Cognitive control and socially desirable behavior: The role of interpersonal impact

The current research reconciles two contradicting sets of findings on the role of cognitive control in socially desirable behaviors. One set of findings suggests that people are tempted by self-serving impulses and have to rely on cognitive control overriding such impulses to act in socially desirable ways. Another set of findings suggests people are guided by other-regarding impulses and cognitive control is not necessary to motivate socially desirable behaviors. We theorize that the dominant impulse is to behave in a socially desirable manner when the interpersonal impact of an action is salient, and that the dominant impulse is to behave in a self-serving manner when the interpersonal impact of an action is not salient. Studies 1–3 found that impairing participants’ cognitive control led to less socially desirable behavior when interpersonal impact was not salient, but more socially desirable behavior when interpersonal impact was salient. Study 4 demonstrates that behaving in a socially desirable manner causes cognitive control impairment when interpersonal impact is not salient. But, when interpersonal impact is salient, behaving in a self-serving manner impairs cognitive control. We discuss the implications of our findings for understanding and managing socially desirable behaviors.     

Avoiding the problem state bottleneck by strategic use of the environment

We investigated whether environmental support can be used to circumvent the problem state bottleneck in human multitasking. Previously, it was shown that people can only maintain a single chunk of information in their problem state resource, the central part of working memory. Consequently, when the problem state resource was required by multiple tasks concurrently, performance decreased. This phenomenon was termed the problem state bottleneck. To investigate whether the environment can be used to circumvent this bottleneck, we conducted an experiment with two main conditions. In the No-Support condition we replicated an earlier experiment that indicated the existence of the problem state bottleneck. In the Support condition we presented external cues, reducing the load on the problem state resource. To support the results of the experiment we present a computational cognitive model. The experiment and model indicated that the problem state bottleneck can be avoided by using external cues. However, subjects only used external cues when this led to faster behavior. These results were interpreted in the light of the Soft Constraints Hypothesis, which states that humans always follow the fastest strategy possible, as opposed to the most accurate strategy.     

Event-method directed forgetting: Forgetting a video segment is more effortful than remembering it

Videos were presented depicting events such as baking cookies or cleaning a fish tank. Periodically, the video paused and an instruction to Remember (R) or Forget (F) the preceding video segment was presented; the video then resumed. Participants later responded more accurately to cued-recall questions (E1) and to true/false statements (E2–5) regarding R segments than F segments. This difference was larger for specific information (the woman added 3 cups of flour) than for general information (the woman added flour). Participants were also slower to detect visual probes presented following F instructions compared to those presented following R instructions. These findings suggest that intentional forgetting is an effortful process that can be performed even on segments of otherwise continuous events and that the result is a relatively impoverished representation of the unwanted information in memory.     

The time course of temporal preparation in an applied setting: A study of gaming behavior

We examined the time course of temporal preparation in the practice of computer gaming. Participants held an infrared rifle to shoot animated figures (“terrorists”) that appeared from an elevator that opened briefly after the sound of a bell. The sound was either loud or soft and the interval between the sound and the opening of the elevator varied between 100 and 600 ms. We found that shooting latency decreased exponentially as a function of interval, reflecting growing temporal preparation towards an optimum. When the sound was soft, this function was shifted to the right as compared to when the sound was loud. These findings are consistent with a model assuming that preparation starts upon the detection of a warning (i.e., later for the soft than for the loud sound) and continues until the detection of a target (i.e., longer as the interval increases). These results signify a successful application of a theoretical model in an applied setting.     

Differences in the acuity of the Approximate Number System in adults: The effect of mathematical ability

It is largely admitted that processing numerosity relies on an innate Approximate Number System (ANS), and recent research consistently observed a relationship between ANS acuity and mathematical ability in childhood. However, studies assessing this relationship in adults led to contradictory results. In this study, adults with different levels of mathematical expertise performed two tasks on the same pairs of dot collections, based either on numerosity comparison or on cumulative area comparison. Number of dots and cumulative area were congruent in half of the stimuli, and incongruent in the other half. The results showed that adults with higher mathematical ability obtained lower Weber fractions in the numerical condition than participants with lower mathematical ability. Further, adults with lower mathematical ability were more affected by the interference of the continuous dimension in the numerical comparison task, whereas conversely higher-expertise adults showed stronger interference of the numerical dimension in the continuous comparison task. Finally, ANS acuity correlated with arithmetic performance. Taken together, the data suggest that individual differences in ANS acuity subsist in adulthood, and that they are related to mathematical ability.     

