Two pathways to causal control: Use and availability of information in the environment in people with and without signs of depression

Perceiving one's causal control is important for adaptive behavior. Studying depression and other individual differences has provided insight into typical as well as pathological causal processing. We set out to study factors that have been shown to distinguish those with and without signs of depression and affect perceptions of causal control: levels of behavior, the availability of outcomes and learning about the environment or context. Two experiments were carried out in which participants, scoring low and high on the Beck Depression Inventory using established cutoffs, completed a causal control task, in which outcomes occurred with a low (.25) or high probability (.75). Behavior levels were either constrained (N₁ = 73) or unconstrained (N₂ = 74). Overall, findings showed that levels of behavior influenced people's experiences of the context in which events occurred. For all participants, very high behavior levels eliminated sensitivity to levels of outcomes occurring in the environment and lead to judgments that were consistent with conditional probabilities as opposed to the experimenter programmed contingency. Thus increased behavior increased perceived control via influence on context experience. This effect was also evident for those scoring high on the BDI. Overall conclusions are that behavior and context provide two important interlinked psychological pathways to perceived control. However, situations that constrain people's ability to respond freely can prevent people with signs of depression from taking control of a situation that would otherwise be uncontrollable.     

Recall as a function of orienting task and retrieval cue

Abstract.— In an incidental learning experiment, a 40 word list with 4 words representing each of 10 taxonom-ic categories and beginning with each of 10 first letters was presented to 120 subjects. Half the subjects sorted the words according to category, half according to initial letter. After an interval of either 1 or 6 min, retention was measured with cued or free recall tests. The subjects in the Category sort-Category cue condition obtained higher recall than the subjects in the Category sort-Letter cue condition, whereas level of recall did not differ between the Letter sort-Letter cue and Letter sort-Category cue conditions. These results together with other results from the experiment were considered as arguments against the Encoding Specificity Principle but in favor of a theory separating encoding from retrieval.     

Dominance as a function of cue similarity: A test of the intrinsic cue dominance model

A nonselective model postulating intrinsic cue dominance was tested in simultaneous discrimination tasks involving reversal on one dimension. In this procedure two dimensions are relevant throughout training; however, following initial discrimination training the reward contingency is reversed for one dimension but maintained for the other. Cue dominance was assessed following acquisition of reversal by the use of opposed-cues test trials, and was defined as a greater number of choices of the test compound containing the positive cue of the reversed dimension than of the test compound containing the positive cue of the maintained dimension. In Experiment I, brightness cues dominated orientation cues. In Experiment II, which employed two different sets of relevant cues, more disparate brightness cues dominated the orientation cues for one set and orientation cues dominated less disparate brightness cues for the other. From this, it was concluded that dominance is a function of relative cue similarity.     

Positive and negative contrast as a function of component duration for key pecking and treadle pressing

Pigeons responded on several multiple schedules for food reinforcers. The duration of the components varied from four seconds to 16 minutes. The absolute size of positive (Experiment 1) and negative (Experiment 2) behavioral contrast varied inversely with component duration when key pecks produced the reinforcers. The absolute size of negative contrast varied directly with component duration, when treadle presses produced the reinforcers (Experiment 3). These results conform to theories that suggest that positive and negative contrast are symmetrical when pigeons peck keys. They also conform to theories that suggest that the same principles do not govern contrast when pigeons peck keys as when they press treadles. Finally, the results support the measurement of behavioral contrast by the differences between baseline rates of responding and the rates emitted when contrast is present.     

The comprehension and recall of similes as a function of context and cue

Participants read 56 sentence pairs and attempted to judge if the context sentence of each pair was related to the figurative message of the following simile. Reaction times and error rates both indicated that (a) participants could judge subject-related contexts more easily that predicate-related contexts, (b) they could judge irrelevant contexts more easily than misleading ones, and (c) these two effects were relatively independent of one another. The cued recall of similes previously paired with relevant or misleading contexts was affected by both a context effect (contexts containing a simile's predicate led to better recall than those containing its subject) and, even more strongly, a cuing effect (the simile's predicate was a better cue than its subject), whereas the cued recall of similes previously paired with irrelevant contexts was affected only by the context effect. In no case was there evidence of an interaction that would have indicated that a cue would be more potent if it referred to the same simile term as had the context.     

