Establishing praise as a conditioned reinforcer: Pairing with one versus multiple reinforcers

Praise and other forms of attention may not function as reinforcers for the behavior of children with autism. Previous research demonstrated that contingently pairing praise with reinforcers (response stimulus) can establish praise as a conditioned reinforcer. We evaluated a procedure for establishing praise as a generalized conditioned reinforcer (pair praise with four reinforcers) and compared it with a procedure to establish praise as a conditioned reinforcer (pair praise with one reinforcer). We compared the two conditions in a reversal design with “praise” and “no programmed consequence” conditions rapidly alternated after pairing phases. With three out of five participants with autism, responding in the “pair‐with‐four” condition showed higher levels of responding or more increasing trends compared with that in “pair‐with‐one” condition. We also replicated previous contingent pairing research with two participants in a multiple baseline across participants design. A limitation was the absence of manipulating motivating operations in assessing the efficacy of praise as a generalized conditioned reinforcer. Nevertheless, these data contribute to the research on establishing praise as a reinforcer, and we recommend directions for future research.     

Intracerebral source generators characterizing concentrative meditation

Previous researchers have studied meditation practices as a means to understand consciousness as well as altered states of consciousness. Various meditation techniques, such as Transcendental Meditation (TM) and Qigong, have been explored with source localization tools; however, the concentrative meditation technique has yet to be fully studied in this manner. The current study demonstrates findings, which outline differential activation in a self-referential default network during meditation in participants who espouse themselves as regular concentrative meditation practitioners, as well as comparisons with a control group practicing a modified version of the relaxation response. The results are compared with other putative experimental findings employing other meditation techniques, and the findings outlined in the current study are discussed with respect to changes in perceptual awareness often reported by meditators.     

Social representations of history,cultural values,and willingness to fight in a war: A collective‐level analysis in 40 nations

This study explores at the national level beliefs about world history and their relationship with cultural values and attitudes towards a national war. A country‐level analysis of university samples from 40 nations involving 7279 students showed that beliefs about history as a superior plan, as social progress, and lawful processes were positively associated with lower human development, and materialistic and power distance values, as well as with willingness to fight in a future national war. Further, beliefs about history as a superior plan, as social progress, and as lawful process were positively related with a stronger disposition to fight, even after controlling for cultural values and human development. Results are discussed in the framework of conceptualizing social representations of history as part of national political cultures.     

Mizpah of Benjamin

In this article I discuss the question of how to speak of the body in theology after Friedrich Nietzsche's critique of Christianity as nihilistic. A purely theoretical and a-historic approach, such as could be found in much doctrinal theology as well as philosophy after Descartes, runs the risk of objectifying the body through its representations of it. The phenomenological approach to embodiment would instead help theology to avoid treating the body as a thing and instead as a communicative and expressive medium for relationships with divinity as well as other human beings. A critical theological somatology after Nietzsche would have to speak of the body through genealogical accounts of the traces of the body in biblical and theological texts as well as in religious practices such as prayer, liturgy and hymns with the aim of correlating this theological tradition with the articulations and configurations of embodiment today.     

Cooperation or Tension? Dyadic Coping in Cystic Fibrosis

Following a rise in the life expectancy of cystic fibrosis (CF) patients, many adults with CF form couple relationships. Yet, dyadic coping has not been previously examined in people with CF. This study examined how adults with CF and their partners cope as a couple with the illness, and what meanings each partner and the couple as a unit attribute to the experience. Seventeen adult CF patients and their partners participated in separate semi‐structured in‐depth interviews. Two main patterns of dyadic coping with CF were identified as follows: cooperation and tension. For couples in cooperation, the marital relationship served as a resource for adaptive coping. These couples were characterized by similarities in their perception of the place of CF in their lives and of their roles in the marital relationship. Couples in tension described the couple relationship as strained by difficulty of accepting the disease, proliferation of negative emotions, and a sense of burden and loneliness in the process of coping. Findings point to the importance of mutual empathy, clear and accepted division of roles between the partners, and open communication for facilitating coping as a couple.     

The Inclusion House: Where Pastors Learn to Minister to Individuals with Disabilities

The Inclusion House is a unique dorm in Holland, Michigan, where nondisabled students, studying to be leaders in the faith community as future pastors, live side-by-side same-aged individuals with intellectual disabilities. After one year, a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews was conducted with the nondisabled roommates. Findings showed overall positive feelings involving watching roommates with a disability become more independent, learning to balance roles as a friend vs. helper, as well as knowledge gleaned about working with these type of individuals as well as their families for their future occupations. These findings are important for the education of future leaders of the church and the manner by which they can include people with disabilities and their families in faith communities.     

