Counterfactual thought in reasoning and performance

Counterfactual thoughts mutate reality to imagine how things might have been different than they actually are. These types of thoughts are more frequent when the antecedent is unusual or the outcome is temporally or numerically close. Counterfactuals have functional benefits for causal reasoning, motivation, intentions, and behavior change. However, they can also bias or hinder these same phenomena under certain conditions. In this article, we review the processes by which counterfactuals produce functional (vs. dysfunctional) outcomes and suggest that this relies on four essential criteria: a causal antecedent is identified accurately; the antecedent can be acted upon by the individual; the counterfactual thought facilitates the means or motivation to alter future behavior; and a future relevant opportunity for application is recognized. Counterfactuals will be functional to the extent that they satisfy all four criteria.     

Cholinergic blockade, septal lesions, and DRL performance in the rat.

Four experiments describing the effects of cholinergic blockade produced by systemic injection of either atropine sulfate or atropine methyl nitrate on the differential reinforcement of low rate (DRL) responding of rats are reported. It was shown that atropine sulfate injected either chronically or at high dosage suppressed DRL responding. Injected acutely, atropine sulfate produced disinhibitory effects. When atropine was injected either chronically or acutely into animals with septal lesions, there was suppression of responding. It was suggested that the specific behavioral outcome resulting from cholinergic blockade depends on the balance resulting from the competing peripheral and central effects of such blockade.     

Hemisphere specific effects in reasoning performance

Summary Subjects frequently produce matching responses to Wason's selection problem. Some authors have proposed that such responses are a result of information processing functions which are lateralised to the right hemisphere and that compete with left hemisphere verbal/logical processes for the control of overt responding. Support for this position has come mainly from studies of patient populations. The present paper reports a series of experiments in which attempts were made to obtain similar confirmation from normal subjects using the technique of selective hemispheric interference. Subjects worked on the selection problem while concurrently performing a unimanual balancing task. Weak but persistent effects of hemispheric interference on the pattern of responses th the selection porblem were observed. In general, the data are consistent with the hypothesis that matching responses reflect right hemisphere processing.These experiments were reported at the Oxford meeting of the Experimental Psychology Society, 1983     

Septal influences on operant responding in the rat.

The afferent and efferent connections of the septum with the hippocampus (fornix) of with the hypothalamus and lower brain stem (medial forebrain bundle) were transected by means of an encephalotome near the point where these pathways enter or leave the septal area. A transection of the fornix that produced minimal direct damage to cellular components of the septum of hippocampus reproduced the effects of large septal lesions on responding in several temporally defined paradigms that involve periods of response suppression (differential reinforcement of low rates, discriminated Sidman avoidance, fixed interval). Transection of the medial forebrain bundle fibers that interconnect the septum with the hypothalamus and lower brain stem did not affect behavior in any of these paradigms. These observations should be veiwed in the context of the results of earlier investigations which demonstrated that transection of the medial forebrain bundle reproduces several other components of the septal lesion syndrome.     

Septal lesions and biting attacks in rats bidirectionally selected for emotionality

Twenty-nine colonies composed of one female and two male rats of high or low emotional strain were established. A dominant male of each colony was identified based on its attacks on an intruder rat. It was found that dominant males of the low emotional strain colonies were significantly more aggressive than those of the high emotional strain. Septal lesions or sham operations were given to dominant males of both strain colonies. Intruder tests were followed and several aggressive behaviors were measured by VTR observation. Biting attacks of the high emotional strain decreased for 10 days after septal latencies were shortened by septal lesions. Lesions X Strain interaction was significant. These results suggest that septal lesion effects on biting attacks are influenced by artificial genetic operations.     

Participant recruitment methods and statistical reasoning performance

Optimal Bayesian reasoning performance has reportedly been elusive, and a variety of explanations have been suggested for this situation. In a series of experiments, it is demonstrated that these difficulties with replication can be accounted for by differences in participant-sampling methodologies. Specifically, the best performances are obtained with students from top-tier, national universities who were paid for their participation. Performance drops significantly as these conditions are altered regarding inducements (e.g., using unpaid participants) or participant source (e.g., using participants from a second-tier, regional university). Honours-programme undergraduates do better than regular undergraduates within the same university, paid participation creates superior performance, and top-tier university students do better than students from lower ranked universities. Pictorial representations (supplementing problem text) usually have a slight facilitative effect across these participant manipulations. These results indicate that studies should take account of these methodological details and focus more on relative levels of performance rather than absolute performance.     

