The Influence of Unrestricted Information Exchange on Willingness to Share Information With Outsiders

This study addressed how engaging in different forms of information exchange within a group is related to group members' willingness to share risk information with outsiders. Drawing from social exchange theories, we focused on 3 unrestricted forms of information exchange: pure‐generalized, group‐generalized, and productive. We hypothesized that individuals' intentions to share information with outsiders would be associated positively with engagement in pure or group‐generalized exchanges and negatively with productive exchange. The hypotheses were supported with data from a national survey of U.S. growers (N = 452) that examined their information‐sharing behaviors with other parties inside and outside their local region. The findings have broad implications for understanding information sharing within and across groups.     

Alterations in error-related brain activity and post-error behavior over time

This study examines the relation between the error-related negativity (ERN) and post-error behavior over time in healthy young adults (N=61). Event-related brain potentials were collected during two sessions of an identical flanker task. Results indicated changes in ERN and post-error accuracy were related across task sessions, with more negative ERN associated with greater improvements in post-error accuracy. This relationship was independent of any cross-sectional relationships between overall task performance, individual difference factors, including personality and self-efficacy, and indices of self-regulatory action monitoring. These results indicate that the relation between ERN and post-error accuracy remains intact and consistent regardless of variation in this set of individual difference factors previously associated with both of these indices of self-regulatory action monitoring, providing support for the strength, robustness, and persistence of this relationship in the process of adaptively controlling behavior to enhance task performance.     

The effect of action video game playing on sensorimotor learning: Evidence from a movement tracking task

Research on the impact of action video game playing has revealed performance advantages on a wide range of perceptual and cognitive tasks. It is not known, however, if playing such games confers similar advantages in sensorimotor learning. To address this issue, the present study used a manual motion-tracking task that allowed for a sensitive measure of both accuracy and improvement over time. When the target motion pattern was consistent over trials, gamers improved with a faster rate and eventually outperformed non-gamers. Performance between the two groups, however, did not differ initially. When the target motion was inconsistent, changing on every trial, results revealed no difference between gamers and non-gamers. Together, our findings suggest that video game playing confers no reliable benefit in sensorimotor control, but it does enhance sensorimotor learning, enabling superior performance in tasks with consistent and predictable structure.     

Reconceptualising parental monitoring within a model of goal-directed parental action

The concept and operationalisation of parental monitoring in adolescent behavioural research is idiosyncratic, and often conflates multiple concepts. This hinders study and understanding of its role in the distinct processes of adolescent development and behaviour. This paper introduces a model of Goal-Directed Parental Action, applied to adolescent crime, in order to situate and thus define the concept of parental monitoring. This model draws on Situational Action Theory to both prioritise motivation and specify a parental action process. This process distinguishes parental goals from the means by which to achieve them and from the knowledge gathering required to evaluate progress towards such goals. Within this framework, parental monitoring is defined as the employment of active information-gathering behaviours by parents to help them to gain knowledge about and evaluate their child's progress towards a range of parentally selected developmental and behavioural goals. In addition to facilitating this definition of parental monitoring, the model of Goal-Directed Parental Action has future potential to clarify other parenting concepts and processes.     

Blind to Bias? Young Children Do Not Anticipate that Sunk Costs Lead to Irrational Choices

Young children anticipate that others act rationally in light of their beliefs and desires, and environmental constraints. However, little is known about whether children anticipate others’ irrational choices. We investigated young children's ability to predict that sunk costs can lead to irrational choices. Across four experiments, 5- to 6-year-olds (total N = 185) and adults (total N = 117) judged which of two identical objects an agent would keep, one obtained at a high cost or one obtained at a low cost. In Experiment 1, adults predicted that the agent would choose the high-cost object over the low-cost one, whereas children responded at chance. Experiment 2 replicated these findings in children, but also included another condition which showed they were sensitive to future costs. They predicted that an agent would be more likely to seek out a low-cost item than a high-cost item. Experiments 3 and 4 then found that children do not anticipate the sunk cost bias in first person scenarios, or in interpersonal sunk cost scenarios, where costs are sunk by others. Taken together, our findings suggest that young children may struggle to understand and predict irrational behavior. The findings also reveal an asymmetry between how they consider sunk costs and future costs in understanding actions. We propose that this asymmetry might arise because children do not consider sunk costs as wasted.