Differential outcomes facilitate same/different concept learning

Commonly recognized, the training procedure one employs often affects the results they obtain. Here, we demonstrate for the first time that abstract-concept learning is affected by employing a differential-outcomes procedure. The differential-outcome effect has been shown to occur for item-specific strategies but has not been established for relational strategies. To test whether different-outcome expectancies can facilitate a relational strategy, eight pigeons were trained and tested in a two-item same/different task with pictures. After pecking an upper picture, they pecked a lower picture if the pictures were the same or a white rectangle if the pictures were different. Two groups of pigeons were rewarded with either different outcomes (sounds and food amounts) or same outcomes. Both groups were trained to criterion with successively larger picture sets (8–1,024 items) and were transfer tested with novel pictures following each acquisition. With the smallest training sets, neither group showed any novel-stimulus transfer. But after acquiring the task with 32 pictures, the different-outcomes group responded more accurately to novel pictures than the same-outcome group. As the training set-size increased, both groups’ transfer performance converged and became equivalent to training performance. These results show for the first time that training with different outcomes facilitates abstract-concept learning.     

All gifts large and small: toward an understanding of the ethics of pharmaceutical industry gift-giving

Much attention has been focused in recent years on the ethical acceptability of physicians receiving gifts from drug companies. Professional guidelines recognize industry gifts as a conflict of interest and establish thresholds prohibiting the exchange of large gifts while expressly allowing for the exchange of small gifts such as pens, note pads, and coffee. Considerable evidence from the social sciences suggests that gifts of negligible value can influence the behavior of the recipient in ways the recipient does not always realize. Policies and guidelines that rely on arbitrary value limits for gift-giving or receipt should be reevaluated.     

Nonselective access of spelling–sound knowledge for Korean‐English bilinguals

An intense debate in monolingual research concerns the presence of phonological recoding in word recognition. Research supporting the phonological recoding hypothesis in monolingual research suggests the possibility of phonological recoding even in L2 recognition. There has been some experimental evidence showing phonological priming between L1 and L2 for alphabetic bilinguals (e.g., French‐Dutch). In the present study, lexical decision experiments used either L1 or L2 primes with targets from the other language at SOAs of 140 ms and 250 ms for Korean‐English bilinguals. It was found that phonological information activated by either an L1 or L2 prime can interact with phonological information in the other language. That is, L2 shares phonological information with L1, and its spelling–sound knowledge is activated, apparently automatically, at an SOA of 140 ms. The consistent pattern of phonological priming of both L1 and L2 targets at the 140 ms SOA indicates that the spelling–sound knowledge of bilingual lexicons is activated when any linguistic form is presented. Importantly, this indiscriminate activation of spelling–sound knowledge in the Korean‐English bilingual system occurs in the absence of any common orthographic cues because the two languages have totally different writing systems.     

Transmission of Educational Outcomes Across Three Generations: Evidence From Migrant Workers’ Children in China

The migration of parents or children may bring risks to children’s academic performance, but intergenerational effects on the academic performance of migrant workers’ children have been underexplored. This study aims to investigate how grandparents’ socioeconomic status (G1) and parents’ proximal and distal socioeconomic status (G2) influence the academic performance of migrant workers’ children (G3) and the corresponding impacts on the academic performance of migrant and left-behind children. The data used in this study were collected from a survey of 2017 migrant workers conducted in 13 districts and cities of 7 provinces of China in 2014. The results of ordered logistic regression models indicate that G1 grandparent socioeconomic status is positively associated with G2 academic performance and education level. Similarly, G2 parental academic performance and education level are positively linked to G3 academic performance. Parental distal academic performance and education level play an important role in G3 academic performance, but grandparents’ socioeconomic status is not significantly associated with G3 academic performance while controlling for both G1 and G2 variables. In addition, the influence of grandparents’ and parents’ socioeconomic status differs between migrant and left-behind children. Grandparent and parental occupation status only have a significant impact on left-behind children. The educational reproduction of migrant workers’ children has different logics among migrant and left-behind children. Further policies and social services are required to improve the development of migrant workers’ children.

