Surrogates and Artificial Intelligence: Why AI Trumps Family

Science and Engineering Ethics - The increasing accuracy of algorithms to predict values and preferences raises the possibility that artificial intelligence technology will be able to serve as a...     

Comparison of schizophrenics and normals on a visual search task.

The response times of 16 paranoids, 16 nonparanoids and 16 normals were compared on a search task which required subjects to identify target letters embedded in displays of varying numbers of non-targets. The rate on increase in response times with increased numbers of letters displayed was not markedly different for the various groups, although a derived measure of decision and response-selection time indicated that normals selected responses more rapidly. When compared with normals, schizophrenics seemed to experience more difficulty in response selection and decision than in processing visual stimulus information.     

Environmental Influences on Aggression: The Effects of Darkness and Proximity of Victim

It was hypothesized that darkness acts as a disinhibitor, and that subjects would deliver higher intensity shocks to a victim in a dimly lit setting than in a brightly lit setting. It was also predicted that this effect would be greater when subject and victim were in close proximity than when they were isolated from each other. The results supported these predictions. It was suggested that lighting may have important effects on social behaviors, and that further research on the influences of lighting on human behavior is needed.     

THE EFFECTS OF KNOWN-ITEM INTERSPERSAL ON ACQUISITION AND RETENTION OF SPELLING AND SIGHTREADING WORDS1

The use of well-documented procedures such as shaping, differential reinforcement, and fading may not be the most practical for teaching certain academic behaviors. An alternative procedure of interspersing trials on previously trained items with trials on unknown items has been suggested, but its effects on acquisition and retention have not been systematically examined. This study investigated the effects of interspersing known items during training on new tasks. Six mentally retarded adolescents were given pretests on spelling and sightreading words, which were divided into pools of learned and unlearned items. Training and baseline conditions were implemented concurrently, using a multi-element design. During interspersal training sessions, 10 known words from the pretest were alternately presented with each of 10 test words that were incorrect on the pretest. The ratio of previously mastered words to test words was gradually reduced. During baseline sessions, 10 different test words were presented without alternation of previously known words. During this condition, a procedure involving high-density social reinforcement contingent on task-related behaviors, but not necessarily correct responses, was later introduced, followed by a return to the original noninterspersal baseline. During all conditions, test words were deleted and replaced after meeting a mastery criterion of three consecutive correct trials. Retention tests were administered over learned test words for all conditions, at specified intervals. Results showed that both acquisition and retention of spelling and sightreading words were facilitated by the interspersal procedure. All subjects acquired more words during the interspersal condition than either the high-density or baseline conditions. The effectiveness of the procedure may possibly be attributed to better maintenance of attending behavior to unknown items as a function of the inclusion of known items, which directly increase the amount of reinforcement for correct responses during the early stages of skill acquisition.     

Wherein lies the debate? Concerning whether God is a person

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion - Within contemporary philosophy of religion there are three main ways in which God is conceptualised in relation to personhood: The first two of...     

Learning- and grade-orientation,sex, and prediction of self-reported academic performance

148 undergraduate students completed the LOGO-II scale, a measure of educational orientation, i.e., learning-oriented and grade-oriented attitudes and behaviors, and were asked to report their current and expected grades, as well as their self-assessed academic skill. Generally, learning orientation was positively correlated with academic performance, but grade orientation was negatively correlated with performance. Learning orientation and grade orientation predicted academic performance for men but not women. Implications of these findings, including the possibility of encouraging students to assume a more learning-oriented approach to their education, are discussed.     

Functional-anatomical organization of predicate metaphor processing

The bulk of the research on the neural organization of metaphor comprehension has focused on nominal metaphors and the metaphoric relationships between word pairs. By contrast, little work has been conducted on predicate metaphors using verbs of motion such as “The man fell under her spell.” We examined predicate metaphors as compared to literal sentences of motion such as “The child fell under the slide” in an event-related, functional MRI study. Our results demonstrated greater activation in the left inferior frontal cortex and left lateral temporal lobe for predicate metaphors as compared to literal sentences, while no differences were seen in homologous areas of the right hemisphere. We suggest that the results support a neural organization principle for motion processing in which greater abstraction proceeds along a posterior-to-anterior axis within the lateral portion of the left temporal cortex.     

Stress administered prior to encoding impairs neutral but enhances emotional long-term episodic memories

Stressful events frequently comprise both neutral and emotionally arousing information, yet the impact of stress on emotional and neutral events is still not fully understood. The hippocampus and frontal cortex have dense concentrations of receptors for stress hormones, such as cortisol, which at high levels can impair performance on hippocampally dependent memory tasks. Yet, the same stress hormones can facilitate memory for emotional information, which involves interactions between the hippocampus and amygdala. Here, we induced psychosocial stress prior to encoding and examined its long-term effects on memory for emotional and neutral episodes. The stress manipulation disrupted long-term memory for a neutral episode, but facilitated long-term memory for an equivalent emotional episode compared with a control condition. The stress manipulation also increased salivary cortisol, catecholamines as indicated by the presence of alpha-amylase, heart rate, and subjectively reported stress. Stressed subjects reported more false memories than nonstressed control subjects, and these false memories correlated positively with cortisol levels, providing evidence for a relationship between stress and false memory formation. Our results demonstrate that stress, when administered prior to encoding, produces different patterns of long-term remembering for neutral and emotional episodes. These differences likely emerge from differential actions of stress hormones on memory-relevant regions of the brain.     

How to do basic medical research

The following editorial is a reprint of an article inLegacies in the Study of Behavior: The Wisdom and Experience of Many (edited by Joseph Warren Cullen and published by Charles C Thomas (1975) Springfield, Illinois) by Irvine H. Page, born 1901, a graduate of Cornell Medical College, and editor of “Modern Medicine.” The life of Dr. Page has been an enviable one and extremely colorful, reminiscent of the more comprehensive, less technically oriented careers of a bygone era. Beginning as Director of the Chemical Division of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Munich from 1928 to 1931, later Director of the Research Division of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation (1945–1966), he pioneered in the mechanism of arteriosclerosis and hypertension, the isolation of serotonin, and in the research on angiotensin. Having been a successful experimental investigator as well as an eminent clinician, he speaks with a direction and brevity from a long experience. Because of the great value of his counsel, his article is reprinted here with his permission and that of the editor, J. W. Cullen, and the publisher Payne Thomas.