The Effect of Remoteness on Intertrial Correlations in Pursuit Rotor Performance

120 male university students were tested on a Koerth pursuit rotor. One group of 60 Ss was tested on each of 6 days spaced throughout a 3-wk. period. Another group of 60 Ss performed the same task in an identical manner for test-retest days only, with the retest day following by 3 wk. One group had a large amount of practice while the other did not within a comparable time period. Each practice session consisted of 60 15-sec. trials. The effects of both practice and layoff on intertrial correlations separated by increasing remoteness was investigated. The findings indicated, as others have found, that correlations decrease in size as remoteness increases. Adjacent trial correlations were found to increase as practice increased.     

Transfer of Reactive Inhibition

A serious challenge to Hull’s (1943) theory of reminiscence and intertrial-interval effects is posed by the current contention that reactive inhibition (I_R) must be task-specific since it does not seem to transfer from one task to another. This notion was examined within the framework of a practice-rest paradigm in which three control groups were given 20 1-min trials on a principal task with intertrial intervals of 0, 5, and 70 sec, respectively, while two experimental groups practiced alternately on the principal task and a secondary task known to produce evidence for I_R. The two secondary tasks varied in their similarities to the principal task. Additional control groups were used to assess the magnitude of habit transfer effects. The total sample consisted of 70 males and 70 females whose modal age was 18 yr. With habit transfer effects controlled, results showed clearly that work effects transferred from the alternate tasks to the main task without regard for differences in similarity. Thus, the task-specificity hypothesis was not supported.     

人格维度与行为抑制的相关研究

本研究旨在探讨人格特点与行为抑制之间的关系。680名被试完成了中国人人格量表(QZPS)和行为抑制量表(BIS),回归和相关分析的结果表明,对七种行为的抑制都与多个人格因素显著相关,相关系数在0.10-0.57之间。控制人格因素间的相关之后,进入每个预测行为抑制回归方程的人格因素分别为6-10个,能够解释17%-51%的变异。文中还对本研究的局限及进一步研究的方向进行了讨论。     

Intertrial intervals and visual habituation in neonates

Eighteen 3-day-old human neonates were shown a 12 by 12 black-white checkerboard target for 45-sec. trials with either a 10-, 20-, or 30-sec. intertrial interval until their visual fixation time decreased to a set criterion for habituation. On subsequent recovery trials, a 2 by 2 black-white checkerboard target received significantly longer fixations from boys in the 10-sec. and girls in the 20-sec. conditions. 30-sec. intervals, however, produced little habituation and recovery. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Intertrial dependence in detection and recognition tasks

A Markov analysis revealed the existence of 1st order intertrial dependence in error and response sequences from both detection and recognition tasks. Both feedback and the introduction of a burst of white noise between trials reduced intertrial dependencies in the error sequences. Task difficulty and intertrial periods affected intertrial dependence in the response sequence.     

Intertrial effects of same-different judgements

Specific intertrial effects (repetition effects) and general intertrial effects (refractoriness or persisting attention to the preceding trial) were studied with the same-different judgment task, which dissociates the effects of response repetition and stimulus repetition. Response repetition alone did not facilitate performance. Stimulus repetition did aid performance, but mainly when accompanied by response repetition. Subjects tended to avoid the normal comparison process by using the (invalid!) “bypass rule” (Fletcher and Rabbitt, 1978): repeat the response if the stimulus or some aspect thereof (letter contents, size, position) is repeated from the preceding trial, otherwise change the response. As to general effects, partial refractoriness was evident at response execution, but not at earlier processing stages. Mean RT increased, but errors decreased, as the response-stimulus interval (RSI) between trials decreased. Presenting a new letter pair immediately after the preceding response produced a delay, but subjects used the waiting time, while the response system recovered or was redirected to the present trial, to improve the accuracy of their decision.     

Reactive aggression and suicide: Theory and evidence

Aggression confers risk for suicide. However, “aggression” is a heterogeneous construct, and it is likely that subgroups of individuals with particular types of aggression are at higher risk. We postulate that a subtype of aggression, reactive aggression, underlies the link with suicide with implications for suicide risk-recognition and prevention. The theoretical rationale and empirical evidence for the role of reactive aggression in suicide is presented from the perspectives of neurobiology, psychopathology, and overt violent behavior. It is hypothesized that partner–relationship disruptions amplify risk for suicide in the near term among reactive aggressive individuals, particularly those with psychiatric disorders, and preliminary evidence in support of this hypothesis is reviewed. We also discuss being jailed as a potential precipitant of suicide in reactive aggressive individuals. Recommendations are made to advance the study of reactive aggression and suicide, including methodological innovations and a greater focus on research of women and older adults.     

Intertrial interval and sequential effects in magnitude scaling.

