Infants and toddlers discriminate amount: are they measuring?

Four experiments that show an early ability to encode and retain information about extent are presented. We found that infants discriminate between the heights of dowels in a habituation task. We also found that toddlers discriminate between heights on a choice task in which a target dowel is presented and removed and they then choose between the target and a foil. Until 4 years of age, however, discrimination occurs only in the presence of a perceptually salient standard. Adults do not require a perceptually present standard; they can assess extent across temporal or spatial gaps by imposing a standard (measure). The present findings indicate that infants and toddlers do not possess an adult ability to establish extent, but that they do possess a skill that provides a start point for this important intellectual achievement.     

Potential moral stigma and reactions to sexually transmitted diseases: evidence for a disjunction fallacy

Five experiments demonstrate how potential moral stigma leads people to underplay their susceptibility to sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and dampens their interest in getting tested. After adding unprotected sex to a list of otherwise innocuous possible vectors for a disease, the authors found that infected people were perceived to be less moral (Experiment 1a), and individuals believed that if they had the disease, others would see them as less moral too (Experiment 1b). Adding this stigmatized vector also reduced reported testing intentions (Experiment 2) and perceived risk of exposure (Experiment 3)--a disjunction fallacy because adding a potential cause reduced estimated likelihood, in violation of basic probability rules. Finally, the authors replicated the effect in a computer virus analog (Experiment 4) and showed that it did not result from simply knowing that one has not engaged in the stigmatized behavior. Results suggest that avoidance of potential stigma can have dramatic health consequences, both for an individual's health decision and for health policy.     

Bilateral entorhinal cortex lesions impair acquisition of delayed spatial alternation in rats

Entorhinal cortex lesions induce significant reorganization of several homotypic and heterotypic inputs to the hippocampus. This investigation determined whether surviving heterotypic inputs after bilateral entorhinal lesions would support the acquisition of a learned alternation task. Rats with entorhinal lesions or sham operations were trained to acquire a spatial alternation task. Although the sham-operated rats acquired the task within about 3 weeks postsurgery, rats with bilateral entorhinal lesions failed to learn the task after 12 consecutive weeks of training despite heterotypic sprouting of the cholinergic septodentate pathway and the expansion of the commissural/associational fiber plexus within the dentate gyrus. Thus, heterotypic sprouting failed to ameliorate significantly the effects of bilateral entorhinal lesions. Rather, entorhinal lesions produced a persistent impairment of spatial memory, characterized by a mixture of random error production and perseverative responding.     

Parental influence on youth propensity to join the military

The purpose of this research was to apply the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) in a model of youths’ career choice intentions and parents’ recommendation intentions. Specifically, a TPB model was developed for youth-parent dyads and tested with SEM to examine parental influence on youth intentions as well as behavior. Results indicated that a modified TPB model is useful for describing how youth and parent beliefs translate into enlistment intentions and pre-enlistment behavior. The strongest impact parents appeared to have on their children was through efficacy beliefs, followed by the link between parents’ attitudes and youths’ normative beliefs. Implications for recruitment and outreach efforts are discussed.     

Obsessive-compulsive disorder with comorbid major depression: what is the role of cognitive factors?

Individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) commonly experience comorbid mood disturbances such as major depressive disorder (MDD). Previous studies that have compared OCD patients with and without MDD have revealed differences in demographic characteristics, clinical severity, and symptom presentation between these two patient groups. Previous studies have not, however, examined whether there are differences with respect to cognitive processes. The present study therefore aimed to address this gap in the literature. Eighty patients with OCD and no unipolar mood disorders were compared with 34 OCD patients with comorbid major depression on measures of OCD symptoms, cognitions, and insight, as well as on measures of depression and functional impairment. Whereas depressed OCD patients evidenced higher scores than non-depressed OCD patients on semi-idiographic measures of OCD symptoms and cognitions, this was not the case for nomothetic measures. Functional impairment and the tendency to misinterpret innocuous intrusive thoughts as significant emerged as unique predictors of depression within the entire sample of OCD patients. Results are discussed in terms of (a) the importance of semi-idiographic assessment of OCD, (b) possible explanations for the relationship between OCD symptoms, depression, and cognitive processes, and (c) the psychological treatment of comorbid OCD and MDD.     

An Empirical Investigation of Critical Success Factors in the Personal Selling Process for Homogenous Goods

This study uses a Critical Success Factor approach to evaluate a representative set of 51 selling techniques with the intent of determining what techniques are more critical to sales success for salespeople who sell homogenous products than others and what techniques are associated with failure. A set of twelve techniques were identified that distinguished salespeople in the top decile from those in the bottom decile.     

Effects of perspective taking on courtroom decisions

Four experiments examined the hypothesis that perspective taking with a defendant would lead to greater empathy, which would mediate lowered perceptions of culpability, with lowered culpability mediating a lower probability of guilt and recidivism. Experiments 1 and 2 established that perspective taking leads to a lower probability of guilty verdicts and recidivism, mediated by a decreased perception of the defendant's culpability. Experiment 2 showed that it does so by increasing empathy. Experiment 3 showed that perspective taking also heightens the perception of culpability through increased empathy for the victim. Experiment 4 showed that decreased culpability is in part driven by leniency, which is also a function of empathy. We tie our findings into other research investigating links between empathy and perspective taking.