Control of avoidance by a response-produced stimulus

Three pigeons were trained to press a foot pedal to postpone electric shock. The safety signal was a tone of 1000 Hz, which sounded for 5 sec following each press; silence therefore served as a warning signal. After the performance approached asymptote, test sessions were interspersed among the training sessions. Following a warm up, the shock was omitted (extinction), and no tone or a tone of 250, 500, 1000, 2000, or 4000 Hz was presented following each press for the remainder of the session. Gradients of generalization plotted in terms of the number of times the tone was produced on each test peaked at 1000 Hz, indicating that the performance was controlled by the frequency. Since this dimension is orthogonal to absence of tone, the gradient cannot be attributed to differences in the magnitude of change in the warning signal. It was concluded that response-produced stimuli reinforce avoidance behavior.     

Liberating Behavior from Time-Bound Control: Expanding the Present Through Hypnosis1

Temporal perspective was experimentally manipulated by verbal instructions to expand the present while minimizing the significance of past and future. The reactions of trained hypnotic subjects to this induction were compared with hynotic simulators and nonsimulating controls. In a fourth group, time sense was made salient but no suggestion given to alter it. Across a variety of tasks, self-report measures, and behavioral observations, this modification of the boundaries between past, present, and future resulted in profound consequences among the hypnotic subjects. Changes in affect, language, thought processes, sensory awareness, and susceptibility to social-emotional contagion, accompanied an expanded present orientation. Nonreactive measures distinguished simulators from hypnotic subjects who apparently were better able than control subjects to incorporate the induced time distortion and perceive it as a viable alternative to their traditional time perspective. Some implications of time as a pervasive, non-obvious, independent variable in the social control of cognition and behavior are outlined.     

Repetition and practice effects in a lexical decision task

Ss classified visually presented verbal units into the categories “in your vocabulary” or “not in your vocabulary.” The primary concern of the experiment was to determine if making a prior decision on a given item affects the latency of a subsequent lexical decision for the same item. Words of both high and low frequency showed a systematic reduction in the latency of a lexical decision as a consequence of prior decisions (priming) but did not show any reduction due to nonspecific practice effects. Nonwords showed no priming effect but did show shorter latencies due to nonspecific practice. The results also indicated that many (at least 36) words can be in the primed state simultaneously and that the effect persists for at least 10 min. The general interpretation was that priming produces an alteration in the representation of a word in memory and can facilitate the terminal portion of the memory search process which is assumed to be random.     

Repetition effects in choice reaction time to multidimensional stimuli

Ss classified as quickly as possible stimuli back-projected one at a time on a small screen by pressing one of two levers in response to each stimulus, according to the levels of a single specified binary stimulus dimension. Stimuli were rectangles varying in height alone, in width alone, or in both dimensions, in either a correlated or an orthogonal fashion. Stimuli followed responses by a fixed interval of 82, 580, or 1,080 msec. Response time was longer when both dimensions varied orthogonally than when only one dimension varied, indicating that Ss were unable to avoid perceiving the rectangle figures as wholes. Repeated stimuli were responded to more quickly than stimuli which were different from the immediately preceding stimulus in all conditions. With orthogonally combined dimensions, response time to stimulus repetitions was lowest, increased when the stimulus changed while the response was repeated, and increased still further when both the stimulus and the response changed. Increasing the time interval between stimuli decreased response time for nonrepetitions, while response time for repetitions was relatively unaffected. The results were discussed in terms of two models of serial choice reaction time.     

Contingency awareness,partial reinforcement effects,and curiosity motivation in children

Third- and fourth-grade children were given a two-choice discrimination learning task, designed to associate each of three syllables with a different reward schedule: 100% reward, 50% reward, and 0% reward. Subsequent to the conditioning phase, measures were made of the subject's awareness of the reward contingencies associated with the syllables, as well as the pleasantness and curiosity which these syllables had acquired during the conditioning. The results showed that a partially rewarded cue was evaluated as somewhat less “pleasant” than a continuously rewarded cue, but evoked more “curiosity” than either the continuous or nonrewarded cues. These effects emerged only for the contingency aware groups.     

