Better late than never? The effect of feedback delay on ERP indices of reward processing

The feedback negativity (FN), an early neural response that differentiates rewards from losses, appears to be generated in part by reward circuits in the brain. A prominent model of the FN suggests that it reflects learning processes by which environmental feedback shapes behavior. Although there is evidence that human behavior is more strongly influenced by rewards that quickly follow actions, in nonlaboratory settings, optimal behaviors are not always followed by immediate rewards. However, it is not clear how the introduction of a delay between response selection and feedback impacts the FN. Thus, the present study used a simple forced choice gambling task to elicit the FN, in which feedback about rewards and losses was presented after either 1 or 6?s. Results suggest that, at short delays (1?s), participants clearly differentiated losses from rewards, as evidenced in the magnitude of the FN. At long delays (6?s), on the other hand, the difference between losses and rewards was negligible. Results are discussed in terms of eligibility traces and the reinforcement learning model of the FN.     

基于价值的议程对学习时间分配影响的眼动研究

通过对比不同梯度下, 分值激发的议程与习惯性反应作用一致、不一致条件中, 优先选择项目和学习时间的差异, 考察基于价值的议程对学习时间分配的影响及其动态过程。结果发现：(1)等分值条件下, 汉语为母语被试存在从左到右的习惯性反应。(2)分值梯度对基于议程的学习时间分配的有效性具有调节作用。小分值梯度(1分、5分)激发的议程能够克服习惯性反应对学习时间分配的影响, 但不能使被试建立起优先学习高价值项目的议程; 大分值梯度(1分、10分)能够克服习惯性反应对学习时间分配影响, 且能够使被试建立起优先学习高价值项目的议程。(3)基于议程调节的学习时间分配在时程和阶段上具有动态性和情境特异性。     

Perspectives on supervision in cognitive therapy

Supervision is often a neglected clinical area. Frequently, supervisors view supervision as an epiphenomenon of clinical work rather than a central feature. This article emphasizes the importance of supervision in cognitive therapy. Teaching novice professionals to skillfully apply cognitive conceptualizations and interventions is a challenging and difficult task. It is argued that fostering a learning alliance in supervision forms the basis for acquisition of pivotal cognitive therapy competencies. Various impediments to productive learning alliances are discussed and ways to obviate these obstacles are suggested. Further, issues related to technical interventions, relationship processes, and case conceptualizations are discussed. Finally, ways to augment trainees' skills in these fundamental areas are delineated. He is also Co-director of the Pre-Doctoral Psychology Residency Training Program.     

Group Reward Contingencies and Cooperative Learning: Immediate and Delayed Effects on Academic Performance,Self-esteem,and Sociometric Ratings

While cooperative learning methods have been reported to have positive effects on a range of personal and social student outcomes, research into their academic benefits has produced mixed results. This study evaluated the effects of one cooperative learning method (cooperative reading and integrated composition, or CIRC) on the reading achievement, sociometric ratings, and self-esteem of 83 third-graders under three reward conditions (group rewards, individual rewards, and no rewards). Although students in the group rewards condition achieved significantly (p < 0.05) higher rate and accuracy scores on weekly reading quizzes than those in the individual and no rewards conditions, this effect was not reflected in overall pre–post reading test scores. There were also no significant effects for condition on the sociometric questionnaire. There was, however, a significant condition by sex interaction effect on total self-esteem scores, which indicated higher scores in the group rewards condition than in the other two conditions for girls. Results are interpreted in light of their practical implications for the application of the CIRC method in school settings, and their theoretical implications for research on the impact of group reward contingencies in cooperative learning methods. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A Comprehensive Model of Entrepreneur Role Stress Antecedents and Consequences

Purpose  The aim of this study was to systematize findings in role stress research into original and conceptually important abstract higher-order constructs and to develop and test a comprehensive structural equation model that examined such expanded conceptualizations of antecedents and consequences to entrepreneur role stress. Design/Methodology/Approach  Model tests were performed on data from a sample of 282 Swedish entrepreneurs (a usable rate of 22.5%) engaged in their first-year of venture activities. We used structural equation modeling, mediation tests and tests for common method bias to test the appropriateness of the model. Findings  We found that role stress can be explained by expansions of lower-ranked, less abstract constructs embedded in a multiple-indicator model of venture technology, venture environment, and entrepreneur personality. The analysis confirmed that role stress is an important mediator and that it has pronounced relationships to expanded conceptualizations of role-related rewards and exhaustion. Implications  This study advance role stress theory and existing knowledge about entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship when it introduces role stress and suggests it mediates the effects from personality traits, organizational and environmental characteristics, on higher-order conceptualizations of rewards and exhaustion. Originality/Value  With contributions from several distinct disciplines over a half decade, prior research has not paid much attention to show how role stress research can benefit from more abstract conceptualizations and empirical evaluation. By synthesizing and developing expanded higher-level conceptualizations that link diversities, we show that expanded conceptualizations effectively enable to introduce role stress to entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship.     

