Extraversion and reinforcement in verbal operant conditioning.

The present investigation was designed to study the relationship between extraversion and modes of reinforcement in verbal operant conditioning. A 4 X 3 randomized block design was replicated ten times. Eighty graduate and post-graduate male students were individually subjected to the standard Taffel conditioning procedure. When the numbers of conditioned responses produced by introverts and extraverts were compared, it was found that: (1) under negative reinforcement ('bad' and electric shock), with both the female and male experimenters, and under positive reinforcement ('good') with the male experimenter, the introverts' score was the higher of the two; (2) under positive reinforcement ('good') with the female experimenter, the extraverts' score was higher than that of the introverts.     

Sociability/impulsivity and caffeine-induced arousal: Critical flicker/fusion frequency and procedural learning

The influence of sociability/impulsivity in caffeine-induced arousal effects was investigated in two separate experiments: Experiment 1 examined critical flicker/fusion frequency change scores (ΔCFFT) in 60 subjects; and Experiment 2 investigated procedural learning in 30 subjects. In the two experiments, subjects received either caffeine citrate (500 mg) or placebo. The pattern of results was consistent across both studies:(1) a strong interactive effect of sociability (as measured by the EPQ extraversion scale) by caffeine/placebo which showed that (a) subjects low in sociability showed the greatest increase in ACFFT and learned most under placebo, while the reverse was true under caffeine; (b) subjects high in sociability, showed no increase in ΔCFFT and learned least under placebo, while the reverse was true under caffeine; and (2) in neither experiment did impulsivity (as measured by the EPS impulsiveness scale) significantly interact with caffeine/placebo. The results are consistent with Eysenck's (The Biological Basis of Personality, 1967) theory of personality in suggesting that subjects low in sociability are highly arousable under low-arousal (placebo) but over-aroused under high-arousal (caffeine), with the reverse pattern of effects holding for subjects high in sociability. The implications of these data for the respective roles of sociability and impulsivity components of extraversion in arousal-mediated performance are discussed.     

Extraversion: sociability and impulsivity?

The sociability and impulsivity components of extraversion were studied. Thirty experimental items were written to assess different aspects of sociability and impuslivity. These items, along with the 24 extraversion items of the MPI, were administered to 146 college students. Factor analyses of experimental items indicated that neither sociability nor impulsivity is unitary. Correlations among these sociability and impulsivity factors and the MPI extraversion items indicated that MPI extraversion is essentially a measure of one aspect of sociability: the quantity of social relationships. Extraversion touches on but does not adequately sample either the intensity (quality) of social relationships or aspects of impulsivity.     

The Significance of the Fluctuations Experienced in Observing Ambiguous Figures and in Binocular Rivalry

This study investigated predictions from Mednick's remote associates theory as to unusualness of response in a word association task as a function of remote associational ability (high or low scores on the RAT), the nature of the verbal stimulus (flat or steep hierarchy words), and the serial position of the response. Ss were Ohio high school students. Although high RAT scorers gave significantly less unusual responses overall than did low RAT scorers, results were interpreted as generally supportive of the theory. Low RAT scorers moved more rapidly to less frequent responses than did high RAT scorers, later responses were more infrequent than earlier responses in the sample tested, and while word-type did not in itself determine unusualness of response, it did interact with the other variables in a manner consistent with the theory.     

Stress and psychoticism

The EPQ, a stress questionnaire, and a bodily symptom questionnaire were completed by 21 female and 12 male psychiatric patients. The P score correlated with a high stress score, and certain stress items differentiated extreme high and low P scorers. In addition, high P scorers were found to have a tendency to increase, rather than decrease some of their bodily symptoms after treatment. A different approach to treatment for high P scorers is suggested.     

