Transcending the Quantitative‐Qualitative Divide With Mixed Methods Research: A Multidimensional Framework for Understanding Congruence and Completeness in the Study of Values

Quantitative research dominates published literature in the helping professions. Mixed methods research, which integrates quantitative and qualitative methodologies, has received a lukewarm reception. The authors address the iterative separation that infuses theory, praxis, philosophy, methodology, training, and public perception and propose a dimensional viewpoint as a framework for successful integration of mixed methods research. This dimensional perspective demonstrates that mixed methods research techniques are necessary but not sufficient to study spiritual, ethical, and religious value issues. Research of career development, “best practices,” nature‐nurture, and prayer illustrate weaknesses and opportunities for evaluating dimensional mixed methods approaches.     

Grand Unified Theories of the Brain Need Better Understanding of Behavior: The Two-Tiered Emergence of Function

Abstract

Over the last few decades, neuroscience and various associated disciples have expanded enormously in terms of output, tools, methods, concepts, and large-scale projects. In spite of these developments, the principles underlying brain function and behavior are yet only partially understood. We claim that brain functioning requires the elucidation of the rules associated with all possible task realizations, rather than targeting the activity underlying a specific realization. A first step in that direction was taken by approaches focusing on dynamical structures underlying task performances, as exemplified by coordination dynamics. Its theoretical foundation owes much to Haken’s synergetics, which provides a formalism through which the degrees of freedom associated with high-dimensional systems may be effectively reduced to one or a few functional variables in the vicinity of phase transitions. The recent theoretical development of structured flows on manifolds (SFM) allows the employment to a potentially broader range of applications. Here we expand the SFM framework and propose that the emergent two-tiered fast–slow dynamics may be a basic mathematical organization underlying the architecture of brain and behavior dynamics. Finally, along a few examples, we illustrate how this framework allows for the incorporation of notions cardinal to ecological psychology.     

Performance on ratio and interval schedules with matched reinforcement rates

In the first study, rats were trained to pull a chain on a schedule (RPI) that regulates the probability of reinforcement to maintain a constant average reinforcement rate without differentially reinforcing long inter-response times (IRTs). Although the response rate was sensitive to the overall rate of reinforcement, performance was unaffected by variations between 1 and 50 in the IRT memory size used in programming the schedule. In the second study, two groups of animals performed on either a random-interval (RI) schedule or a RPI schedule, with reinforcement rates determined by those generated by a third group performing on a random ratio (RR) 20 schedule. The RI group responded at a lower rate than the RPI group, which, in turn, responded at a lower rate than the RR group, even though the three groups experienced comparable rates of reinforcement. The fact that the RPI group responded at a lower rate than the RR group suggests that the standard response rate difference observed between ratio and interval schedules, which have been matched for reinforcement rate, cannot be attributed solely to the fact that conventional interval schedules differentially reinforce long IRTs.     

Judgement of act-outcome contingency: The role of selective attribution

In the first experiment subjects were presented with a number of sets of trials on each of which they could perform a particular action and observe the occurrence of an outcome in the context of a video game. The contingency between the action and outcome was varied across the different sets of trials. When required to judge the effectiveness of the action in controlling the outcome during a set of trials, subjects assigned positive ratings for a positive contingency and negative ratings for a negative contingency. Furthermore, the magnitude of the ratings was related systematically to the strength of the actual contingency. With a fixed probability of an outcome given the action, judgements of positive contingencies decreased as the likelihood that the outcome would occur without the action was raised. Correspondingly, the absolute value of ratings of negative contingencies was increased both by an increment in the probability of the outcome in the absence of the action and by a decrement in the probability of the outcome following the action. A systematic bias was observed, however, in that positive judgements were given under a non-contingent relationship when the outcome frequency was relatively high. However, this bias could be reduced by giving extended exposure to the non-contingent schedule (Experiment 2).

This pattern of contingency judgements can be explained if it is assumed that a process of selective attribution operates, whereby people are less likely to attribute an outcome to some potential target cause if another effective cause is present. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated the operation of this process by showing that initially establishing another agent as an effective cause of the outcome subsequently reduced or blocked the extent to which the subjects attributed the outcome to the action.

Finally, we argue that the pattern and bias in contingency judgements based upon interactions with a causal process can be explained in terms of contemporary conditioning models of associative learning.     

The potentiation effect during serial conditioning

The development of suppression in rats to a target conditioned stimulus (CS) was compared in trace and serial conditioning procedures. The interval between the end of the target CS and the shock unconditioned stimulus (US) was filled by a second CS in the serial, but not the trace, procedure. In five experiments the serial procedure produced superior conditioning. This potentiation effect, however, depended critically upon the level of conditioning to the stimulus interpolated between the target CS and the US. When conditioning to the interpolated CS was either reduced by giving independent nonreinforced trials with this CS alone or enhanced by independent reinforced trials, the potentiation effect was abolished. In addition, the insertion of a trace interval between the target and interpolated CSs reduced the effect. However, the magnitude of conditioning to the target CS was unaffected by post-conditioning changes in the conditioned strength of the interpolated CS. These findings are discussed in terms of the contribution of both the association between the CSs themselves, which is inherent in the serial procedure, and that between the target CS and the US.     

More Than Words: Response to Phelan

Studies in Philosophy and Education -