The human capacity to transmit olfactory information

Monell Chemical Senses Center and Department of Otorhinolaryngology and Human Communication University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104 Previous estimates of the capacity of the olfactory channel are uniformly low. Either olfaction is considerably more limited than vision and audition or its capacity has been underestimated. It was suggested that underestimation may be due to use of stimuli having low levels of information or lack of laboratory training. Here, whole odors from objects were used. Naive Ss performed at levels consistent with earlier reports, and evidenced effects of prior experience in identifying the odors. With training, a much greater capacity than found previously was observed. It appears that the odors of single compounds and objects differ in information, dimensionality, or patterning, much like color patches and pictures or tones and words differ.     

Do stigma and its psychosocial impact differ between Asian-born Chinese immigrants and Western-born Caucasians with head and neck cancer?

Stigma appears to influence emotional distress and well-being in cancer survivors, but cross-cultural differences have been ignored. Previous studies suggest that stigma may be especially relevant for survivors of Asian origin. However, their study designs (e.g. focused on female cancers, qualitative designs, and an absence of comparison groups) limit the strength of this conclusion. We hypothesized that (1) Asian-born Chinese immigrants (AI) would report more perceived cancer-related stigma than Western-born Caucasians (WBC); and (2) the impact of stigma on emotional distress and well-being would be greater in AI as compared to WBC. Head and neck cancer survivors (n = 118 AI and n = 404 WBC) completed measures of well-being, emotional distress, and a three-item indicator of stigma in structured interviews. The majority of respondents (59%) reported one or more indicators of stigma. Stigma correlated significantly with emotional distress (r = .13, p = .004) and well-being (r = ?.09, p = .032). Contrary to our hypotheses, WBCs and AIs did not differ in reported stigma nor did we detect differences in its psychosocial impact. Stigma exerts a deleterious psychosocial impact on head and neck cancer survivors. It did not differ significantly between AI and WBC survivors.     

Download or stream? Steal or buy? Developing a typology of today's music consumer

This paper explores the impact that recent transformations in digital music technology (e.g. the increasing popularity of legal streaming platforms) have had on the consumer experience. Following 35 in‐depth qualitative interviews, we have identified four key segments of contemporary music consumers (steadfast pirates, ex‐downloaders, mixed tapes and the old schoolers [the disengaged]) based on a continuum of their preference for illegal music piracy. Examining key themes (e.g. morality, format, value and identity investment) to distinguish each segment, we contribute to a fragmented music piracy literature in particular through the identification of the “ex‐downloaders” and “mixed tape” segments. Previous literature has tended to frame music piracy in very simplistic terms, failing to acknowledge a large number of consumers who are conflicted about their actions and rationalise their piracy in complicated and inconsistent ways related to the broader industry and their own sense of identity as a music consumer. Additionally, the discussion of the ex‐downloader segment provides significant evidence that for a large number of consumers, a policy of participation, in the shape of providing superior alternatives for legal digital music consumption, can be much more beneficial in tackling the problem of piracy than previous strategies of policing and coercion. Managerial and future research implications are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Conceptualising the relationship between shopper religiosity,perceived risk and the role of moral potency

The primary aim of this paper is to conceptualise the influence of shopper religiosity on perceived risk and the moderating role of moral potency when purchasing religiously questionable products from retailers. An extensive review of extant literature was undertaken, drawing together the General Theory of Marketing Ethics and the concept of moral potency, in a retail context. A conceptual model is developed that provide the basis for future inquiry. The model elucidates the complex relationships between the dimensions of religiosity and social and psychological risk and then explains the moderating role of moral potency. The model offers a strong psychological explanation of how a shoppers' religion may increase their perceptions of risk in a purchase situation. The model also argues that risk perceptions may be heightened (or lessened) as a result of the shoppers' personal responsibility, confidence and courage. Retail managers may choose to implement this model in order to better predict shopper adoption behaviour of new religiously questionable products. The model allows for future empirical examinations across multiple shopping contexts and may be employed to estimate levels' demand for new products based on the extent of religiosity, moral potency and risk. The role of religion within retailing and shopping behaviour is emergent. Extant retailing literature has previously overlooked the role of religion as an antecedent to risk and the role of moral potency in moderating that relationship. This is the first paper to highlight these gaps and propose a testable model. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Are We All Little Eichmanns?

Philosophia - In this review essay, I review in detail Abram de Swann's fine new book, The Killing Compartments. The book is a theoretical analysis of the varieties and causes of genocides and...