Behaviorism in 1942: A Précis of Tilquin's Le Behaviorisme: Origine et Développement de la Psychologie De Réaction en Amérique

Book-length treatments of behaviorism from a philosophical and historical perspective are few in number. Tilquin''s (1942) is one of these, but its publication in French during World War II and the limited number of available copies make for difficult access. In this paper, I summarize the contents of the book for a general audience of behavior analysts. Tilquin''s work is a useful tour of the behaviorism of its time, and most of the topics discussed in it remain relevant to behavior analysis.     

Depressive affect among health care seekers: how it is related to attachment style, emotional disclosure, and health complaints

The present cross-sectional questionnaire survey investigated depressive affect among persons visiting their general practitioner (GP). It examined the impact of a number of factors likely to be associated with depressive affect, including demographic variables, severity of medical condition, and personal factors such as ease in disclosing personal information, and attachment style. Results showed that among the sample of patients (N = 198) visiting their GP, depressive affect was generally quite high. In particular, those reporting more depressive affect were the elderly, those with more severe health problems, more psychological problems, and a lower level of emotional disclosure frequency. As expected, attachment style was also related to lack of well-being among patients: those with a less avoidant but more anxious attachment style reported higher levels of depressive affect. In total, 38% of the variance of depressive affect was predicted by this model. Security of attachment was also related to reasons why patients consulted their GP, with avoidant attachment related to physical problems and anxious attachment to mental problems. Theoretical relevance of the findings and implications for medical help-seeking are discussed.     

On the consistency problem for the calculus

In this paper, we further investigate the consistency problem for the qualitative temporal calculus introduced by Pujari et al. [A.K. Pujari, G.V. Kumari, A. Sattar, INDU: An interval and duration network, in: Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 1999, pp. 291–303]. We prove the intractability of the consistency problem for the subset of pre-convex relations, and the tractability of strongly pre-convex relations. Furthermore, we also define another interesting set of relations for which the consistency problem can be decided by the -closure method, a method similar to the usual path-consistency method. Finally, we prove that the -closure method is also complete for the set of atomic relations of implying that the intervals have the same duration.     

Delayed masking and the auditory attentional blink: A test for retrieval competition and bottleneck models

The attentional blink (AB) corresponds to a transient deficit in reporting the second (T2) of two targets embedded in a rapid sequence of distractors. The retrieval competition (Shapiro, Raymond & Arnell, 1994) and bottleneck models (Chun & Potter, 1995; Jolicoeur, 1998) predict the attenuation of the deficit with the extension of the delay between T2 and its mask. This prediction was tested using auditory sequences of nonverbal stimuli in which the T2-mask interval was systematically varied. The magnitude of the auditory AB diminished with the lengthening of the interval from 50 to 150 ms while no time-locked deficit was observed with the longest (350 ms) and the shortest (10 ms) intervals. These results suggest that presenting a mask after T2 is not sufficient to produce an auditory AB: The mask must be perceivable as an auditory event distinct from the target and occur before T2 consolidation. The present study also provides evidence that as in vision, AB deficits take place in the auditory domain when T2 is masked by interruption but not by integration. Our findings are best accounted for in terms of bottlenecked processing limitations.     

Mental health care for ethnic minority individuals and communities in the aftermath of disasters and mass violence

Findings from research on psychiatric epidemiology, disaster effects, discrepancies in service use, and cross-cultural psychology are reviewed to generate guidelines for culturally responsive postdisaster interventions. Ethnicity and culture influence mental health care at various points: on need for help; on availability and accessibility of help; on help-seeking comfort (stigma, mistrust), and on the probability that help is provided appropriately. There are aspects of disaster mental health practice that may ameliorate many of barriers that contribute to ethnic disparities in service use. It is proposed that interventions should give greater attention to socially engaged emotions and functioning. To promote disaster recovery, practitioners are advised to: assess community needs early and often; provide easily accessible services; work collaboratively and proactively to reduce stigma and mistrust and engage minorities in care; validate and normalize distress and help-seeking; value interdependence as well as independence as an appropriate developmental goal; promote community action; and advocate for, facilitate, or conduct treatment and evaluation research. Notwithstanding the pain and stress they cause, disasters create opportunities to de-stigmatize mental health needs and build trust between providers and minority communities.     