THE LIMITS TO PARTICIPATION IN DIS‐EQUILIBRIUM ECOLOGY: Maori involvement in habitat restoration within Te Urewera National Park

In this paper, we explore conceptualizations of ‘ordinary’ citizens common in public engagement forums on emerging technologies and assumptions from deliberative theory that ordinary people are more likely to be appropriately ‘changed’ through deliberative processes facilitated by experts. Looking at a large US public forum event [the National Citizens Technology Forum (NCTF)], we asked: What were the goals for this exercise and how did they shape conceptualizations of ordinariness and representativeness? Whose goals and conceptualizations were they? Were the engaged citizens ordinary and representative—and were they changed by the exercise? Our exploration revealed that exercise organizers conceived of ordinary citizens as people lacking science and technology backgrounds, without advocacy or business connections to the technologies at hand, and demographically reflecting the US population. Exercise materials also implied that ideal ordinary participants would lack strong opinions and emotions about these technologies. Actual NCTF participants, however, tended to be more educated, have higher incomes, and to be more liberal than the US public, and participants from all backgrounds had a range of relevant knowledge, experiences and opinions about science and technology. They were changed by the exercise in complex and conflicting ways—based as much on their own knowledge and reflections on relational dynamics as on exercise processes, interactions with experts, and information provided in the exercise. We argue that inadequately explored ideas about ordinary citizens are highly problematic. Further, invisible assumptions about what is ‘normal’ among experts and status quo institutions serve to reify the lay–expert divide that engagement exercises are intended to counteract.     

Secondary-task effects on sequence learning

With a repeated sequence of stimuli, performance in a serial reaction-time task improves more than with a random sequence. The difference has been taken as a measure of implicit sequence learning. Implicit sequence learning is impaired when a secondary task is added to the serial RT task. In the first experiment, secondary-task effects on different types of sequences were studied to test the hypothesis that the learning of unique sequences (where each sequence element has a unique relation to the following one) is not impaired by the secondary task, while the learning of ambiguous sequences is. The sequences were random up to a certain order of sequential dependencies, where they became deterministic. Contrary to the hypothesis, secondary-task effects on the learning of unique sequences were as strong or stronger than such effects on the learning of ambiguous sequences. In the second experiment a hybrid sequence (with unique as well as ambiguous transitions) was used with different secondary tasks. A visuo-spatial and a verbal memory task did not interfere with the learning of the sequence, but interference was observed with an auditory go/no-go task in which high- and low-pitched tones were presented after each manual response and a foot pedal had to be pressed in response to high-pitched tones. Thus, interference seems to be specific to certain secondary tasks and may be related to memory processes (but most likely not to visuo-spatial and verbal memory) or to the organization of sequences, consistent with previous suggestions.     

How research in behavioral pharmacology informs behavioral science

Behavioral pharmacology is a maturing science that has made significant contributions to the study of drug effects on behavior, especially in the domain of drug-behavior interactions. Less appreciated is that research in behavioral pharmacology can have, and has had, implications for the experimental analysis of behavior, especially its conceptualizations and theory. In this article, I outline three general strategies in behavioral pharmacology research that have been employed to increase understanding of behavioral processes. Examples are provided of the general characteristics of the strategies and of implications of previous research for behavior theory. Behavior analysis will advance as its theories are challenged.     

A Contemporary View of Some of Joseph Sandler's Key Concepts

Three of Sandler's seminal papers—“The Background of Safety” (1960a), “The Concept of the Representational World” (1962), and “Countertransference and Role Responsiveness” (1976)—are scrutinized and discussed to explore the evolution of his thinking over some 40 years. His early insistence on the importance of feeling states and intrapsychic mechanisms and processes, especially those relating to internal objects and internal object relationships, are emphasized as well as the interactions and complementary relationship between theoretical formulations and clinical findings, as exemplified in his research activities in the Index Department of the Anna Freud Centre in London and in his paper on countertransference and role responsiveness. Interrelationships with other concepts, both clinical and theoretical, show up in Sandler's work as well as that of other eminent authors up to the present time, and similarities in conceptualizations are highlighted. Sandler's continuous efforts to clarify psychoanalytic concepts and to integrate differing psychoanalytic conceptualizations and models are illustrated by references to and quotations from the salient papers.     

