Determinants of reinforcer accumulation during an operant task.

Responses by rats on an earn lever made available food pellets that were delivered to a food cup by responses on a second, collect, lever. The rats could either collect and immediately consume or accumulate (defined as the percentage of multiple earn responses and as the number of pellets earned before a collect response) earned pellets. In Experiment 1, accumulation varied as a function of variations in the earn or collect response requirements and whether the earn and collect levers were proximal (31 cm) or distal (248 cm) to one another. Some accumulation occurred under all but one of the conditions, but generally was higher when the earn and collect levers were distal to one another, particularly when the earn response requirement was fixed-ratio (FR) 1. In Experiment 2, the contributions of responses and time to accumulation were assessed by comparing an FR 20 earn response requirement to a condition in which only a single earn response was required at the end of a time interval nominally yoked to the FR interval. When 248 cm separated the earn and collect levers, accumulation was always greater in the FR condition, and it was not systematically related to reinforcement rate. In Experiment 3, increasing the earn response requirement with a progressive-ratio schedule that reset only with a collect response increased the likelihood of accumulation when the collect and earn levers were 248 cm apart, even though such accumulation increased the next earn response requirement. Reinforcer accumulation is an understudied dimension of operant behavior that relates to the analysis of such phenomena as hoarding and self-control, in that they too involve accumulating versus immediately collecting or consuming reinforcers.     

Stock optimizing in choice when a token deposit is the operant.

Each of 2 monkeys typically earned their daily food ration by depositing tokens in one of two slots. Tokens deposited in one slot dropped into a bin where they were kept (token kept). Deposits to a second slot dropped into a bin where they could be obtained again (token returned). In Experiment 1, a fixed-ratio (FR) 5 schedule that provided two food pellets was associated with each slot. Both monkeys preferred the token-returned slot. In Experiment 2, both subjects chose between unequal FR schedules with the token-returned slot always associated with the leaner schedule. When the FRs were 2 versus 3 and 2 versus 6, preferences were maintained for the token-returned slot; however, when the ratios were 2 versus 12, preference shifted to the token-kept slot. In Experiment 3, both monkeys chose between equal-valued concurrent variable-interval variable-interval schedules. Both monkeys preferred the slot that returned tokens. In Experiment 4, both monkeys chose between FRs that typically differed in size by a factor of 10. Both monkeys preferred the FR schedule that provided more food per trial. These data show that monkeys will choose so as to increase the number of reinforcers earned (stock optimizing) even when this preference reduces the rate of reinforcement (all reinforcers divided by session time).     

School Psychologist and Teacher Perceptions of Social Power in Consultation

Social power has been recognized as central to understanding aspects of school consultation. This study examined school psychologist and teacher perceptions of the effectiveness of 11 bases of social power that psychologists might use with initially resistant teachers. Results suggested that psychologists and teachers held similar views about power within consultation: Both groups rated expert and informational power as the most effective bases, ranked the 11 power bases in a similar way, and indicated that psychologists would be more effective using “soft” (i.e., subtle, positive, noncoercive) bases rather than “hard” bases. Findings also suggested that the groups held different views of social power: Psychologists rated impersonal and personal reward power as more effective than did teachers, and teachers rated psychologists' use of legitimate position, informational, and legitimate dependence power as more effective than did psychologists.     

Public Discourse: Creating the Conditions for Dialogue Concerning the Common Good in a Postmodern Heterogeneous Democracy

This paper offers a philosophical `history' of the nature of`public discourse' – a basic element of human rights. It beginswith Enlightenment views from Condorcet and Jefferson, turns to Dewey,and then to Habermas. Over a couple of centuries not only does thecentral character of discourse change but so too does the definition ofa public person.     

Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) in the New Millenium: A Cross-Cultural Approach

This paper reviews and discusses the results of five cross-cultural studies in Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Spain, and USA, using 2 (college students vs. their parents) × 2 (males vs. females) MANOVA match group designs with the Attitudes and Beliefs Inventory subscales as dependent variables, two multicultural studies investigating the relationship between some demographic variables (Pan American Health Organization's Index of Violence, and Acculturation) and people's Irrationality, and two multidisciplinary studies on the relationship between some medical conditions (skin diseases, and severity of symptoms during menopause) and Irrational Beliefs.     