The capacity of visual short-term memory within and between hemifields

Visual short-term memory (VSTM) and attention are both thought to have a capacity limit of four items [e.g. Luck, S. J., & Vogel, E. K. (1997). The capacity of visual working memory for features and conjunctions. Nature, 309, 279-281; Pylyshyn, Z. W., & Storm, R. W. (1988). Tracking multiple independent targets: evidence for a parallel tracking mechanism. Spatial Vision, 3, 179-197.]. Using the multiple object visual tracking paradigm (MOT), it has recently been shown that twice as many items can be simultaneously attended when they are separated between two visual fields compared to when they are all presented within the same hemifield [Alvarez, G. A., & Cavanagh, P. (2004). Independent attention resources for the left and right visual hemifields (Abstract). Journal of Vision, 4(8), 29a.]. Does VSTM capacity also increase when the items to be remembered are distributed between the two visual fields? The current paper investigated this central issue in two different tasks, namely a color and spatial location change detection task, in which the items were displayed either in the two visual fields or in the same hemifield. The data revealed that only memory capacity for spatial locations and not colors increased when the items were separated between the two visual fields. These findings support the view of VSTM as a chain of capacity limited operations where the spatial selection of stimuli, which dominates in both spatial location VSTM and MOT, occupies the first place and shows independence between the two fields.     

Stability of attachment during the preschool period

Children's attachment patterns at early preschool age and 2 years later as well as factors related to stability-instability were examined in a diverse socioeconomic status French Canadian sample of 120 children. Attachment was assessed during 2 laboratory visits using separation-reunion procedures when the children were approximately 3.5 (J. Cassidy & R. S. Marvin, 1992) and 5.5 (M. Main & J. Cassidy, 1988) years old. Overall, stability of attachment, based on 4-way classification, was moderate (68%, k = .47, p = .01). Change from security to disorganization was associated with the most dramatic decline in interactive quality with mother, lowest marital satisfaction, and greatest likelihood of severe attachment-related family events, namely, loss and parental hospitalization. Families of children who changed from security to organized insecurity presented levels of caregiving and marital dissatisfaction that fell between those of stable secure children and secure children who changed toward disorganization.     

Effects of bilingual and monolingual presentations and time on concept- and language-matching tasks

Balanced Turkish-English bilingual participants viewed word pairs, presented both monolingually (English-English or Turkish-Turkish) or bilingually (English-Turkish or Turkish-English) and both for short and long durations. They made decisions on whether the simultaneously presented words in a pair were in the same language or not, or whether they denoted the same concept or not. In the short presentation condition, we found no evidence for subliminal processing. In cases in which both words were consciously identified, participants were more accurate, although not faster in the long than in the short presentation condition for both language and concept decisions. In the long presentation condition, language decisions were more accurate than concept decisions, although not faster. In addition, language decisions were not affected by whether the words were synonyms (concept identity), and concept decisions were not affected by whether the presentation was monolingual or bilingual (language identity), although in the monolingual conditions, "same" decisions were faster but not more accurate, and in the bilingual conditions a speed-accuracy trade-off was observed in that "same" decisions were faster but "different" decisions were more accurate.     

Unilateral nostril breathing in intraocular pressure of right-handed healthy subjects

The effects of unilateral forced nostril breathing on the intraocular pressures of right and left eyes was studied in 24 male and 26 female right-handed adults. In men, the forced breathing through both the right and left nostrils significantly decreased the intraocular pressures of both right and left eyes. For women, the forced breathing through right nostril did not affect the intraocular pressures of right and left eyes, and the forced breathing through left nostril also had no effect on the intraocular pressure of right eye, although it decreased the intraocular pressure of left eye significantly. These results show that unilateral forced nostril breathing decreases intraocular pressure especially in men, perhaps increasing sympathetic nervous system activity.     

Factor analyses of the DIB-R in adolescents

The goal of this study was to examine the factor structure of the Revised Diagnostic Interview for Borderlines (DIB-R; Zanarini, Gunderson, Franckenburg, & Chauncey, 1989) in a nonpatient sample of 118 adolescents. A principal components factor analysis with a Varimax rotation extracted three factors. A confirmatory factor analysis showed that this three-factor model provided an adequate fit. The first factor, which included depression, anxiety, helplessness/hopelessness, loneliness/emptiness, and also encompassed odd thinking/unusual perceptive experiences and quasi-psychotic experiences, appeared to be centered on painful feelings and dissociative defense. The second factor, labeled "impulsivity," consisted of impulse action patterns, counterdependency, and stormy relationships. This factor seemed to be centered on defensive acting-out. The third factor, called "aggressiveness," consisted of anger, hypomania, devaluation/manipulation/sadism, and demand/entitlement, and might express manic/narcissistic defenses. These analyses suggest that there may be homogeneous components of borderline symptomatology in adolescents that may reflect affective disturbances and defensive mechanisms.