When socially excluded people prefer moralizing to anti- and prosocial behavior: Support for a goal-directed account

According to the temporal need-threat model, different responses toward social exclusion stem from the fact that different needs are threatened. Because evidence for this account is mixed, we tested a goal-directed account in which the chosen behavior depends not only on the threatened need but also on the behavior that has the highest expectancy of repairing that need. In two experiments, participants were excluded using the cyberball paradigm. They were then either assigned to a condition in which they could choose to send aggressive or prosocial messages to the other players or to a condition in which they could send aggressive, prosocial, or moralizing messages. We hypothesized that the expectancy to repair threatened needs would be higher for moralizing behavior than for aggressive and prosocial behavior, which would result in moralizing behavior in the second condition. Both experiments provided partial support for our hypothesis, suggesting that the reactions to social exclusion might be goal directed.

     

Timesharing on the PDP-11 under RT-11

A timesharing system for the Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-11 is described. In keeping with the general philosophy of the RT-11 operating system, the permanently resident portion of the system is kept to an absolute minimum size. The system supports from 2 to 16 users, and provides each with full editing and batch execution capabilities.     

Help-seeking behavior in families of schizophrenics

To meet the exigencies of coping with the onset of schizophrenia in the family, caregivers sought out an array of professional and nonprofessional supports. The respondents to a questionnaire, all members of a self-help group, reported considerable merit to the help of friends, relatives, and group members. In contrast, the various forms of therapy were valued little; nearly half found no value at all. These findings are better understood when needs of families are expressed. Of highest priority are understanding of the illness, practical guidance in patient management, and community resources such as housing. These are not typical functions of therapy. Self-help groups may serve these needs better.     

FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF SEPARATE TOPOGRAPHIES OF ABERRANT BEHAVIOR

We conducted a functional analysis of distinct topographies of aberrant behavior displayed by 4 clients. We first analyzed the behaviors in an aggregate fashion and then separated the behaviors to formulate hypotheses about the maintaining variables for each behavior. The procedures were used in a two-phase experiment. During Phase 1, two extended functional analyses were completed, one in an inpatient unit and one in a special education classroom. During Phase 2, two brief functional analyses were completed in an outpatient clinic. Results indicated that hypotheses of separate functions for distinct behaviors can be generated using both extended and brief functional analyses when the results are graphed in the aggregate and are separated by response topography. The results also suggest that these methods can improve the accuracy of data interpretation and treatment selection.     

Unintentional processing of motivational valence

Recent motivational affective priming studies (Moors & De Houwer, 2001; Moors, De Houwer, & Eelen, 2004) showed that primes that indicate success on a goal-inducing task facilitate positive target responses whereas primes that indicate failure on that task facilitate negative target responses. In the current studies, we examined whether these priming effects depend on consciously intentional processing of the motivational valence of the primes. In Experiment 1, the outcome of success or failure was presented not only immediately before the target (i.e., the prime) but also a second time after the target response. This should encourage participants to ignore the prime. In Experiment 2, participants were asked to respond to the targets within 600 ms after target onset. As a result, participants had little opportunity to process the motivational prime valence in a consciously intentional way. Nevertheless, strong affective priming effects were found in both studies. These results provide additional support for the claim that motivational valence can be processed without the conscious intention to do so.     

Integration of Two Skeptical Emotion Theories: Dimensional Appraisal Theory and Russell's Psychological Construction Theory

This inquiry attempts to integrate two skeptical emotion theories: dimensional appraisal theory and Russell's (2003) psychological construction theory. To bring out the skeptical elements of these theories, I compare them first with two classic theories: affect program theory and discrete appraisal theory. The skeptical theories are similar to each other in that they replace the concept of emotion with the concept of emotional episode, and that they organize the variety within the set of emotional episodes according to dimensions instead of vernacular emotion subsets. Their differences concern the strength of the relations among the components in emotional episodes and the scientific status of the set of emotional episodes. To make an informed decision about the elements to keep and to revise from both theories, I engage in a separate analysis of the behavior-related components and the experience component, guided by insights from general behavior theories and general theories of consciousness. The analysis of the behavior-related components suggests the relatively uncharted idea that the so-called emotional aspect of behavior can be caused by a goal-directed mechanism. The analysis of the experience component reveals that different theories have emphasized different aspects of experience and hence different paths toward experience. The inquiry ends with an integrated theory that rejects the scientific status of emotions or emotional episodes, but accepts the scientific status of the components and sees strong causal relations among them.     

Watching diagnoses develop: Eye movements reveal symptom processing during diagnostic reasoning

Finding a probable explanation for observed symptoms is a highly complex task that draws on information retrieval from memory. Recent research suggests that observed symptoms are interpreted in a way that maximizes coherence for a single likely explanation. This becomes particularly clear if symptom sequences support more than one explanation. However, there are no existing process data available that allow coherence maximization to be traced in ambiguous diagnostic situations, where critical information has to be retrieved from memory. In this experiment, we applied memory indexing, an eye-tracking method that affords rich time-course information concerning memory-based cognitive processing during higher order thinking, to reveal symptom processing and the preferred interpretation of symptom sequences. Participants first learned information about causes and symptoms presented in spatial frames. Gaze allocation to emptied spatial frames during symptom processing and during the diagnostic response reflected the subjective status of hypotheses held in memory and the preferred interpretation of ambiguous symptoms. Memory indexing traced how the diagnostic decision developed and revealed instances of hypothesis change and biases in symptom processing. Memory indexing thus provided direct online evidence for coherence maximization in processing ambiguous information.     

Interoceptive and exteroceptive cues in the tolerance of the ethanol ataxic effect in rats

In the current analysis of classic conditioning with regard to the phenomenon of drug tolerance, there is empirical evidence of interoceptive pharmacologic cues and of exteroceptive cues, which are associated with the effect of the drug. The former could overshadow the latter. The aim of the present investigation was to contribute experimental data about the interaction that occurs between these two kinds of cues. For this purpose, a set of interoceptive and exteroceptive cues was presented as conditioned stimulus, together with an unconditioned stimulus that corresponded to the ataxic effects of ethanol. The results showed that the interoceptive cues were associated with the ataxic effect of ethanol, and they produced a tolerance response of the same intensity as the exteroceptive cues.