The diminishing marginal value of happy people

Thomas Hurka has recently proposed a utilitarian theory which would effect a compromise between Average and Total utilitarianism, the better to deal with issues in population ethics. This Compromise theory would incorporate the principle that the value which an extra happy person contributes to a possible world is a decreasing function of the total population of that world: that happy people are of diminishing marginal value. In spite of its initial plausibility I argue against this principle. I show that the Compromise theory is actually no improvement over the two original versions of utilitarianism; in particular, it is subject to almost all the objections which are fatal to Average utilitarianism, and more besides. And I attempt to dispell the appearance that intuition supports the Compromise theory as against Total utilitarianism, by arguing that the latter's Repugnant Conclusion, when properly understood, is not intuitively unacceptable. Total utilitarianism remains a plausible ethical theory, while both the Average and the Compromise theories should be definitely rejected.     

Formal operations, the imaginary audience and the personal fable

One hundred twenty-nine 6th, 8th, 10th/11th, and 12th graders were administered Enright, Lapsley, and Shukla's Adolescent Egocentrism Scale (AES) and How Is Your Logic?, a Piagetian-based, group-administered, written test of cognitive development. A series of ANOVAs on four scales of the AES (imaginary audience, personal fable, self-in-general, nonsocial) provided partial support for Inhelder and Piaget's, and Elkind's views that adolescent egocentrism is a function of beginning formal operations. Discussion focused on the difficulty of assessing the true thoughts/feelings of persons who are worried how they will appear to others.     

Delayed sensory feedback in the learning of a novel motor task

Summary Generally the therapeutical effect of EMG feedback is viewed in terms of the immediate contiguity between response and information. According to this view any feedback delay would deteriorate the result. In this article the validity of this notion has been investigated. Three groups of normal subjects were required to perform a difficult movement under three feedback conditions: immediate EMG feedback, delayed EMG feedback, and a control (no EMG feedback) condition. The results indicated a significant difference between the EMG feedback groups and the control condition. However, no such difference was found between the immediate and delayed feedback conditions. The results suggested that the immediacy of the feedback is not the main factor in EMG feedback, but the specificity of the information.This study was supported by Grant no. 15-35-03 from the Netherlands Organization for the Advancement of Pure Research     

Stage analysis of the reaction process using brain-evoked potentials and reaction time

Summary Motor processes partly determine reaction time (RT) in both choice reaction time and in binary classification tasks. These latter tasks are popular in cognitive psychology because the experimenter believes that he has kept the motor component simple and constant and therefore can attribute changes in RT to perceptual or cognitive processes. In this paper we used the P3 component of the event-related potential (ERP) as a time marker indicating the duration of perceptual and cognitive processes. The latency of this component is believed to reflect stimulus evaluation time independent of response selection and organization time.Two types of tasks were used: a choice-reaction time task and a binary classification task. Signal similarity and S-R compatibility additively affected RT, but only signal similarity affected P3 latency. The number of items in the positive set and response type affected both P3 latency and RT. Relative response frequency changed the bias in the cognitive evaluation of the stimulus, reflected in the latency of the P3 component, and affected RT only if the subjects preset their motor system (indexed by the late CNV). A model was presented which proposes that motor processes may partially overlap with the perceptual and cognitive evaluation of the stimulus. Both ERPs and RT are necessary tools in the study of the relative timing of these processes.     

Use of partial stimulus information in response processing

We examined the reaction time benefit that is obtained when salient features of the stimulus set and response set correspond. Components of the event-related brain potentials were used to measure the timing of stimulus-related and response-related processes in order to determine the locus of this effect. Of particular importance was the development of a new index of selective response preparation, the corrected motor asymmetry (CMA). We found no evidence for the use of preliminary, partial stimulus information in response preparation. These results suggest that the benefit is located primarily in response selection processes and probably reflects a more efficient algorithm for stimulus-response translation. Also, we found trial-to-trial variability in the duration of response selection to be the major determinant of variability in reaction time, whereas the durations of subsequent response-related processes were relatively invariant. Implications of these results for discrete and continuous models of choice reaction performance are discussed.     

Working memory in chess

Three experiments investigated the role of working memory in various aspects of thinking in chess. Experiment 1 examined the immediate memory for briefly presented chess positions from master games in players from a wide range of abilities, following the imposition of various secondary tasks designed to block separate components of working memory. Suppression of the articulatory loop (by preventing subvocal rehearsal) had no effect on measures of recall, whereas blocking the visuospatial sketchpad (by manipulation of a keypad) and blocking the central executive (by random letter generation) had equivalent disruptive effects, in comparison with a control condition. Experiment 2 investigated the effects of similar secondary tasks on the solution (i.e., move selection) of tactical chess positions, and a similar pattern was found, except that blocking the central executive was much more disruptive than in Experiment 1. Experiment 3 compared performance on two types of primary task, one concerned with solving chess positions as in Experiment 2, and the other a sentence-rearrangement task. The secondary tasks in each case were both designed to block the central executive, but one was verbal (vocal generation of random numbers), while the other was spatial in nature (random generation of keypresses). Performance of the spatial secondary task was affected to a greater extent by the chess primary task than by the verbal primary task, whereas there were no differential effects on these secondary tasks by the verbal primary task. In none of the three experiments were there any differential effects between weak and strong players. These results are interpreted in the context of the workingmemory model and previous theories of the nature of cognition in chess.     

