Choice Sets and Choice Intentions

Abstract

Researchers have widely accepted the argument that the Fishbein model generally predicts better if the intention measure corresponds to the predicted behavior with respect to target, action, context, and time frame. Although the model is routinely applied in situations involving choice among multiple alternatives, researchers frequently overlook the need to measure intentions so that they correspond to the multiple target behaviors that constitute the subject'S salient choice set. The present study was designed to demonstrate the effect of choice set on the measurement of behavioral intentions of American students. The data support the argument that Fishbein'S intention measure is quite sensitive to the choice set involved, perhaps one reason why intention measures sometimes fail to predict behavior accurately.     

壮族人群自然情况及高血压流行特点研究

原发性高血压因发病隐匿,患病率高,是血管事件的高危因素倍受关注.如何在人群中早期识别其高度、敏感的危害性因素,并在其萌芽之前,采取有效的干预措施,阻止、延缓或消灭其进展,达到控制或减少其对人类的危害,具有十分重要的现实意义.本文综述壮族居民高血压痛流行因素的研究进展.     

信用环境的伦理探析

从伦理意义上讲,信用环境是指由市场经济主体的信用道德观念和信用道德行为在市场的生产、交换、分配、消费等各个经济环节中所表现出来的履行信用契约的伦理状况.优化信用环境,挖掘其伦理价值,是市场经济良性运行的基础.     

The Problem of Units and the Circumstance for POMP

Many areas of the behavioral sciences have few measures that are accepted as the standard for the operationalization of a construct. One consequence is that there is hardly ever an articulated and understood framework for the units of the measures that are employed. Without meaningful measurement units, theoretical formulations are limited to statements of the direction of an effect or association, or to effects expressed in standardized units. Thus the long term scientific goal of generation of laws expressing the relationships among variables in scale units is greatly hindered. This article reviews alternative methods of scoring a scale. Two recent journal volumes are surveyed with regard to current scoring practices. Alternative methods of scoring are evaluated against seven articulated criteria representing the information conveyed by each in an illustrative example. Converting scores to the percent of maximum possible score (POMP) is shown to provide useful additional information in many cases.     

Choice and Logic

There is a little known paradox the solution to which is a guide to a much more thoroughgoing solution to a whole range of classic paradoxes. This is shown in this paper with respect to Berrys Paradox, Heterologicality, Russells Paradox, and the Paradox of Predication, also the Liar and the Strengthened Liar, using primarily the epsilon calculus. The solutions, however, show not only that the first-order predicate calculus derived from Frege is inadequate as a basis for a clear science, and should be replaced with Hilbert and Bernays conservative extension. Standard second-order logic, and quantified propositional logic also must be substantially modified, to incorporate, in the first place, nominalizations of predicates, and whole sentences. And further modifications must be made, so as to insist that predicates are parts of sentences rather than forms of them, and that truth is a property of propositions rather than their sentential expressions. In all, a thorough reworking of what has been called logic in recent years must be undertaken, to make it more fit for use.Portions of this paper have previously been published in Logical Studies, vol. 9, http://www.logic.ru/LogStud/09/No9-06.html, and the Australasian Journal of Logic, vol. 2, http://www.philosophy.unimelb.edu.au/ajl/2004/2004_4.pdf.     

Choice and foraging

In Experiment 1, six naive pigeons were trained on a foraging schedule characterized by different states beginning with a search state in which completion of a fixed-interval on a white key led to a choice state. In the choice state the subject could, by appropriate responding on a fixed ratio of three, either accept or reject the schedule of reinforcement that was offered (either a variable-interval five-second or a variable-interval 20-second). If the subject accepted the schedule, it entered a “handling state” in which the appropriate variable-interval schedule was presented. Completion of the variable-interval schedule produced food. The independent variable was the fixed-interval value in the search state, and the dependent variable was the rate of acceptance of the long variable-interval in the choice state. Experiment 2 was identical except that the search state required completion of a variable-interval, instead of a fixed-interval, schedule. The rate of acceptance of the long variable-interval schedule in both experiments was a direct function of the length of the search state, in accordance with both optimality theory and the delay-reduction hypothesis.     

Choice and Culpability

Abstract

In this paper, I take exception with a widely held philosophical doctrine, according to which agents are morally responsible only for actions they have intentionally done, or chosen to bring about. I argue that that there are positive duties of consideration and proper regard that make sense of holding persons responsible in the absence of any choice to commit wrong acts.     

Choice

Understanding how and why analysands make the choices they do is central to both the clinical and the theoretical projects of psychoanalysis. And yet we know very little about the process of choice or about the relationship between choices and motives. A striking parallel is to be found between the ways choice is narrated in ancient Greek texts and the experience of analysts as they observe patients making choices in everyday clinical work. Pursuing this convergence of classical and contemporary sensibilities will illuminate crucial elements of the various meanings of choice, and of the way that these meanings change over the course of psychoanalytic treatment.     

Choice and reinforcement delay

Previous studies of choice between two delayed reinforcers have indicated that the relative immediacy of the reinforcer is a major determinant of the relative frequency of responding. Parallel studies of choice between two interresponse times have found exceptions to this generality. The present study looked at the choice by pigeons between two delays, one of which was always four times longer than the other, but whose absolute durations were varied across conditions. The results indicated that choice is not uniquely determined by the relative immediacy of reinforcement, but that absolute delays are also involved. Models for concurrent chained schedules appear to be more applicable to the present data than the matching relation; however, these too failed to predict choice for long delays.     

