People as intuitive prosecutors: The impact of social-control goals on attributions of responsibility

Three experiments explored determinants of punitive character attributions to norm violators. Experiment 1 showed that ideological conservatism and manipulated threat to society increased anger and attributional punitiveness when there was ambiguity about culpability. Experiment 2 showed that informing observers that norm violations were widespread and rarely punished increased attributional punitiveness by activating anger-charged retributive goals. Experiment 3 showed that liberals and conservatives alike felt justified in assigning greater blame to high-status perpetrators who commit acts of negligence with more severe consequences but that only conservatives felt justified in doing so for low-status perpetrators. Overall, the results reinforce the hypothesis that societal threat activates a prosecutorial mindset identifiable by a correlated cluster of attributions, emotions, punishment goals and punitiveness.     

Word acquisition, retention, and transfer: findings from contextual and isolated word training

Successful reading instruction entails not only acquiring new words but also remembering them after training has finished and accessing their word-specific representations when they are encountered in new text. We report two studies demonstrating that acquisition, retention, and transfer of unfamiliar words were affected differentially by isolated word and context training. Materials were individualized to include only those words that average readers in second grade were unable to name in context. Different words were trained in each condition; context training presented words in stories, and isolated word training presented words on flashcards. Together, the studies show that context training promotes word acquisition beyond that experienced from reading words in isolation. Contrary to the prevailing opinion, memory performance for words trained in context and in isolation did not differ; children demonstrated excellent retention over an 8-day interval in both conditions. Finally, transfer was maximized when the congruency between training and testing was high. Therefore, when reading trained words in novel circumstances, the best method of training was mediated by the transfer task employed at test.     

Willingness to use microbicides varies by race/ethnicity, experience with prevention products, and partner type.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate women's willingness to use vaginal microbicides to reduce/prevent HIV infection, using measures grounded in the individual, behavioral, and social contexts of sex. DESIGN: A cross-sectional study that enrolled a sample (N = 531) of 18-55 year old Latina, African-American, and White women in the U.S. between October, 2004, and July, 2005. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Willingness to use microbicides and individual- and context-related variables (e.g., demographics, relationship status). RESULTS: Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported a one-dimensional, 8-item scale, with high internal consistency (alpha = .91). Subgroup analyses within the Latina (n = 166), African- American (n = 193), and White sub-samples (n = 172) also supported a unidimensional scale with strong internal validity and high reliability. Race/ethnicity as a contextual factor, a woman's history of using prevention products, and the nature of the sexual partnership were predictive of willingness to use microbicides (R = .41). That is, women with greater frequencies of condom use, a history of spermicide use, and non-main sexual partners had higher predicted Willingness to Use Microbicides scale scores, while White women had lower predicted scores. CONCLUSION: The Willingness to Use Microbicides scale serves as the first psychometrically validated measure of factors related to microbicide acceptability. Developing and implementing psychometrically validated and contextualized microbicide acceptability measures, in an effort to understand microbicide users and circumstances of use, is crucial to both clinical trials and future intervention studies.     

Attentional filtering of transients allows for a recovery from change blindness

Previous reports suggest that introducing distracting visual transients during a change-detection task can result in change blindness. In four experiments, we found that presenting the distracting transients repeatedly prior to the change produces a recovery from change blindness. This recovery from change blindness is not due solely to low-level neural adaptation of transient detectors, but instead seems to be based on attentional filtering of the distracting transient signals. This attentional filtering can be object-based rather than location-based. In addition, we found that the ability to achieve this attentional filtering depends critically on presenting the to-be-ignored transient signals prior to the time of the change.     

Age of Onset of ADHD in a Sample of Elementary School Students

Examined the age of onset of ADHD symptoms and subtypes using parent ratings of a large sample of elementary school students. Results showed: (1) in children with ADHD-combined type, hyperactive-impulsive symptoms emerged at younger ages than inattention symptoms; (2) about one-fifth of children who met symptom count and impairment criteria for ADHD did not meet the age of onset criterion; (3) Children who did not meet the age of onset criterion consisted primarily of children with inattention problems; and (4) children who did not meet the age of onset criterion had more impaired parent-child relationships, self-esteem, family functioning, and higher overall impairment ratings than children who did meet the criterion. These results raise questions about the validity of the age of onset criterion for ADHD as formulated in DSM-IV.     

Parental Narratives About Genetic Testing for Hearing Loss: A One Year Follow Up Study

Few studies examine whether and how parental attitudes towards genetic testing change over time. In this study we interviewed parents of 14 children with newly identified hearing loss at two time points: after referral to genetics and 1 year later. Qualitative analyses of parental narratives indicate that parental attitudes did not change significantly over this time. Parents who perceived genetic testing to be useful continued to value it after testing, while parents who did not perceive it as being useful for their child’s future held the same view a year later. The only parents who changed their views regarding the usefulness of genetic testing for hearing loss were those who reported that their children underwent significant changes in their hearing loss or were faced with other life threatening conditions. Parents were also often unaware of the role of the genetic counselor and how genetic counseling could help address many of their lingering questions and concerns. These emergent themes indicate the need for geneticists and genetic counselors to be aware of and sensitized to the questions and attitudes that bring parents to a genetic evaluation, as well as the reasons why parents may not follow up with genetic testing for hearing loss when recommended.     

The ideal elf: identity exploration in World of Warcraft.

In this study, we examine the identity exploration possibilities presented by online multiplayer games in which players use graphics tools and character-creation software to construct an avatar, or character. We predicted World of Warcraft players would create their main character more similar to their ideal self than the players themselves were. Our results support this idea; a sample of players rated their character as having more favorable attributes that were more favorable than their own self-rated attributes. This trend was stronger among those with lower psychological well-being, who rated themselves comparatively lower than they rated their character. Our results suggest that the game world allows players the freedom to create successful virtual selves regardless of the constraints of their actual situation.     

Protecting people in research: a comparison between biomedical and traffic research

Traffic research shares a fundamental dilemma with other areas of empirical research in which humans are potentially put at risk. Research is justified because it can improve safety in the long run. Nevertheless, people can be harmed in the research situation. Hence, we need to balance short-term risks against long-term safety improvements, much as in other areas of research with human subjects. In this paper we focus on ethical issues that arise when human beings are directly affected in the performance of research by examining how the ethical requirements in biomedical research can inform traffic research. After introducing the basic ethical requirements on biomedical research, each of the major requirements is discussed in relation to traffic research. We identify the main areas where biomedical research and traffic research differ, and where the ethical requirements from the former cannot easily be transferred to the latter. Finally, we argue that there is a need for systematic studies of the ethics of traffic research and point to some of the issues that need to be addressed.     

Individual differences in young and older adults' spelling: do good spellers age better than poor spellers?

Young and older adults' ability to retrieve the spellings of high- and low-frequency words was assessed via tests of spelling recognition and production. One of the spelling production tests required participants to write down the correct spellings of auditorily presented words, and accuracy was used to categorize participants in both age groups as good or poor spellers. The results showed that individual spelling ability and word frequency contributed to age differences. Older adults who were poor spellers were less accurate in recognizing and producing correct spelling than young adults who were poor spellers. In contrast, no age differences occurred for good spellers. Furthermore, low-frequency words were especially difficult for young adults and poor spellers, relative to older adults and good spellers. These results indicate that aging alone is not detrimental to the processes underlying recognition or production of spelling but instead compounds existing problems caused by poor spelling.