Participant recruitment methods and statistical reasoning performance

Optimal Bayesian reasoning performance has reportedly been elusive, and a variety of explanations have been suggested for this situation. In a series of experiments, it is demonstrated that these difficulties with replication can be accounted for by differences in participant-sampling methodologies. Specifically, the best performances are obtained with students from top-tier, national universities who were paid for their participation. Performance drops significantly as these conditions are altered regarding inducements (e.g., using unpaid participants) or participant source (e.g., using participants from a second-tier, regional university). Honours-programme undergraduates do better than regular undergraduates within the same university, paid participation creates superior performance, and top-tier university students do better than students from lower ranked universities. Pictorial representations (supplementing problem text) usually have a slight facilitative effect across these participant manipulations. These results indicate that studies should take account of these methodological details and focus more on relative levels of performance rather than absolute performance.     

Septal lesions lower responding under fixed-ratio schedules of reinforcement.

Albino Sprague-Dawley rats with complete septal lesions and rats with control operations were studied under fixed-ratio (FR) schedules of reinforcement. Both groups were trained for 10 sessions each under FR 10, 20, 40, 60, 80, and 100. In contrast to findings from progressive FR studies and some simple FR studies, septal lesions resulted in lower overall and local response rates along with longer postreinforcement pauses. These effects were especially evident during the FR 100 schedule of reinforcement. A comparison of reinforcement rate as a function of FR size within the context of behavioral economics (i.e., a demand function) indicated that septal lesions did not alter the reward value of food. These findings suggest that responding on FR schedules of reinforcement can be altered by the various procedures used to train rats to reach the terminal value of a reinforcement schedule.     

Enhancing academic performance by strengthening class-inclusion reasoning

Class inclusion is an early form of abstract thought that requires logical rather than perceptually based inferences plus an appreciation of part-whole relationships (B. Inhelder and J. Piaget, 1959/1964). The authors randomly assigned 2 groups of first graders who were having academic difficulties to be instructed on either class inclusion or phonics. Results showed a significant linear relation between individual children's mastery of class inclusion and their scores on the Cognitive Abilities Test Form 6 (D. F. Lohman and E. P. Hagen, 2001) verbal and quantitative measures of reasoning. The authors also found a significant linear relation between mastery of class inclusion and improvement in report card marks issued by teachers who were blind to the children's group assignment.     

Gastric secretion and activity-stress lesions in the rat

In Experiment 1, gastric samples were obtained by means of a pylorus ligation procedure on either the first or last day of the activity-stress procedure. Experimental rats had more stomach lesions and showed a drop in gastric acid on the last day collection. In Experiment 2, rats were surgically prepared with gastric cannulas and pyloric cuffs, and first and last day collections were obtained from the same animal. Experimental activity rats revealed more stomach lesions and a corresponding drop in gastric acid on the last collection than did control rats, which thereby suggests that acid was not a significant etiological variable. The destruction of acid-bearing parietal cells or the back diffusion of hydrogen ions could also explain the low acid values in rats with stomach lesions.     

Septal lesions and behavior: effects of presurgical rearing and strain of mouse.

Male mice (C57BL/10J or SJL/J strains) were reared in either enriched social cages or restricted individual cages from 25 days of age until they underwent septal or control surgery 1 mo later. Enrichment differentially altered septal or control behavior as measured by: fluid consumption of water, saccharin, and quinine; performance on a rotorod; and the acquisition of an active avoidance task. The interactions of presurgical history with brain damage were manifested differently in the two strains of mice. The importance of attending more to genetic and presurgical history in attempts to define the effects of brain damage on behavior and to determine the function of brain structures is discussed.     

Effects of anxiety on inferential reasoning task performance

Three experiments were conducted in which high anxiety and low anxiety subjects were required to construct inferences. In Experiment 1 there was no anxiety-related performance deficit when inferring a necessary anaphoric relation, a process argued to be automatic. Experiments 2 and 3 involved the verification of unnecessary inferences, a process argued to involve the utilization of the working memory system. In both Experiments 2 and 3 there was an anxiety-related performance deficit. The results are consistent with a working memory-oriented account of anxiety-related performance effects, as deficits were restricted to capacity-demanding tasks.     

Septal area lesions impair spatial working memory in homing pigeons (Columba livia)

The septo-hippocampal system in birds resembles that of mammals, motivating research into the function of the avian hippocampus while surprisingly little attention has been given to the septum. To investigate a possible role of the avian septum in memory, the effects of septal area lesions on a spatial working memory (SpWM) task was tested in homing pigeons. After preoperative training on an analogue eight-arm (feeders) radial maze, now sham-operated control and septal lesioned pigeons were then trained again on the same task of locating the four feeders on the test phase of a trial that were not baited during the sample phase of a trial. During the test phase of a working memory trial, septal lesioned pigeons, compared to both their own preoperative performance and the performance of the controls, required significantly more choices to locate the four baited feeders not baited during the sample phase of a trial, and they made significantly fewer correct responses to the now baited feeders on their first four choices. The results demonstrate that, like its mammalian counterpart, the avian septum plays an important role in SpWM, suggesting that at least some functional properties of the septum are evolutionarily conserved in birds and mammals.