Partial negative reinforcement: fixed-ratio escape

Rats were unable to sustain performance when eight bar-presses turned off shock (−FR 8). In a second experiment, thirsty rats were able to maintain a moderate response rate when performance on −FR 8 was also reinforced with water. Some rats continued to bar-press on −FR 8 after withdrawal of positive reinforcement, but at a much lower rate. A possible explanation of the results is that during intermittent escape conditioning in a free-responding situation the absence of shock itself acquires aversive properties.     

Targeting Ontological Security: Information Warfare in the Modern Age

Recent studies have made great strides looking at the implications that the human need for ontological security has for politics and International Relations. However, less attention has been paid to how actors might target this need. While Steele and Mattern both examine the possible manipulation of subjectivity, this article turns to the concept of information warfare (IW) to broaden the view of how, and to what end, this is pursued. Congruently, by elaborating upon how the digitalization of society has increased the potential to influence and manipulate cognition and emotion, OS strengthens current literature on IW. It argues that by covertly perverting the information landscape, IW can alter how events are connected to national narratives, influencing policy by making certain options appear more/less shameful, or it can unravel the bonds of society by polarizing domestic narrative debates, purposely sowing ontological insecurity. This provides a firmer understanding of the strategic implications interference can have generally and of Russia's interference into the 2016 U.S. election specifically. Therefore, by viewing facets of IW as part of a range of tactics employed to manipulate/undermine subjectivity, a more nuanced understanding of interstate relations subsequently emerges.     

Reinforcer pathology II: Reward magnitude,reward delay,and demand for alcohol collectively relate to college students' alcohol related problems

The reinforcer pathologies model of addiction posits that two characteristic patterns of operant behavior characterize addiction. Specifically, individuals suffering from addiction have elevated levels of behavioral economic demand for their substances of abuse and have an elevated tendency to devalue delayed rewards (reflected in high delay discounting rates). Prior research has demonstrated that these behavioral economic markers are significant predictors of many of college students' alcohol-related problems. Delay discounting, however, is a complex behavioral performance likely undergirded by multiple behavioral processes. Emerging analytical approaches have isolated the role of participants' sensitivity to changes in reinforcer magnitude and changes in reinforcer delay. The current study uses these analytic approaches to compare participants' discounting of money versus alcohol, and to build regression models that leverage these new insights to predict a wider range of college students' alcohol related problems. Using these techniques, we were able to 1) demonstrate that individuals differed in their sensitivity to magnitudes of alcohol versus money, but not sensitivity to delays to those commodities and 2) that we could use our behavioral economic measures to predict a range of students' alcohol related problems.     

The effects of signalled and unsignalled lick-dependent delays on the development of schedule-induced drinking in rats

Food pellets were programmed to be delivered to rats every 60 sec (Fixed Time 60-sec schedule), and the development of schedule-induced drinking was measured in terms of the amount of water consumed and the number of licks per inter-pellet interval. For some rats (masters) 10-sec delays in food delivery were dependent on licks. Yoked-control rats received food at the same time as their masters and independently of their own behaviour. In Experiment 1, in which the delays were signalled by a blackout, the master rats began to drink, but this schedule-induced behaviour then decreased to levels lower than those shown by the yoked controls. When the signalled delays were discontinued, the drinking of the master rats recovered. In Experiment 2, in which the delays were not signalled, the master rats did not develop as much schedule-induced drinking as the yoked controls, and discontinuing the delays led to only small increases in drinking. These results support the view that schedule-induced drinking is subject to control by its consequences.     

Visual pattern recognition: Size preprocessing re-examined

Template theories of visual pattern recognition assume the operation of preprocessing routines to deal with irrelevancies such as discrepancies in stimulus size. In three experiments where size was an irrelevant dimension, observers classified pairs of forms as either “same” or “different”. In Experiment I, the classification “different” was required when the stimuli shared the same form but a different orientation, and “same” when the stimuli shared the same form and orientation. Under these conditions RT was an increasing function of the magnitude of the size disparity between stimuli with equal slopes for “same” and “different” judgements. In Experiment II, “different” classifications were made to stimuli that had different forms, and “same” to figures with the same form. This stimulus set produced a size disparity function that interacted with response type; “different” responses had a shallower slope. Experiment III consisted of a mixed stimulus set drawn from both Experiment I and II. Stimuli that produced additive effects of size disparity and response type in Experiment I now produced an interaction between these two factors similar to the one observed in Experiment II. The results of these experiments are interpreted as evidence that previous contradictory results reported in the literature stem from differences in the way the stimulus set is constructed, and that size transformations can not be a necessary operation, at least when “different” judgements are made. The results are problematic for the view that size disparity effects in matching tasks are easily interpretable in terms of a primitive size normalization stage that precedes any comparison operations.     

Das Ding as Object of Melancholia

While Freud’s account of melancholia stresses the role of a lost object, a Lacanian approach draws attention to the role of an intruding and excessive “real” object and the inability of the psychotic subject to adequately shield themselves from the traumatic jouissance associated with it. While initially these approaches seem to contradict one another, this short commentary argues that the loss of an imaginary (ego-supporting) object (as per Freud’s conceptualization of psychosis) may be coterminous with the invasive presence of an object of a different order—that of the Lacanian real. We are able to better appreciate the particularity of this invasive object by reference to Lacan’s notion—itself derived from Freud—of das Ding. Das Ding is that “object” of amassed primal jouissance, which—like a black hole—corresponds to its own absence and which, in its terrifying and sublime materializations, brings together the three crucial Freudian concepts of libidinal overproximity, unmodulated jouissance, and the death drive.     

Twin Inc.

This paper presents an account of how human spontaneous embryonic chimeras are formed. On the prevalent view in the philosophical literature, it is said that chimeras are the product of two embryos that fuse to form a new third embryo. We call this version of fusion synthesis. In contrast to synthesis, we present an alternative mechanism for chimera formation called incorporation, wherein one embryo incorporates the cells of a second embryo into its body. We argue that the incorporation thesis explains other types of chimera formation, which are better understood, and is more consistent than synthesis with what is known about embryological development. Incorporation also has different implications than synthesis and so avoids the philosophical puzzles that are often said to accompany embryonic chimera formation—puzzles which pose problems to the human embryo’s persistence from fertilization to the fetal stage of human development.     

Liberating narratives and the play of unforbidden pleasures: In brief dynamic therapy

Drawing upon the work of Adam Phillips and Ronald Britton the author highlights the intimidating and fear-inducing nature of the super-ego and the role of the therapist in supporting the judgements of the ego and liberating it from the domination of the super-ego. He goes on to explore the proposition that moral principles do not need to be oppressive in nature and that they can emanate from objects that are more akin to sexual or aesthetic objects. These themes are linked to Woodmansey’s conceptualistion of the punitive and humiliating super-ego, and the origin of the super-ego as an internalisation of an external conflict is outlined. The role of identifying a Cyclical Maladaptive Pattern as a focus and its contribution in identifying the super-ego and how it manifests in the client’s narrative are explored, as well as the crucial contribution of a playful stance on the part of therapist in subverting and undermining the intimidating strictures of the super-ego.