EPS Prize Lecture. Licking and liking: the assessment of hedonic responses in rodents

Affective processes are a key determinant of behaviour: At its simplest, liked stimuli are approached while disliked stimuli are avoided. Although assessing hedonic responses in nonverbal animals can be difficult, one relatively tractable approach relies on detailed analyses of rodents' consummatory behaviour. Rodents typically produce rhythmic sets of licks that can be grouped into clusters on the basis of the intervals between licks. The mean number of licks in a cluster (cluster size) is directly related to the concentration of palatable and unpalatable solutions. These relationships suggest that lick cluster size might be a useful index of an animal's hedonic reaction to the solution being consumed. I begin by reviewing studies of conditioned flavour preference and aversion that support the idea that lick cluster size can provide useful information about rats' hedonic reactions. I then describe how this methodology has been used to address previously intractable issues in the investigation of contrast effects as well as revealing an analogue of effort justification effects that, in humans, are commonly explained in terms of cognitive dissonance reduction. Finally, I consider how lick analysis might provide information about hedonic responses in animal models of human psychiatric disorders. In all these cases, how an animal did something was particularly informative about why it was doing it.     

The Influence of Expertise on Maritime Driving Behaviour

We compared expert and novice behaviour in a group of participants as they engaged in a simulated maritime driving task. We varied the difficulty of the driving task by controllling the severity of the sea state in which they were driving their craft. Increases in sea severity increased the size of the upcoming waves while also increasing the length of the waves. Expert participants drove their craft at a higher speed than novices and decreased their fixation durations as wave severity increased. Furthermore, the expert participants increased the horizontal spread of their fixation positions as wave severity increased to a greater degree than novices. Conversely, novice participants showed evidence of a greater vertical spread of fixations than experts. By connecting our findings with previous research investigating eye movement behaviour and road driving, we suggest that novice or inexperienced drivers show inflexibility in adaptation to changing driving conditions. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Stay Cool,Hang Loose,Admit Nothing 1 : Race,Intergroup Contact,and Public-Police Relations

Research on cognitive dissonance has fallen into several traditions. One, stimulated by Festinger and Carlsmith (1959), exposes subjects to experiences of induced compliance. A second, reflecting Brehm (1956), requires subjects to choose among alternative courses of action. It is argued that choice-among-alternatives experiments reflect only inconsistent preferences, whereas induced-compliance experiments involve normative elements, and that we should not expect these two traditions to generalize equally to all populations. Our hypotheses were tested with two subject populations: university undergraduates and older church members (the latter chosen for greater sensitivity to norms). Results confirmed that older church members were more likely to resolve dissonance when subjected to an induced-compliance design but indicated that the members were only minimally affected by a choice-among-alternatives design. Result are discussed for their theoretical and practical implications.     

Quasi-Realism and Inductive Scepticism in Hume’s Theory of Causation

Interpreters of Hume on causation consider that an advantage of the ‘quasi-realist’ reading is that it does not commit him to scepticism or to an error theory about causal reasoning. It is unique to quasi-realism that it maintains this positive epistemic result together with a rejection of metaphysical realism about causation: the quasi-realist supplies an appropriate semantic theory in order to justify the practice of talking ‘as if’ there were causal powers in the world. In this paper, I problematise the quasi-realist reading of Hume on causation by showing how quasi-realism does not speak to inductive scepticism. I also offer evidence that Hume takes inductive scepticism to result from his theory of causation, and that his scepticism is tied to his rejection of metaphysical causal realism.     

The role of stimulus comparison in human perceptual learning: effects of distractor placement

Within-subjects procedures were used to assess the influence of stimulus comparison on perceptual learning in humans. In Experiment 1, participants received intermixed (A, A', A, A',…) or blocked (B, B,…, B', B',…) exposure to pairs of similar female faces. In a subsequent same/different discrimination task, participants were more accurate when the test involved A and A' than when it involved B and B' (or novel faces: C and C'). This perceptual learning effect was reduced by placing a visual distractor (*: either another face or a checkerboard) between successive presentations of the faces during the exposure stage (e.g., A - * - A'). The attenuation of the intermixed versus blocked difference was particularly marked when faces were used as the distractor. In Experiment 2, this reduction in perceptual learning was more marked when * was positioned between the pairs of intermixed faces (i.e., A - * - A') than when it preceded and succeeded those faces (i.e., * - A - A' - *). These results provide the first direct evidence that the opportunity to compare stimuli plays a causal role in supporting perceptual learning. They also support the specific view that perceptual learning reflects an interaction between a short-term habituation process, that ordinarily biases processing away from the frequently presented common elements and toward their less frequently presented unique elements, and a long-term representational process that reflects this bias.     

Behind the wheel: What drives the effects of error handling?

Existing research comparing error management (a strategy focusing on increasing the positive and decreasing the negative consequences of errors) to error prevention (a strategy focusing on working faultlessly), has identified error management as beneficial for multiple outcomes. Yet, due to various methodological limitations, it is unclear whether the effects previously found are due to error prevention, error management, or both. We examine this in an experimental study with a 2 (error prevention: yes vs. no) × 2 (error management: yes vs. no) factorial design. Error prevention had negative effects on cognition and adaptive transfer performance. Error management alleviated worry and boosted one’s perceived self-efficacy. Overall, the results show that error prevention and error management have unique outcomes on negative affect, self-efficacy, cognition, and performance.     

Teaching Tradition: Diverse Perspectives on the Pilot Urban American Indian Traditional Spirituality Program

Many urban American Indian community members lack access to knowledgeable participation in indigenous spiritual practices. And yet, these sacred traditional activities remain vitally important to their reservation‐based kin. In response, our research team partnered with an urban American Indian health center in Detroit for purposes of developing a structured program to facilitate more ready access to participation in indigenous spiritual knowledge and practices centered on the sweat lodge ceremony. Following years of preparation and consultation, we implemented a pilot version of the Urban American Indian Traditional Spirituality Program in the spring of 2016 for 10 urban AI community participants. Drawing on six first‐person accounts about this program, we reflect on its success as a function of participant meaningfulness, staff support, mitigated sensitivities, and program structure. We believe that these observations will enable other community psychologists to undertake similar program development in service to innovative and beneficial impacts on behalf of their community partners.     

Correspondence of children's anticipated vocations, perceived competencies, and interests: Results from an Italian sample

Relations among anticipated vocations, self-assessments of competence, and interests in sample of 190 Italian children were examined. Children were asked what activities they liked, those they thought they were good at, and what job they expected when they grew up. The responses were coded into RIASEC Holland codes and agreement across the three questions was examined using kappa statistics. Results indicated that there was no relation between anticipated occupations and either interest or perceived competence. Thus, these anticipated occupations appear to be based on unrealistic criteria and the validity of studying such early expressions of interest is questionable. Conversely, results demonstrated a correspondence between interest and competence and this correspondence was similar for boys and girls and increased with age.