     

Efficacy of Treating Sexual Trauma in a Substance Abuse Residential Program for Women

This is a program evaluation of treating sexual trauma in a residential substance abuse treatment program for women. Residents who were seeking treatment for their substance abuse disorder (SUD), also had a history of both childhood and adult sexual trauma. Given the literature supporting concurrent trauma-SUD treatment, the Warrior Renew (WR) protocol (Katz, Warrior Renew: Healing from military sexual trauma, Springer, New York, 2014) was added to the curriculum of Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step groups, relapse prevention, and substance abuse education classes. The WR manual consists of coping skills to address sleep and anxiety, and cognitive/experiential restructuring to address anger/resentments due to injustice, betrayal, and self-blame. It also addresses interpersonal factors such as relationship patterns and healthy interpersonal skills. This evaluation was conducted as part of routine clinical care in a naturalistic setting. Nineteen residents graduated the program and opted to complete pre-and post-treatment assessments. Findings revealed significant decreases in symptoms of anxiety, depression, posttraumatic negative thinking, and PTSD, and significant increases in positive factors of optimism and self-esteem-- all with large effect sizes. In addition, 95% of the sample had a reliable change at the 95% confidence interval. Resident’s feedback to staff reflected strong positive endorsement of the WR program. Results suggest WR is a promising effective treatment for women who have had sexual trauma in a substance abuse residential treatment program.     

The Nazi Engineers: Reflections on Technological Ethics in Hell

Engineers, architects, and other technological professionals designed the genocidal death machines of the Third Reich. The death camp operations were highly efficient, so these technological professionals knew what they were doing: they were, so to speak, good engineers. As an educator at a technological university, I need to explain to my students—future engineers and architects—the motivations and ethical reasoning of the technological professionals of the Third Reich. I need to educate my students in the ethical practices of this hellish regime so that they can avoid the kind of ethical justifications used by the Nazi engineers. In their own professional lives, my former students should not only be good engineers in a technical sense, but good engineers in a moral sense. In this essay, I examine several arguments about the ethical judgments of professionals in Nazi Germany, and attempt a synthesis that can provide a lesson for contemporary engineers and other technological professionals. How does an engineer avoid the error of the Nazi engineers in their embrace of an evil ideology underlying their technological creations? How does an engineer know that the values he embodies through his technological products are good values that will lead to a better world? This last question, I believe, is the fundamental issue for the understanding of engineering ethics.     

Erratum to: Toward an Evidence-Based System for Innovation Support for Implementing Innovations with Quality: Tools, Training, Technical Assistance, and Quality Assurance/Quality Improvement

Special Issue: Advances in Bridging Research and Practice Using the Interactive System Framework for Dissemination and Implementation; Guest Editors: Abraham Wandersman, Paul Flaspohler, Catherine A. Lesesne, Richard Puddy; Action Editor: Emilie Phillips Smith     

Toward an Evidence-Based System for Innovation Support for Implementing Innovations with Quality: Tools,Training, Technical Assistance,and Quality Assurance/Quality Improvement

An individual or organization that sets out to implement an innovation (e.g., a new technology, program, or policy) generally requires support. In the Interactive Systems Framework for Dissemination and Implementation, a Support System should work with Delivery Systems (national, state and/or local entities such as health and human service organizations, community-based organizations, schools) to enhance their capacity for quality implementation of innovations. The literature on the Support ystem has been under-researched and under-developed. This article begins to conceptualize theory, research, and action for an evidence-based system for innovation support (EBSIS). EBSIS describes key priorities for strengthening the science and practice of support. The major goal of EBSIS is to enhance the research and practice of support in order to build capacity in the Delivery System for implementing innovations with quality, and thereby, help the Delivery System achieve outcomes. EBSIS is guided by a logic model that includes four key support components: tools, training, technical assistance, and quality assurance/quality improvement. EBSIS uses the Getting To Outcomes approach to accountability to aid the identification and synthesis of concepts, tools, and evidence for support. We conclude with some discussion of the current status of EBSIS and possible next steps, including the development of collaborative researcher-practitioner-funder-consumer partnerships to accelerate accumulation of knowledge on the Support System.     

Temporal properties of visual search in pigeon target localization

To examine the mechanisms and time course of visual search behavior, we rewarded 6 experienced pigeons for locating and pecking at an odd target region randomly embedded in a larger rectangular array of contrasting distractor elements. On two-target test trials, a flanking secondary target region was briefly presented (100, 250, or 500 ms) after display onset with stimulus onset asynchrony values of 0, 50, 100, 175, 250, 375, 500, 1000, 2000, and 3000 ms. Two types of interference effects were possibly identified with target localization accuracy. One type occurred early in processing, where the secondary target appeared to interfere with search behavior, perhaps involving mechanisms similar to inhibition of return. A second type of interference was isolated that appeared to be time locked to responding and might occur at a postsearch stage of processing. Several possible connections of these effects to established mechanisms in human visual search and attention are suggested.