Pioneer profiles: A few minutes with Sid Bijou

This article is an interview with Sidney W. Bijou. His education, work, accomplishments, and honors in the field of behavior analysis are reviewed and described in his own words. Some of his accomplishments include applying operant methodology to normal children and children with retardation, extending operant methodology with children from the laboratory to the natural environment, carrying the banner of behavior analysis to many foreign countries, teaching and advising many students of behavior analysis who have become well known as behavior analysts, and researching, developing, and commercializing such well-known products as the Edmark reading program, the Portage parent training program, and the Wide Range Achievement Test.     

The Turn from Ontology to Ethics: Three Kantian Responses to Three Levinasian Critiques

Abstract

Both Kant and Levinas state that traditional ontology is a type of philosophy that illegitimately forces the structure of human reason onto other beings, thus making the subject the center and origin of all meaning. Kant’s critique of the ontology of his scholastic predecessors is well known. For Levinas, however, it does not suffice. He rejects what we could call an ‘existential ontology’: a self-centered way of living as a whole, of which all philosophical ontology is but a branch. Alternatively, he presents an ethical way of living centered on ‘the Other’. Kant also, however, eventually turns to ethics to uncover a more fundamental domain of meaning. Hence, both thinkers ultimately agree about the primacy of ethics over theory. Despite this concurrence, Levinas nevertheless criticizes all aspects of Kant’s turn towards ethics: his reason for making this turn, the kind of critique that he applies to this domain, and the outcome thereof. These three points reflect Levinas’ more general critique that Kant did not succeed in overcoming ontological discourse. This paper shows how Kant can reply to, and overcome, each of Levinas’ three critiques. In this way, I reveal certain commonalities between these two thinkers that commentators still often overlook.     

心理咨询中领悟质量的评定依据——当事人和咨询师的视角

为获得当事人和咨询师对心理咨询中领悟质量的评定依据,采用协商一致的质性研究方法分别对13位当事人和15位咨询师的访谈材料进行分析。结果：当事人的评定依据包括影响力和特性;而咨询师的评定依据包括影响力、特性、类型、产生方式以及当事人对领悟的接纳程度。结论：领悟的影响力和领悟的特性是评定领悟质量的重要依据。     

Reset a task set after five minutes of mindfulness practice

This study aimed to evaluate the impact of a brief mindfulness practice on reducing the carryover effect caused by a previous task set and to determine the mechanism for its effectiveness. Experiment 1 showed that a memorized color interfered with subsequent visual search as a singleton distractor only when color was a defining feature for the search target. In Experiment 2, three interventions (scene-viewing, distraction, and mindfulness practice) were implemented across three groups for five minutes between two blocks; color was relevant to search in the first block and irrelevant in the second. Only the mindfulness group showed a non-significant carryover effect. Experiment 3 demonstrated that the scene-viewing participants continued adopting a suppressive mode of attentional control on a previously distracting color during letter judgment. In contrast, mindfulness practice could reset a task set. Mindfulness practice could enhance concentration in the present moment via reconfiguring the mode of attentional control.     

From a passing thought to a false memory in 2 minutes: Confusing real and illusory events

The frequency with which subjects erroneously included a nonpresented word in their recall of a study list was explored in two experiments. The intrusion error was recalled by as many as 80% of the subjects, and when it was perceived to have been presented early in the study list, it was assigned confidence ratings and phenomenological retrieval characteristics equivalent to those for presented words. As a result, subjects were often unable to discriminate memories of real study words from their memories of a related but nonpresented word. Manipulations of encoding, but not of retrieval, conditions altered both the frequencies of illusory memories and their metamemorial characteristics. The results and paradigm are discussed in terms of their relevance to the “memory-recovery” debate.     

Three Approaches to Iterated Belief Contraction

In this paper we investigate three approaches to iterated contraction, namely: the Moderate (or Priority) contraction, the Natural (or Conservative) contraction, and the Lexicographic contraction. We characterise these three contraction functions using certain, arguably plausible, properties of an iterated contraction function. While we provide the characterisation of the first two contraction operations using rationality postulates of the standard variety for iterated contraction, we found doing the same for the Lexicographic contraction more challenging. We provide its characterisation using a variation of Epistemic ranking function instead.     

