Aspectos sobre la validación del entrenamiento de la

Participants contacted us in response to an advertisement, were screened over the phone and in the lab, provided informed consent once they met our

inclusionary/exclusionary criteria, then filled out background demographic and psychological information, before proceeding to the experimental task.

Recruitment:

Healthy adults (final n =100) were recruited at Caltech (Pasadena, CA) using an online job posting website, Craig’s List137. Participants were paid $15/hour for their time throughout the experiment and the recruitment advertisement stated that participants could make $100 or more. (Most participants made slightly more than $100.) This sample was self-selecting and all had access to computers, but given the wide availability of computers in local libraries and job resource centers, we do not believe that we skewed the distribution by using a computerized recruiting technique. Prospective participants were initially screened over the telephone and additionally screened in the lab. The following criteria were used to determine our experimental pool.

Inclusionary criteria: All participants were between 40 and 60 years old and were screened for coherence and fluency in their English language skills, although they were

not required to be native English speakers. All must have been residents of Southern California for the past 15 years or more. In addition, all participants were asked to provide their occupation and permanent address in order to be included in the study.

Exclusionary criteria: We excluded participants if they were currently under the care of a neurologist or had any history of head injury or seizures, tumor or brain surgery. Participants were also excluded if they had ever been diagnosed with any major

psychiatric illness or were currently taking any medications normally prescribed for psychiatric conditions (such as antidepressants). Participants who were habitually unemployed or homeless were excluded from the study, as were those with a history of schizophrenia or major depressive or bipolar disorder.

These inclusionary and exclusionary criteria provided us with a diverse sample of participants fairly representative of the population of California. Our sample was limited in that it only included English-speaking, healthy adults.

Demographic Information:

Demographic information was collected about each participant through a series of pencil and paper questionnaires. The population demographics of this group matched the California census averages on IQ (mean = 110), gender distribution and ethnicity. The mean income range was $15,000 - $30,000 per year and participants’ ages were evenly distributed within the range (mean = 48.9). We included the expected proportion of right and left handed people and participants varied in occupation, sexual orientation, political, religious and cultural backgrounds. Overall, we believe our experimental group was a

representative sampling of the general, healthy, English-speaking population in Southern California within the given age range. Chapter 4 presents detailed demographic and psychological characterization of the participants.

General Assessment:

We administered a battery of background information and neuropsychological tests to gather further information about our participants. (These are described in detail later in this chapter.) This information was necessary both to characterize and examine the characteristics of the people who generated the moral memories for our database and for providing a further filter for exclusion.

Further Exclusionary Criteria: Participants were excluded from the study after the first testing session if they did not meet certain minimum standards. Any participant whose IQ was measured in the lab to be below 80 was excluded. A short, very easy measure of general memory was given to each participant (including questions about the identity of the current president and capital of the state they were born in). All

participants passed this memory measure, but any participant who hadn’t would have been excluded. Participants who were non-fluent English speakers or who spoke with an accent or speech impediment that made it difficult to understand them were excluded. (Since all data were spoken and needed to be transcribed, this was a necessity of the study.) Participants who displayed emotional or erratic behavior to the experimenter who was conducting the IQ test were excluded. Participants who took too long (greater than 2 hours) to complete the preliminary questionnaires were not invited to complete the rest of

the study. (Most participants took about 1 hour to complete this task.) Participants were excluded from continuing the study if they provided inappropriate, incomplete or incomprehensible memories during the cued recall protocol. 11 participants were

excluded after Session 1 due to these criteria; 7 participants were excluded after Session 2. While several of these criteria were judgment calls on the part of the experimenters, all exclusionary criteria were made blind to the content of the moral memories a participant produced.

Participants answered a variety of questions about their cultural background, religious and political viewpoints. To assess cultural background, a paper and pencil questionnaire was administered. Each participant was asked to describe the cultural background in which they grew up. If the participants felt that their current culture was different than the one that they grew up in, they were asked to describe their current culture as well. Similar questions were asked about past and current religious affiliations. Participants wrote, on average, between one and three sentences for each of these

questions.