Neutral Questions Research Articles

Fiabilidad y validez del autoinforme sobre el consumo de drogas en la población escolarizada de secundaria

To assess the reliability and validity of self-reported use among secondary school students. Validity was assessed in a representative sample of nearly 1,300 students by analyzing: a) the proportion of questions on drug use left unanswered compared with that for other questions; b) the proportion of inconsistencies between related questions; c) the proportion of questions wrongly completed; d) admision of ficticious drug use; e) the relationship between self-reported drug use and that of friends', and f) willingness to admit cannabis and ecstasy use. Reliability was analyzed using the kappa index, the proportion of specific agreement, and the intra-class correlation coefficient in a test-retest procedure in a randomized subsample of 349 students. The response rate to questions on drug use was high and was similar to that for more neutral questions. Only 0,3% of the secondary school students reported having used a fictitious drug. Except in the case of heroin, individual drug use was directly related to friends' perception of consumption. A very low proportion of students would not be willing to admit to use of cannabis (2%) or ecstasy (3,4%). Questions referring to drug use at some time during students' lives showed greater reliability than those referring to more recent drug use (last 12 months). The kappa indexes for drug consumption at some time during students lives ranged from 0.65 to 0.87, except for ecstasy and LSD (0.51 and 0.52 respectively). The age of first drug consumption was highly reliable (intra-class correlation coefficients ranged from 0.71 to 1). Except for ectasy, amphetamines and LSD, indexes of reliability and validity were generally good and similar to those obtained in other studies. These findings support the idea that information about self-reported drug use obtained through a questionnaire is reliable and valid, although the absolute prevalences of the use of some drugs should be interpreted with caution. The indicator of consumption at some time during students' lives is especially useful in studies monitoring drug use among this population.

Counterfactuals as Behavioral Primes: Priming the Simulation Heuristic and Consideration of Alternatives

We demonstrate that counterfactuals prime a mental simulation mind-set in which relevant but potentially converse alternatives are considered and that this mind-set activation has behavioral consequences. This mind-set is closely related to the simulation heuristic (Kahneman & Tversky, 1982). Participants primed with a counterfactual were more likely to solve the Duncker candle problem (Experiment 1), suggesting that they noticed an alternative function for one of the objects, an awareness that is critical to solving the problem. Participants primed with a counterfactual were more likely to simultaneously affirm the consequent and select the potentially falsifying card, but without selecting the irrelevant card, in the Wason card selection task, suggesting that they were testing both the stated conditional and its reverse (Experiment 2). The increased affirmations of the consequent decreased correct solutions on the task—thus, the primed mind-set can bias or debias thought and action. Finally, Experiment 3 provides further evidence that counterfactual primes increase the accessibility of relevant alternatives. Counterfactual primes attenuated the confirmation bias in a trait hypothesis testing context by increasing the selection of questions designed to elicit hypothesis-disconfirming answers, but without increasing the selection of neutral questions. The nature of priming effects and the role of counterfactual thinking in biasing and debiasing thought and action are discussed.

ATTITUDES TO AGING QUESTIONNAIRES: SOME EVIDENCE FOR POTENTIAL BIAS IN THEIR DESIGN

Questionnaires on attitudes to aging may contain tacit sources of negative bias by inviting judgments not just on aging but on physical and economic welfare. In the present study, attitudes were assessed after participants (89 psychology first-year undergraduates, mean age 25.55 yrs, SD 9.11) had been asked either a set of 5 neutral questions, 5 questions on economic welfare of older people, or 5 questions on the physical frailty of older people. The economic questions group had significantly more negative views of mental aspects of aging than did the neutral group. The implications of this finding are discussed.

ATTITUDES TO AGING QUESTIONNAIRES: SOME EVIDENCE FOR POTENTIAL BIAS IN THEIR DESIGN

Questionnaires on attitudes toward aging may contain tacit sources of negative bias by inviting judgments not just on aging but on physical and economic welfare . In the present study, attitudes were assessed after participants (89 psychology first year undergraduates, mean age=25.55, SD=9.11) had been asked either a set of 5 neutral questions, 5 questions on economic welfare of older people, or 5 questions on the physical frailty of older people. The economic questions group had significantly more negative views of mental aspects of aging than did the neutral group. The implication of this finding are discussed.

Early metalinguistic competence: speech monitoring and repair behavior.