Exceptions to recognition failure as a function of the encoded association between cue and target

The relation of the recognition failure of recallable words to overall recognition rates is largely invariant across conditions that influence both recall and recognition separately. In two experiments, the influence of the integration of the members of A-B word pairs on this relation was investigated. In Experiment 1, it was found that deviations of observed recognition failure from predictions of the Tulving-Wiseman function (Tulving & Wiseman, 1975) were produced by shallow, nonsemantic encoding. In Experiment 2, the association of category-to-instance pairs was varied. It was found that weak associates caused larger deviations of observed recognition failure from predicted recognition failure than did strong associates. Such results suggest that a strongly encoded association between cue and target elements of A-B pairs is a necessary condition for the adherence of data to the Tulving-Wiseman function. The implications of these findings for general models of memory are discussed.     

Expectancy-learning and evaluative learning in human classical conditioning: affective priming as an indirect and unobtrusive measure of conditioned stimulus valence

It has been argued that in classical conditioning two processes might be operative. First, one may learn that the conditioned stimulus (CS+) is a valid predictor for the occurrence of the biologically negative or positive event (US; expectancy-learning). Second, one may learn to perceive the conditioned stimulus itself as a negative or positive stimulus, depending on the valence of the event it has been associated with (evaluative learning). Until the present, however, both forms of learning have been investigated using rather different conditioning procedures. Using a differential aversive conditioning preparation with pictures of human faces as CSs and an electrocutaneous stimulus as US, we were able to demonstrate that both forms of learning can co-occur. Moreover, the extent of evaluative learning in this aversive conditioning procedure did not significantly differ from the amount of evaluative learning in an evaluative conditioning procedure with positive and negative adjectives as USs, which was administered to the same participants. In the present study evaluative learning was not only indexed by direct evaluative ratings, but we introduced affective priming as an indirect and unobtrusive, reaction time based measure of stimulus valence. Finally, imagery instructions during acquisition did not facilitate expectancy-learning nor evaluative learning.     

Speculations on the emergence of self-awareness in big-brained organisms: the roles of associative memory and learning, existential and religious questions, and the emergence of tautologies

This paper argues that self-awareness emerges in organisms whose brains have a sufficiently integrated, complex ability for associative learning and memory. Continual sensory input of information related to the organism leads to the formation of a set of associations that may be termed an organismal “self-image”. After providing the basic mechanistic basis for the emergence of an organismal self-image, this paper proceeds to go through a representative list of behaviors associated with self-awareness, and shows how associative memory and learning, combined with an organismal self-image, leads to the emergence of these various behaviors. This paper also discusses various tautologies that invariably emerge when discussing self-awareness. We continue with various speculations on manipulating self-awareness, and discuss how concepts from set and logic theory may provide a useful set of tools for understanding the emergence of higher cognitive functions in complex organisms.     

Making the illusory correlation effect appear and then disappear: The effects of increased learning

The acquisition of a negative evaluation of a fictitious minority social group in spite of the absence of any objective correlation between group membership and negative behaviours was described by Hamilton and Gifford (1976) Hamilton, D. L. and Gifford, R. K. 1976. Illusory correlation in intergroup perception: A cognitive basis of stereotypic judgments. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 12: 392–407. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] as an instance of an illusory correlation. We studied the acquisition and attenuation through time of this correlation learning effect. In two experiments we asked for participants’ judgements of two fictitious groups using an online version of a group membership belief paradigm. We tested how judgements of the two groups changed as a function of the amount of training they received. Results suggest that the perception of the illusory correlation effect is initially absent, emerges with intermediate amounts of absolute experience, but diminishes and is eliminated with increased experience. This illusory correlation effect can be considered to reflect incomplete learning rather than a bias due to information loss in judgements or distinctiveness.     

Associability of a previously conditioned stimulus as a function of qualitative changes in the US

Hall and Pearce (1979) reported retarded manifestation of conditioned responding to repeated CS-strong shock pairings as a result of prior CS-weak shock pairings. These authors suggested that a latent inhibition (LI)-like process reduced the associability of the CS during weak shock conditioning despite excitatory associations between CS and weak shock being formed. The present experiments examined the possibility that the negative transfer from CS-weak shock conditioning in Stage 1 to CS-strong shock conditioning in Stage 2 observed by Hall and Pearce was due at least in part to the similarity between weak and strong shock rather than, or in addition to, a general loss of CS associability. Specifically, the transfer of decreased associability to conditioning with a dissimilar US was investigated. Consistent with Hall and Pearce, who gave multiple training trials in Stage 2, Experiment 1 found the development of conditioned responding owing to a single CS-strong shock pairing in Stage 2 to be retarded by prior CS-weak shock pairings and compared this effect to conventional LI. In Experiment 2, partial attenuation of the negative transfer following CS-weak shock was obtained by substituting ice water immersion for strong shock, that is, by making the strong US qualitatively dissimilar from the weak US. In contrast, conventional LI resulting from preconditioning CS-only exposures was equivalent for strong shock in Experiment 1 and ice water immersion in Experiment 2. A possible mechanism for the sensitivity to qualitative US changes of the observed negative transfer is discussed.     

