Developmental and sex-related differences in preschoolers' affective decision making

This study investigated developmental and sex-related differences in affective decision making, using a two-deck version of Children's Gambling Task administered to 3- and 4-year-old children. The main findings were that 4-year-old children displayed better decision-making performance than 3-year-olds. This effect was independent of developmental changes in inductive reasoning, language, and working memory. There were also sex differences in decision-making performance, which were apparent only in 3-year-old children and favored girls. Moreover, age predicted awareness of task and the correlation between the latter and decision-making performance was significant, but only in 4-year-old children. This study thus indicates that there is a remarkable developmental leap in affective decision making, whose effects are apparent around the age of 4, which according to our results, also marks the age when the correlation of declarative knowledge and decision-making performance becomes significant.     

The emergence of interest in the ethics of psychological research with humans

We describe the growth of interest in the ethics of research with human participants based on articles abstracted in Psychological Abstracts and PsycLIT. Interest was low and variable until 1974, after which there was a marked increase in the number of articles published. We explain this emergence of ethical interest in terms of the social climate of concern for human rights in the 1960s and 1970s, the 1973 revision of the American Psychological Association's ethical principles, and the development of federal regulation of research with human participants.