When two paradigms meet: Does evaluative learning extinguish in differential fear conditioning?

Contemporary theories of Pavlovian conditioning propose a distinction between signal learning (SL), in which a conditioned stimulus (CS) becomes a predictor for a biologically significant unconditioned stimulus (US), and evaluative learning (EL), in which the valence of the US is transferred to the CS. This distinction is based largely on the different susceptibilities of EL and SL to extinction. This study compared the extinction of indices of EL (online valence ratings) and SL (US-expectancy ratings and skin conductance responses, SCRs) in a differential fear conditioning design using complex CSs. Only half of the participants gave online valence ratings, allowing us to confirm that online valence measurement did not influence SCRs. In line with the distinction between EL and SL, SCRs extinguished rapidly while valence ratings showed resistance to extinction. US-expectancy ratings, however, were not distinguishable from valence ratings indicating that verbal indicators of EL and SL share a similar time course.     

Chimpanzee (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Pan troglodytes</Emphasis>) and orangutan (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Pongo abelii</Emphasis>) forethought: self-control and pre-experience in the face of future tool use

Planning for future needs has traditionally been considered to be restricted to human cognition. Although recent studies on great ape and corvid cognition challenge this belief, the phylogenesis of human planning remains largely unknown. The complex skill for future planning has not yet been satisfactorily established in any other extant primate species than our own. In humans, planning for future needs rely heavily on two overarching capacities, both of which lie at the heart of our cognition: self-control, often defined as the suppression of immediate drives in favor of delayed rewards, and mental time travel, which could be described as a detached mental experience of a past or future event. Future planning is linked to additional high complexity cognition such as metacognition and a consciousness usually not attributed to animals. In a series of four experiments based on tool use, we demonstrate that chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and orangutans (Pongo abelii) override immediate drives in favor of future needs, and they do not merely rely on associative learning or semantic prospection when confronted with a planning task. These results suggest that great apes engage in planning for the future by out competing current drives and mentally pre-experiencing an upcoming event. This suggests that the advanced mental capacities utilized in human future planning are shared by phylogenetically more ancient species than previously believed.     

Ethics and rural healthcare: what really happens? What might help?

Relatively few articles discuss the ethical issues that accompany healthcare in rural areas. This article presents and discusses the key findings obtained from multi-method research studies conducted over a 9-year period of time in a multi-state rural area. It challenges the efficacy of current models for bioethics, shows what kinds of ethical issues develop in rural communities, and offers a framework for envisioning resources and approaches that may be more appropriate.     

From <Emphasis Type="Italic">ego</Emphasis> to <Emphasis Type="Italic">alter ego</Emphasis>: Husserl,Merleau-Ponty and a layered approach to intersubjectivity

This article presents two different phenomenological paths leading from ego to alter ego: a Husserlian and a Merleau-Pontian way of thinking. These two phenomenological paths serve to disentangle the conceptual–philosophical underpinning of the mirror neurons system hypothesis, in which both ways of thinking are entwined. A Merleau-Pontian re-reading of the mirror neurons system theory is proposed, in which the characteristics of mirror neurons are effectively used in the explanation of action understanding and imitation. This proposal uncovers the remaining necessary presupposition of a minimalized version of the Husserlian concept of pairing and its recent and improved version in terms of the intermodal system. This leads to a layered approach to the constitution of intersubjectivity.     

Influence of re-exposure and retrieval disruption during group collaboration on later individual recall

This research examined the influence of prior group collaboration on later individual recall. We considered the negative effects of retrieval disruption and the potentially positive effects of re-exposure to additional items during group recall in the context of three hypotheses: the individual-strategy hypothesis, the combined-strategy hypothesis, and the group-strategy hypothesis. After a study phase and a brief delay, participants completed three successive recall trials in four different recall sequence conditions: III (individual-individual-individual), ICI (individual-collaborative-individual), CII (collaborative-individual-individual), and CCI (collaborative-collaborative-individual). Results show that repeated group recalls (CCI), and securing individual retrieval organisation prior to group recall (ICI), benefit later individual recall more than repeated individual recalls (III). These findings support the group-strategy hypothesis and the individual-strategy hypothesis, and have important implications for group versus individual learning practices in educational settings.     

