Moral disengagement and children’s propensity to tell coached lies

This study investigated the relationship between children’s proneness to endorse moral disengagement mechanisms and their anticipated antisocial lie telling. Participants were 107 predominantly white Australian children in Grade 1 (27 boys, 27 girls; M_age = 6.69 years) and Grade 4 (24 boys, 29 girls; M_age = 9.69 years). Children completed a lie-telling moral disengagement scale and two vignettes. In the first vignette, a child character witnessed a transgression and was coached to say that they did not see the transgression occur (lie type: false denial). In the second vignette, a child character did not witness a transgression and was coached to say that they saw a transgression (lie type: false allegation). In accordance with social cognitive theory predictions, greater proneness to using moral disengagement mechanisms was associated with children’s anticipated lie telling for both false allegations and false denials. These findings highlight the important role of moral disengagement in children’s lie telling.     

University attrition: LISREL with logistic regression for the persistence criterion

This study demonstrates the use of logistic regression in conjunction with LISREL for a university attrition study. College records and surveys completed by first-year university students at the beginning of the semester and in the third month of the semester were used to operationalize key constructs within Tinto's attrition model. The sample of 313 students was divided into male and female subgroups for analysis. Significant influential factors within the final empirical models varied between the two groups. LISREL was used to test hypothesized differences between empirical models. Because of the skewed distribution of the final criterion—persistence—logistic regression was used to identify significant predictors.     

Topographies of power: a critical historical geography of schooling in Tanzania

This article builds a case for critical historical geography in comparative education to examine how, over time, the social production of space contributes to educational disparity. It draws on Gupta and Ferguson's contrasting concepts of the ‘power of topography’ and the ‘topography of power’ and Lefebvre's tripartite theory of space to explore space–time relationships at multiple scales in Tanzania. Data come from primary and secondary historical texts about the Kilimanjaro Region as well as a longitudinal study carried out between 2000 and 2012 in two districts in the region. The analysis shows how advantage and disadvantage are differentially distributed over time and space, revealing the enduring interconnections of geography, history, and political power in postcolonial states and the importance of multi-scalar comparative research in comparative education.     

Content integration across multiple documents reduces memory for sources

The current experiments systematically examined semantic content integration as a mechanism for explaining source inattention and forgetting when reading-to-remember multiple texts. For all 3 experiments, degree of semantic overlap was manipulated amongst messages provided by various information sources. In Experiment 1, readers’ source recognition was significantly poorer when the sources presented semantically-congruent compared to semantically-distinct messages. Experiment 2 replicated the findings, despite half of the participants receiving a pre-reading warning. Experiment 3 extended the examination to include longer argument-based texts; readers additionally wrote a comprehensive essay on the topic. The results indicated longer reading times and better recall memory for the claims and evidence statements from semantically-congruent compared to semantically-distinct texts, while still reproducing the poorer source recognition effects of Experiments 1 and 2. We discuss implications for contemporary accounts of multiple text comprehension as well as directions for future research.     

Student gain in reasoning ability as a function of teacher reasoning level and teaching style preference

This study examines the effect of teacher reasoning level (i.e., concrete versus formal) and teaching style preference (i.e., inquiry vs. expository) on improvement in student reasoning ability. A random sample of fourth and seventh grade teachers and their students were selected to participate over one school year. Students completed a reasoning test in the early fall and late spring. Teachers completed two instruments in the Spring, a reasoning test and a teaching style preference questionnaire. Students of concrete operational teachers showed greater gains in reasoning ability than students of formal operational teachers while students of inquiry teachers showed slightly greater gains than students of expository teachers. Possible explanations are discussed as are suggestions for future research.     

