A learning theory account of depression

Learning theory provides a foundation for understanding and deriving treatment principles for impacting a spectrum of functional processes relevant to the construct of depression. While behavioral interventions have been commonplace in the cognitive behavioral tradition, most often conceptualized within a cognitive theoretical framework, recent years have seen renewed interest in more purely behavioral models. These modern learning theory accounts of depression focus on the interchange between behavior and the environment, mainly in terms of lack of reinforcement, extinction of instrumental behavior, and excesses of aversive control, and include a conceptualization of relevant cognitive and emotional variables. These positions, drawn from extensive basic and applied research, cohere with biological theories on reduced reward learning and reward responsiveness and views of depression as a heterogeneous, complex set of disorders. Treatment techniques based on learning theory, often labeled Behavioral Activation (BA) focus on activating the individual in directions that increase contact with potential reinforcers, as defined ideographically with the client. BA is considered an empirically well‐established treatment that generalizes well across diverse contexts and populations. The learning theory account is discussed in terms of being a parsimonious model and ground for treatments highly suitable for large scale dissemination.     

Semantic and phonological information flow in the production lexicon

When speakers produce words, lexical access proceeds through semantic and phonological levels of processing. If phonological processing begins based on partial semantic information, processing is cascaded; otherwise, it is discrete. In standard models of lexical access, semantically processed words exert phonological effects only if processing is cascaded. In 3 experiments, speakers named pictures of objects with homophone names (ball), while auditory distractor words were heard beginning 150 ms prior to picture onset. Distractors speeded picture naming (compared with controls) only when related to the nondepicted meaning of the picture (e.g., dance), exhibiting an early phonological effect, thereby supporting the cascaded prediction. Distractors slowed picture naming when categorically (e.g., frisbee) related to the depicted picture meaning, but not when associatively (e.g., game) related to it. An interactive activation model is presented.     

Relevant logic and the theory of information

This paper provides an interpretation of the Routley-Meyer semantics for a weak negation-free relevant logic using Israel and Perry's theory of information. In particular, Routley and Meyer's ternary accessibility relation is given an interpretation in information-theoretic terms.I am indebted to Max Cresswell for invariable conversations relating to the topic and encouraging me to provide a philosophical explanation of the ternary semantics for relevant logic and to Errol Martin also for useful discussions and encouragement. I am also grateful to Greg Restall who made his work available to me while I was finishing this project. While working on this project, I was supported by a grant from the Centre for Information Science Research at The Australian National University. I am grateful to John Slaney and Michael McRobbie for securing this grant. I gave an earlier version of this paper to the Basser School of Computer Science at the University of Sydney and to the philosophy department at Victoria University of Wellington. I thank all those in attendance especially John Bacon, Norman Foo, Abhaya Nayak, Kim Sterelny, and James Maclaurin.     

Knowledge and the regularity theory of information

Fred Dretske's Knowledge and the Flow of Information is an extended attempt to develop a philosophically useful theory of information. Dretske adapts central ideas from Shannon and Weaver's mathematical theory of communication, and applies them to some traditional problems in epistemology. In doing so, he succeeds in building for philosophers a much-needed bridge to important work in cognitive science. The payoff for epistemologists is that Dretske promises a way out of a long-standing impasse — the Gettier problem. He offers an alternative model of knowledge as information-based belief, which purports to avoid the problems justificatory accounts face. This essay looks closely at Dretske's theory. I argue that while the information-theoretic framework is attractive, it does not provide an adequate account of knowledge. And there seems to be no way of tightening the theory without introducing some version of a theory of justification — the very notion Dretske's theory was designed to avoid.     

The instructional information processing account of digital computation

What is nontrivial digital computation? It is the processing of discrete data through discrete state transitions in accordance with finite instructional information. The motivation for our account is that many previous attempts to answer this question are inadequate, and also that this account accords with the common intuition that digital computation is a type of information processing. We use the notion of reachability in a graph to defend this characterization in memory-based systems and underscore the importance of instructional information for digital computation. We argue that our account evaluates positively against adequacy criteria for accounts of computation.     