This article examines 2-3-year-olds' responses to specific (e.g., "Where did he go?") and neutral (e.g., "What?") requests for clarification. The focus is on children's ability to locate the linguistic errors that provoked neutral questions of clarification and their success in providing appropriate repair. It is argued that this behavior provides evidence for a speech monitor that detects errors and enables repair. Contrary to A. Karmiloff-Smith's (1992) claim, control over the production and comprehension of specific structures does not necessarily precede monitoring. Rather, metalinguistic abilities that are implicated in speech monitoring develop simultaneously with the acquisition of primary linguistic behavior and do not require awareness. It is claimed that such metaprocesses are fundamental to the use of language as a vehicle for the expression of intentional content.

DIAGNOSIS AND MANAGEMENT OF ALCOHOL PROBLEMS

Approximately 14 million Americans suffer from alcohol abuse and dependen~e,’~ and drinking remains the most common cause of liver-related mortality in the United States. Forty-four percent of the 26,000 annual deaths from liver cirrhosis are attributed to alcohol use. Even this is likely to be an underestimate because certifying physicians may not be familiar with the decedent’s drinking history or may desire to protect the family from the stigma of a family member being an alcoholic.10 Alcoholic liver disease is also an important cause of morbidity. It has been estimated that between 15% and 30% of heavy drinkers develop advanced liver disease.I9 In 1990, cirrhosis was listed as a diagnosis on approximately 1% of discharges from nonfederal short-stay hospitals for those 15 years and older and was the principal diagnosis for 0.2% of the discharges. Underestimation of alcoholic liver disease on hospital discharge records may exceed that for death certificate^.^^ Because of the adverse effects of alcohol on the liver, alcoholdependent and alcohol-abusing patients commonly are seen in many hepatologists’ practices. Although findings on the physical examination and laboratory tests may provide clues, the diagnosis of alcoholism depends on the history provided by patients and their relatives. The two most commonly employed sets of criteria are the American Psychiatric Association‘s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, ed 4 (DSM-IV)’ and in the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases, 10th rev (ICD-10).36 Both are based on symptoms of alcohol dependence and abuse rather than specific thresholds of drinking frequency, quantity, or patterns. The term alcoholism has been dropped in favor of two distinct categoriesalcokol abuse and alcohol dependence. Alcoholic liver

Depression and Interpersonal Responses to Others' Moods: The Solicitation of Negative Information about Happy People

A total of four experiments tested the prediction that social comparison concerns lead depressed individuals to solicit more negative disclosures from happy people than they otherwise would. In Experiments 1 and 2, depressed, mildly depressed, and nondepressed subjects reviewed information about another person that included ratings of that person's mood (Experiment 2 also included a control condition without mood information). After reviewing the material, subjects chose a subset of items from a list of positive, negative, and neutral questions to ask the person in an upcoming meeting. Experiment 3 replicated this procedure but used a mood manipulation to define subject groups. Experiment 4 examined the impact of subjects' line of questioning on others. Taken together; the results indicate that when they believe their partner is happy, depressed individuals are especially likely to solicit negative information about that person. This unfavorable interpersonal response increases depressed individuals' risk of social rejection.

The effects of risperidone on memory function in schizophrenia

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is thought to be characterized by dysfunctional memory processes, i.e., the automatic re-experiencing of the traumatic event and the inability to consciously recall facts about the traumatic event, as well as altered emotional processing of trauma-relevant cues.The present study examined the cerebral mechanisms underlying the cued recall of trauma-specific memories and the emotional processing of the presented cues in 16 PTSD patients, 15 trauma-exposed subjects without PTSD and 16 healthy controls. Subjects received questions about their specific trauma as well as other disastrous and neutral events while the electroencephalogram and heart rate were measured. The PTSD patients showed no impairment in trauma-specific declarative memory compared to non-PTSD subjects but had some deficits in general declarative memory as assessed by the Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised. Compared to healthy control subjects, PTSD patients displayed increased P300 and late positive complex amplitudes to trauma-specific questions, indicating enhanced emotional processing of these cues. In line with their behavioral performance, both trauma-exposed groups showed decreased terminal contingent negative variation amplitudes to trauma-specific questions over frontal electrodes reflecting altered memory retrieval. Within-group comparisons revealed that only the PTSD group but not the other groups showed a differentiation between trauma-specific and neutral questions with respect to the LPC, tCNV and P300. Concordantly with previous studies, PTSD patients showed elevated resting heart rate compared to the healthy controls. These findings are discussed in the context of current models of the role of declarative memory in the development and maintenance of PTSD.

