Call to claim your prize: Perceived benefits and risk drive intention to comply in a mass marketing scam.

Mass marketing scams extract an enormous toll, yet the literature on scams is just emerging. In Experiment 1, 211 adults reviewed a solicitation and rated their intention of contacting an "activation number" for a prize. Scarcity and authority were manipulated. Many (48.82%) indicated some willingness to contact to "activate" the winnings. Intention of responding was inversely related to the perception of risk (b = -.441, p < .001) and positively associated with perception of benefits (b = .554, p < .001), but not with the experimental condition. In Experiment 2, 291 adults were randomly assigned to one of the three conditions (low, medium, or high activation fee), and were asked to report willingness to contact. Activation fees decreased intent to contact, but percentages remained high (25.70%), with higher perception of risk reducing contact rates (b = -.581, p < .001), and benefit perception increasing intent to contact (b = .381, p < .001). Our studies indicate that consumers are responding to perceived risks and benefits in their decision-making, regardless of persuasion elements used by scammers. In summary, our studies find that consumers with lower levels of education and high perception of benefits are at increased risk for mass marketing scams. (PsycINFO Database Record

Validity of the mini-mental state examination and the montreal cognitive assessment in the prediction of driving test outcome.

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the effectiveness of two cognitive screening measures, the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), in predicting driving test outcome for individuals with and without cognitive impairment. DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study. SETTING: A clinical driving evaluation program at a teaching hospital in the United States. PARTICIPANTS: Adult drivers who underwent assessment with the MMSE and MoCA as part of a comprehensive driving evaluation between 2010 and 2014 (N=92). MEASUREMENTS: MMSE and MoCA total scores were independent variables. The outcome measure was performance on a standardized road test. RESULTS: A preestablished diagnosis of cognitive impairment enhanced the validity of cognitive screening measures in the identification of at-risk drivers. In individuals with cognitive impairment there was a significant relationship between MoCA score and on-road outcome. Specifically, an individual was 1.36 times as likely to fail the road test with each 1-point decrease in MoCA score. No such relationship was detected in those without a diagnosis of cognitive impairment. CONCLUSION: For individuals who have not been diagnosed with cognitive impairment, neither the MMSE nor the MoCA can be reliably used as an indicator of driving risk, but for individuals with a preestablished diagnosis of cognitive impairment, the MoCA is a useful tool in this regard. A score on the MoCA of 18 or less should raise concerns about driving safety.

Change detection and change blindness in pigeons (Columba livia).

Change blindness is a phenomenon in which even obvious details in a visual scene change without being noticed. Although change blindness has been studied extensively in humans, we do not yet know if it is a phenomenon that also occurs in other animals. Thus, investigation of change blindness in a nonhuman species may prove to be valuable by beginning to provide some insight into its ultimate causes. Pigeons learned a change detection task in which pecks to the location of a change in a sequence of stimulus displays were reinforced. They were worse at detecting changes if the stimulus displays were separated by a brief interstimulus interval, during which the display was blank, and this primary result matches the general pattern seen in previous studies of change blindness in humans. A second experiment attempted to identify specific stimulus characteristics that most reliably produced a failure to detect changes. Change detection was more difficult when interstimulus intervals were longer and when the change was iterated fewer times.