Stimulus competition in pre/post and online ratings in an evaluative learning design

Evaluative learning is said to differ from Pavlovian associative learning in that it reflects stimulus contiguity, not contingency. Thus, evaluative learning should not be subject to stimulus competition, a proposal tested in the current experiments. Participants were presented in elemental and compound training phases with pictures of shapes as CSs. Each shape/pair of shapes was followed by a picture of a happy or an angry face as the US. In Experiments 1 and 2, evaluative ratings were collected before and after the experiment, and, in Experiment 3, participants provided evaluations online. Stimulus competition was evident in all experiments confirming that evaluative learning is sensitive to stimulus contingencies.     

Derived transformation of children's pregambling game playing

Contemporary behavior-analytic perspectives on gambling emphasize the impact of verbal relations, or derived relational responding and the transformation of stimulus functions, on the initiation and maintenance of gambling. Approached in this way, it is possible to undertake experimental analysis of the role of verbal/mediational variables in gambling behavior. The present study therefore sought to demonstrate the ways new stimuli could come to have functions relevant to gambling without those functions being trained directly. Following a successful derived-equivalence-relations test, a simulated board game established high- and low-roll functions for two concurrently presented dice labelled with members of the derived relations. During the test for derived transformation, children were reexposed to the board game with dice labelled with indirectly related stimuli. All participants except 1 who passed the equivalence relations test selected the die that was indirectly related to the trained high-roll die more often than the die that was indirectly related to low-roll die, despite the absence of differential outcomes. All participants except 3 also gave the derived high-roll die higher liking ratings than the derived low-roll die. The implications of the findings for behavior-analytic research on gambling and the development of verbally-based interventions for disordered gambling are discussed.     

Hemispheric asymmetries in auditory distraction

Serial-verbal short-term memory is impaired by irrelevant sound, particularly when the sound changes acoustically (the changing-state effect). In contrast, short-term recall of semantic information is impaired only by the semanticity of irrelevant speech, particularly when it is semantically related to the target memory items (the between-sequence semantic similarity effect). Previous research indicates that the changing-state effect is larger when the sound is presented to the left ear in comparison to the right ear, the left ear disadvantage. In this paper, we report a novel finding whereby the between-sequence semantic similarity effect is larger when the irrelevant speech is presented to the right ear in comparison to the left ear, but this right ear disadvantage is found only when meaning is the basis of recall (Experiments 1 and 3), not when order is the basis of recall (Experiment 2). Our results complement previous research on hemispheric asymmetry effects in cross-modal auditory distraction by demonstrating a role for the left hemisphere in semantic auditory distraction.     

Effects of video modeling on treatment integrity of behavioral interventions

We examined the effects of individualized video modeling on the accurate implementation of behavioral interventions using a multiple baseline design across 3 teachers. During video modeling, treatment integrity improved above baseline levels; however, teacher performance remained variable. The addition of verbal performance feedback increased treatment integrity to 100% for all participants, and performance was maintained 1 week later. Teachers found video modeling to be more socially acceptable with performance feedback than alone, but rated both positively.     

Cross-informant symptoms from CBCL, TRF, and YSR: trait and method variance in a normative sample of Russian youths

A large community-based sample of Russian youths (n = 841, age M = 13.17 years, SD = 2.51) was assessed with the Child Behavior Checklist (mothers and fathers separately), Teacher's Report Form, and Youth Self-Report. The multiple indicator-version of the correlated trait-correlated method minus one, or CT-C(M - 1), model was applied to analyze (a) the convergent and divergent validity of these instruments in Russia, (b) the degree of trait-specificity of rater biases, and (c) potential predictors of rater-specific effects. As expected, based on the published results from different countries and in different languages, the convergent validity of the instruments was rather high between mother and father reports, but rather low for parent, teacher, and self-reports. For self- and teacher reports, rater-specific effects were related to age and gender of the children for some traits. These results, once again, attest to the importance of incorporating information from multiple observers when psychopathological traits are evaluated in children and adolescents.     

A component analysis of job interview training for young adults with autism spectrum disorder

The job interview is a vital component to acquire employment. Individuals with autism spectrum disorder may experience difficulties with job interviews due to notable deficits in social and communication skills. We evaluated the relative impact of several components of a job interview training package on six participants' responses to commonly asked interview questions. We used a multiple baseline design across participants to present the following components: written instructions, rehearsal and video self‐feedback with a commercially available training program, and verbal feedback delivered by the experimenter. Results demonstrated that all participants required an additional behavioral skills training session to meet our mastery criterion. However, once training was complete, all participants showed generalized performance when the interview questions were presented in a varied format and by a novel interviewer outside of the training environment. In addition, their performance was maintained at follow‐up.     

Knowledge and the permissibility of action

Synthese - I argue in favor of a certain connection between knowledge and the permissibility of action. On this approach, we do not think of the relation between those notions as reflecting a...     

Object- and feature-based priming in visual search

Two contrasting accounts for priming in visual search have been proposed. The main difference between the two is the level of perceptual processing at which the priming effects are assumed to occur, whether priming is assumed to operate through the selective facilitation of features or at the level of selection of objects for response. The aim of the experiments here was to contrast these accounts. In the first two experiments, observers performed a search for the odd diamond in the midst of two distractor diamonds. Each diamond had two colors, but the configurations of the colors within the diamonds were different for the two experiments in ways previously shown to lend themselves differently well to object formation. The results show that priming can be both feature- and object-based, depending on the topological properties of the stimuli. This was confirmed in a third experiment, in which a quite dissimilar stimulus set was used to address the same question, once again yielding similar results. We thus show that priming operates at various levels of perceptual processing, a result consistent with new findings from neuroimaging and neuropsychology.     

Body-extension versus body-incorporation: Is there a need for a body-model?

This paper investigates the role of a pre-existing body-model that is an enabling constraint for the incorporation of objects into the body. This body-model is also a basis for the distinction between body extensions (e.g., in the case of tool-use) and incorporation (e.g., in the case of successful prosthesis use). It is argued that, in the case of incorporation, changes in the sense of body-ownership involve a reorganization of the body-model, whereas extension of the body with tools does not involve changes in the sense of body-ownership.     

An increase in stimulus arousal has differential effects on the processing speed of pleasant and unpleasant stimuli

The arousal value of a stimulus influences its salience, whereby higher arousal should lead to faster processing. However, in previous research, participants consistently made faster valence judgments for low arousal, pleasant stimuli than for high arousal, pleasant stimuli. The speed of valence and arousal judgments for pictures and words were investigated in three experiments. Valence judgments were faster for low arousal than for high arousal pleasant pictures and for high arousal than for low arousal unpleasant pictures and words. Moreover, arousal judgments were faster for low arousal than high arousal pleasant and for high arousal than low arousal unpleasant pictures and words. The current research confirms that the impact of valence and arousal on processing speed does not reflect on the labels (valence versus arousal) used when recording speeded judgments. Similarly to valence, stimulus arousal interacts differentially with the evaluation of pleasant and unpleasant stimuli producing a processing advantage for high arousal, unpleasant stimuli but not high arousal, pleasant stimuli.