IQ in childhood and the metabolic syndrome in middle age: Extended follow-up of the 1946 British Birth Cohort Study

IQ in early adulthood has been inversely associated with risk of the metabolic syndrome in midlife. We tested this association in the British 1946 birth cohort, which assessed IQ at age eight years and ascertained the metabolic syndrome at age 53 years based on modified (non-fasting blood) ATPIII criteria. Childhood IQ was inversely associated with risk of the metabolic syndrome, but this association was almost entirely mediated by educational attainment and achieved occupational social class. This may be consistent with a pattern where childhood IQ is strongly associated with outcomes that reflect neurological disorder, such as the degenerative dementias, but less so with common chronic physical diseases of ageing.     

Building to discover: a common coding model

I present a case study of scientific discovery, where building two functional and behavioral approximations of neurons, one physical and the other computational, led to conceptual and implementation breakthroughs in a neural engineering laboratory. Such building of external systems that mimic target phenomena, and the use of these external systems to generate novel concepts and control structures, is a standard strategy in the new engineering sciences. I develop a model of the cognitive mechanism that connects such built external systems with internal models, and I examine how new discoveries, and consensus on discoveries, could arise from this external-internal coupling and the building process. The model is based on the emerging framework of common coding, which proposes a shared representation in the brain between the execution, perception, and imagination of movement.     

The Heart and the Head: On Choosing Experiences Intuitively and Possessions Deliberatively

An enduring question in the field of judgment and decision making is when people are likely to choose on the basis of intuition and when they are likely to pursue a more deliberative decision strategy. Here, we attempt to shed light on that question by examining whether people tend to weight intuition more heavily when making experiential purchases, and to weight deliberation more heavily when making material purchases. Results from seven studies indicate that they do. In Study 1 (and a replication), participants expressed an explicit preference for choosing experiential purchases intuitively and material purchases analytically. In Study 2 (and a replication), participants anticipated experiencing more regret after going against reason for material purchases and going against intuition for experiential purchases. Participants in Study 3 who were asked to think about an experiential purchase wanted to see the relevant information presented by alternative, which facilitates intuitive/holistic processing, more than did those who were asked to consider a material purchase. In two additional studies, participants who were induced to think intuitively chose experiential purchases more often (Study 4) and reported a higher willingness to pay for them (Study 5) compared with participants induced to think analytically. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Correction to: Is Ultimate Attribution Error Universal? Inter-group Attribution for Success and Failure among University Students in Delhi

In the abstract, the sixth line should read as “Results indicated that both General Caste category and Scheduled Caste category participants showed no inter-group attribution bias.     

Influence of motivated reasoning on saving and spending decisions

The decision to save enhances well-being in the long-term but it conflicts with the desire to spend money to gain immediate gratification. In this research, we examine the influence of having single versus multiple accounts on individuals’ savings and spending decisions. We find that individuals save more with a single account than with multiple liquid accounts. Utilizing work on motivated reasoning and fuzzy-trace theory, we suggest that multiple accounts engender fuzzy gist representations, making it easier for people to generate justifications to support their desired spending decisions. However, a single account reduces the latitude for distortion and hinders generation of justifications to support desirable spending decisions. Across four studies that provide participants with the opportunity to earn, spend, and save money, we demonstrate the proposed effect and test the underlying process.     

Pressure-induced structural transition in UGa2

High-pressure X-ray diffraction has been performed on UGa₂ up to 20?GPa using a diamond anvil cell. UGa₂ exhibits the AlB₂-type structure with space group P6/mmm at room temperature and atmospheric pressure. At about 16?GPa a reversible structural transformation to a tetragonal phase was observed. The bulk modulus of the AlB₂-type phase has been determined to be ～100?GPa, which is comparable to rare earth digallides like TmGa₂ and HoGa₂.     

Effect of Mg content on Portevin–Le Chatelier band strain in Al–Mg sheet alloys

Experimental measurements of stress drops and band strains in type-B Portevin–Le Chatelier (PLC) bands were carried out for 5xxx series Al–Mg sheets with Mg content between 1.8 and 4.5?wt%. While the stress drops increase with global strain, the band strain values in all the samples follow a common linear relationship with global strain. The results indicate that the type-B PLC band strain is independent of solute content at given strain rate.     

Cellular site and molecular mode of synapsin action in associative learning

Synapsin is an evolutionarily conserved, presynaptic vesicular phosphoprotein. Here, we ask where and how synapsin functions in associative behavioral plasticity. Upon loss or reduction of synapsin in a deletion mutant or via RNAi, respectively, Drosophila larvae are impaired in odor-sugar associative learning. Acute global expression of synapsin and local expression in only the mushroom body, a third-order "cortical" brain region, fully restores associative ability in the mutant. No rescue is found by synapsin expression in mushroom body input neurons or by expression excluding the mushroom bodies. On the molecular level, we find that a transgenically expressed synapsin with dysfunctional PKA-consensus sites cannot rescue the defect of the mutant in associative function, thus assigning synapsin as a behaviorally relevant effector of the AC-cAMP-PKA cascade. We therefore suggest that synapsin acts in associative memory trace formation in the mushroom bodies, as a downstream element of AC-cAMP-PKA signaling. These analyses provide a comprehensive chain of explanation from the molecular level to an associative behavioral change.     

Effects of organizational citizenship behaviors on selection decisions in employment interviews

This article reports on an experiment examining the effects of job candidates' propensity to exhibit organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) on selection decisions made in the context of a job interview. We developed videos that manipulated candidate responses to interview questions tapping task performance and citizenship behavior content in 2 administrative positions. Results obtained from 480 undergraduates provided support for our hypotheses that job candidates who exhibited higher levels of helping, voice, and loyalty behaviors were generally rated as more competent, received higher overall evaluations, and received higher salary recommendations than job candidates who exhibited lower levels of these behaviors. These effects held even after taking into account candidate responses regarding task performance. We also found that candidate responses to OCB-related questions tended to have a greater effect on selection decisions for the higher level position (supervisor of administrative personnel) than for the lower level one (administrative assistant). Finally, content analyses of open-ended responses indicated that participants' selection decisions were particularly sensitive to candidates who exhibited low levels of voice and helping behaviors. Implications and future research are discussed.     

Illness Beliefs and Coping Strategies of Diabetic Women

The present study examines the relationship between illness beliefs and coping strategies in diabetic women patients. Measures of illness beliefs and coping strategies were administered to 100 diabetic women. Patients, who believed more strongly in psychosocial, supernatural, and environmental causes of illness, adopted avoidance coping strategies, whereas those who believed less strongly in these causes adhered to approach coping strategies. Patients, who held a strong belief in disease control by themselves and doctors, used approach coping strategies, whereas those who believed in supernatural control of illness used avoidance coping strategies. Approach coping was linked to less severe consequences of illness, less pain, and greater hope for positive outcomes of illness.