Rushton’s contributions to the study of mental ability

This essay describes Rushton’s contribution to examining the nexus of intelligence, race, and genetics, specifically what I termed “Spearman’s hypothesis”. It states that Black–White differences are “most marked in just those [tests] which are known to be saturated with g”. I (Jensen) had confirmed this hypothesis using large data sets in the 1970s and 1980s and also found that Black–White differences were most marked on the more heritable rather than the more cultural subtests. Rushton confirmed and extended these findings in many highly innovative ways and demonstrated Spearman’s hypothesis applied among samples of Gypsy Roma in Serbia, and East Asian, European, South Asian, Colored and Black samples in South Africa. He has not only documented group differences in brain size, intelligence, life span, family structure, infant mortality, developmental precocity, personality, and temperament, and rates of two egg twinning, and crime among East Asians, Europeans, and Africans, but also provided a life history theory that explains them.     

Factorial invariance and latent mean differences of scores on trait emotional intelligence across gender and age

Little is known about the factorial invariance and latent mean difference across sex and age in trait emotional intelligence (EI). The purpose of this study was to examine whether the measurement structure underlying trait EI is equivalent across sex and age groups. The sample consisted of 2919 teenagers, youths and adults. In order to investigate the above hypothesis the measurement and structural equivalence as well as the equality of latent means of scores across sex and age were tested. The multi-group confirmatory factor analysis results revealed that configural, metric, scalar and structural invariance exist across sex and age samples. Findings regarding the latent mean differences across sex and age groups are discussed with reference to recent and past findings.     

Resolute ignorance on race and Rushton

I review Rushton’s research on the evolutionary divergence of the three major human lineages. His life-history theory predicts, and his multiple analyses document, a consistent three-way patterning of mean differences among blacks, whites, and East Asians on coevolved sets of morphological, physiological, developmental, psychological, and behavioral traits. I then analyze a typical example of how critics evaluate his work, including the rate at which they cast his scientific hypotheses, methods and conclusions in politically charged language. The set of articles in question, although authored by well-known academics and appearing in a major, peer-reviewed journal, illustrate how mob science works to “discredit” valid research and enforce collective ignorance about entire bodies of evidence. Rushton is a scholar and gentleman but it appears that his critics often act like neither.     

Remember me? Psychopathic traits and emotional memory in an undergraduate sample

We investigated the effects of psychopathy on emotional memory among a predominantly female undergraduate sample. Undergraduates (N = 153, mean age = 20.1; 80.1% female; 57.1% Caucasian) completed a facial memory task. Participants were presented with a series of faces (sad, scared, angry, happy, neutral), completed a self-report measure of psychopathy, and were presented with another series of faces (with some from the first phase, and some new). Participants were asked whether they recognized each face from the first set, and reaction time (RT) was measured. Although memory for emotional faces did not differ from neutral faces, there were main effects of emotion, gender and psychopathy on RT. A significant 3-way interaction revealed that males who were higher in psychopathy had slower RTs; they were slow to remember sad, angry and neutral faces. In conclusion, psychopathy may affect emotional memory differently across gender. Specifically, undergraduate men, but not women, with higher psychopathy levels may show impaired memory for emotional faces. Implications for future studies of emotional memory and psychopathy are discussed.     

Secondary psychopathy,but not primary psychopathy,is associated with risky decision-making in noninstitutionalized young adults

Although risky decision-making has been posited to contribute to the maladaptive behavior of individuals with psychopathic tendencies, the performance of psychopathic groups on a common task of risky decision-making, the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT; Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, & Anderson, 1994), has been equivocal. Different aspects of psychopathy (personality traits, antisocial deviance) and/or moderating variables may help to explain these inconsistent findings. In a sample of college students (N = 129, age 18–27), we examined the relationship between primary and secondary psychopathic features and IGT performance. A measure of impulsivity was included to investigate its potential as a moderator. In a joint model including main effects and interactions between primary psychopathy, secondary psychopathy and impulsivity, only secondary psychopathy was significantly related to risky IGT performance, and this effect was not moderated by the other variables. This finding supports the growing literature suggesting that secondary psychopathy is a better predictor of decision-making problems than the primary psychopathic personality traits of lack of empathy and remorselessness.     