Resilience in the Face of Maternal Psychopathology and Adverse Life Events

Maternal psychopathology has long been recognized as a risk factor for psychopathology in offspring; however, some resilient youth achieve a favorable outcome in the presence of maternal psychopathology. We identified factors that predicted resilience among youth who were exposed to adverse life events, and also examined whether the same factors protected youth against maternal psychopathology and adverse life events. Main and interaction effects of child and family factors were examined employing cross-sectional data from a household probability sample of 1285 youth aged 9 through 17 collected at four sites. On average, children exhibited a greater degree of resilience when they had higher IQ, closer parental monitoring, better family functioning, higher educational aspiration, and were female. Interaction between maternal psychopathology and IQ was significant, and there was a trend between maternal psychopathology and gender. A higher IQ is a protective factor against both maternal psychopathology and adverse life events; whereas being a girl seems to be a protective factor against maternal psychopathology, but not adverse life events.     

Cued visual attention does not distinguish between occluded and occluding objects

Does visual attention spread from the cued end of an occluded object to locations occupied by inferred portions of that object? We investigated this question by using a probe detection paradigm with two-dimensional (2-D) displays of occluded objects. Probes could appear in occluded or nonoccluded locations on either a cued or noncued object. Participants responded faster to probes appearing within the region of space occupied by the cued object. This was true not only when the probe appeared in positions separated from the cued location by an occluder (as demonstrated by Moore, Yantis, & Vaughan, 1998), but also when it appeared in positions on the occluder itself. Thus, results suggest that cued facilitation spreads to regions of noncued occluding objects that overlap cued occluded objects in 2-D space.     

Lexical activation during the recognition of Chinese characters: Evidence against early phonological activation

In two primed-naming experiments involving Chinese character recognition, one with native Mandarinspeaking subjects and another with native Cantonese-speaking subjects, we varied both the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) and the prime—target similarity along various lexical dimensions. Across both experiments, the results were as follows: (1) Relatively strong and reliable semantic priming appeared very early across various SOAs, and its onset was not affected by meaning precision, (2) either homophonic priming had negligible effects on target naming or the effects appeared relatively late (only at 57 msec), and (3) graphic inhibition was found across different SOAs. Since the same set of stimuli and procedure were adopted as those in the study of Perfetti and Tan (1998), the present findings raise questions about the reliability and validity of the results from their study that have been used to support the notion that phonology is a constitutive element of character recognition and precedes meaning access in the identification process. Instead, the present results suggest that phonology is optional for accessing meaning in Chinese character recognition among skilled adult readers.     

The representation of “false cognates” in the bilingual lexicon

The results of repetition priming studies with homographs such asbank suggest that semantic constraints restrict priming to the specific meaning invoked during the study phase. Cross-language priming studies with “false cognates” (words with similar form but unrelated meanings) suggest that form similarity may be sufficient to support repetition priming, and they do not therefore support this claim. The relevant studies have used language cues (e.g., seeing the word ESTATE in the context of other Italian words) as distinct from semantic cues (e.g.,inverno—estate) to constrain meaning, however, so that interpretation is correspondingly uncertain. The experiment described in this paper was designed to answer this question: Does sequential exposure to the English word pairmanor—estate during the study phase facilitate lexical decision to the second of these words during sequential exposure to the Italian word pairinverno—estate (i.e., winter-summer) during the test phase of the experiment? In the experiment reported below, interpretation of false cognates was constrained by meaning rather than language, and cross-language repetition priming was eliminated for false cognates. The results suggest that lexical representation in bilinguals is organized along morphological lines rather than by language.     

Referral Source Differences in Functional Impairment Levels for Children Served in the Comprehensive Community Mental Health Services for Children and Their Families Program

We report one of the first multi-site investigations into referral source variation in functional impairment for children with serious emotional disturbance served in systems of care settings. Baseline data collected as part of the national evaluation for the Comprehensive Community Mental Health Services for Children and Their Families Program was used to assess the comparability of functional status for children referred from traditional mental health versus non-mental health agencies. Results indicate that children referred from child welfare and family groups have significantly lower levels of overall dysfunction than those referred from mental health, while children referred from school and juvenile justice agencies have comparable levels. Clinical and research implications are discussed.