Choice and multiple reinforcers

Pigeons chose between equivalent two-component mixed and multiple terminal-link schedules of reinforcement in the concurrent-chains procedure. The pigeons preferred the multiple schedule over the mixed when the components of the compound schedules were differentiated in terms of density of reinforcement, but the pigeons were indifferent when the components were differentiated in terms of number of reinforcers per cycle. Taken together, these results indicate that a local variable, the interval to the first reinforcer, but not a molar variable, the number of reinforcers, was sufficient to differentiate the components and thereby evoke preference.     

Choice and behavioral patterning

Ten pigeons pecked left and right keys in a discrete-trials experiment in which access to food was contingent upon changeovers to the right key after particular runs of left-key pecks. In each of three sets of conditions, two run lengths were reinforced according to a concurrent variable-interval schedule: reinforcement followed runs of either 1 or 2, 1 or 4, or 2 or 4 left-key pecks preceding changeovers. The intertrial interval separating successive pecks was varied from .5 to 10.0 sec, and the relative frequency of reinforcement for the shorter of the two reinforced runs was varied from 0 to .75. The contingencies established local behavioral patterning that roughly approximated that required for reinforcement. For a fixed pair of reinforced run lengths, preference for the shorter of the two frequently increased as the intertrial interval increased and therefore as the minimum temporal durations of both reinforced runs increased. Preference for the shorter of the two also increased as its corresponding relative frequency of reinforcement increased. Both of these effects on preference were qualitatively similar to corresponding effects in previous research with two different kinds of reinforced behavioral patterns, interresponse times and interchangeover times. In all these experiments, analytical units were found in the temporal patterns of behavior, not in the behavior immediately contiguous with a reinforcer. It is suggested that a particular local temporal pattern of behavior is established to the extent to which it is repeatedly remembered when reinforcers are delivered, regardless of whether the delivery of a reinforcer is explicitly contingent upon that pattern.     

Indeterministic Choice and Ability

The problem of luck is advanced and defended against libertarian theories of responsibility-enabling ability. An outline of an account of ability is articulated to explore some features of the sort of ability moral responsibility requires. The account vindicates the luck objection and suggests a novel puzzle: Libertarianism is structurally barred from answering the problem of luck because responsibility requires, but inherently lacks, an explanation from reason states to actions that preserves reliability of connection between responsibility-grounding reasons-sensitivity and action.     

Virtuous Choice and Parity

This article seeks to contribute to the discussion on the nature of choice in virtue theory. If several different actions are available to the virtuous agent, they are also likely to vary in their degree of virtue, at least in some situations. Yet, it is widely agreed that once an action is recognised as virtuous there is no higher level of virtue. In this paper we discuss how the virtue theorist could accommodate both these seemingly conflicting ideas. We discuss this issue from a modern Aristotelian perspective, as opposed to a purely exegetic one. We propose a way of resolving what seems to be a major clash between two central features of virtue ethics. Our proposal is based on the notion of parity, a concept which recently has received considerable attention in the literature on axiology. Briefly put, two alternatives are on a par (or are ‘roughly equal’) if they are comparable, although it is not the case that one is better than the other, nor that they are equally good. The advantages of applying the concept of parity to our problem are twofold. Firstly, it sheds new light on the account of choice in virtue theory. Secondly, some of the criticisms that have been mounted against the possibility of parity can be countered by considering the notion of choice from a virtue theory perspective.     

Choice frequency and similarity

Abstract.— Within the framework of a Thurstonian approach to social choice frequencies, an assumption of a positive correlation between similarity and correlation predicts smaller standard deviations of utility differences for more similar choice objects. This prediction was supported in two studies of similarity and preference, one concerned with social science disciplines and the other with Swedish political parties. Implications for understanding social choice phenomena in politics and marketing are discussed.     

Choice and response contingencies

Two experiments investigated the extent to which response contingencies influence the choice between two schedules of reinforcement by exposing pigeons to a concurrent-chains procedure in which reinforcers in one terminal link were response-independent, and in the other terminal link, response-dependent. In Experiment 1, the pigeons were indifferent between an aperiodic, response-independent schedule and an aperiodic, response-dependent schedule that required a minimum rate of responding. This finding limits the generality of a required-rate contingency as a determinant of choice, which contingency had been previously demonstrated in a context of periodic reinforcement to evoke preference for an alternate schedule. In Experiment 2, the pigeons preferred a periodic, response-independent schedule to a periodic, response-dependent schedule that shared a feature with a required-rate schedule: there was a requirement to respond early in the interreinforcement interval, when responding produced reinforcement only later. The results of the two experiments suggest the following general interpretation: pigeons prefer a second schedule to the extent that the response contingencies of the first schedule must be satisfied during discriminable periods of nonreinforcement.     

新形势下医院药学的困境与发展

全面分析在当前新的形势下医院药学发展处在转型期所面临的实际困难.正确认识目前医院药剂科在人才队伍建设和知识结构上存在的不足,以及自身拥有的专业技术优势等.明确今后工作的重点在于深入临床贴近患者,向临床药学服务方向发展,同时不断提高临床药学科研水平,促进医院药学事业更高、更快发展.