The intertrial interval (ITI) was varied within subjects in magnitude estimation and cross-modality matching experiments. Fits of a recently proposed time series regression model show that the influence of the previous stimulus intensity on the current response decreases when the ITI is increased. The results can be interpreted as showing that an assimilative or additive perceptual or memory effect decreases with an increase in ITI. Fits of an earlier model, on the other hand, suggest that the influence of the previous stimulus intensity increases with an increase in ITI, which is counter to expectations. The new regression model (a) provides a simple explanation for the counterintuitive results obtained with the earlier model, (b) shows that assimilation in perception or memory can appear as contrast, and (c) reduces to a simpler model for longer ITIs.     

Intertrial inhibition of focused attention in pop-out search

When a visual search for a color oddball is performed, responses to target-present trials are affected by the color of items in immediately preceding target-absent trials, a phenomenon known as the distractor-previewing effect (DPE). Specifically, the color of the items in the target-absent trial suppresses responses to a target of that color in the subsequent trial, even though participants report a target feature uncorrelated with color. We believe that this suppression reflects a transient inhibitory effect on focused attention that biases attention away from items that are of the same color as the items in the target-absent trial. Experiments 1-3 show that the DPE is present only in tasks that require focused attention. Experiments 4A and 4B show that the DPE persists even when target-absent displays are masked. Last, Experiment 5 shows that the DPE emerges as early as within the first 100 msec of a target-present trial and is fully in place by the 250-msec mark.     

Some Effects Of Intertrial Interval Duration On Discrete-trial Choice

Pigeons were trained in Experiment 1 on a discrete-trial concurrent variable-interval (VI) 1-min VI 3-min schedule, and in Experiment 2 on a discrete-trial concurrent VI 1.5-min VI 1.5-min schedule. In each experiment, the intertrial-interval durations (ITIs) were 0 s, 6 s, 22 s, and 120 s, and the schedules were both independent and interdependent. The purpose of the research was to determine whether lengthening the ITI would disrupt any local control that existed, measured with respect to relative response rate and changeover probability. In Experiment 1, with the independent schedules, both preference and obtained relative reinforcement rate approximated .75 at short ITIs, but then decreased toward .50 with longer ITIs. With interdependent schedules, both preference and obtained relative reinforcement rate approximated .75 at all ITIs. In both experiments, with both independent and interdependent schedules, changeover probabilities for each response in a sequence of up to five successive responses to a given schedule were variable for individual birds. The average changeover probabilities for all birds suggested perseveration rather than a systematic increase within a given ITI or a systematic trend toward chance responding as ITI duration increased. Finally, the changeover functions did not differ when a sequence of responses was calculated to begin anew after reinforcement rather than with the first response on a schedule. Taken together, the data were inconsistent with a theory holding that only local processes underlie choice in discrete-trial procedures.     

Intertrial sources of stimulus control and delayed matching-to-sample performance in humans

Two experiments compared delayed matching-to-sample (DMTS) accuracy under 2 procedures in adults with mental retardation. In the trial-unique procedure, every trial in a session contained different stimuli. Thus, comparison stimuli that were correct on one trial were never incorrect on other trials in that session (or vice versa). In the 2-sample DMTS procedure, the same 2 comparison stimuli were presented on each trial, and their function changed quasi-randomly across trials conditional upon the sample stimulus. Across 2 experiments, 7 of 8 subjects showed the highest overall accuracy under the trial-unique procedure, and no subject showed consistently higher accuracy under the 2-sample procedure. Negative, exponential decay functions fit to logit p values showed that this difference was due largely to the steeper delay-mediated decline in sample control for the 2-sample procedure. Stimulus-control analyses indicated that, under the 2-sample procedure, the selection of the comparison stimulus on Trial N was often controlled by the comparison stimulus selection on Trial N-1 rather than the Trial-N sample stimulus. This source of competing stimulus control is not present in trial-unique procedures. Experiment 2 manipulated intertrial interval duration. There was a small but consistent increase in accuracy as a function of intertrial interval duration under the 2-sample procedure, but not under the trial-unique procedure.     

Expanding the Intertrial Interval During Extinction: Response Cessation and Recovery

We examined trial spacing during extinction following a human contingency learning task. Specifically, we assessed if an expanding retrieval practice schedule ( [Bjork and Bjork, 1992] and [Bjork and Bjork, 2006]), in which the spacing between extinction trials was progressively increased, would result in faster immediate extinction and less recovery from extinction than uniformly spaced extinction trials. We used an ABB vs. ABA renewal design and observed that, whereas the expanding group extinguished faster during extinction treatment, the expanding and constant groups showed the same level of extinction with an immediate test in the extinction context (ABB) and the two groups showed equivalent ABA renewal at test in the training context. We conclude that the faster extinction observed in the expanding groups could be misleading in clinical treatment, if the therapist used the absence of fear during extinction as the basis for terminating treatment.