A Behavior Systems View of Conditioned States during Long and Short CS–US Intervals

In the behavior systems view, a long CS–US interval should differentially condition a general search mode and related behavior, while a short CS–US interval should differentially condition a focal search mode and related behavior. Two experiments paired a long or a short CS with food, and then, during an extinction test, compounded the CS with an unconditioned probe-stimulus of a rolling ball-bearing. Presuming that the long CS differentially conditions a general search mode, and that unconditioned contact of a moving stimulus is characteristic of that mode, presentation of the long CS should facilitate interaction with the ball-bearing. Similarly, presuming that a short CS differentially conditions a focal search mode, and that feeder-directed responses are characteristic of this mode, presentation of a short CS should facilitate nosing in the food-tray. Consistent with these predictions, ball-bearing contact increased in rats receiving the long CS, while nosing in the food-tray was higher with the short CS.     

Encoding, repetition, and the mirror effect in recognition memory: Symmetry in motion

Attention/likelihood theory has been used to explain the mirror effect in recognition memory. The theory also predicts that any manipulation that affects the recognition of old items will also affect recognition of the new items—more specifically, that all the underlying distributions will move and that they will move symmetrically on the decision axis. In five experiments, we tested this prediction. The first two experiments used encoding tasks during study to change recognition performance for high- and low-frequency words. The results show symmetrical dispersion of the underlying distributions. The final three experiments used repetition to increase recognition performance. Repetition produced a symmetrical pattern of movement that was different from that produced by encoding task. This pattern is, however, also covered by attention/likelihood theory. A further extension of the theory was used to predict response times.     

Theory in Child Psychosocial Treatment Research: Have It or Had It? A Pragmatic Alternative

In the area of child psychosocial intervention research, substantial progress in addressing challenging methodological issues has been made. In this article we suggest that continued movement forward requires maintaining a balance between methodological and theoretical issues, and that it would be advantageous to begin to think about matching advances in methodological sophistication by similar advances in theoretical sophistication. The need to advance our understanding of theoretical issues is especially important in light of the challenges raised by postmodernism, particularly as these challenges relate to knowledge development. We discuss these challenges and describe how a pragmatic orientation may be a useful way to respond to them. We also describe how a pragmatic orientation has been useful in our work in developing, implementing and evaluating psychosocial interventions for children with phobic and anxiety disorders.     

Compensation for Jaw Fixation by Aphasic Patients

The ability to compensate for fixation of the jaw by a bite block was investigated in 6 nonfluent aphasics, 6 fluent aphasics, and 10 normal control subjects. Acoustic analyses of the vowels [i u a æ] and fricatives [s s] revealed substantial but incomplete compensation for the perturbation in all three subject groups. Perceptual identification scores and quality ratings by naive and phonetically trained listeners indicated poorer identification of the high vowels [i u] under compensatory conditions relative to normal production. Of particular interest was the fact that all three groups of subjects exhibited similar patterns of results. The findings suggest that any deficit in speech motor programming demonstrated by the nonfluent aphasic patients did not affect compensatory abilities. Results are discussed with respect to normal speech adaptation skills and the nature of articulatory breakdown in nonfluent aphasia.     

The Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine of the Council of Europe

The Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine developed by the Council of Europe, now undergoing ratification, is the first international treaty focused on bioethics. This article describes the background of the Convention's development and its general provisions and provides a comparison of its requirements with those of federal regulations governing research with human subjects. Although most provisions are comparable, there are significant differences in scope and applicability, for example, in the areas of compensation for injury, research participation by persons with limited capacity to consent, assisted reproduction, organ transplantation, and research in emergency situations. The Convention represents a milestone in international bioethics and protection of human rights that will probably be referred to with increasing frequency.     

A Comparison of Active Student Response and On-Task Instruction on the Acquisition and Maintenance of Health Facts by Fourth Grade Special Education Students

An alternating treatments design was used to compare the effects of active student response (ASR) and on-task (OT) instruction on the acquisition and maintenance of health facts during small-group lessons. Five students with learning difficulties (4 students identified as developmentally handicapped and 1 student identified as learning disabled) participated in daily instruction on weekly sets of 20 unknown health facts (10 facts assigned to the ASR condition and 10 to the OT condition). During ASR instruction, the teacher modeled the correct response to a health question that was presented visually on a health fact card, and the students immediately repeated the correct response in unison three times. During OT instruction, students attended visually to the health fact card as the teacher modeled the correct response. All 5 students made more correct responses on end-of-day tests on health facts taught with ASR instruction than they did on health facts taught with OT instruction. ASR instruction also produced consistently superior results on maintenance tests administered 2 weeks after instruction.     

DEGREES OF FREEDOM AND THE INTERPRETATION OF QUANTUM FIELD THEORY

Nick Huggett and Robert Weingard (1994) have recently proposed a novel approach to interpreting field theories in physics, one which makes central use of the fact that a field generally has an infinite number of degrees of freedom in any finite region of space it occupies. Their characterization, they argue, (i) reproduces our intuitive categorizations of fields in the classical domain and thereby (ii) provides a basis for arguing that the quantum field is a field. Furthermore, (iii) it accomplishes these tasks better than does a well-known rival approach due to Paul Teller (1990, 1995). This paper contends that all three of these claims are mistaken, and suggests that Huggett and Weingard have not shown how counting degrees of freedom provides any insight into the interpretation or the formal properties of field theories in physics.     

Powerful Pedagogy in the Science-and-Religion Classroom

This essay is a discussion of effective teaching in the science-and-religion classroom. I begin by introducing Alfred North Whitehead's three stages of learning—romance, discipline, and generalization—and consider their implications for powerful pedagogy in science and religion. Following Whitehead's three principles, I develop a number of additional heuristics that deal with active, visual, narrative, cooperative, and dialogical learning styles. Finally, I present twelve guidelines for how to use e-mail and class-based listserves to achieve some of these outcomes.     

Postmodernism: What One Needs to Know

This essay is an introduction to postmodernism and deconstruction as they relate to the special challenges of scholarship and teaching in the science and religion multidiscipline.