Choice Behaviour in a Computer-Aided Multiattribute Decision Task

Choice behaviour in an interactive multiple-criteria decision-making environment was examined experimentally. The main purpose was to investigate whether subjects are more comfortable in processing criterion/attribute information simultaneously (in parallel) or sequentially. As a research instrument, three different interactive software systems were used on a microcomputer by management students at the Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration and the Institute of National Economy in Moscow to solve essentially the same problem of buying/leasing a home tailored to the respective decision environments. The experiments also provided us with a possibility to learn useful lessons about how human subjects make computer-supported choices. The results of the experiments are discussed. Furthermore, questions for future research are suggested. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Relations of child effortful control to personality,well-being and parenting

This study examined effortful control and its relations to personality, parenting and well-being in a community sample of Russian preschool children (N = 365, 46% girls) using parent-reported effortful control scale from the very short form of the children's behaviour questionnaire, the inventory of child individual differences–short version, the Alabama parenting questionnaire—preschool revision, the self-reporting questionnaire, and parent and teacher reports on the strengths and difficulties questionnaire. The findings confirmed the four-factor structure of effortful control, including inhibitory control, attentional control, low-intensity pleasure and perceptual sensitivity. Girls demonstrated higher scores than boys on effortful control, perceptual sensitivity, inhibitory control and low-intensity pleasure. Older children scored higher than younger on inhibitory control and perceptual sensitivity and lower on low-intensity pleasure. Gender and age accounted for less than 3% of the variance in effortful control. Effortful control was associated with personality traits of conscientiousness, agreeableness and openness, and with positive emotions and low-negative affect. Higher effortful control was associated with higher levels of prosocial behaviour and lower levels of externalising and internalising problems. Structural modelling showed that the effect of parenting on child prosocial and problem behaviours may be mediated by effortful control.     

Substance use and mothers’ neural responses to infant cues

Substance use may influence mothers’ responsiveness to their infants and negatively impact the parent–infant relationship. Maternal substance use may co-opt neural circuitry involved in caregiving, thus reducing the salience of infant cues and diminishing the sense of reward experienced by caring for infants. Gaps in understanding exist with regard to the mechanisms by which substance use operates to influence mothers’ processing of infant cues and how this translates to caregiving. Therefore, we examined how substance use might relate to maternal neural responses to infant cues using event-related potentials (ERPs). Substance-using (n = 29) and nonsubstance-using (n = 29) mothers viewed photographs of infant faces and heard recordings of infant vocalizations while electroencephalography was recorded simultaneously. Three specific ERP components were used to examine initial processing of infant faces (N170) and cries (N100), and attentional allocation to infant faces and cries (P300). Substance-using mothers did not discriminate facial affect at early encoding stages (N170), were generally slower to orient to infant cries (N100), showed heightened responses to neutral faces (P300), and failed to adaptively differentiate between high-distress versus low-distress cries (P300). These differences may be important to caregiving behaviors associated with the formation of mother–child attachment. Implications are discussed, as are limitations and future directions.     

Florian Znaniecki: Creative evolution of a sociologist

Znaniecki devoted his creative life to aconstant reexamination of the basic problems of sociology: its subject matter and the methodology through which it can be studied. The developments in his thought can be traced with the help of the prefaces to his books, in which he explains the location of that work in his over-all effort to develop a systematic sociology, the major influences on his thought, and his arguments with other theories. Starting as a philosopher with a special interest in the evolution of values, he spent years as a result of Thomas's influence attempting to find a psychological base for human behavior, finally abandoning the attempt in favor of systems of social interaction. He focused on four such systems: social relation, social role, social groups, and societies.