Latent inhibition and learned helplessness in children: Similarities and differences

Four experiments used a common set of procedures to investigate the occurrence and the generalization of learned helplessness (LH) and latent inhibition (LI) in 10- to 11-year-old children. In Experiment 1, preexposure to response-outcome independence impaired performance (i.e., LH) on two subsequent tests: The first was similar to the preexposure situation, the second was not. Moreover, LH occurred whether preexposure involved positive or negative feedback. On the other hand, noncontingent stimulus preexposure did not impair subsequent performance, i.e., LI was not obtained in the first experiment. Experiment 2 replicated the LH findings of Experiment 1: LH occurred following preexposure to response-independent feedback, regardless of whether that feedback was positive or negative, and LH generalized to a situation that was different from the preexposure situation. In addition, the stimulus preexposure procedures of Experiment 2 were embedded in a “masking” task and, under these conditions, LI was obtained. Nevertheless, LI did not generalize to a testing situation that was different from the preexposure situation. Experiment 3 demonstrated that noncontingent stimulus preexposure impairs performance relative to a nonpreexposed control group, that the effect is dependent upon masking, that masking alone produces no performance decrement, and that LI is, indeed, stimulus specific. In Experiment 4, preexposure to response-outcome independence impaired subsequent performance on similar and dissimilar tests whether feedback was consistently positive, consistently negative, or randomly positive and negative over trials. In addition, stimulus preexposure produced LI only under conditions of masking and even then, LI was not evident in novel test situations. The results are discussed in terms of common and different mechanisms underlying the LI and LH phenomena.     

Transfer of conditioned inhibition across different aversive reinforcers in the rat

Three experiments using a conditioned suppression procedure in rats assessed transfer of conditioned inhibition across different aversive reinforcers. Experiment 1, using shock and car horn blast as reinforcers, showed that a noise negatively correlated with 0.7-mA shock between sessions attenuated suppression of lever pressing elicited by the signals for 0.7-mA shock and 110-db horn blast. Similarly, when the noise signaled the omission of horn blast, it attenuated suppression elicited by the signals for horn blast and shock. Experiment 2, using the same procedure, replicated transfer of conditioned inhibition from shock to horn found in Experiment 1, and indicated that such effects should be attributed to associative factors. Experiment 3, using the conditioned inhibition paradigm and different chambers during training and testing, replicated transfer from horn to shock and indicated that transfer cannot be attributed to multiple-background-reinforcer associations established during inhibitory training. The results of these experiments have implications for theories of conditioned inhibition.     

Generalization gradients of inhibition after different amounts of training

Five groups of pigeons received seven sessions of variable-interval reinforcement for pecking a blank white key, followed by either 1, 2, 4, 8, or 16 sessions of training on a successive discrimination in which the positive stimulus was the blank white key and the negative stimulus was a black vertical line on the white key. After training, a generalization test was administered along the line-tilt continuum. Relative gradients of inhibition became steeper with increased amounts of training, and reliably nonhorizontal absolute gradients were obtained only from groups of subjects with at least four days of training. Therefore, inhibitory stimulus control improves with added training. Several problems with the concept of “inhibition” are examined and some implications of the results for theoretical analyses of operant discrimination learning are discussed.     

Substitution in a sense

The Reference Principle (RP) states that co-referring expressions are everywhere intersubstitutable salva congruitate. On first glance, (RP) looks like a truism, but a truism with some bite: (RP) transforms difficult philosophical questions about co-reference into easy grammatical questions about substitutability. This has led a number of philosophers to think that we can use (RP) to make short work of certain longstanding metaphysical debates. For example, it has been suggested that all we need to do to show that the predicate ‘( ) is a horse’ does not refer to a property is point out that ‘( ) is a horse’ and ‘the property of being a horse’ are not everywhere intersubstitutable salva congruitate. However, when we understand ‘substitution’ in the simplest and most straightforward way, (RP) is no truism; in fact, natural languages are full of counterexamples to the principle. In this paper, I introduce a new notion of substitution, and then develop and argue for a version of (RP) that is immune to these counterexamples. Along the way I touch on the following topics: the relation between argument forms and their natural language instances; the reification of sense; the difference between terms and predicates; and the relation between reference and disquotation. I end by arguing that my new version of (RP) cannot be used to settle metaphysical debates quite as easily as some philosophers would like.     