Covert processing of faces in prosopagnosia is restricted to facial expressions: evidence from cross-modal bias

We present a single case study of a brain-damaged patient, AD, suffering from visual face and object agnosia, with impaired visual perception and preserved mental imagery. She is severely impaired in all aspects of overt recognition of faces as well as in covert recognition of familiar faces. She shows a complete loss of processing facial expressions in recognition as well as in matching tasks. Nevertheless, when presented with a task where face and voice expressions were presented concurrently, there was a clear impact of face expressions on her ratings of the voice. The cross-modal paradigm used here and validated previously with normal subjects (de Gelder & Vroomen, 1995, 2000), appears as a useful tool in investigating spared covert face processing in a neuropsychological perspective, especially with prosopagnosic patients. These findings are discussed against the background of different models of the covert recognition of face expressions.     

Ernst Mach and B. F. Skinner: Their similarities with two traditions for verbal behavior

Ernst Mach is most closely associated with a positivism that demanded a language of close contact with reality. Mach linked this view with the tradition of the quest for an ideal language in which meaning is a property of a word. Logical positivism and the S-R psychology of the early B. F. Skinner also participated in this ideal-language positivism. In addition, Mach showed an affinity with another tradition-a pragmatic-selectionist tradition-although that tradition and Mach's similarities with it were not as well developed. Mach showed no difficulty in jointly maintaining both of these traditions although they have been regarded as deeply incompatible. When the later Skinner adopted a pragmatic selectionism for his later views on verbal behavior, he rejected his earlier views that were aligned with S-R psychology as well as with logical positivism and its sympathizers. Nevertheless, some statements consistent with "meaning is a property of a word" remained for some time in Skinner's writing.     

Structure of the hypochondriacal and hysteroid personality

Hypochondriacal and hysteroid personalities are considered the extreme variants of defined emotional and motivational dimensions. The hysteroid personality is mainly characterized by a strong need for social attention and respect as well as by a lack of emotional genuiness. For the diagnosis of hypochondriacal and hysteroid personality tendencies, a Hypochondria-Hysteria Inventory was developed and employed in 13 different samples with a total of 1206 persons. The index scores of the individual degrees of hypochondriacal and hysteroid tendencies were demonstrated to be of sufficient reliability. There was no important relationship between the individual degrees of hypochondriacal and hysteroid tendencies. Hypochondriacal tendencies are significantly correlated with general anxiety, neuroticism, depression, inhibition and psychasthenia as well as with a general negative self-concept. There is only a weak and partial significant relationship to the degree of introversion. The intensity of hypochondriacal tendencies increases with age. Hysteroid personality tendencies are significantly associated with extraversion, a certain degree of aggressiveness as well as with unconcern and sociability. The intensity of hysteroid tendencies in older adults is lower than in adolescents and young adults.     

Research trauma in incarcerated spaces: Listening to incarcerated women's narratives

This paper discusses researcher emotional experiences evoked while conducting narrative interviews in a research project that explored the rehabilitation experiences of 18 incarcerated women. I highlight the significance of listening as a methodology in spaces of incarceration. The importance of retrospective reflexivity in locating experiences of trauma encountered during the research process is discussed. The paper also brings to the fore the transformative power of stories for listeners as I share how my prejudices and attitudes regarding incarcerated women, as people who are framed as dangerous, were challenged. Experiences with interviewing and connecting with the incarcerated women further emphasised the importance of proactive self-care for researchers, with the significance of reflexivity as a self-care tool when doing qualitative research with vulnerable populations.     

Professionalism in career guidance and counselling – how professional do trainee career practitioners feel at the end of a postgraduate programme of study?

This paper explores the extent to which students on a vocational postgraduate programme identify with characteristics and competences that define a professional career guidance and counselling practitioner. Literature suggests professionalism in careers work is characterised by a focus on the needs of the client with the practitioner in a facilitative role. Competences are often couched in developmental terms, with practitioners moving from inexperienced to experienced. Students identified the most valued characteristics as adherence to professional values and ethical standards with an emphasis on person-centred practice. They recognised that competence was a developmental process, characterising themselves as at an early stage on completion of their course. Supporting the client took precedence over issues such as advocating for the profession, supporting employers and social responsibility. Generally, students saw completing a programme of study either as a beginning to a process of development of professionalism or as part of their professional development.     

Decomposable Models: A New Look at Interdependence and Dependence Structures in Psychological Research

Decomposable models represent interdependence structures for observable variables. Each model is fully characterized by a set of conditional independence restrictions, and can be visualized with an undirected as well as a special type of a directed graph. As a consequence each decomposable model can be interpreted either in terms of interdependencies only or as a particular kind of dependence structure, as a recursive system or path analysis model. Under the assumption of normally distributed variables, decomposable models determine the structure of correlation matrices, and maximum-likelihood estimates of these can be calculated with the help of ordinary least squares estimation. Using several examples from psychological research, we discuss the interpretation of decomposable models. Furthermore, it is demonstrated how recursive dependence structures can be specified with the help of decomposable models in a hypothesis generating (exploratory) as well as in a hypothesis testing (confirmatory) manner.     