Creating Public Alienation: Expert Cultures of Risk and Ethics on GMOs

For a century and a half cholera has been a stigmatizing disease. That the entire world was susceptible to it seemed merely to accentuate its association with Asia, and particularly with Bengal and its people. The recent epidemic in Haiti suggests that cholera still carries stigma. That stigma is the product of epistemic practices within an interdisciplinary and orientalist cholera science that took shape in the 1860s and 1870s, which have, without renewed scrutiny, prevailed largely uncontested until recent decades. Those practices involved an over-interpretation of the historical epidemiological work of John Macpherson by his colleague N. C. Macnamara. Recent research, recognizing the wide distribution and genetic instability of Vibrio cholerae, offers an alternative context for appreciating Macpherson's insights. This new program of interdisciplinary cholera research seems largely free of stigmatizing representations, but nor does it offer (or seek) a single and simple program of cholera prevention. The cholera case study invites reflection on the little-studied problem of epistemic accountability in interdisciplinary research, alerts us to questions of how disciplines are (and might be) made to cohere in policy-driven inquiries. The chief maxim is toward more explicit inclusion of the concept of multiple working hypotheses.     

Infrastructure and Scaffolding: Interpretation and Change of Research Involving Human Genetic Information

This essay addresses the relationship of interpretation to change, at two levels. One level concerns the revolutionary claims of molecular biology and biotechnology about using genetic information, read literally or with a minimum of interpretation, to reshape human life. The other level concerns the relationship in social studies of science and technology (STS) between interpreting projects in the life sciences and influencing their direction. On that level, the essay is experimental, employing a series of vignettes that introduce themes and questions—scaffolding—intended to stimulate readers to make their own connections between interpretation and change, in science, STS, and society. The vignettes in Part 1, which range from treatment of individuals with PKU or MAOA genes to personalized medicine and biobanks, indicate in different ways that the use of genetic information always requires social infrastructure. Once attention is given to the actual or implied social infrastructure, the prospect of reshaping life using human genetic information raises more questions than it answers. This thread carries over into Part 2, which speaks to an area of STS that needs more development, namely, conceptualizing the structure of the social context of scientific and technological developments and the nature of human agency in the ongoing restructuring of that context. The vignettes create a picture in which the influence on science of an STS interpretation will, like any effort to produce change, depend on how it links with other engagements and with the heterogeneous components that make up ongoing, intersecting processes of science in society.     

Manipulating recall vantage perspective of intrusive memories in dysphoria

The current study attempted to experimentally manipulate mode of recall (field, observer perspective) in a sample of mildly dysphoric participants (N=134) who reported a distressing intrusive memory of negative autobiographical event. Specifically, the current study sought to ascertain whether shifting participants into a converse perspective would have differential effects on the reported experience of their memory. Results indicated that shifting participants from a field to an observer perspective resulted in decreased experiential ratings: specifically, reduced distress and vividness. Also, as anticipated, the converse shift in perspective (from observer to field) did not lead to a corresponding increase in experiential ratings, but did result in reduced ratings of observation and a trend was observed for decreased levels of detachment. The findings support the notion that recall perspective has a functional role in the regulation of intrusion-related distress and represents a cognitive avoidance mechanism.     

Invariance of cognitive triage in the development of recall in adulthood

Past research has demonstrated that cognitive triage (weak-strong-weak recall pattern) is a robust effect that optimises children's recall. The aim of the current research was to determine whether adults’ free recall also exhibits triage and whether cognitive triage is less marked with older than younger adults’ recall. Younger and older adults memorised 16 unrelated words until all items were recalled perfectly. The triage pattern existed for both the younger and older adults’ recall and there was evidence for age differences in triage. Our results are consistent with claims of greater verbatim forgetting and increased susceptibility to output interference with age in adulthood. Further research is needed to determine whether fuzzy-trace theory adequately explains the ageing of triage and what factors play a role in the development of this pattern of recall in adulthood.     

A Study of low scores in Canadian children and adolescents on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children,Fourth Edition (WISC-IV)

Knowing the prevalence of low neurocognitive scores for the WISC-IV Canadian normative sample (WISC-IV^CDN) is an important supplement for clinical interpretation of test performance. On the WISC-IV^CDN, it is uncommon for children and adolescents to have 4 or more subtest scores or 2 or more Index scores ≤ 9th percentile when all scores on the battery are considered simultaneously. As the level of the child's intelligence increases or the number of years of parental education increases, the prevalence of low scores decreases. These results are consistent with existing studies of the base rates of low scores in children and adolescents on pediatric cognitive batteries, including the WISC-IV American normative sample. Tables provided are ready for clinical use.