Pavlov in America: a heterodox approach to the study of his influence

This work presents a critical analysis of Pavlov's influence that goes beyond the conventional view: that which reduces his influence in American psychology to the behaviorism of Watson and Hull. In order to understand the nature of the Russian physiologist's influence in American psychology, we propose a distinction between three approaches to it: 1) the symbolic approach, on representing a model of the possibility of constructing an objective psychology; 2) the methodological approach, given the importance of the technique of conditional reflexes; and 3) the theoretical approach, which is derived from his theory of higher nervous activity. This perspective permits us to suggest that most of Pavlov's influence on behaviorism was of a symbolic and methodological nature--though the methodological influence also reached other authors that did not belong to the behaviorist traditions, as was the case of Mateer. As far as the theoretical influence is concerned, our work proposes that it is more visible in authors such as Gantt and Liddell, or even in authors such as Boldirev, Director of the Pavlovian Laboratory at the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan. The case of Gantt is especially interesting because, in addition to his important contributions, he played an essential role in the foundation of the Pavlovian Society, and the journal Conditional Reflex. What our work proposes is that to understand the nature of Pavlov's influence in American psychology it is necessary to take into account the very characteristics of that psychology: its pragmatic interests, its methodological rigor, the dominant systems of neo-behavioral theory and the changes that occurred after the Second World War.     

Anomalous cerebral language organization: acquired crossed aphasia in a dextral child

Following a dramatic change of its reported incidence, it was only recently recognized that acquired crossed aphasia in dextral children represents a highly exceptional phenomenon. We describe in a three epoch time-frame model the aphasic and neurocognitive manifestations of an additional case and focus briefly on its anatomoclinical configurations. In our patient, a right parietal cortico-subcortical hemorrhagic lesion caused an initially severe aphasia. After remission of the global aphasic symptoms in the acute phase, an adynamic output disorder with relatively severe auditory-verbal comprehension disturbances developed. In addition to the adynamia of self-generated speech, formal language investigations performed 3 weeks postonset, revealed agrammatism, hypertonic dysarthria, and dysprosodia. A substantial improvement of the aphasic disorder was objectified 83 days postonset. Neuropsychological investigations disclosed both dominant and nondominant hemisphere dysfunctions. Reassessment of neurocognitive functions after a 10-year period evidenced discrete residual anomia, confined to visual confrontational naming and a discrete visuo-perceptual syndrome. Given the posterior localization of the lesion, the syndrome shift from global to predominantly adynamic aphasia represents a finding beyond the plausible anatomoclinical expectations holding in general for the uncrossed, classic types of childhood and adult aphasia. As the first representative of crossed aphasia in dextral children with an anomalous lesion-aphasia profile, our case provides evidence to enrich the discussion on lateralization and intrahemispherical organization of language functions in both childhood and adult aphasia.     

Social influences on parental and nonparental responses toward pups in virgin female prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster)

Pair-bonded prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster) are biparental after the birth of pups. However, whereas most adult virgin males are parental, most virgin females are not. In 6 experiments, influences on the parental behavior of virgin female prairie voles were examined. It was found that (a) young virgin females were more maternal than older females, (b) the postweaning sex ratio of cage-mates did not affect females' responses to pups, (c) females raised to adulthood with their parents and younger siblings present were highly parental, (d) 48-hr exposure to pups beginning at weaning increased some aspects of later maternal responding, (e) rearing to adulthood with the parents even in the absence of younger siblings also increased females' maternal responding, and (f) the increase was seen only if both parents were present. Continued parental presence promotes alloparental behavior, possibly important if daughters do not disperse from the natal nest.     

Causal conditional reasoning and semantic memory retrieval: a test of the semantic memory framework

This study tested and refined a framework that proposes a mechanism for retrieving alternative causes and disabling conditions (Cummins, 1995) during reasoning. Experiment 1 examined the relation between different factors affecting retrieval. The test revealed high correlations between the number of possible alternative causes or disabling conditions and their strength of association and plausibility. Experiment 2 explored the hypothesis that due to a more extended search process, conditional inferences would last longer when many alternative causes or disabling conditions were available. Affirmation of the consequent (AC) and modus ponens (MP) latencies showed the hypothesized pattern. Denial of the antecedent (DA) and modus tollens (MT) inferences did not show latency effects. The experiment also identified an effect of the number of disabling conditions on AC and DA acceptance. Experiment 3 measured efficiency of disabler retrieval by a limited time, disabler generation task. As predicted, better disabler retrieval was related to lower acceptance of the MP and MT inferences.     

Hierarchical classes: Model and data analysis

A discrete, categorical model and a corresponding data-analysis method are presented for two-way two-mode (objects × attributes) data arrays with 0, 1 entries. The model contains the following two basic components: a set-theoretical formulation of the relations among objects and attributes; a Boolean decomposition of the matrix. The set-theoretical formulation defines a subset of the possible decompositions as consistent with it. A general method for graphically representing the set-theoretical decomposition is described. The data-analysis algorithm, dubbed HICLAS, aims at recovering the underlying structure in a data matrix by minimizing the discrepancies between the data and the recovered structure. HICLAS is evaluated with a simulation study and two empirical applications.This research was supported in part by a grant from the Belgian NSF (NFWO) to Paul De Boeck and in part by NSF Grant BNS-83-01027 to Seymour Rosenberg. We thank Iven Van Mechelen for clarifying several aspects of the Boolean algebraic formulation of the model and Phipps Arabie for his comments on an earlier draft.     

Is masked neighbor priming inhibitory? Evidence using the incremental priming technique

To investigate neighbor effects in visual word recognition, the masked priming technique holds considerable advantages over unprimed methods, because a target word is used as its own control. However, inhibitory neighbor effects obtained with masked priming are still open for different interpretations, because the primes differ across conditions. Given this theoretical problem, it is useful to investigate neighbor priming effects using a prime as its own control. This option is available in the incremental priming technique (Jacobs, Grainger, & Ferrand, 1995), in which a within-condition baseline is created by comparing the response times (RTs) to a target when it is primed at different prime durations. In this study, we examined masked neighbor priming using this technique. Both the traditional and the within-condition baseline indicated that masked neighbor word priming is inhibitory in nature. The results are discussed in terms of current theories of visual word recognition.