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Contextualização: A lei norte-americana acerca da venda e consumo de Cannabis é bastante conflitante. A lei federal proíbe totalmente sua venda sob a Lei de Substâncias Controladas de 1970. Apesar desse tratamento criminalizado, muitos estados “legalizaram” a maconha e até licenciaram empresas para vendê-la. Uma grande indústria cresceu rapidamente para vender esse tipo de produto. No entanto, essas empresas estão violando abertamente a lei federal. Essa violação desencadeia inúmeros problemas legais para esses negócios, inclusive nas áreas de impostos, seguros e funções legais básicas. Objetivo: Este artigo pretende explorar o efeito desse conflito de leis (entre a lei federal e a lei estadual) e as implicações complexas de manter e executar contratos norte-americanos de Cannabis que violam a lei federal. Metodologia: A presente pesquisa vale-se do método indutivo, empregando a análise de decisões judiciais e a revisão bibliográfica. Resultados: Este artigo argumenta que quando a política pública por trás da legalização da maconha é sopesada contra a proibição federal, um tribunal deve considerar que a exigibilidade desses contratos deve ser apoiada pela política mais forte. Portanto, os contratos que envolvem negócios/empresas relacionadas à maconha devem ser aplicados mesmo que violem a Lei Federal de Abuso de Substâncias Controladas.

Healthy adults show better memory for low-arousal positive versus negative stimuli, but depression compromises this positive memory advantage. Existing studies are limited by small samples or analyses that provide limited insight into underlying mechanisms. Our study addresses these concerns by using a multistaged analysis, including diffusion modeling, to identify precise psychological processes underlying the positive memory advantage and its disruption by depression in a large sample. A total of 1,358 participants completed the BDI-II (Beck et al., 1996) and an emotional memory task. At encoding, participants judged whether positive and negative words were positive or self-descriptive. After a free recall test, participants viewed an equal mix of studied and unstudied words and judged whether each was "old" or "new"; if judged "old," they indicated whether the study source was a valence or self-reference judgment. We replicate the positive memory advantage and its decrease in depression in recall, recognition, and source accuracy. The hierarchical drift diffusion model (HDDM; Wiecki et al., 2013) revealed that higher BDI-II scores are associated with more efficient evidence accumulation for negative words in the recognition and source memory tasks. By contrast, evidence accumulation for positive words is unaffected by BDI-II during the recognition task but becomes less efficient with increased BDI-II during the source memory task. In conclusion, in a well-controlled design with a large sample, we find that depression reduces the positive memory advantage. HDDM analyses suggest that this reflects differential effects of depression on the speed of evidence accumulation during the retrieval of positive versus negative memories. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

We investigated whether standardized neuropsychological tests and experimental cognitive paradigms measure the same cognitive faculties. Specifically, do neuropsychological tests commonly used to assess attention measure the same construct as attention paradigms used in cognitive psychology and neuroscience? We built on the “general attention factor”, comprising several widely used experimental paradigms (Huang et al., 2012). Participants (n = 636) completed an on-line battery (TestMyBrain.org) of six experimental tests [Multiple Object Tracking, Flanker Interference, Visual Working Memory, Approximate Number Sense, Spatial Configuration Visual Search, and Gradual Onset Continuous Performance Task (Grad CPT)] and eight neuropsychological tests [Trail Making Test versions A & B (TMT-A, TMT-B), Digit Symbol Coding, Forward and Backward Digit Span, Letter Cancellation, Spatial Span, and Arithmetic]. Exploratory factor analysis in a subset of 357 participants identified a five-factor structure: (1) attentional capacity (Multiple Object Tracking, Visual Working Memory, Digit Symbol Coding, Spatial Span), (2) search (Visual Search, TMT-A, TMT-B, Letter Cancellation); (3) Digit Span; (4) Arithmetic; and (5) Sustained Attention (GradCPT). Confirmatory analysis in 279 held-out participants showed that this model fit better than competing models. A hierarchical model where a general cognitive factor was imposed above the five specific factors fit as well as the model without the general factor. We conclude that Digit Span and Arithmetic tests should not be classified as attention tests. Digit Symbol Coding and Spatial Span tap attentional capacity, while TMT-A, TMT-B, and Letter Cancellation tap search (or attention-shifting) ability. These five tests can be classified as attention tests.

Mobile- and web-based psychological research are a valuable addition to the set of tools available for scientific study, reducing logistical barriers for research participation and allowing the recruitment of larger and more diverse participant groups. However, this comes at the cost of reduced control over the technology used by participants, which can introduce new sources of variability into study results. In this study, we examined differences in measured performance on timed and untimed cognitive tests between users of common digital devices in 59,587 (Study 1) and 3818 (Study 2) visitors to TestMyBrain.org , a web-based cognitive testing platform. Controlling for age, gender, educational background, and cognitive performance on an untimed vocabulary test, users of mobile devices, particularly Android smartphones, showed significantly slower performance on tests of reaction time than users of laptop and desktop computers, suggesting that differences in device latency affect measured reaction times. Users of devices that differ in user interface (e.g. screen size, mouse vs. touchscreen) also show significant differences (p