Parent predictors of changes in child behavior problems

The present study examined whether ineffective discipline, single parent status, social support, parent involvement, and parent depression predicted changes in preschoolers' (N = 129) behavior problems. This study also evaluated whether child sex and ethnicity moderated the relations between these variables and changes in problem behavior. Parents completed questionnaires at the beginning of the study, and parent, teacher, and observational ratings of children's behavior problems were collected twice during the school year. Parents' own social support predicted improvement for boys and parent depression was associated with worsening symptoms for girls. Single parenthood and parent involvement predicted changes in behavior problems for the sample as a whole. Several significant ethnic differences emerged, highlighting the importance of considering cultural context in studies of parenting and child externalizing behavior.     

Delayed reconfiguration of a non-emotional task set through reactivation of an emotional task set in task switching: an ageing study

ABSTRACT

In our everyday life, we frequently switch between different tasks, a faculty that changes with age. However, it is still not understood how emotion impacts on age-related changes in task switching. Using faces with emotional and neutral expressions, Experiment 1 investigated younger (n?=?29; 18–38 years old) and older adults’ (n?=?32; 61–80 years old) ability to switch between an emotional and a non-emotional task (i.e. responding to the face's expression vs. age). In Experiment 2, younger and older adults also viewed emotional and neutral faces, but switched between two non-emotional tasks (i.e. responding to the face's age vs. gender). Data from Experiment 1 demonstrated that switching from an emotional to a non-emotional task was slower when the expression of the new face was emotional rather than neutral. This impairment was observed in both age groups. In contrast, Experiment 2 revealed that neither younger nor older adults were affected by block-wise irrelevant emotion when switching between two non-emotional tasks. Overall, the findings suggest that task-irrelevant emotion can impair task switching through reactivation of the competing emotional task set. They also suggest that this effect and the ability to shield task-switching performance from block-wise irrelevant emotion are preserved in ageing.     

Psychopathy and verbal emotion processing in non-incarcerated males

Incarcerated males who score high on personality measures of psychopathy are reported to be less efficient than other incarcerated males in processing emotionally laden stimuli. In this study, we evaluated whether an emotion deficit is also present in non-incarcerated higher functioning males who score high on psychopathy personality measures. A sample of male university students was screened for psychopathic personality, and two subsamples, those who scored high or low on global psychopathy, participated in a series of language processing tasks designed to assess verbal emotion processing. Unlike previous studies of emotion processing in the verbal domain, stimuli also systematically varied in abstractness. The results showed that participants scoring high in psychopathy were less efficient than those scoring low in psychopathy in processing negatively valenced words, across all levels of word abstractness. The results extend previous accounts of emotional processing deficits in individuals with psychopathic personality to a relatively high-functioning non-incarcerated sample.     

Feeling low,thinking slow? Associations between situational cues,mood and cognitive function

ABSTRACT

Within-person changes in mood, which are triggered by situational cues, for example someone’s location or company, are thought to affect contemporaneous cognitive function. To test this hypothesis, data were collected over 6 months with the smartphone application (app) moo-Q that prompted users at random times to rate their mood and complete 3 short cognitive tests. Out of 24,313 people across 154 countries, who downloaded the app, 770 participants submitted 10 or more valid moo-Q responses (mean?=?23; SD?=?18; range 10–207). Confirming previous research, consistent patterns of association emerged for 6 different situation cues with mood and cognitive function: For example, being alone rather than with others when completing the app resulted in worse mood but better cognitive task performance. Notwithstanding, changes in mood and cognitive function were not coupled. The advantages and challenges of using smartphone technology for studying mood and cognitive function are discussed.     

Impact of individual differences upon emotion-induced memory trade-offs

After seeing a scene containing an emotional component (e.g., a snake in a forest) people often demonstrate a “trade-off” in memory, where memory for the emotional component (e.g., the snake) is good, but memory for the non-emotional elements (e.g., the forest) is poor. The result is an incomplete memory retaining central emotional information at the expense of neutral background information. Though almost everyone demonstrates the trade-off, there may be individual differences in the magnitude of the effect. We investigated whether differences in the strength of the trade-off would correlate with anxiety levels, working memory capacity, and executive functioning abilities. Sixty-four participants studied scenes comprised of a negative or neutral item placed on a neutral background, and memory was later tested for items and backgrounds separately. The magnitude of the trade-off correlated positively with anxiety and negatively with visuospatial working memory and executive function. These results suggest that greater anxiety, poor visuospatial working memory, and poor executive function may inhibit formation of complete mental representations of these complex emotional scenes.