DEMAND EQUATIONS FOR QUALITATIVELY DIFFERENT FOODS UNDER FIXED‐RATIO SCHEDULES: A COMPARISON OF THREE DATA CONVERSIONS

Concurrent schedules were used to establish 6 hens' preferences for three foods. The resulting biases suggested wheat was preferred over honey‐puffed and puffed wheat, and puffed wheat was the least preferred food. The hens then responded under fixed‐ratio schedules for each food in 40‐min (excluding reinforcer time) sessions, with the response requirement doubling each session until no reinforcers were received. At the smaller ratios, the less preferred the food, the faster the hens' overall response rates (mainly as a result of shorter postreinforcement pauses) and the more reinforcers they received. The relations between the logarithms of the number of reinforcers obtained (consumption) and the response ratio (price) were well fitted by curvilinear demand functions. Wheat produced the smallest initial consumption (ln L), followed by honey‐puffed and puffed wheat, respectively. The response requirement at which the demand functions predicted maximal responding (P_max) were larger for wheat than for the other foods. Normalizing consumption and price, as suggested by Hursh and Winger (1995), moved the data for the three foods towards a single demand function; however, the P_max values were generally largest for puffed wheat. The results of normalization, as suggested by Hursh and Silberberg (2008), depended on the k value used. The parameter k is related to the range of the data, and the same k value needs to be used for all data sets that are compared. A k value of 8.0 gave significantly higher essential values (smaller α values) for puffed wheat as compared to honey‐puffed wheat and wheat, and the P_max values, in normalized standard price units, were largest for puffed wheat. Normalizing demand by converting the puffed and honey‐puffed wheat reinforcers to wheat equivalents (by applying the bias parameter from the concurrent‐schedules procedure) maintained separate demand functions for the foods. Those for wheat had the smallest rates of change in elasticity (a) and, in contrast to the other analyses, the largest P_max values. Normalizing demand in terms of concurrent‐schedule preference appears to have some advantages and to merit further investigation.     

青少年情绪弹性问卷的研究报告

根据情绪弹性的理论构建,编制出二维结构的青少年情绪弹性问卷。问卷经探索性因素分析,抽取出积极情绪能力和情绪恢复能力两个维度,表明情绪弹性的理论构建是合理的;通过问卷的信、效度检验,表明该问卷可以作为测评青少年情绪弹性的有效工具。运用本问卷对青少年的调查表明,青少年的情绪弹性存在着显著的性别和年级差异,男生明显高于女生,高中生明显高于初中生。     

墨子音乐美学思想探微

墨子是小手工业者和小生产者的代表,却是一位卓越人物。其博大精深的学术思想、强国谋略、治世之法对后世影响至深,他所提出的以“兼爱、非命”为中心思想体系的学说可与儒家学说“仁义、礼乐”相媲美。墨子的音乐美学思想是其学说中的一个重要部分,也是我国古代音乐宝库中一颗璀璨的明珠,文章从墨子背景谈起,着重论述了墨子的音乐美学思想的内容,以及与“节用”的经济学说和“兼以易别”、“禁恶而劝爱”的政治思想的关系,从而进一步丰富、完善了墨子音乐美学思想的内涵。     

乳腺癌中4．1N蛋白和E-cadherin蛋白表达的临床意义

研究乳腺癌组织中4．1N 蛋白和上皮型钙黏附素（E-cadherin）的表达情况及临床病理意义。应用免疫组织化学PV-6000法和western blot法检测4．1N蛋白及E-adherin在乳腺癌中的表达。二者在乳腺癌与乳腺良性病变组织的差异有统计学意义（P＜0．05）,在乳腺癌中表达与组织学分级、临床分期、淋巴结转移有关（P＜0．05）,4．1N和E-adherin之间呈正相关。二者与浸润性乳腺癌的发生及发展相关,可为乳腺癌诊断及治疗提供参考。     

Association Between Proactive Personality and Academic Self–Efficacy

Research about organizations has consistently revealed that proactive personality is a relatively stable disposition and a significant antecedent of self-efficacy, which generates employees’ proactive behavior and thus benefits individuals and firms. Consequently, the present study aimed to examine whether the relationship between proactive personality, a general temperamental tendency, and specific self-efficacy that is focused on certain activities or tasks might emerge across contexts in an education setting with a directional effect. From a sample of 123 students, we employed a longitudinal approach using two waves of surveys to examine the directional relations between students’ proactive personalities and their academic self–efficacy in education. The results showed that students’ proactive personalities at Time 1 predicted change in their academic self–efficacy at Time 2, suggesting a top–down relationship. On the contrary students’ academic self–efficacy at Time 1 could not predict their proactive personalities at Time 2. In short, the directional effect of proactive personality on self–efficacy across contexts was captured in this study. Implications and limitations were discussed.     

The Perceived Advantages and Disadvantages of Presymptomatic Testing for Machado-Joseph Disease: Development of a New Self-Response Inventory

This study describes the construction of a self-response inventory to evaluate the perception of advantages and disadvantages of the Machado-Joseph disease presymptomatic testing, in 44 individuals at-risk for this disease. The results showed that the reliability of this inventory was satisfactory. Factor analysis revealed a bidimensional structure: perceived advantages (pros) and perceived disadvantages (cons) of presymptomatic testing. Social desirability was found unrelated to the total scores of our inventory. Additional correlation studies, with other scales, confirmed the convergent validity of the instrument. These results suggest adequate construct validity. This inventory thus seems to be a proper instrument to assess expectations involved in the decision-making process of Machado-Joseph disease presymptomatic testing.     

Involvement of alpha-bungarotoxin-sensitive nicotinic receptors in long-term memory formation in the honeybee (Apis mellifera)

In the honeybee Apis mellifera, multiple-trial olfactory conditioning of the proboscis extension response specifically leads to long-term memory (LTM) which can be retrieved more than 24 h after learning. We studied the involvement of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in the establishment of LTM by injecting the nicotinic antagonists mecamylamine (1 mM), alpha-bungarotoxin (alpha-BGT, 0.1 mM) or methyllycaconitine (MLA, 0.1 mM) into the brain through the median ocellus 20 min before or 20 min after multiple-trial learning. The retention tests were performed 1, 3, and 24 h after learning. Pre-training injections of mecamylamine induced a lower performance during conditioning but had no effect on LTM formation. Post-training injections of mecamylamine did not affect honeybees' performances. Pre-training injections of MLA or post-training injection of alpha-BGT specifically induced LTM impairment whereas acquisition as well as memory retrieval tested 1 or 3 h after learning was normal. This indicates that brain injections of alpha-BGT and MLA did not interfere with learning or medium-term memory. Rather, these blockers affect the LTM. To explain these results, we advance the hypothesis that honeybee alpha-BGT-sensitive acetylcholine receptors are also sensitive to MLA. These receptors could be essential for triggering intracellular mechanisms involved in LTM. By contrast, medium-term memory is not dependent upon these receptors but is affected by mecamylamine.     

Association between dyads and correct responses on the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task (PASAT)

The sensitivity of the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task (PASAT) to working memory deficits may be enhanced by examining "dyads" (i.e., correct responses immediately preceded by a correct response) as a complement to the traditional total correct summary score. In a sample of 397 mostly African American (79%) healthy adults, total dyad and total correct scores were highly correlated (r = .96, p < .001); however, the magnitude of this association diminished in faster stimulus presentation trials, particularly among participants with impaired working memory abilities.