Tests for inhibition after extinction of a conditioned stimulus in the flavour aversion procedure

In four experiments, rats received flavour aversion conditioning followed by extinction. The flavour was then subjected to retardation and summation tests. Experiment 1 showed that reacquisition of an extinguished flavour aversion was retarded with respect to the performance shown by rats for whom the flavour was novel. No retardation was found, however, with respect to a control group that had been given non-reinforced pre-exposure to the flavour. Experiment 2 demonstrated that extinction showed the same sensitivity to the effects of a retention interval as did latent inhibition, consistent with the view that the retardation effect was a consequence of the occurrence of latent inhibition during extinction. An extinguished stimulus was also found to alleviate the response governed by aseparately trained excitor in a summation test (Experiments 3 and 4), but the size of this effect did not exceed that produced by a control stimulus when the procedure used ensured an equivalent aversion to the test excitor in the two cases. These results challenge the proposal that extinction can turn a stimulus into a net inhibitor.     

Social Comparisons at Work as Related to a Cooperative Social Climate and to Individual Differences in Social Comparison Orientation

Cette étude a porté sur la fréquence des comparaisons sociales dans une situation de travail et sur les sentiments évoqués par ces comparaisons. Ces processus one été rapportés aux différences individuelles qui apparaissent dans l’orientation des comparaisons sociales et à la perception d’un climat de travail coopératif. Les sujets étaient 216 médecins de différents organismes de santé de l’agglomération de Valence en Espagne. En général, les comparaisons vers le haut étaient plus fréquentes et procuraient plus d’impressions positives et moins d’affects négatifs que les comparaisons vers le bas. Ceux qui présentaient un niveau élevé dans l’orientation des comparaisons rapportaient relativement plus de comparaisons vers le haut et vers le bas, plus de sentiments positifs après des comparaisons vers le bas et plus de sentiments negatifs à l’issue de comparaisons vers le haut. Inversement, ceux qui percevaient le climat social au travail comme coopératif rapportaient relativement plus de sentiments positifs après des comparaisons vers le haut. Parmi les 87 sujets participèrent à la partie longitudinale de la recherche, le climat coopératif perçu et l’orientation des comparaisons sociales furent plus stables sur une durée d’un an que le fréquence des comparaisons vers le haut et vers le bas et les conséquences affectives de ces comparaisons. Il faut en conclure que les individus interprètent les comparaisons sociales au travail dans un sens positif quand ils perçoivent le climat social comme coopératif et d’une façon négative quand ils sont à un niveau élevé dans l’orientation des comparaisons sociales. This study examined the frequency of social comparisons in a work setting, and the feelings that these comparisons evoked. These processes were related to individual differences in social comparison orientation, and to the perception of a cooperative social climate at work. The participants were 216 physicians from various health centers in the Community of Valencia in Spain. In general, upward comparisons occurred more often, and elicited more positive and less negative affect than downward comparisons. Those high in social comparison orientation reported relatively more upward as well as downward comparisons, more positive affect after downward comparisons, and more negative affect after upward comparisons. Conversely, those who perceived the social climate at work as cooperative reported relatively more downward comparisons, more negative affect after downward comparison, and more positive affect after upward comparison. Among the 87 participants who participated in the longitudinal part of the study, perceived cooperative climate and social comparison orientation were more stable over a period of one year than the frequency of upward and downward comparison and the affective consequences of upward and downward comparison. It is concluded that individuals interpret social comparisons at work in a positive way when they perceive the social climate as cooperative, and in a negative way when they are high in social comparison orientation.     

Staying and Returning dynamics of young children's attention

In this paper, we decompose selective sustained attending behavior into components of continuous attention maintenance and attentional transitions and study how each of these components develops in young children. Our results in two experiments suggest that changes in children's ability to return attention to a target locus after distraction (“Returning”) play a crucial role in the development of selective sustained attention between the ages of 3.5–6 years, perhaps to a greater extent than changes in the ability to continuously maintain attention on the target (“Staying”). We further distinguish Returning from the behavior of transitioning attention away from task (i.e., becoming distracted) and investigate the relative contributions of bottom-up and top-down factors on these different types of attentional transitions. Overall, these results (a) suggest the importance of understanding the cognitive process of transitioning attention for understanding selective sustained attention and its development, (b) provide an empirical paradigm within which to study this process, and (c) begin to characterize basic features of this process, namely its development and its relative dependence on top-down and bottom-up influences on attention.

Research Highlights

• Young children exhibited an endogenously ability, Returning, to preferentially transition attention to task-relevant information over task-irrelevant information.
• Selective sustained attention and its development were decomposed into Returning and Staying, or task-selective attention maintenance, using novel eye-tracking-based measures.
• Returning improved between the ages of 3.5–6 years, to a greater extent than Staying.
• Improvements in Returning supported improvements in selective sustained attention between these ages.