Der Familienname von Edmund Husserl

Ohne ZusammenfassungUniversität Würzburg     

PROMPTING ONE LOW-FAT,HIGH-FIBER SELECTION IN A FAST-FOOD RESTAURANT

Evidence increasingly links a high-fat, low-fiber diet to coronary heart disease and certain site cancers, indicating a need for large-scale dietary change. Studies showing the effectiveness of particular procedures in specific settings are important at this point. The present study, using an A-B-A-B design and sales data from computerized cash registers, replicated and extended previous work by showing that inexpensive prompts (i.e., signs and fliers) in a national fast-food restaurant could increase the sales of salads, a low-fat, high-fiber menu selection. Suggestions also are made pertinent to more widespread use of the procedures.     

Develocracy vs democracy

In a sequence of contributions in Developmental Review,(Moshman, 1990a, Moshman 1990b; Commons & Rodriguez, 1990), researchers have recently applied a developmental approach to constitutional policy. In particular, they discussed whether student religious groups in public schools should be permitted in light of the potentially conflicting constitutional principles of religious freedom on the one hand and of the ban against the establishment of a religion by the government on the other hand. Although they differed in important respects, Moshman as well as Commons and Rodriguez made the permissibility of student religious groups fully or partly contingent on the students' developmental stage. Because newer developmental theories differentiate several stages of adult development, such linkage of constitutional rights with developmental stages raises the specter of “develocracy.” Develocracy is a term I suggest to characterize a constitutional system in which a substantial number of rights and duties of adults depends on their developmental stage.     

Origins of the misplaced confidence effect in collaborative recall

Studies have shown that dyads and groups place significantly more confidence in wrong answers to questions about a jointly witnessed event than do individuals. This experiment was designed to discover whether this misplaced confidence is influenced by prior free collaborative recall of the events in question. The results clearly indicated that prior group remembering lessens the effect, and improves the testimonial validity of both individual and group answers to questions about a jointly witnessed event. Taken in conjunction with other studies, the results imply that two or more witnesses of an event may profitably discuss what happened, but that they may best be interrogated separately in order to maximize the information available to the interrogator and to minimize misplaced confidence.     

Evaluating information for truthfulness: The effects of logical subordination

Research has shown that many individuals do not routinely evaluate new information for consistency with respect to what they already know. One factor that may affect the likelihood of critical evaluation is whether or not the information is the central focus of the message. Two experiments tested this possibility by establishing differential emphasis of false information within complex sentences. Half of the target sentences contained a false fact in the main clause and half contained a false fact in the subordinate clause. In Experiment 1 subjects verified 64 sentences presented orally as either true or false. In Experiment 2 subjects read and evaluated 20 paragraphs for the presence of false information. As expected, subjects were less likely to report the false information when it was conveyed as logically subordinate rather than central. The results suggest one explanation for deficits in comprehension monitoring and have implications for understanding susceptibility to persuasive communications.     

The assessment of type a behavior in children and adolescents: An overview

The present article presents an overview of the instruments that have been used to assess the Type A behavior pattern in children and adolescents. The development, usage, and psychometric properties of each assessment technique are discussed, with methodological concerns being addressed whenever appropriate. The Matthews Youth Test for Health is the assessment of choice for children, because of its brevity, ease of administration, and adequate psychometric properties. The Hunter-Wolf A-B Rating Scale is desirable only for older, highly literate children. The Adolescent Structured Interview appears to be the most promising device for the adolescent age range. The other adolescent assessment devices are relatively unpopular, difficult to administer, and not always conceptually parallel to existing research on Type A behavior. Recommendations for future research are presented.     

The temporal structure of motivation. V. A within-episodes analysis of priming and provocation

Rats provided with chronic, continuous access to intracranial self-stimulation (ICS) exhibit discrete episodic response patterns. Response episodes under two conditions were examined for systematic trends in the spacing of times between successive responses (interresponse times; IRTs) to better identify the motivational bases of ICS. Three trends were observed in self-initiated and experimenter-provoked episodes. First, initial responses of spontaneous episodes typically had declining interresponse times. Second, this trend was not present when responses were provoked rather than spontaneous. Third, absolute times between responses varied across conditions, with provoked behavior having significantly lower initial IRTs. The findings suggest that for spontaneously initiated responding a transient facilitatory process cumulates at the beginning of ICS episodes. For provoked responding, it is possible that a manipulation which increased the initial probability of responding over time may have done so by maximizing an initial phasic priming process. At their onset, spontaneous and provoked episodes may be characterized by quantitatively differing motivational profiles.