Money enhances memory consolidation--but only for boring material

Money’s ability to enhance memory has received increased attention in recent research. However, previous studies have not directly addressed the time-dependent nature of monetary effects on memory, which are suggested to exist by research in cognitive neuroscience, and the possible detrimental effects of monetary rewards on learning interesting material, as indicated by studies in motivational psychology. By utilizing a trivia question paradigm, the current study incorporated these perspectives and examined the effect of monetary rewards on immediate and delayed memory performance for answers to uninteresting and interesting questions. Results showed that monetary rewards promote memory performance only after a delay. In addition, the memory enhancement effect of monetary rewards was only observed for uninteresting questions. These results are consistent with both the hippocampus-dependent memory consolidation model of reward learning and previous findings documenting the ineffectiveness of monetary rewards on tasks that have intrinsic value.     

Interparental violence, maternal emotional unavailability and children's cortisol functioning in family contexts

Our goal in the present study was to examine the specificity of pathways among interparental violence, maternal emotional unavailability, and children's cortisol reactivity to emotional stressors within interparental and parent-child relationships. The study also tested whether detrimental family contexts were associated, on average, with hypocortisolism or hypercortisolism responses to stressful family interactions in young children. Participants included 201 toddlers and their mothers who were from impoverished backgrounds and who experienced disproportionate levels of family violence. Assessments of interparental violence were derived from maternal surveys and interviews, whereas maternal emotional unavailability was assessed through maternal reports and observer ratings of caregiving. Salivary cortisol levels were sampled at 3 time points before and after laboratory paradigms designed to elicit children's reactivity to stressful interparental and parent-child contexts. Results indicated that interparental violence and the mother's emotional unavailability were differentially associated with children's adrenocorticol stress reactivity. Furthermore, these family risk contexts predicted lower cortisol change in response to distress. The results are interpreted in the context of risky family and emotional security theory conceptualizations that underscore how family contexts differentially impact children's physiological regulatory capacities.     

Enriched behavioral prediction equation and its impact on structured leaning and the dynamic calculus

This theoretical note describes an expansion of the behavioral prediction equation, in line with the greater complexity encountered in models of structured learning theory (R. B. Cattell, 1996a). This presents learning theory with a vector substitute for the simpler scalar quantities by which traditional Pavlovian-Skinnerian models have hitherto been represented. Structured learning can be demonstrated by vector changes across a range of intrapersonal psychological variables (ability, personality, motivation, and state constructs). Its use with motivational dynamic trait measures (R. B. Cattell, 1985) should reveal new theoretical possibilities for scientifically monitoring change processes (dynamic calculus model: R. B. Cattell, 1996b), such as encountered within psychotherapeutic settings (R. B. Cattell, 1987). The enhanced behavioral prediction equation suggests that static conceptualizations of personality structure such as the Big Five model are less than optimal.     

公共政策情境中行为习惯的形成机制与培养策略

引导社会成员重塑日常良好行为习惯是增强公共政策有效性的重要路径和切入点, 洞悉并把握行为习惯的形成机制对具体培养策略的制定和实施大有裨益。行为习惯是指通过高频重复的奖励习得, 在记忆中形成的情境与反应之间的内隐联结。作为一种特殊的内隐记忆系统, 行为习惯具有自动化、情境线索依赖性、对当前奖励低敏感性等特征。行为习惯的形成机制包含两个独立且共发的习得机制, 即联结习得机制和奖励习得机制。在日常良好行为习惯的形成初期, 目标引导着个体对行为价值的习得。在培养社会成员日常良好行为习惯的过程中, 应将情境线索的稳定性、高频行为的低认知重复以及奖励的合理设置, 作为公共政策助推社会成员养成日常良好行为习惯的三大核心策略。未来的研究方向应着力于加强习惯研究的学科视阈融合, 更新行为习惯领域的研究范式, 重置公共设施以提升有益行为的易达性, 以及引入商业模式以共促社会成员日常良好行为习惯的重塑。     

Development of hierarchical structures for actions and motor imagery: a constructivist view from synthetic neuro-robotics study

The current paper shows a neuro-robotics experiment on developmental learning of goal-directed actions. The robot was trained to predict visuo-proprioceptive flow of achieving a set of goal-directed behaviors through iterative tutor training processes. The learning was conducted by employing a dynamic neural network model which is characterized by their multiple time-scale dynamics. The experimental results showed that functional hierarchical structures emerge through stages of developments where behavior primitives are generated in earlier stages and their sequences of achieving goals appear in later stages. It was also observed that motor imagery is generated in earlier stages compared to actual behaviors. Our claim that manipulatable inner representation should emerge through the sensory–motor interactions is corresponded to Piaget’s constructivist view.     