What the rat’s nose tells the rat’s mouth: Long delay aversion conditioning with aqueous odors and potentiation of taste by odors

In Experiment 1, olfactory bulbectomized and control rats were trained using operant conditioning to determine the taste threshold of aqueous amyl acetate. Concentrations below gustatory threshold were used in Experiments 2–5 to compare the effectiveness of odors with various concentrations of saccharin as cues for illness. The results showed the following: (1) The effectiveness of odor and taste was directly related to concentration; (2) the strength of an aversion to a concentration of taste could be matched by an appropriate concentration of an odor; (3) odor was as effective as taste with CS-US delays of 4 h; and (4) an effective odor potentiated an aversion to an otherwise ineffective taste. The results challenge the privileged role accorded tastes in food aversion learning and the manner in which tastes are held to interact with odors according to the sensory-and-gate channeling analysis of potentiation (Rusiniak, Hankins, Garcia, & Brett, 1979).     

The effect of rate of reinforcement and time in session on preference for variability

Pigeons pecked keys on concurrent-chains schedules that provided a variable interval 30-sec schedule in the initial link. One terminal link provided reinforcers in a fixed manner; the other provided reinforcers in a variable manner with the same arithmetic mean as the fixed alternative. In Experiment 1, the terminal links provided fixed and variable interval schedules. In Experiment 2, the terminal links provided reinforcers after a fixed or a variable delay following the response that produced them. In Experiment 3, the terminal links provided reinforcers that were fixed or variable in size. Rate of reinforcement was varied by changing the scheduled interreinforcer interval in the terminal link from 5 to 225 sec. The subjects usually preferred the variable option in Experiments 1 and 2 but differed in preference in Experiment 3. The preference for variability was usually stronger for lower (longer terminal links) than for higher (shorter terminal links) rates of reinforcement. Preference did not change systematically with time in the session. Some aspects of these results are inconsistent with explanations for the preference for variability in terms of scaling factors, scalar expectancy theory, risk-sensitive models of optimal foraging theory, and habituation to the reinforcer. Initial-link response rates also changed within sessions when the schedules provided high, but not low, rates of reinforcement. Within-session changes in responding were similar for the two initial links. These similarities imply that habituation to the reinforcer is represented differently in theories of choice than are other variables related to reinforcement.     

Prediction of concurrent keypeck treadle-press responding from simple schedule performance

Four pigeons pecked keys and pressed treadles for food reinforcers delivered by several variable-interval schedules of reinforcement. Then the subjects responded on several concurrent schedules. Keypecking produced reinforcers in one component, and treadle-pressing produced reinforcers in the other. The changeover delay, which prevented reinforcement after all switches from one response to the other, was 0, 5, or 20 sec long. An equation proposed by Kerrnstein (1970) described the rates of treadle-pressing and keypecking emitted during the variable-interval schedules. The k parameter of this equation was larger for keypecking than for treadle-pressing. The R₀ parameters were not systematically different for the two responses. The rates of keypecking and treadle-pressing emitted during the components of the concurrent schedules correlated with, but were not equal to, the rates of responding predicted by Herrnstein’s equation and the subject’s simple schedule responding. The ratios of the rates of responding emitted during, and the ratios of the time spent responding on, the components of the concurrent schedules conformed to an equation proposed by Baum (1974), but not to Herrnstein’s equation.     

Health information professionals: delivering core services and value in extraordinary times

The 2020 virtual issue of the Health Information and Libraries Journal (HILJ) is published to link to the CILIP Health Libraries Group Conference which was to take place in Scotland 22–25th July. Whilst the conference was postponed in light of the coronavirus (COVID‐19) pandemic, its themes of (i) Working in Partnership; (ii) Resilience and Well‐being; (iii) Public and Patient involvement; (iv) Quality Impact and Metrics; and (v) Improvement and Innovation have nevertheless provided the basis on which to compile this virtual issue. Overarching these themes is a core value of the HIL profession, to provide relevant, timely and sustainable information services, and the articles selected from HILJ (2018 through to March 2020) contribute to the aim of meeting and going beyond these goals under the conference banner of ‘not your average day in the office’. The virtual issue mirrors the format of a regular issue of HILJ, a review article, four original articles and three from our regular features: ‘Dissertations into Practice’, ‘International Perspectives and Initiatives’ and ‘Teaching and Learning in Action’. The authors come from Canada, China, Croatia, Sweden and the UK. All articles included in this issue are available online.