动作自主性与结果性质对不同预测性条件下施动感的影响

采用时间估计法考察动作自主性水平、动作结果性质(利己、利他、中性)以及结果是否可预测对施动感的影响。结果发现, 高自主性的自由选择条件比低自主性的服从条件增强了个体的施动感, 且不受动作结果性质与结果是否可预测的影响; 在低自主性的服从条件下, 当结果可预测时利己结果比利他结果的施动感更强, 而在结果不可预测时利己和利他结果的施动感没有区别, 但均弱于中性结果。这揭示出动作的主观意愿在施动感产生过程中的重要作用, 同时在自主性较低的服从条件下, 对利己或利他道德属性的动作结果能否被预测, 对个体的施动感产生了不同的影响。研究结果说明具有利己或利他道德属性的动作对施动感会产生自上而下的调节作用, 且这种调节作用在低自主条件下较为突显。     

Making sense of word senses: the comprehension of polysemy depends on sense overlap

Studies of polysemy are few in number and are contradictory. Some have found differences between polysemy and homonymy (L. Frazier & K. Rayner, 1990), and others have found similarities (D. K. Klein & G. Murphy, 2001). The authors investigated this issue using the methods of D. K. Klein and G. Murphy (2001), in whose study participants judged whether ambiguous words embedded in word pairs (e.g., tasty chicken) made sense as a function of a cooperating, conflicting, or neutral context. The ambiguous words were independently rated as having low, moderate, or highly overlapping senses to approximate a continuum from homonymy to metonymic polysemy. The effects of meaning dominance were examined. Words with highly overlapping meanings (e.g., metonymy) showed reduced effects of context and dominance compared with words with moderately or low overlapping meanings (e.g., metaphorical polysemy and homonymy). These results suggest that the comprehension of ambiguous words is mediated by the semantic overlap of alternative senses/meanings.     

The authority of the moral sense

The Journal of Value Inquiry -     

Testosterone facilitates the sense of agency

Sense of agency (SoA) refers to feelings of being in control of one’s actions. Evidence suggests that SoA might contribute towards higher-order feelings of personal control – a key attribute of powerful individuals. Whether testosterone, a steroid hormone linked to power in dominance hierarchies, also influences the SoA is not yet established. In a repeated-measures design, 26 females participated in a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial to test the effects of 0.5 mg testosterone on SoA, using an implicit measure based upon perceived shifts in time between a voluntary action and its outcome. Illusions of control, as operationalized by optimism in affective forecasting, were also assessed. Testosterone increased action binding but there was no significant effect on tone binding. Affective forecasting was found to be significantly more positive on testosterone. SoA and optimistic expectations are basic manifestations of power which may contribute to feelings of infallibility often associated with dominance and testosterone.     

New Directions in the Study of Gender Similarities and Differences

ABSTRACT— I review new trends in research on the psychology of gender. The gender similarities hypothesis holds that males and females are similar on most, but not all, psychological variables. Gender is not only an individual-difference or person variable but also a stimulus variable. Emerging approaches to cross-national measurement of constructs such as gender equality provide new insights into patterns of gender differences and similarities across cultures. Current neuroscience approaches emphasize neural plasticity and provide the opportunity to study neural correlates of males' and females' differential experiences.     

Illusion of sense of self-agency: discrepancy between the predicted and actual sensory consequences of actions modulates the sense of self-agency, but not the sense of self-ownership

It is proposed that knowledge of motor commands is used to distinguish self-generated sensation from externally generated sensation. In this paper, we show that the sense of self-agency, that is the sense that I am the one who is generating an action, largely depends on the degree of discrepancy resulting from comparison between the predicted and actual sensory feedback. In Experiment 1, the sense of self-agency was reduced when the presentation of the tone was unpredictable in terms of timing and its frequency, although in fact the tone was self-produced. In Experiment 2, the opposite case was found to occur. That is, participants experienced illusionary sense of self-agency when the externally generated sensations happened to match the prediction made by forward model. In Experiment 3, the sense of self-agency was reduced when there was a discrepancy between the predicted and actual sensory consequences, regardless of presence or absence of a discrepancy between the intended and actual consequences of actions. In all the experiments, a discrepancy between the predicted and actual feedback had no effects on sense of self-ownership, that is the sense that I am the one who is undergoing an experience. These results may suggest that both senses of self are mutually independent.