A motivated action theory account of goal orientation

Rapid organizational change is increasing the pressure on employees to continually update their skills and adapt their behavior to new organizational realities. Goal orientation is a promising motivational construct that may explain why some individuals adapt to change better. Unfortunately, the current goal orientation literature is in a state of conceptual and methodological disarray. This presentation reviews the goal orientation literature and identifies numerous conceptual ambiguities, including definitional inconsistencies, dimensional inconsistencies, and inconsistencies in the conceptualization of stability. These conceptual ambiguities result in a confusing array of goal orientation measures and manipulations and ultimately an incoherent empirical database. A dynamic self-regulation model of goal orientation, termed motivated action theory, is presented to integrate the various conceptual perspectives and to provide guidelines for future goal orientation research.     

A computational account of the development of the generalization of shape information

Abecassis, Sera, Yonas, and Schwade (2001) showed that young children represent shapes more metrically, and perhaps more holistically, than do older children and adults. How does a child transition from representing objects and events as undifferentiated wholes to representing them explicitly in terms of their attributes? According to RBC (Recognition‐by‐Components theory; Biederman, 1987 ), objects are represented as collections of categorical geometric parts (“geons”) in particular categorical spatial relations. We propose that the transition from holistic to more categorical visual shape processing is a function of the development of geon‐like representations via a process of progressive intersection discovery. We present an account of this transition in terms of DORA ( Doumas, Hummel, & Sandhofer, 2008 ), a model of the discovery of relational concepts. We demonstrate that DORA can learn representations of single geons by comparing objects composed of multiple geons. In addition, as DORA is learning it follows the same performance trajectory as children, originally generalizing shape more metrically/holistically and eventually generalizing categorically.     

Mechanisms of visual-cognitive aging: A neural network account

Two neural network simulations were run for the purpose of specifying the network parameters that best describe age-related interindividual and intraindividual variability in figure completion performance. the network architecture was modified in three ways that corresponded to plausible computational and neuro-anatomical constraints. In two simulations in which the rate of increase of activation within network units was constrained during testing, the performance of the network closely resembled the relevant empirical data. These findings supported a computationally specific model of age-related differences in figure completion performance rather than a diffuse model of age-related slowing. It is suggested that the analysis of fit between the results of computer simulations and analogous empirical data provides a useful method for the explication of aging mechanisms, and for distinguishing among competing hypotheses and constructs in the study of cognitive aging.     

The premotor theory of attention as an account for the Simon effect

The Simon effect refers to the phenomenon that responses are faster when the irrelevant location of a stimulus corresponds with the response location than when these locations do not correspond. In the current paper we examined the viability of an updated version of the premotor theory of attention (PMTA) as an account for the Simon effect. Two predictions were evaluated. First, in the case of focused attention at the relevant target position a strong reduction of the Simon effect should be observed as the Simon effect according to PMTA crucially depends on attentional orienting. Secondly, if attention is directed towards a location then this orienting by itself should already be sufficient for producing a Simon effect, as stimulus presence is not required. Our data confirmed these predictions thereby supporting the relevance of the PMTA for the Simon effect.     

Symmetry, gestalt and information theory

Two kinds of patterns were made up out of crosses. The first kind was symmetrical and the second contained a sub-pattern repeated in the same orientation. Subjects were requested to reproduce the stimuli after viewing them for 2 sec. It was found that there was no difference between the two kinds of stimuli when symmetry about the horizontal axis was involved but that when symmetry about the vertical axis occurred the symmetrical stimuli were reproduced more accurately than the repeated stimuli. Introduction of contrasting colours on the two portions of each pattern decreased the frequency of correct responses, whilst stressing the grid line subdividing the stimuli into two portions containing the same information had no significant effect.     

Semantic integration of verbal information into a visual memory

A total of 1,242 subjects, in five experiments plus a pilot study, saw a series of slides depicting a single auto-pedestrian accident. The purpose of these experiments was to investigate how information supplied after an event influences a witness's memory for that event. Subjects were exposed to either consistent, misleading, or irrelevant information after the accident event. Misleading information produced less accurate responding on both a yes-no and a two-alternative forced-choice recognition test. Further, misleading information had a larger impact if introduced just prior to a final test rather than immediately after the initial event. The effects of misleading information cannot be accounted for by a simple demand-characteristics explanation. Overall, the results suggest that information to which a witness is exposed after an event, whether that information is consistent or misleading, is integrated into the witness's memory of the event.