The octopus in the laboratory. Handling,maintenance, training

Octopus maya lives well for long periods in a small tank containing a plastic house in which it can be carried without disturbance to and from an experimental situation. Data are reported on the growth of animals kept under these conditions as a function of feeding schedule and on their food intake as a function of deprivation. Some animals were trained in a runway with food as reward, and others were trained in a simple maze with return to sea water as reward.     

Where the Rainbow Speaks and Catches the Sun

Abstract

Living with a neurobiological brain disorder, commonly known as a mental illness, requires a lifetime of diligent work toward recovery and wellness. This paper outlines the story of one occupational therapist's journey with her own mental illness. She prefers to call her own road of “recovery” one of “discovery,” as it has led her to discover true talents and gifts (strengths) even amongst encounters with old models that emphasize weaknesses and disability over abilities and capabilities. The following journey unfolds as advances in research, changes in services, increased focus on consumer as leader and increased tools and resources available lead the way toward a more positive ability to live a purposeful life, engaging in meaningful activities in spite of an illness. This paper gives a personal account as a tool to be used by other therapists as they travel along their own treatment journeyswhether with, or as consumers, of mental health services.     

Gender Differences in Campaign Materials and Politicians’ Professional Orientation: The Case of a Hong Kong Election

This study examines gender differences in election campaigns with a specific focus on whether professional orientation, defined as the extent to which a politician sees politics as a career with its own ladder of advancement, would suppress gender differences. This is because candidates with higher levels of professional orientation may tend to see themselves primarily as “politicians” instead of as women or men. A content analysis of 836 candidates’ campaign leaflets in a local level election in Hong Kong was conducted. The results show some differences in the extent to which women and men candidates mentioned certain issues and used certain appeals in their platforms. However, when gender differences existed, they were more pronounced among candidates with weaker professional orientation.     

Tactile spatial sensitivity and anisotropy

A gap detection task was examined for its usefulness as a measure of tactile spatial sensitivity and as a measure of anisotropy. In Experiment 1, sensitivity was measured with a gap detection task both with and without a latex glove at three locations on the hand: the fingerpad, fingerbase, and palm. Results showed that sensitivity varied as a function of location and was correlated with changes in the density of innervation of the primary afferent fibers. In accord with other measures of spatial sensitivity, the glove had a moderate effect on sensitivity in the gap detection task. The results both with and without the glove were more similar to those obtained using another measure of spatial sensitivity, the grating orientation task, than to those obtained using the smooth-grooved task, which is considered an intensive measure. In Experiments 2-4, anisotropy was examined using the gap detection and grating orientation tasks, as well as the smooth-grooved task. Locations on the index finger, palm, and arm were tested. Results indicated that anisotropy was revealed only by tasks that relied on spatial cues. The differences between spatial sensitivity measured in the proximal-distal orientation as compared with the lateral-medial orientation varied by location and were as much as 2.35/1. The results are discussed in terms of what they may reveal about the underlying mechanisms responsible for tactile anisotropy.     

21% versus 79%: Explaining philosophy’s gender disparities with stereotyping and identification

This study tests the hypothesis that the perception of philosophy as a male-oriented discipline contributes to the pronounced gender disparity within the field. To assess the hypothesis, we determined the extent to which individuals view philosophy as masculine, and whether individual differences in this correspond with greater identification with philosophy. We also tested whether identification with philosophy correlated to interest in it. We discovered, first, that the more women view philosophy as masculine, the less they identify with it, and second, that the less women identify with philosophy, the less they want to major in it. Interestingly, this result does not hold for men—their viewing philosophy as masculine does not correspond to their identification with it, nor does it correlate with their likelihood of majoring in it. We also discovered that the typical student does not have a preconceived notion of philosophy as masculine; this suggests that they come to view philosophy as masculine the more they do it, which in turn supports the possibility that teaching the discipline differently may prevent students from conceiving of philosophy as masculine, thus allowing a path to reducing the gender disparity.     

Self-effacing wit as a response to oppression: dynamics in ethnic humor

Theories of self-effacing ethnic humor are analyzed from the perspectives of psychological defense and acculturation. These processes are contrasted with masochism as explanations of self-directed wit. Developmental paradigms are appealed to in conceptualizing the sociocultural function of humor. Identification with the aggressor is conceptualized as a transitional mechanism to assimilate the minority into the host culture. Turning against the self is developed as an alternate mechanism that uses humor as a means of self-empowerment. Reframing and splitting are posited as integral to the defensive process of ethnic humor. The method of luring the aggressor into a situation that is then used against him is construed as the kamikaze maneuver and conceptualized as an ambush technique in which the role of self-effacement facilitates aggression. The analytic elements of these approaches are explored with reference to Jewish humor as a stereotype of the wit of a transient and oppressed people, and annotated examples are offered from published anthologies. Illustrative vignettes, ranging from the mundane to the clinical, are annotated in the discussion. Directions for further inquiry are outlined for issues unresolved in the research literature.