Anxiety and counter-conditioning: the role of the behavioral inhibition system in the ability to associate aversive stimuli with future rewards

A total of 130 female undergraduates performed a counter-conditioning choice-task. This task presented two response alternatives and subjects were instructed to earn the maximum number of points. Responses to button 1 were normally followed by an immediate reward (an average gain of 7.5 points). Responses to button 2 were always followed by a punishment (an average loss of 20 points), but caused the next-but-one press on button 1 to give an average gain of 115 points. Thus, subjects were required to learn and maintain this counter-conditioning association. Four groups of subjects were formed according to the scores on the Sensitivity to Punishment and Sensitivity to Reward scales (which are measures of individual differences of Gray's anxiety and impulsivity personality dimensions, respectively). A 69.2% of subjects learned and maintained the counter-conditioning association. As predicted, personality results confirmed that subjects with lower scores on the Sensitivity to Punishment scale learned the counter-conditioning association better and faster when compared with high scorers. Results are consistent with Gray's Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS) model of anxiety which holds that individual differences in anxiety may relate to the ability to associate aversive stimuli with a future reward. Assuming that anxiety depends on BIS functioning, our results show that high trait anxious subjects, if compared with low anxious ones, would have a lower ability for associating an aversive event with a later appetitive one. This learning process would serve non-anxious subjects to reduce the aversiveness of cues of punishment and to cope better with stressful situations.     

The effects of positive and negative feedback and reward on originality

Forty subjects participated in a remote associates verbal learning task. Subjects were assigned to reward or feedback and positive or negative conditions in a 2 × 2 factorial design. Subjects in the various groups performed at significantly different levels with the positive reward group producing the most remote associates, folllowed, respectively, by the negative feedback, negative reward, and positive feedback groups. It was suggested that rewarding remote assocites results in relatively flat associative gradients, wherein the subject has ready access to all associates. Conversely, punishing common associates produces emotionality which reduces the response probability of remote associates, thus producing a relatively steep associative gradient. Extrapolations to Mednick's theory of creativity were made, suggesting that creativity is under environmental control.     

A descriptive taxonomy of environmental operations and its implications for behavior analysis

Environmental operations may be classified according to whether they have evocative or function-altering effects. Evocative events, such as the presentation of unconditioned and conditioned stimuli, establishing operations, and discriminative stimuli, serve to increase, decrease, or maintain the momentary frequency of behavior. Function-altering operations, such as operant and respondent conditioning, the correlation of stimuli, and the presentation of certain verbal stimuli, serve to increase, decrease, or maintain the evocative and function-altering (e.g., reinforcing or punishing) functions of other events. This paper expands upon the functional taxonomy of environmental events described by Michael (1993a). The resulting classification scheme should permit behavior analysts to more easily respond to similarities and differences between functional environmental events. This paper discusses implications of the suggested taxonomy for how behavior analysts talk about motivational variables, discriminative stimuli, the operant unit of analysis, and the distinction between operant and respondent conditioning.     

Nonregulation of food intake in restrained,emotional, and external eaters

In the present study, regulation of ice cream intake after a preload was examined in 20 high and 20 low scorers (median split) on subscales of the Restraint Scale (RS) (Herman, Polivy, Pliner, Threshold, & Munic, 1978) and the Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire (DEBQ) (van Strien, 1986). For each subscale it was hypothesized that low scorers would regulate their ice cream intake. High scorers on disinhibitive scales (i.e., the RS and the DEBQ-emotional and -external subscales) were expected to counterregulate after a preload. In contrast, high scorers on the inhibitive DEBQ-restraint scale were expected to regulate their ice cream intake. A robust effect was found: high scorers never regulated ice cream intake after a preload on either the disinhibitive or the inhibitive scales, while low scorers always did. For the RS a significant interaction effect was found [F(1,39)=4.97, p=.03]. None of the other subscales showed interaction effects. The t tests showed that low scorers on all subscales ate significantly less after a preload than without one, while high scorers on all subscales did not differ in intake after a preload or without one. This nonregulation appears to be characteristic of people preoccupied with caloric intake, regardless of the content of the preoccupation.     

高低行为激活系统个体在赌博任务下的决策模式

为考察不同行为激活系统/行为抑制系统下的个体在Iowa赌博任务反应模式下的决策行为,本研究采用人格问卷与行为实验相结合的方式,探讨了人格、冲动和行为决策间的关系。结果发现:(1)行为激活系统三个维度与行为决策存在显著负相关,行为激活系统低分组的IGT得分较高,行为激活系统高分组的IGT得分较低,而冲动特征与IGT得分相关不显著;(2)行为激活系统高、低分者在IGT任务上差异显著,且行为激活系统高分组者在收益-风险并存情境中表现出"即时收益优先"的决策模式。结果提示,在收益-风险并存情境中,高行为激活的人格特征者倾向风险决策模式。     

General Newsletter

Low scores often have been ignored in validity research on the MMPI, yet these statistically significant deviations from the norm may be valuable sources of information and occur frequently enough to merit further investigation. The meaning of low scores on the MMPI-2 was examined for 822 male-female partner pairs in the MMPI-2 restandardization sample. Subjects were divided by MMPI-2 scale scores into high-, medium-, and low-score groups. Analyses of variance were performed with score level as the independent variable and partner ratings as dependent variables. Significant differences were found between the low- and medium-score groups with low scorers rated as better adjusted than medium scorers. More significant differences were found between the high-score and medium-score groups than between the low-score and medium-score groups; this suggested that high scores on MMPI-2 clinical scales are associated with poorer adjustment.     

