Establishing discriminative stimulus control within generalized oddity performance,without reinforcement

In two oddity learning studies with children, subjects were reinforced for oddity (or nonoddity) responding on line-tilt or dot numerosity problems. Interposed form and color problems were not reinforced. No instructions to make oddity choices were given. In Experiment I it was found that reinforcement for oddity or nonoddity responding on tilt and numerosity problems produced the corresponding tendency toward oddity or nonoddity performance on these problems and also on the nonreinforced form and color problems. These results show a generalized oddity phenomenon similar to generalized imitation. In Experiment II a third type of nonreinforced problem was presented in this same format: compound stimuli permitting either a color or a form solution. It was found that immediate prior training with nonreinforced form problems, interpolated among the reinforced tilt and numerosity problems, led to form-oddity choices in the compound problems. Similarily, color pretraining produced color-oddity choices. These results show that selective discriminative stimulus control can be obtained in oddity learning, without reinforcement for choices on either of the two dimensions involved.     

A common factor in the MMPI scales of married couples.

Using canonical analysis, a common factor in the MMPI scales of husbands and wives was found. The Sc, Pd, and Hs scales for both the husbands and the wives contributed heavily to the relationship. Other scales contributing to the correlation between the personality components of the pairs were F, Hy Pt, and Si for the husbands and Pa for the wives. The results were interpreted as indicating areas of homogeneity and heterogeneity in the personalities of married couples.     

The “Paradox of Self‐Constitution” and Korsgaard's Two Conceptions of Maxims for Action

This article argues that Christine Korsgaard gives two accounts of maxims, the identity‐priority account and the form‐priority account. There is a tension between the accounts because (1) Korsgaard's form‐priority maxims account cannot function apart from the identity of a well‐formed agent that precedes and tests maxims to determine if they should count as reasons or laws, and (2) Korsgaard's identity‐priority maxims account needs the form of the maxim to precede, bind, and constitute the well‐formed agent. This tension mirrors the two sides of what Korsgaard has called the “paradox of self‐constitution.” The article concludes that Korsgaard's paradox of self‐constitution leads to an arbitrariness that undermines the formation of moral laws.     

Attentional control mediates fearful responding to an ecologically valid stressor

Background and Objectives: Attentional control (AC) is defined as the ability to voluntarily shift and disengage attention and is thought to moderate the relationship between preexisting risk factors for fear and the actual experience of fear. Design: This longitudinal study elaborates on current models of AC by examining whether AC moderates or mediates effects of an ecologically valid stressor (a college examination) and also whether AC is predictive of state-like fear over longer timescales than previously reported. Methods: Based on previous findings, we hypothesized that AC would moderate the relationship between trait anxiety and affective distress in response to the examination stressor. We also tested a competing mediational model based on AC theory. These models were tested in two separate samples (sample 1, N = 219; sample 2, N = 129; Total N = 348) at two time points, at the beginning of a college semester in a large undergraduate class and 5 minutes prior to a college examination. Results: Mediation but not moderation of anxiety by AC was supported in both samples using multiple dependent measures. Conclusions: We conclude that AC may be useful in predicting affective distress in naturalistic settings, particularly in cases where anxiety is anticipatory.     

Meta‐Analysis of Counseling Outcomes for the Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

This meta‐analysis of 152 published posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) clinical trials from 1990 to 2012 concluded that counseling generally produced a small to large effect of treatment across all comparison conditions at termination (d+ = 0.30 to 0.89). These gains were maintained at longest follow‐up (d+ = 0.58 to 0.86) for the wait‐list, treatment‐as‐usual, and single‐group comparisons, but not for the follow‐up placebo comparison (d+ = 0.15), probably because of the low power (j = 3 placebo studies). Clinical trial findings were synthesized using a random‐effects model. No effects of publication bias or moderating variables were evident. No difference was found between trauma‐focused and non‐trauma‐focused approaches. Implications for counseling practice and future PTSD outcome research are addressed.     

Customer Reactions to Staff Empowerment: Mediators and Moderators

For over a decade, the empowerment of service staff has been touted as an effective means of improving worker satisfaction and performance. The 2 studies described in this paper assess likely customer reactions to staff empowerment. In Study I, conditions of full empowerment produced higher customer satisfaction ratings than did either limited or no empowerment, with evidence that the link between empowerment and satisfaction is mediated primarily by perceptions of procedural fairness. In Study 2, full empowerment was again associated with high satisfaction and with positive appraisals of the empowered staff member, although these effects were moderated by the employee's communication style.     

The kinematics of belief and desire

Richard Jeffrey regarded the version of Bayesian decision theory he floated in ‘The Logic of Decision’ and the idea of a probability kinematics—a generalisation of Bayesian conditioning to contexts in which the evidence is ‘uncertain’—as his two most important contributions to philosophy. This paper aims to connect them by developing kinematical models for the study of preference change and practical deliberation. Preference change is treated in a manner analogous to Jeffrey’s handling of belief change: not as mechanical outputs of combinations of intrinsic desires plus information, but as a matter of judgement and of making up one’s mind. In the first section Jeffrey’s probability kinematics is motivated and extended to the treatment of changes in conditional belief. In the second, analogous kinematical models are developed for preference change and in particular belief-induced change that depends on an invariance condition for conditional preference. The two are the brought together in the last section in a tentative model of pratical deliberation. This paper is one of a pair dedicated to Richard Jeffrey and prepared for a workshop held in his memory at the 26th International Wittgenstein Symposium. My thanks to the organisers of, and the participants in, this workshop and to two anonymous referees for their comments.