A behaviour modification project with chronic schizophrenics in the community

A major shortcoming of token economies is their failure to ensure carry over of behavioural gains into the community; hence it is logical to investigate the feasibility of behavioural programmes for schizophrenics in their own homes. The token economy literature and the literature on behavioural interventions in the natural environment provide guidelines but also indicate possible difficulties arising from the nature of the illness and the use of the family setting.

Despite numerous accounts of effective behavioural treatment of schizophrenics (Ullman and Krasner, 1965; Ayllon and Azrin, 1968; Atthowe and Krasner, 1968; Stoffelmayr et al., 1973) here and there in the literature a note of caution is sounded. Meyer and Chesser(1970) and Yates (1970) suggest that there is undue optimism. Kazdin (1973) notes that reports of non-response in psychotics range from 10 per cent (Atthowe and Krasner. 1968) to 52 per cent (Panek 1969). Non-response is sometimes attributed to practical or administrative obstacles (Ayllon and Azrin, 1968; Hall and Baker, 1973) or shortcomings in the application or Operant principles (Ayllon and Azrin, 1965; Atthowe and Krasner, 1968; Kazdin and Bootzin, 1972). but more serious objections stem from the view that Operant principles may be applicable only to certain aspects of the behaviour of psychotics, such as apathy and withdrawal fostered by institutional environments. Operant technology may fail to take into account the antecedents of behaviour, including anxiety, delusions and hallucinations or covert consequences such as relief of anxiety (Davison, 1969). ‘Non-functioning’ behaviour, particularly deficit in social interaction, and paranoid behaviour, have been found especially resistant, the former because of initial low levels of the desired behaviour, the latter because of covert self-reinforcement (Libermann, 1968). Kazdin (1973) suggests that there is support from laboratory studies for the view that response patterns in psychotics may be atypical. A further qualification is that one cannot readily generalise from the American ‘chronic schizophrenic’ to his British counterpart (Cooper et al., 1972) nor from the long-stay patient to the chronic schizophrenic in the community.

The literature on behavioural intervention in the family setting gives further cause for caution. Thomas and Walter (1973) report a 27 per cent dropout, and suggest this was due to client inaccessibility, “countervailing environmental influences”, non-compliance, crises and unstable domestic situations. Patterson (1972) and Sajwaj (1973) cite parents' personal problems. Tharp and Wetzel (1969) rejection of Operant methods, and Salzinger et al. (1972) parents' poor verbal ability and low educational achievement as factors related to unsuccessful outcome. In the Project described below, it was hoped that problems would be more clearly identified and that a beginning might be made in selecting suitable cases for behaviour modification in the family setting.     

Mental load,heart rate and heart rate variability

Summary Several investigators have shown that diminished sinus arrhythmia can be seen as an indication of increased mental load. The present experiment deals with the influence of different levels of mental load, operationalized as the number of binary choices per minute, on the regularity of the heart rate. Also we investigated the influence of four different rest conditions on the regularity of the heart rate.The results show that sinus arrhythmia scores differentiate significantly between several levels of mental load, but heart frequency appeared to be an even better indicator.No significant differences were found between the four rest conditions. Stability over three subsequent measurement sessions was satisfactory, and reliability within the measurement periods was very high.

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Zusammenfassung Mehrere Forscher haben gezeigt, daß abnehmende Sinusarrhythmie betrachtet werden kann als ein Indikator zunehmender mentaler Belastung.In der vorliegenden Untersuchung handelt es sich um den Einfluß verschiedener Niveaus der mentalen Belastung, operationalisiert als die Zahl der binären Wahlen pro Minute, auf die Regelmäßigkeit der Herzfrequenz.Außerdem untersuchten wir den Einfluß vier verschiedener Ruhezustände auf die Regelmäßigkeit der Herzfrequenz.Die Ergebnisse zeigen, daß auf Grund Sinusarrhythmiedaten differenziert werden kann zwischen verschiedenen Niveaus mentaler Belastung, aber die Herzfrequenz erweist sich sogar als ein besserer Indikator.Man stellte keine signifikanten Unterschiede zwischen den vier verschiedenen Ruhezuständen fest.Die Stabilität während drei verschiedener Meßperioden war befriedigend, und die Zuverlässigkeit der Messungen (reliability) innerhalb der Meßperioden war sehr groß.

     

A major modification of the Bousfield (1966) measure of category clustering

The measure of category clustering proposed by Bousfleld & Bousfleld (1966) was modified to take into account differences in the distribution of the expected value of number of repetitions. The possible effects of using the clustering index without this major modification are discussed.