Setting events controlling social verbal exchanges between students with developmental delays

The peer social verbal exchanges (social conversational units) between four developmentally delayed students were studied as a function of setting events. A single conversational unit consisted of a verbal exchange in which each individual functioned as both speaker and listener. Each unit included a three term verbal contingency. Data were collected by trained observers viewing videotapes of 20-minute sessions in which running times were burned onto the videotape. Frequencies of social conversational units were measured under two conditions. Comparisons were made between sessions in which the teacher responded only when spoken to and sessions in which the teacher was absent using a combined reversal and multiple schedule design. Results showed that peer conversational units emerged at high rates when the teacher was absent and at low or nonexistent rates when the teacher responded only when spoken to in the living room setting. The setting and audience control for peer verbal exchanges were discussed as functions possibly of either a punishing audience, establishing operations, or response deprivation.     

Does emotion processing require attention? The effects of fear conditioning and perceptual load

This study examined the impact of perceptual load on the processing of unattended threat-relevant faces. Participants performed a central letter-classification task while ignoring irrelevant face distractors, which appeared above or below the central task. The face distractors were graded for affective salience by means of aversive fear conditioning, with a conditioned angry face (CS+), an unconditioned angry face (CS-), and a neutral control face. The letter-classification task was presented under conditions of both low and high perceptual load. Results showed that fear conditioned (i.e., CS+) angry face distractors interfered with task performance more than CS- angry or neutral face distractors but that this interference was completely eliminated by high perceptual load. These findings demonstrate that aversively conditioned face distractors capture attention only under conditions of low perceptual load.     

The influence of alexithymia and music on the incidental memory for emotion words

Alexithymia is a multifaceted personality construct which encompasses difficulties in identifying and expressing feelings along with an externally oriented cognitive style. We investigated whether congruent vs. incongruent emotional musical priming (happy and angry music) during encoding would moderate the effects of alexithymia on recognition rates. We found that high alexithymia scorers recognized fewer joy and anger words than low scorers. Angry music decreased recognition rates in high alexithymia scorers compared to low alexithymia scorers. The congruency and incongruency effects between music and words depended on alexithymia level. The anger deficit in high alexithymia scorers and the possible support provided by happiness cues are discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Extinction of a classically conditioned G.S.R. as a function of awareness

Insight, defined as the ability to verbalize the stimulus-response contingency of acquisition has bsen found to be unrelated to the extinction of an operantly conditioned verbal response. In the present study, the authors classically conditioned a GSR response in thirty Ss without insight, divided them into insight and no-insight groups following acquisition, and ran extinction trials which demonstrated a positive relationship (P< 0.001) under these particular conditions. It was concluded that the role of insight in extinction is a complex function of mode of conditioning (classical vs. operant) and/or mode of response (voluntary vs. involuntary), and that further studies utilizing the classical-voluntary and operant-involuntary combinations will be needed to define that function.     

Separating discriminative and function-altering effects of verbal stimuli

Ever since Skinner's first discussion of rule-governed behavior, behavior analysts have continued to define rules, either explicitly or implicitly, as verbal discriminative stimuli. Consequently, it is not difficult to find, in the literature on rule-governed behavior, references to stimulus control, antecedent control, or to rules occasioning behavior. However, some verbal stimuli have effects on behavior that are not easily described as discriminative. Such stimuli don't evoke behavior as discriminative stimuli, but rather alter the functions of other stimuli in a manner analogous to operant and respondent conditioning. Hence, this type of control has been called function altering. Any known stimulus function (e.g., evocative, or [conditioned] reinforcing or punishing functions) can apparently be altered by such function-altering stimuli. Describing these stimuli as discriminative stimuli obscures their possible function-altering effects and consequently may retard inquiry into them. This paper encourages behavior analysts to begin separating the discriminative and function-altering effects of verbal stimuli and suggests that by doing so, behavior analysts may better understand what may be most unique about these stimuli. Results from several experiments, especially those in which children served as subjects, are analyzed. Finally, some speculations are offered concerning the genesis of function-altering stimuli.     

