Procedural justice,identity and deference to the law: What shapes rule‐following in a period of transition?

The group engagement model has two core arguments. The first is that procedural justice shapes rule‐following in groups, organisations and societies. The second is that the influence of procedural justice upon rule‐following is mediated by changes in people's identification with groups. This study uses a sample of South Africans to test both arguments. While the procedural justice argument has already been widely tested and supported, this study extends that test to a society in rapid transition and upheaval. Further, it tests the identity mediation argument in the same context. The results support both arguments. Procedural justice shapes rule‐following and that influence is mediated by identification with superordinate authority.     

Why do Alzheimer patients have difficulty with pronouns? Working memory, semantics, and reference in comprehension and production in Alzheimer's disease

Three experiments investigated the extent to which semantic and working-memory deficits contribute to Alzheimer patients' impairments in producing and comprehending referring expressions. In Experiment 1, the spontaneous speech of 11 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) contained a greater ratio of pronouns to full noun phrases than did the spontaneous speech produced by 9 healthy controls. Experiments 2 and 3 used a cross-modal naming methodology to compare reference comprehension in another group of 10 patients and 10 age-matched controls. In Experiment 2, patients were less sensitive than healthy controls to the grammatical information necessary for processing pronouns. In Experiment 3, patients were better able to remember referent information in short paragraphs when reference was maintained with full noun phrases rather than pronouns, but healthy controls showed the reverse pattern. Performance in all three experiments was linked to working memory performance but not to word finding difficulty. We discuss these findings in terms of a theory of reference processing, the Informational Load Hypothesis, which views referential impairments in AD as the consequence of normal discourse processing in the context of a working memory impairment.     

The Influence of Decision Makers' Goals on Their Concerns About Procedural Justice1

Two studies examine how decision makers' goals of enhancing organizational effectiveness and promoting positive interpersonal relations shape their decision making when they are allocating scarce resources among group members. Past research has conceptualized this problem as one of balancing between the use of two distributive justice principles: equity and equality. The studies reported examine the degree to which authorities are also concerned about issues of procedural justice. The results suggest that experienced decision makers—both managerial and administrative—believe that when trying to maintain positive interpersonal relations it is as important to use decision-making procedures that will be regarded as fair (procedural justice) as it is to allocate outcomes in ways which will be regarded as fair (distributive justice). Decision makers' definitions of procedural justice are also examined.     

Aging and attitude change.

Social psychologists have proposed a variety of different models to account for people's relative openness to attitude change through the life cycle. Two of the most important models are the impressionable years model, which suggests an especially great openness to change among the young, and the lifelong openness model, which suggests that age is unrelated to openness to attitude change. Two studies were conducted to examine the openness of people of varying ages to attitude change. In both studies, the influence of personal experiences with government agencies on attitudes toward government was examined. The attitudes of older people changed as much or more in response to their personal experiences as did those of younger people. These results support the lifelong openness model of attitude change.     

Generation of random-dot stereogratings

Stereogratings are an extension of periodic stimulation to the Cyclopean domain. A program for the generation of random-dot stereogratings is described, with discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of the program.     

Characteristics of stereomovement suppression

Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics - The suppression of visibility of stereomovement was investigated for sinusoidal depth movement of a test line with an antiphase reference line....     

The effects of limited and intensive school psychologist-teacher consultation

Effects of two modes of school psychological consultation were examined against four main outcomes: (1) changes in teacher understanding of the child, (2) the direction of the changes in teacher understanding of the child, (3) teacher satisfaction with consultation, and (4) teacher follow-through on psychologist's recommendations. The two consultative modes were differentiated by the amount of time and by the length and elaboration of the psychological report. Eight school psychologists alternated in acting out the different consultative modes, plus a control condition, with a total of 120 teachers who had referred children. Data were obtained through paper and pencil questionnaires completed pre- and postconsultation by teacher and psychologist. The results strongly supported the intensive over the limited consultation, and any consultation over no consultation.     

The role of apparent motion cues in orientation masking

It has been reported that the tuning function relating masking of a vertical line to the orientation of a masking line differs in form depending upon whether the mask is presented with the target (simultaneous masking) or before it (forward masking). From such evidence, it might be concluded that different mechanisms are implicated. Lovegrove (1976) suggested that lateral inhibition mediates the simultaneous effect, whereas postexcitatory suppression (adaptation) mediates the successive effect. The six experiments reported here show that apparent motion cues reduce the effectiveness of successive masking when single-line stimuli are used, but that when such motion cues are eliminated, the two tuning functions are similar in form. It is, thus, unnecessary to invoke separate mechanisms in the two cases.