Drive level and cue utilization in a free operant situation with albino rats

Summary Albino rats under either a daily high (2 gms) or moderate (12 gms) food deprivation condition were presented stimuli at the termination of reinforced fixed ratio bar press response chains. Within each drive group, half the animals received a session of brief light-off stimuli accompanied by reinforcement followed by a session of a buzzer and light-off compound stimuli paired with reinforcement. The remaining animals had the buzzer first paired with reinforcement and then the compound stimulus paired with reinforcement. Each stimulus element was tested for its respective control of nonreinforced food-cup approach behavior. These tests demonstrated that the buzzer cue blocked and overshadowed control of approach behavior of the light-off cue. In animals that received the initial light-off conditioning session, overshadowing by the buzzer of the light-off stimulus was less strong in high than moderate drive animals. These results were discussed in terms of Kamin's (1969) findings and Easterbrook's (1959) arousal-cue utilization hypothesis.The present study was supported by a grant given to the senior author from the National Research Council of Canada (APA 7450). The findings of the single stimulus control groups were also presented as a paper in modified form to the Canadian Psychological Association at its annual meeting, 1974, Windsor, Ontario, Canada.     

ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVE: ANALYZING THE VALIDITY OF THE WOFO

Spence and Helmreich developed the Work and Family Orientation (WOFO) Questionnaire as a multidimensional measure of achievement motivation and attitudes toward family and career because they believed that a unitary construct of achievement motivation was not sufficient to account for broad patterns of behavior in varied situations. This article reviews the evidence for the construct validity of the WOFO questionnaire based on data from a large group (N = 3, 727) of men and women with high educational and career aspirations. Evidence presented includes factor analysis of the WOFO subscale dimensions, subscale reliabilities, and an analysis of the effect of gender and masculinity-femininity on achievement motives. The research confirms new insights regarding the relationship between achievement motives and sex roles for women and men.     

Gender marking on citizens band radio: Self-identity in a limited-channel speech community

Self-assigned handles (nicknames) connote gender images in citizens band radio (CB), a limited-channel, mass participation speech community. Semantic differential analysis of a sample of male and female handles reveals that men project virility, while women collectively refrain from any significant degree of gender marking. Male dominance, absence of nonverbal communication channels, and the newness of the community combine to account for present image patterns.Research was supported by a grant from the University of South Florida Research Council. The author thanks R. Hansen, R. O'Hara, L. Penner, H. Vetter, W. Wheeler, and A. Wolfe for helpful suggestions; R. Fader, J. Fioroni, B. Johnson, and G. Wharton for technical assistance.     

Informational and motivational components of social reinforcement

Thirty-six four-year-old children of each sex were tested in a two-choice marble dropping task. There were three Ss in each cell of a 3 × 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design. The factors investigated were: reinforcement condition (Contingent, Yoked, Nonreinforcement), sex, base preference level (strong vs weak), Base Rate Level (high vs low). The dependent variables were: base preference ratio, base rate, preference ratio change, rate change. The contingently reinforced Ss had significantly higher preference change scores than Ss in the other two reinforcement conditions but only at the high base preference level. The Ss in both the contingent and yoked groups had higher rate change scores than Ss in the nonreinforcement group. The results were interpreted as indicating social reinforcement may have two effects, one a cue function and the other an effect on S's motivational system. The results indicate that regression effects do not operate in the two-choice task and that crossing baseline levels of performance is an effective way to control baseline differences in analyses of change in the two-choice task.     

Effects of uncertainty reduction,material rewards,and variety on children's choice behavior

This experiment was designed to isolate the incentive properties of uncertainty reduction (information) from those of material reward value and variety in a binary, competitive reward situation. After pretraining, fourth-grade children chose between a prescaled high-reward object and a question mark stimulus which concealed one of two lower-valued objects on each of 40 trials. The concealed objects appeared equally often for half the Ss and with a 9:1 ratio for the rest, thus, reducing one or 47 bit of uncertainty, respectively, when chosen. Ss also served as their own controls. In the control condition, stimulus color cued the identity of the concealed object, reducing uncertainty before a choice was made. As predicted, significantly more question marks were chosen when such choice reduced uncertainty (p < .001). Evidence for the influence of relative-reward value and object novelty was obtained. Uncertainty reduction appears to have incentive value independent of other factors.     

ON VOLUNTARY ACTION AND ITS HIERARCHICAL STRUCTURE1

Les AA., cherchant à découvrir quels sont les caractères de l'organisation de quelques systèmes biologiques au cours de la première enfance, montrent comment un comportement primitivement automatique et réflexe se transforme graduellement en contrôle volontaire. Sur la base d'expériences qui ont porté sur la manière dont deux activités conflictuelles, téter et regarder, s'intègrent chez le bébé de 2 à 3 mois, on peut distinguer des étapes dans le processus d'organisation : (a) d'abord, suppression de I'une ou de l'autre activité; (b) ensuite, alternance des deux sans interférence; (c), enfin maintien en place des deux à la fois : la structure des deux activités est intégrée dans un acte qui les comprend I'une et l'autre, les parties y étant cependant exécutées séparément. Dans une autre expérience, on observe que les bébés s'efforcent de voir nettement, but qui est fixé arbitrairement, en coordonnant suçage et regard, à l'aide d'une stratégie de réponses qui est hiérarchiquement organisée et adaptative. Certains épisodes du développement de la manipulation des objets avec guidage visuel, montrent comment un programme d'action peut être mis en place dès le début. La maîtrise de l'action implique un cycle de restriction brutale des formes du mouvement et de formation programmée de l'habileté dans les limites de cette restriction. On peut dire, en conclusion, qu'il y a une organisation adaptative, générique et intelligente du comportement à chaque âge. Elle est atteinte de façon inégale et imparfaite, par intermittence et incomplètement : une nouvelle analyse fonctionnelle est nécessaire.     

The effect of “irrelevant” variables on decision making: Criterion shifts in preferential choice?

In decision research, it is widely assumed that decision makers have subjective experiences which indicate definitively, albeit with random fluctuations, whether or not one alternative is preferable to another. Further, it is assumed that subjects' choices reflect this underlying preference order. It follows from this position, as a logical consequence rather than an empirical observation, that if a manipulation affects people's choices, it does so by changing the way people subjectively experience the alternatives (presumably via people's encoding or combination of attribute information). In psychophysics, an analogous theoretical position has been relinquished. Specifically, it is no longer believed that observers in a detection experiment have subjective experiences which indicate definitively, albeit with error, whether a signal has been perceived. Rather, according to signal detection theory, the observer's sensory experience can be portrayed as a quantifiable sensation that must be converted into an overt report of “signal present” or “signal absent” by comparing the sensation with a criterion. In this paper, we describe two models of preferential choice, the lexicographic criterion model and a probabilistic criterion model, that replace the notion of definitive preference with an analogue of signal detection theory. In the models, the decision maker is represented as having quantifiable inclinations, rather than definitive preferences, that must be converted into an overt choice by comparing the inclinations with a criterion. By attributing the effects of experimental manipulations to shifts in the criterion, rather than to changes in people's inclinations, the model offers a testable alternative to the proposition that altered choices imply altered preferences.