Ingratiation tactics channeled by target values and threat capability1

Several hypotheses concerning the use of ingratiation tactics were tested in a paradigm where subjects believed that monetary rewards were contingent on a favorable evaluation from a supervisor. Manipulated variables in the 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design were (a) the nature of the supervisor's values (i.e., efficiency vs. sociability), (b) the level of threats issued by the supervisor (no threat vs. high threat), and (c) the extent to which the subjects were dependent on the supervisor's evaluation (low dependency vs. high dependency). The dependent variables were the extent to which the subjects used the ingratiation tactics of other-enhancement (flattery) and selective self-presentation. Findings indicate that the manipulation of the supervisor's values affected the form of other-enhancement used by subjects; more flattery in terms of efficiency occurred in the efficiency values condition, while more flattery in terms of sociability occurred in the sociability values condition. The supervisor's values also affected self-presentation; subjects claimed to hold efficiency ideals when the supervisor held efficiency values, but (in line with earlier findings) they did not claim to hold sociability ideals when the supervisor held sociability values. The manipulation of threats issued by the supervisor had a significant effect on the subjects' use of other-enhancement with respect to the target's sociability, but it had no effect on other ingratiation measures. Finally, the manipulation of dependency had no effect on other-enhancement, but it did produce a surprising “modesty effect” on self-presentation. Subjects presented themselves as both less efficient and less sociable under high dependency than under low. These findings are discussed in the light of previous research on ingratiation tactics.     

Conditioned leg movement in the cat with massed trials,trace conditioning,and weak US intensity

Six male cats served as subjects in a classical conditioning experiment designed to assess the development of an overt conditioned response with experimental parameters that had been demonstrated to produce conditioning of neuro-electrical activity in immobilized cats. The subjects were physically restrained by means of an adjustable full-body cast during the experimental sessions which consisted of 75 habituation trials (light flash alone) followed by 225 trials with light and shock paired in a trace conditioning manner, and 75 additional extinction trials (light alone). The subjects were divided into two groups, and three different experimental sessions were given to each on three consecutive days. Group I received low US intensity (18 v) conditioning on the first day, high US (45–85 v) conditioning on Day 2 and pseudoconditioning on Day 3. Group II received the same sessions, but in a pseudoconditioning —high US—low US order. The results indicated that a conditioned leg movement was produced when the CS was paired in a trace conditioning fashion with either the high or low intensity shock US. The development of the conditioned leg movement across trials was found to be very similar to that of the conditioned neural activity in a previous study using comparable stimuli and procedures.     

奖惩线索条件下内外倾个体的自主唤醒和行为反应

将停止信号任务和金钱激励延迟任务相结合,使用16导生理记录仪记录被试的生理指标,探讨内外倾者在动机凸显情景下的生理唤醒特点以及反应调节能力。结果发现,隐含奖励和惩罚线索呈现之后,内外倾者的心率增快,内倾者的皮肤电活动显著增强。在停止信号任务中的优势反应阶段,内外倾者表现为对奖励凸显线索刺激的反应时缩短;而在非优势反应阶段,和外倾者相比较,内倾者的抑制反应错误率增高。表明内外倾者在奖惩线索条件下表现出不同的生理唤醒特点和行为反应。     

Failure to loose fear: The impact of cognitive load and trait anxiety on extinction

Exposure therapy is an effective technique for fear reduction. However, whether effective exposure requires attentional allocation to the feared situation remains a debated clinical issue. In the present study, the impact of attention allocation in extinction was investigated in an experimental conditioning study. Through a between-subjects manipulation of cognitive load, we created a condition in which participants could allocate their attention to the feared stimulus during extinction (low load condition), and a condition in which attentional allocation was impaired (high load condition). The influence of cognitive load on extinction was examined by comparing electrodermal responses and verbal ratings for the conditioned stimuli in the two extinction load conditions. The results show less successful extinction in the high load condition than in the low load condition. However, this effect was found only in low anxious participants, and it was prominent only on the skin conductance responses. The present results suggest that extinction is not automatic but requires cognitive resources.