Psychophysiological assessment of imagery in obsessive-compulsives: a pilot study

In a within-groups design, four obsessive-compulsive patients imagined four different types of scenes: (1) exposure to feared situations; (2) exposure to feared situations followed by engaging in ritualistic behavior: (3) engaging in ritualistic behavior without provocation; and (4) neutral situations. Each scene type was presented three times with order of presentation randomized. Beat-by-beat heart rate samples were taken during the visualization of each scene and converted to second-by-second heart rate. An examination of second-by-second heart rate for each scene type suggested that scenes involving exposure to feared situations elicited defensive responses (DR), whereas those that did not elicited orienting responses (OR). The implications of these results for compulsive behavior, the fear-reduction model and Sokolov's (1963) OR-DR model, are briefly discussed.     

Conciliatory strategies and relative power

In an investigation of variations of a conciliatory strategy, 96 subjects, half female and half male, played a modified Prisoner's Dilemma in which their relative power, in terms of control over the other's outcomes, was less than, equal to, or greater than that of a simulated other. After 10 trials on which (s)he was 50% competitive, the other either did or did not send a handwritten note of general intent to be cooperative. In the second block of 10 trials, the other either was 100% cooperative or began with cooperation and stayed with it as long as the subject did not exploit. When the subject did exploit, the other made the competitive choice on the following trial as a form of retaliation, but followed this retaliation by a return to cooperation on the next trial so that there were never two consecutive competitive choices. During this second block, the simulated other always signaled in advance, with an explicit message, which choice (s)he was about to make. In a third block, the other was 100% cooperative in all conditions and sent no messages. As hypothesized, subjects whose power was equal to or less than that of the other were more cooperative in response to conciliation than were subjects whose power was greater than that of the other. Subjects who received the general note of intent were more cooperative than those who did not, but only in the equal and low power conditions. The subjects in the equal power condition who experienced retaliation were more cooperative than those who did not, but those in the unequal conditions tended to react negatively to retaliation. The results were discussed in terms of Osgood's (Peace Research Reviews, 1979, 8(2), 77–92) GRIT strategy and outcome control in interaction.     

Reinforcement of human observing behavior by a stimulue correlated with extinction or increased effort

Young men pulled a plunger on mixed and multiple schedules in which periods of variable-interval monetary reinforcement alternated irregularly with periods of extinction (Experiment 1), or in which reinforcement was contingent on different degrees of effort in the two alternating components (Experiment 2). In the baseline conditions, the pair of stimuli correlated with the schedule components could be obtained intermittently by pressing either of two observing keys. In the main conditions, pressing one of the keys continued to produce both discriminative stimuli as appropriate. Pressing the other key produced only the stimulus correlated with variable-interval reinforcement or reduced effort; presses on this key were ineffective during periods of extinction or increased effort. In both experiments, key presses producing both stimuli occurred at higher rates than key presses producing only one, demonstrating enhancement of observing behavior by a stimulus correlated with the less favorable of two contingencies. A control experiment showed that stimulus change alone was not an important factor in the maintenance of the behavior. These findings suggest that negative as well as positive stimuli may play a role in the conditioned reinforcement of human behavior.     

On the time course of letter perception: A masked priming ERP investigation

In an experiment measuring event-related brain potentials (ERPs), single-letter targets were preceded by briefly presented masked letter primes. Name and case consistency were manipulated across primes and targets so that the prime was either the same letter as the target (or not), and was presented in the same case as the target (or not). Separate analyses were performed for letters whose upper- and lowercase forms had similar features (or not). The results revealed an effect of prime-target visual similarity between 120 and 180 msec, an effect of case-specific letter identity between 180 and 220 msec, and an effect of case-independent letter identity between 220 and 300 msec. We argue that these ERP results reflect processing in a hierarchical system for letter recognition that involves both case-specific and case-independent representations of alphabetic stimuli.     

Two types of recollection-based monitoring in younger and older adults: Recall-to-reject and the distinctiveness heuristic

People often use recollection to avoid false memories. At least two types of recollection-based monitoring processes can be identified in the literature. Recall-to-reject is based on the recall of logically inconsistent information (which disqualifies the false event from having occurred), whereas the distinctiveness heuristic is based on the failure to recall to-be-expected information (which is diagnostic of non-occurrence). We attempted to investigate these hypothetical monitoring processes in a single task, as a first step at delineating the functional relationship between them. By design, participants could reject familiar lures by (1) recalling them from a to-be-excluded list (recall-to-reject) or (2) realising the absence of expected picture recollections (the distinctiveness heuristic). Both manipulations reduced false recognition in young adults, suggesting that these two types of monitoring were deployed on the same test. In contrast, older adults had limited success in reducing false recognition with either manipulation, indicating deficits in recollection-based monitoring processes. Depending on how a retrieval task is structured, attempts to use one monitoring process might interfere with another, especially in older adults.     

Absent-mindedness: Lapses of conscious awareness and everyday cognitive failures

A brief self-report scale was developed to assess everyday performance failures arising directly or primarily from brief failures of sustained attention (attention-related cognitive errors-ARCES). The ARCES was found to be associated with a more direct measure of propensity to attention lapses (Mindful Attention Awareness Scale--MAAS) and to errors on an existing behavioral measure of sustained attention (Sustained Attention to Response Task--SART). Although the ARCES and MAAS were highly correlated, structural modelling revealed the ARCES was more directly related to SART errors and the MAAS to SART RTs, which have been hypothesized to directly reflect the lapses of attention that lead to SART errors. Thus, the MAAS and SART RTs appear to directly reflect attention lapses, whereas the ARCES and SART errors reflect the mistakes these lapses are thought to cause. Boredom proneness was also assessed by the BPS, as a separate consequence of a propensity to attention lapses. Although the ARCES was significantly associated with the BPS, this association was entirely accounted for by the MAAS, suggesting that performance errors and boredom are separate consequences of lapses in attention. A tendency to even extraordinarily brief attention lapses on the order of milliseconds may have far-reaching consequences not only for safe and efficient task performance but also for sustaining the motivation to persist in and enjoy these tasks.     

The heuristic-analytic theory of reasoning: Extension and evaluation

An extensively revised heuristic-analytic theory of reasoning is presented incorporating three principles of hypothetical thinking. The theory assumes that reasoning and judgment are facilitated by the formation of epistemic mental models that are generated one at a time (singularity principle) by preconscious heuristic processes that contextualize problems in such a way as to maximize relevance to current goals (relevance principle). Analytic processes evaluate these models but tend to accept them unless there is good reason to reject them (satisficing principle). At a minimum, analytic processing of models is required so as to generate inferences or judgments relevant to the task instructions, but more active intervention may result in modification or replacement of default models generated by the heuristic system. Evidence for this theory is provided by a review of a wide range of literature on thinking and reasoning.     

The negated conditional: a litmus test for the suppositional conditional?

Under the suppositional account of conditionals, when people think about a conditional assertion, "if p then q," they engage in a mental simulation in which they imagine p holds and evaluate the probability that q holds under this supposition. One implication of this account is that belief in a conditional equates to conditional probability [P(q/p)]. In this paper, the authors examine a further implication of this analysis with respect to the wide-scope negation of conditional assertions, "it is not the case that if p then q." Under the suppositional account, nothing categorically follows from the negation of a conditional, other than a second conditional, "if p then not-q." In contrast, according to the mental model theory, a negated conditional is consistent only with the determinate state of affairs, p and not-q. In 4 experiments, the authors compare the contrasting predictions that arise from each of these accounts. The findings are consistent with the suppositional theory but are incongruent with the mental model theory of conditionals.