“I'll Take Gender Differences for $1000!” Domain-Specific Intellectual Success on “Jeopardy”

A great deal of laboratory research has demonstrated that women underestimate their intellect and abilities, and we studied whether this tendency manifested itself outside the laboratory by examining the performance of men and women on the television game show “Jeopardy”. Information about the masculinity and femininity of the topic categories for 65 games was collected, and selections, answers,wagering strategies, and earnings were noted for 195 White men and women contestants on the show. Men were more likely than women to appear as contestants, made most of the selections in the game, and won more money. Until the end of the game, men selected and correctly answered a disproportional number of questions from masculine topic categories, which appeared more often during the first round of play. Women chose more feminine and neutral questions than did men, and correctly answered those questions at a proportional rate. Wagering strategies differed late in the game, as men bet a higher percent of their earnings than did women, but only when wagering on masculine topics. Several explanations for differing performance of men and women on “Jeopardy”are offered, including confidence in ability due to self-estimation of intelligence, differential use of evaluative feedback, and the gender role appropriateness of demonstrating intellect.

"Yes, I Agree"

The present study of yes/no questions explores what it might be about them that has encouraged many to think of an affirmative answer as a form of agreement with the question. It is easy to see how such a view may be taken of questions which are, by their very form, biased in favour of such an answer, though less so in the case of neutral questions. Even here, however, something may be said in defence of the view, if we consider semantic theories associating with a question a particular proposition, which, though unasserted by the asker, is still expressed and 'on the table' to be agreed to by the answerer.

Being friendly in survey interviews

This paper discusses the devices through which survey interviewers construct a ‘personal interview style’. The first part describes several types of interviewers' friendly reactions to respondents' assessable statements. The second part shows how interviewers may reformulate ‘neutrally’ scripted questions in such a way that they include a preference for a ‘socially desirable’ answer. In survey methodological terms, the interviewers transform neutral questions into leading questions. These are two turn sequential levels on which interviewers may be seen as ‘doing being personal’.

The role of comparison questions in physiological detection of deception.

Comparison questions in physiological detection of deception were studied with 60 "guilty" and 60 "innocent" participants in a mock crime experiment. Different types of comparison questions were used in four conditions: relevant-irrelevant (R-I) participants answered only relevant and neutral questions; trivial directed lie participants were instructed to lie to three of the six neutral questions; personal directed lie participants were instructed to lie to personally relevant questions; and probable lie participants received traditional probable lie comparison questions. Respiration, cardiovascular, vasomotor, and electrodermal activity were recorded. Manipulation of the comparison questions produced different patterns of physiological responses for innocent but not for guilty participants. The R-I test produced an unacceptable rate of false positive decisions.

Comfort and nurses' moral choices.

Caring has been advocated as integral to nursing ethics, and much theorizing has suggested that it may be a partial or the entire foundation for nursing's ethic. Yet few research studies have examined the practical expression of caring in the clinical setting. The author describes the concept of comfort as an aspect of care experienced by long-term care nurses in their daily practice related to moral choices. The design of the study was descriptive and qualitative. The sample consisted of 15 registered nurses who were participants in the author's previous study of moral certainty and uncertainty. Their responses to interview questions during the previous study suggested the topic for the present study. A semi-structured interview consisting of eight neutral open-ended questions was conducted with each participant. The findings suggest that long-term-care nurses function in the roles of mediator and communicator. In these roles, they try to meet a mental ideal of "good nursing practice'. They use multiple criteria on which to base their moral choices including comfort, their own and their residents. The author examines the providing and feeling of comfort as related to the nurses' moral choices.

Asking personal questions in mock job interviews

A job interview role‐play situation was used to examine the strategies that interviewers employ when asking personal as compared to neutral questions. In the first experiment, mock interviews were conducted in either a face‐to‐face setting or over the telephone. Participants played the role of an interviewer and a confederate acted as the interviewee. The hypotheses tested were: 1) personal questions would be asked later than neutral questions; 2) more hesitation markers, tag questions and hedges would be used when asking personal questions than for neutral ones; 3) the behaviours hypothesised above would be more pronounced in the face‐to‐face than in the telephone setting. Support was found for the first two hypotheses but not for the third. In order to examine whether or not hypothesis 2 (hesitation markers, tag questions and hedges) was confounded by hypothesis 1 (order effect), a second experiment was carried out in which the order of personal and neutral questions was randomised across subjects. The results confirmed hypothesis 2.

Signs of subclinical eating disorders in teenage girls.

To study possible indicators for subclinical eating disorders among teenage girls. A descriptive cross-sectional study based on two anonymous self-report questionnaires. Girls aged 15 to 19 years in secondary high school in Bergen, Norway. 100 girls, mean age 16.6 years, were included. One girl fulfilled DSM-III-R criteria for bulimia nervosa, and was therefore excluded from analysis. Ten girls fulfilled criteria for subclinical eating disorders. The Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire and a 48-item questionnaire designed for the study were used. Attitudes towards own body size/weight, food habits, and somatic symptoms were studied. Girls with subclinical eating disorders experienced their own body as fatter and were more unhappy with their weight than girls without eating problems. They more often skipped breakfast or lunch, reported more dyspeptic problems and regurgitation, and had a larger weight fluctuation than girls without eating problems. Questions about main meals may serve as neutral opening questions for the general practitioner when case finding in eating disorders. Obviously unrealistic feelings about body size/weight indicate the need to enquire more closely about symptoms of eating disorders.

