magnitude and onset of this effect were greater than observed following similar administration of the selective 5-HT reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) sertraline (10 mg/kg/day), used as a standard anti-depressant drug.     

Remarks on method for MMPI-Rorschach studies

An impressionistic list of methodological considerations that may be of consequence in Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)-Rorschach studies is presented. These include the potential effects of the multidimensionality of the basic clinical MMPI scales in comparison studies, issues of deception and response style in such studies, and the rote of theory in guiding the selection of variables in the search for MMPI-Rorschach correspondences. The recently established necessity of controls for the total number of Rorschach responses provides the basis for suggestions for further controls in MMPI-Rorschach studies, including those for level of distress and for the minimization/exaggeration of psychopathology. An effort is made to contrast these two instruments in terms borrowed from information theory as a way of illuminating their complementary aspects, and suggesting means by which each may contribute to an enhanced understanding of the other.