A Unified Empirical Account of Responsibility Judgments*

Skeptical worries about moral responsibility seem to be widely appreciated and deeply felt. To address these worries—if nothing else to show that they are mistaken—theories of moral responsibility need to relate to whatever concept of responsibility underlies the worries. Unfortunately, the nature of that concept has proved hard to pin down. Not only do philosophers have conflicting intuitions; numerous recent empirical studies have suggested that both prosaic responsibility judgments and incompatibilist intuitions among the folk are influenced by a number of surprising factors, sometimes prompting apparently contradictory judgments. In this paper, we show how an independently motivated hypothesis about responsibility judgments provides a unified explanation of the more important results from these studies. According to this ‘Explanation Hypothesis’, to take an agent to be morally responsible for an event is to take a relevant motivational structure of the agent to be part of a significant explanation of the event. We argue that because of how explanatory interests and perspectives affect what we take as significant explanations, this analysis accounts for the puzzling variety of empirical results. If this is correct, the Explanation Hypothesis also provides a new way of understanding debates about moral responsibility.     

Forgetting of prior remembering in persons reporting recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse

Case studies of individuals reporting recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse suggest that some overestimate their prior forgetting of the abuse. People reporting recovered or continuous memories of childhood sexual abuse and control subjects reporting no history of abuse participated in two experiments examining this "forgot it all along" phenomenon. Participants in Experiment 1 were more likely to forget that they had previously recalled a studied item if they were cued to think of it differently on two recall tests than if they were cued to think of it in the same way on the two tests. This effect was stronger for recovered-memory participants than for continuous-memory and control participants. In Experiment 2, participants recalled autobiographical events three times over a period of 4 months. Much as in Experiment 1, they underestimated prior remembering when the events had been recalled in a different emotional frame (positive vs. negative) on the previous occasion. This underestimation was more pronounced for recovered-memory participants than for continuous-memory and control participants.     

Effects of repeated retrieval of central and peripheral details in complex emotional slides

Research has demonstrated that repeated retrieval enhances memory for practised verbal information, but undermines correct recall of unpractised related verbal information, a phenomenon known as retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF). This paper addresses the question of what happens with memory for unrehearsed aspects of an emotional picture when retrieval of other aspects of that picture is practised. In two experiments we investigated whether repeated retrieval of certain details of negative emotional slides undermines recall of unrehearsed details of such slides. In Experiment 1 retrieval of peripheral details was practised. The results demonstrated that recall for peripheral details was enhanced. However, correct recall of unpractised central details remained unaffected. Furthermore, retrieval practice did not alter the number of commission errors. Experiment 2 revealed that repeated retrieval of central details enhanced memory for these details. Although more commission errors were produced, again correct recall was not impaired for the unrehearsed central and peripheral details. This failure to find retrieval-induced forgetting effects for complex visual material is at odds with the RIF literature, and potential reasons for this are discussed. The data also extend previous studies in demonstrating that extensive retrieval can increase the number of commission errors.     

Is there an optimal factor structure of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale in patients with first‐episode psychosis?

The Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) is the most widely used scale to assess a variety of symptoms in patients with schizophrenia and other psychoses. The factor structure of the PANSS has been examined with confirmatory factor analyses in several studies, but not in a well‐defined first‐episode psychosis sample. The aim of this paper is to examine the statistical fit of five different PANSS models in a first‐episode, non‐affective psychosis sample. Confirmatory factor analyses were performed on PANSS data (n = 588). A main criterion for best fit was defined as the Expected Cross Validation Index (ECVI). No tested model revealed an optimally satisfactory model fit index. The Wallwork/Fortgang five‐factor model demonstrated the most optimal psychometric properties. The corresponding subscales of all evaluated five‐factor models were strongly intercorrelated. The Wallwork/Fortgang five‐factor model was found to be statistically and clinically ideal among patients with first‐episode psychosis. Therefore, we recommend this model in forthcoming studies among patients with first‐episode psychosis. However, to prevent the loss of clinically valuable information on an item level, we do not recommend removing any items from the original form. Our study also implies that the specific choice of model will not have a substantial effect on outcome results in studies on the course and outcome in first‐episode psychosis.     