Cheating behavior of sex-type and androgynous children in sex-stereotyped and non-sex-stereotyped tasks

Two studies investigated the motivation of sex-typed and androgynous 10 to 12-year-old boys and girls to appear knowlegeable about sex-typed, cross-sex-typed, and neutral information. Subjects in both studies were classified on the basis of the BSRI ( S. L. Bem, 1974, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 42, 155–162), into sex typed and androgynous. Subjects in Study 1 were given feminine, masculine, or neutral questions, whereas subjects in Study 2 were given all three types of questions. All subjects were given the opportunity to falsely report success (i.e., to cheat). The results of both studies revealed that sex-typed boys were less motivated to exhibit knowledge in feminine than in masculine questions, while androgynous children of both sexes did not exhibit such differential motivation. The findings were less clear cut for girls since sex-typed girls cheated more in feminine than in masculine questions only in the second study. The results are discussed with reference to Bem's gender schema theory.

Differentiation of deception as a psychological process: a psychophysiological approach.

ABSTRACTIf psychophysiology is the study or differentiation of psychological processes by means of physiological measures, then the experimental demonstration of deception as a psychophysiological phenomenon requires a comparison of physiological responses to two conditions (experimental and control) which differ only with respect to deception. To this end, the Differentiation‐of‐Deception Paradigm controls for differential question significance and frequency of occurrence. Thirty‐two subjects were tested in this paradigm, with the skin conductance response as the dependent variable. We examined, within subjects: a) the basic deception comparison which contrasted relatively neutral autobiographical questions answered deceptively with those answered honestly, and b) the mode of answering, which was either an immediate answer to the question (conventional method) or an answer delayed by 10 seconds. The deception phenomenon (greater responding to deceptive relative to honest trials) emerged significantly (and nondifferentially) to both the immediate and delayed questions, but (perhaps because of response interference) not when responding was measured immediately following the delayed answers. Future research should vary other conditions and measure additional dependent variables with the aim of investigating possible psychological and physiological mechanisms, as well as extending the deception phenomenon beyond its present electrodermal form.

Appearance versus Reality in Dyadic Interaction: Evidence for a Lingering Phenomenism

We investigated the strength of children's tendency to give phenomenist readings of neutral questions about object properties (e.g. "What colour are these things?") in illusory contexts. The question was whether two kinds of social pressure to produce a realist reading would mitigate this tendency. In the experimental groups, pairs of children between 4½ and 7½ years of age were presented with visual illusions. In the symmetrical conflict condition each child had an equally illusory view which contradicted the view of the partner; and in the asymmetrical conflict condition one child had an illusory view and the partner had a non-illusory view. In the first case the realist answer provided a way out of an impasse and in the second case it was in direct opposition to the phenomenist answer. The number of agreed phenomenist readings was very similar to the number of phenomenist answers given in three solo conditions, and it steadily decreased with age. However, examination of videotapes of the interactions showed that the nature of the agreed answer was not unaffected by what the children said to each other and not unaffected by (separately assessed) social dominance. The data were interpreted as evidence for a lingering phenomenism.

Does Lexical Marking Affect Eyewitness Recall?

Abstract Four experiments examined the effect of lexical marking on eyewitness recall. In Experiments 1 and 2, subjects viewed a videotaped reenactment of a purse snatching; in Experiment 3, they imagined the occurrence of one; and in Experiment 4, they viewed a videotaped reenactment of a liquor-store armed robbery. In each experiment, subjects responded to questions containing marked, unmarked, or neutral adjectives concerning the assailant's age and height as well as other aspects of the event. In the first three experiments, analyses of variance on the subjects' responses and homogeneity of variance tests both failed to show effects attributable to lexical marking. In Experiment 4 the marked question produced significantly lower estimates of the robber's age as compared to the unmarked and neutral questions. It was argued that previous studies that showed a lexical marking effect were contaminated by demand characteristics.

The Corporation in Criminology: New Directions for Research

Beginning with the work of Edwin Sutherland, contributions to the study of corporate crime have been prescriptive in orientation. Such a value stance, it is argued, has clouded empirical investigation of the issue. This article suggests an alternative approach, one oriented toward a definitional perspective on crime. Within this framework, attention may be shifted to empirically neutral questions regarding the causes and processes of changing conceptions of corporate liability.