Multiple imitation mechanisms in children

Four studies using a computerized paradigm investigated whether children's imitation performance is content-specific and to what extent dependent on other cognitive processes such as trial-and-error learning, recall, and observational learning. Experiment 1 showed that 3-year-olds could successfully imitate what we call novel cognitive rules (e.g., first → second → third), which involved responding to 3 different pictures whose spatial configuration varied randomly from trial to trial. However, these same children failed to imitate what we call novel motor-spatial rules (e.g., up → down → right), which involved responding to 3 identical pictures that remained in a fixed spatial configuration from trial to trial. Experiment 2 showed that this dissociation was not due to a general difficulty in encoding motor-spatial content, as children successfully recalled, following a 30-s delay, a new motor-spatial sequence that had been learned by trial and error. Experiment 3 replicated these results and further demonstrated that 3-year-olds can infer a novel motor-spatial sequence following observation of a partially correct and partially incorrect response-a dissociation between imitation and observational learning (or emulation learning). Finally, Experiment 4 presented 3-year-olds with "familiar" motor-spatial sequences that involved making a linear response (e.g., left → middle → right) as well as "novel" motor-spatial sequences (e.g., right → up → down) used in Experiments 1-3 that were nonlinear and always involved a change in direction. Children had no difficulty imitating familiar motor-spatial sequences but again failed to imitate novel motor-spatial sequences. These results suggest that there may be multiple, dissociable imitation learning mechanisms that are content-specific. More importantly, the development of these imitation systems appears to be independent of the operations of other cognitive systems, including trial and error learning, recall, and observational learning.     

Evolution proposes and ontogeny disposes

Genes, the basic building blocks of evolution, are highly conserved. For example, the mouse and human have approximately the same number of genes, and around 94% are identical in the two species. Since species differ on multiple dimensions (e.g., anatomy, physiology, and behavior), it follows that identical genes may subserve different functions in different species. Two reasons for this are gene-gene interaction and gene-environment interaction (and it is the presence of these interactions which prevents one from making deterministic statements about genetics, thus rendering obsolete the nature-nurture controversy). Behavioral examples of both types of interactions are presented, including studies showing that (1) the uterine environment enhances later cognitive competence, (2) early postnatal experiences affect learning and emotionality and can extend into future generations, (3) maternal behavior changes the offspring's later behavior and physiology, and (4) knocking out one gene results in an animal less competent in one learning process but more competent in a complementary learning process.     

Anatomy of a decision: striato-orbitofrontal interactions in reinforcement learning, decision making, and reversal

The authors explore the division of labor between the basal ganglia-dopamine (BG-DA) system and the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) in decision making. They show that a primitive neural network model of the BG-DA system slowly learns to make decisions on the basis of the relative probability of rewards but is not as sensitive to (a) recency or (b) the value of specific rewards. An augmented model that explores BG-OFC interactions is more successful at estimating the true expected value of decisions and is faster at switching behavior when reinforcement contingencies change. In the augmented model, OFC areas exert top-down control on the BG and premotor areas by representing reinforcement magnitudes in working memory. The model successfully captures patterns of behavior resulting from OFC damage in decision making, reversal learning, and devaluation paradigms and makes additional predictions for the underlying source of these deficits.     

Intrinsic Versus Extrinsic Motivation in Schools: A Reconciliation

This article explores the nature of the relationship between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in schools, and in particular examines critically the assertion that these processes are necessarily antagonistic. The weight of evidence suggests that rewards in the form of school grades and the focus of many students on doing well, gradewise, need not necessarily interfere with learning for its own sake. Educational implications of these findings are considered. One such implication is that focusing on students' interests can be a valuable motivational strategy.     

IMPROVING THE PEER INTERACTIONS OF STUDENTS WITH EMOTIONAL AND BEHAVIORAL DISORDERS THROUGH SELF-EVALUATION PROCEDURES: A COMPONENT ANALYSIS AND GROUP APPLICATION

We conducted two experiments examining the effects of a self-evaluation package on the peer interactions of students described as emotionally or behaviorally disordered. Experiment 1 assessed the additive effects of various components of a self-evaluation package on the frequency of inappropriate and appropriate peer interactions. The components assessed were rewards alone, rewards plus discussion, and self-evaluation plus rewards. Results showed limited effectiveness when rewards alone and rewards plus discussion were implemented. However, substantial improvements in peer interactions were observed when the self-evaluation component was added. Experiment 2 examined the efficacy and feasibility of the procedures when implemented in a group setting. Students in three classrooms served as participants. Direct observation data collected for 8 of the participants showed the procedures to be effective in improving peer interactions when implemented in a group context.