Gender differences on the Five to Fifteen questionnaire in a non‐referred sample with inattention and hyperactivity‐impulsivity and a clinic‐referred sample with hyperkinetic disorder

Lambek, R., Trillingsgaard, A., Kadesjö, B., Damm, D. & Thomsen, P. H. (2010). Gender differences on the Five to Fifteen questionnaire in a non‐referred sample with inattention and hyperactivity‐impulsivity and a clinic‐referred sample with hyperkinetic disorder. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 51, 540–447. The aim of the present study was to examine gender differences in children with inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity on the Five to Fifteen (FTF) parent questionnaire. First, non‐referred girls (n = 43) and boys (n = 51) with problems of attention and hyperactivity‐impulsivity and then clinic‐referred girls (n = 35) and boys (n = 66) with hyperkinetic disorder (HKD) were compared on the FTF. Results suggested that non‐referred boys were more hyperactive‐impulsive than non‐referred girls, whereas clinic‐referred boys and girl with HKD were more similar than dissimilar on the FTF questionnaire. Secondly, it was examined whether the application of gender mixed norms versus gender specific norms would result in varying proportions of clinic‐referred children with HKD being identified as impaired on the subdomains of the FTF questionnaire. Based on results it was concluded that the use of a gender mixed normative sample may lead to overestimation of impairment in boys with HKD, but the type of sample applied to define impairment on the FTF should depend on the purpose for applying the questionnaire.     

Effect of low dose ionizing radiation exposure in utero on cognitive function in adolescence

Heiervang, K. S., Mednick, S., Sundet, K. & Rund, B. R. (2010). Effect of low dose ionizing radiation exposure in utero on cognitive function in adolescence. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 51, 210–215. Radiation from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant meltdown greatly affected several Norwegian counties. The cognitive consequences of in utero exposure to radiation from the Chernobyl accident have been intensely debated. This study examines the cognitive outcomes for those Norwegians who were exposed as fetuses to the fallout from Chernobyl. The participants, 84 adolescents who were exposed in utero to radiation from the most contaminated areas in Norway and 94 adolescents from areas not contaminated by the radiation, were tested on verbal and nonverbal IQ. Two data analyses were conducted. First, using a control‐group design, the IQ scores of exposed and unexposed adolescents were compared. Second, in a timing‐of‐exposure design, those exposed during the most sensitive period were contrasted with those exposed later in gestation. Adolescents exposed to low‐dose ionizing radiation in utero scored significantly lower in full‐scale IQ than unexposed adolescents. The difference was restricted to verbal IQ and was not evident for nonverbal IQ. The effect was not observed in exposed adolescents who had passed the most sensitive gestational period prior to the accident and thus were exposed to the radiation from Chernobyl exclusively after gestational week 16. These participants performed as well as the controls. Although the results should be interpreted cautiously due to the study’s nonrandomized design, the data add new and important support to the hypothesis that the Chernobyl accident may have had a subtle effect on the cognitive functioning of those exposed to low‐dose ionizing radiation in utero during the most sensitive gestational period.     

The Mental Regulation of Autobiographical Recollection in the Aftermath of Trauma

ABSTRACT— Survivors of psychological trauma are frequently troubled by intrusive recollection of the traumatic event. We describe research showing that attempts to suppress such trauma memories can be associated with paradoxically enhanced remembering of the trauma, enhanced access to other negative personal material, and a lack of specificity in the recollection of the personal past. This suggests that attempted suppression is generally a counterproductive approach to the regulation of traumatic memories in distressed trauma survivors. Working with trauma memories, rather than suppressing them, is more adaptive.     

“Sound” alternatives to visual graphics for exploratory data analysis

Efficient exploratory data analysis (EDA) may be aided by succinct, but informative, graphical representations (e.g., Tukey plots) that convey information about central tendency, variability, and shape of distributions, and that permit detection of outliers. Using research strategies adapted from studies of cross-modal perceptual equivalence, we show how auditory analogies of such displays may offer an effective alternative to visual plots for EDA.     

Retrieval‐induced forgetting of autobiographical memory details

Several studies suggest that intrusive and overgeneral autobiographical memory are correlated. Thus, paradoxically, in some patients a hyperaccessibility of memory for one (series of) event(s) goes hand‐in‐hand with a scarcity of memories for other personal experiences. This clinical observation is reminiscent of the laboratory phenomenon of retrieval‐induced forgetting (RIF). This refers to the finding that repeatedly recalling some experimental stimuli impairs subsequent recall of related (i.e., tied to the same retrieval cue) stimuli. RIF of emotional autobiographical memories might provide an experimental model for the clinical memory phenomena in question. The present paper reports two experiments that explored the merits of applying the retrieval practice paradigm to relatively broad categories of autobiographical memories. Both studies found a significant RIF effect in that practised memories were recalled better than unrelated unpractised (baseline) memories. In addition, unpractised memories that were related to the practised memories were recalled more poorly than baseline memories. Implications of these findings for modelling the co‐occurrence of intrusive and overgeneral memories are discussed.