Introduction to Three Diagnoses of God

This brief article introduces the three articles diagnosing God by Helsel, Capps, and Carlin as examples of a skeptical strain that has been present throughout Judeo–Christian history, suggesting that psychology as an “interrogative” mode is a necessary counterpoint to theology’s dogmatic mode. The three articles are recommended on the basis of their heuristic value for instruction about mental illness, their playfulness and humor, and their potential for reshaping traditional images of God that have been harmful.     

Three contributions to understanding human sexuality

A critical review of three recent studies of sexuality is placed against the background of four groups that have, for the past decade, attempted to discern the most important facts—known or still to be discovered—about human sexuality. The books reviewed are:The Pleasure Bond by William H. Masters and Virginia Johnson;Christian, Celebrate Your Sexuality by Dwight Hervey Small; andMale Homosexuals: Their Problems and Adaptations by Martin S. Weinberg and Colin J. Williams.     

Discrimination and generalization by rats of temporal stimuli lasting for minutes

In three experiments, rats learned to respond differentially to reinforced and nonreinforced trials when the length of the intertrial interval (ITI) predicted the trial outcome (reinforcement or nonreinforcement). Rats in control groups, for whom the length of the ITI did not predict the outcome, did not show differential performance on nonreinforced and reinforced trials. Generalization gradients obtained following discrimination training were comparable to those obtained following discrimination training with other types of discriminative stimuli. That is, groups which had shown differential performance in discrimination training yielded generalization gradients with fastest speeds at the previously reinforced ITIs, slowest speeds at the previously nonreinforced ITIs, and intermediate speeds at ITIs of intermediate length. Control groups yielded flat gradients across all ITIs tested. These effects were shown for relative time discrimination (short time = reinforcement, long time = nonreinforcement, or the reverse) and also for an absolute time discrimination (long and short time = reinforcement, middle time = nonreinforcement or the reverse). This method was effective for time duration measured in minutes rather than seconds, as is more commonly the case.     

To read two pages,I need 5 minutes,but give me 5 minutes and I will read four: how to change productivity estimates by inverting the question

Past research has shown that people underestimate the time they need to complete large tasks, whereas completion times for smaller tasks are often overestimated, suggesting higher productivity estimates for larger than for smaller tasks. By replacing the traditional question about how much time a given work will take with a question about how much work can be completed within a given amount of time, we also found the opposite pattern. Both trends could reflect a general tendency to underestimate large amounts (of work as well as time) relatively to small ones. This ‘magnitude bias’ was explored in two studies where students estimated reading tasks, a third where IT‐professionals estimated software projects, and a fourth where participants imagined a familiar walk, divided into time segments or part distances of varying lengths. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Five minutes after death: A study of beliefs and expectations

This paper examines the beliefs and expectations that a sample of 508 people hold about the first five minutes after death. A substantial minority believed that they will experience the main elements of the neardeath experience (NDE). In general these elements were cited more frequently than were Biblical images. Six percent of the sample said that postmortem survival for them will be a negative and disturbing experience. We discuss these results in terms of their methodological implications for other survey work and their theoretical contribution toward our understanding of negative NDEs.     

Distinct prefrontal molecular mechanisms for information storage lasting seconds versus minutes

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is known to actively hold information "online" for a period of seconds in working memory for guiding goal-directed behavior. It has been proposed that relevant information is stored in other brain regions, which is retrieved and held in working memory for subsequent assimilation by the PFC in order to guide behavior. It is uncertain whether PFC stores information outside the temporal limits of working memory. Here, we demonstrate that although enhanced cAMP-dependent protein kinase A (PKA) activity in the PFC is detrimental to working memory, it is required for performance in tasks involving conflicting representations when memory storage is needed for minutes. This study indicates that distinct molecular mechanisms within the PFC underlie information storage for seconds (working memory) and for minutes (short-term memory). In addition, our results demonstrate that short-term memory storage within the prefrontal cortex is required for guiding behavior in tasks with conflicts and provides a plausible mechanism by which the prefrontal cortex executes cognitive control.     

Three contributions to the two-valued propositional calculus

Summary Three chapters contain the results independent of each other. In the first chapter I present a set of axioms for the propositional calculus which are shorter than the ones known so far, in the second one I give a method of defining all ternary connectives, in the third one, I prove that the probability of propositional functions is preserved under reversible substitutions. This paper appeard orginally under the title “Trois contributions an calcul des propositions bivalent” inStudia Societatis Scientiarum Torunensis, Toruń, Polonia, Sectio A, vol. I (1948), pp. 3–15.