Individual differences in sensitivity to health communications: consideration of future consequences.

There are reliable individual differences in the extent to which people consider the long- and short-term consequences of their behaviors. Such differences, assessed by the Consideration of Future Consequences (CFC) Scale (A. Strathman, F. Gleicher, D. S. Boninger, & C. S. Edwards, 1994), are hypothesized to influence the impact of a persuasive communication. In an experimental study, the time frame of occurrence of positive and negative consequences of engaging in a new colorectal cancer-screening program was manipulated in a sample of two hundred twenty 50-69-year-old men and women. CFC moderated (a) the processing of short- versus long-term consequences and (b) the persuasive impact of the different communications on behavioral intentions. Low CFC individuals produced more positive thoughts and were more persuaded when positive consequences were short term and negative consequences were long term. The opposite was true for high CFC individuals.     

Studying reaction time with nonaging intervals: An effective procedure

The nonaging-intervals procedure, in which momentary probability of stimulus occurrence remains constant, is preferable in principle to varied or constant intervals for double-stimulation experiments on reaction time (RT). However, elevation of RT has uniformly been found at short waiting intervals on single-stimulation baseline tasks. Effects attributable to the first stimulus on double-stimulation tasks would thus be confounded. The required level baselines were obtained for both simple and choice reactions by combining the transit-signal method with nonaging intervals. Possible reasons for this success were the elimination of timekeeping error and psychological refractoriness. Results with precued full response information show the expected decline of RT with increase of precue-to-stimulus interval. Suggestions are given for the use of nonaging intervals for studying the attentional demands of movements and the influence of level of momentary probability on basic RT effects.     

When encoding fails: Instructions,feedback, and registration without learning

Four experiments replicated and extended the registration-without-learning effect, in which there is little improvement in the ability to discriminate an old target (X) from a highly similar test item (Y) after the first few presentations of X, even though judgments of frequency continue to rise in an openended fashion. Forced-choice testing revealed the anomalous form of the learning curve for X-Y discrimination (faster and then slower than the exponential). Effects of several different learning instructions were compared, but these appeared to affect only the level of initial learning, and to do little to promote X-Y discrimination learning on later presentations. The opportunity for self-testing with feedback during study provided no benefits when responding was covert, but did when overt anticipation was required. The findings are discussed in relation to the roles of bottom-up and topdown processing in memory encoding, and to the importance of error-correcting feedback in further structural learning of materials, once the materials have become familiar.     

Phonological spelling

A case study is presented of phonological spelling, an acquired spelling disorder in which the primary symptom is the occurrence of phonologically plausible errors (e.g. "flood" → flud). Not all of the patient's spelling errors are as phonologically "perfect" as this example; but it is arguable that the errors primarily derive from a routine which segments a phonological code and assigns orthographic representations to these individual segments. This account of errors in phonological spelling is contrasted with an interpretation of oral reading errors in surface dyslexia. We conclude that errors in the two disorders do not reveal a precise parallel, and that the contrast is partly attributable to the differential role of comprehension in reading and spelling.     

Direct visual access in reading for meaning

Two experiments examined whether phonological receding is an obligatory stage in reading for meaning or whether direct access to a word's semantic representation is the general rule. The first study demonstrated that the time to make a semantic decision about a pair of words was much more delayed by misspelling than was the time to make a phonological one. The second study investigated the effect of varying the syllabic length of a word on reaction time in a category decision task. While reaction time varied with the semantic difficulty of the category decision, it generally proved invariant with respect to syllabic length. It is argued that reading for meaning generally uses a direct route from visual form to semantic representation.     

The basis of the 3/4 view advantage in face recognition

Three-quarter views of faces promote better recognition memory for previously unfamiliar faces than do full-face views. This paper reports experiments which examine the possible basis of the effect, and, in particular, examine whether the effect reflects some ‘canonical’ role for the 3/4 view of a face. Experiment 1 showed no advantage of 3/4 views over full-face views when the task was to decide whether or not each of a series of faces was that of a highly familiar colleague. In Experiment 2 a sequential matching task was used, where subjects had to respond positively if both members of a pair of faces were of the same person. When the faces used were highly familiar to the subjects, there was no evidence of an advantage for a 3/4 view in the matching task. Three-quarter views and full-face views led to equivalent performance, though profiles produced decrements in performance. When the same faces were shown to subjects who were unfamiliar with the faces, 3/4 views did lead to increased speeds in same trials, compared with full-face, though profiles again proved difficult. Thus a 3/4 view advantage appeared only where the faces were unfamiliar, and the task had to be performed at the level of visual matching. It appears that the 3/4 view advantage may be obtained only when the task involves explicit matching between test views and remembered target photographs, rather than reflecting any more fundamental properties of the representations used to recognize highly familiar faces.     

Personality and alcohol dependence

In this study, groups of ‘alcoholic’ subjects were independently rated as to their degree of dependence by a technique previously validated. The two groups of moderately and severely dependent subjects were then given the 101-item EPQ. In keeping with other similar studies, the data suggested that high N, high P and low E in men were related to the Clinical Alcohol Personality. Further analysis of these and other data suggest that whilst raised N scores may be a spurious artefact which is a consequence of heavy alcohol consumption, the E and P findings may reflect stable predispositions. There were no sex differences, but there was a major group difference on P, with both severely dependent men and women scoring significantly higher than their less dependent counterparts.     

Maternal perception of maladjustment in clinic-referred children: An extension of earlier research

The purpose of the present study was to extend earlier research examining predictors of maternal perceptions of maladjustment in clinic-referred children. Forty-five mothers and their clinic-referred children served as subjects. Maternal perceptions of child maladjustment were measured by the Parent Attitude Test. Maternal depression, marital adjustment, and family socioeconomic status were determined by the Beck Depression Inventory, Locke Marital Adjustment Test, and Myers and Bean index of social status, respectively. Child compliance and child deviant behavior (other than noncompliance) were obtained in home observations collected by independent observers. The results indicated that maternal depression was the best predictor of maternal perception of children. The remaining variables failed to contribute to the multiple regression analyses. Separate analyses also were performed on males and females and different predictor variables emerged for the two groups.The research reported in this study was supported by NIMH Grant 34193.     

Answering to Future People: Responsibility for Climate Change in a Breaking World

Our everyday notions of responsibility are often driven by our need to justify ourselves to specific others – especially those we harm, wrong, or otherwise affect. One challenge for contemporary ethics is to extend this interpersonal urgency to our relations with those future people who are harmed or affected by our actions. In this article, I explore our responsibility for climate change by imagining a possible ‘broken future’, damaged by the carbon emissions of previous generations (including ourselves), and then asking what its inhabitants might think of our current behaviour, our moral thinking, and our excuses. In particular, I will focus on a simplified scenario where present people can only avoid a broken future by sacrificing Rawlsian favourable conditions. Suppose we refuse to avoid a broken future, on the grounds that we cannot be expected to make such great sacrifices. If the broken future lacks favourable conditions, will its inhabitants accept our excuses? Will they hold us responsible for things we regard as excusable? If so, should we be guided by their judgements or by our own?