Exposure to negative emotional cues and alcohol cue reactivity with alcoholics: a preliminary investigation

Fifty-one male and female inpatient alcoholics received cue exposure treatment involving in vivo exposure to alcohol cues and imaginal exposure to individualized high-risk drinking situations involving negative emotional cues. At post-test, self-report measures of urge to drink alcohol and negative emotional states were obtained during an alcohol cue reactivity assessment. Contrary to our hypothesis, greater exposure to negative emotional cues during treatment was associated with greater urge and negative emotional responses at post-test. In addition, greater duration of exposure to negative emotional cues predicted greater attention to alcohol-related stimuli and thoughts about drinking during the post-test. Implications for future research in this area include extending the duration of exposure to negative emotional cues in order to establish the optimal exposure durations within which a majority of individuals achieve clinically significant reductions in their urge to drink alcohol.     

The hyphen as a segmentation cue in triconstituent compound processing: it's getting better all the time

Bertram, R., Kuperman, V., Baayen, R. H. & Hyönä, J. (2011). The hyphen as a segmentation cue in triconstituent compound processing: It’s getting better all the time. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 52, 530–544. Inserting a hyphen in Dutch and Finnish compounds is most often illegal given spelling conventions. However, the current two eye movement experiments on triconstituent Dutch compounds like voetbalbond“footballassociation” (Experiment 1) and triconstituent Finnish compounds like lentokenttätaksi“airporttaxi” (Experiment 2) show that inserting a hyphen at constituent boundaries does not have to be detrimental to compound processing. In fact, when hyphens were inserted at the major constituent boundary (voetbal‐bond“football‐association”; lentokenttä‐taksi“airport‐taxi”), processing of the first part (voetbal“football”; lentokenttä“airport”) turns out to be faster when it is followed by a hyphen than when it is legally concatenated. Inserting a hyphen caused a delay in later eye movement measures, which is probably due to the illegality of inserting hyphens in normally concatenated compounds. However, in both Dutch and Finnish we found a learning effect in the course of the experiment, such that by the end of the experiments hyphenated compounds are read faster than in the beginning of the experiment. By the end of the experiment, compounds with a hyphen at the major constituent boundary were actually processed equally fast as (Dutch) or even faster than (Finnish) their concatenated counterparts. In contrast, hyphenation at the minor constituent boundary (voet‐balbond“foot‐ballassociation”; lento‐kenttätaksi“air‐porttaxi”) was detrimental to compound processing speed throughout the experiment. The results imply that the hyphen may be an efficient segmentation cue and that spelling illegalities can be overcome easily, as long as they make sense.     

Acquisition of cup drinking using previously refused foods as positive and negative reinforcement

We used previously refused foods as positive and negative reinforcement in the acquisition of cup drinking. Cup drinking increased with positive and negative reinforcement, both alone and in combination (without escape extinction), indicating that treatment of food refusal can establish some foods as appetitive stimuli whereas others remain aversive.     

Differences in performance on a reversal learning test and division of labor in honey bee colonies

We studied the association between honey bee (Apis mellifera) division of labor and performance on an olfactory reversal-learning test. Manipulations of colony age structure and flight experience were used to test whether differences in performance are associated with age, current behavioral state, or flight experience. Nurse bees showed significantly faster rates of extinction to a learned odor than did foragers. This difference was associated primarily with differences in behavioral state, rather than age; it was seen when comparing nurses and foragers from typical colonies and normal-age nurses and precocious foragers from single-cohort colonies. Differences in extinction rate were not related to differences in flight experience; there was no difference between foragers and foraging-age bees denied flight experience. These results suggest that changes in learning and memory occur in association with division of labor. We speculate on the possible functional significance of the difference in extinction rate between nurses and foragers. Received: 15 January 2000 / Accepted: 22 August 2000