Emergence of response‐response relations

The present study examined whether bidirectional response‐response relations could be established without direct reinforcement. In AB training for 12 undergraduates, higher rates of touches to a white circle on the monitor screen (A1) produced two stimuli (B1 and B2) on half of the trials, whereas lower rates (A2) produced the same effect on the other half. Choosing one of the two stimuli was reinforced according to the preceding responding (A1B1 and A2B2). In BC training, touching a stimulus (B1 or B2) produced three white circles lined up horizontally on the screen, after which one of two different response sequences to the circles (left‐center‐right, C1 or C2, and right‐center‐left, C2 or C1) were reinforced, depending on the stimulus presented (B1C1 and B2C2). After AB and BC relations were established, 11 of 12 participants showed the emergence of untrained relations (BA, CB, AC, and CA) throughout five test sessions, and the remaining participant showed it in the first four test sessions. These response‐response relations were replicated with five other undergraduates and different trained relations.     

An Optimized Design of Choice Experiments: A New Approach for Studying Decision Behavior in Choice Task Experiments

In this paper, we present a new approach for the optimal experimental design problem of generating diagnostic choice tasks, where the respondent's decision strategy can be unambiguously deduced from the observed choice. In this new approach, we applied a genetic algorithm that creates a one‐to‐one correspondence between a set of predefined decision strategies and the alternatives of the choice task; it also manipulates the characteristics of the choice tasks. In addition, this new approach takes into account the measurement errors that can occur when the preferences of the decision makers are being measured. The proposed genetic algorithm is capable of generating diagnostic choice tasks even when the search space of possible choice tasks is very large. As proof‐of‐concept, we used this novel approach to generate respondent‐specific choice tasks with either low or high context‐based complexity that we operationalize by the similarity of alternatives and the conflict between alternatives. We find in an experiment that an increase in the similarity of the alternatives and an increase in the number of conflicts within the choice task lead to an increased use of non‐compensatory strategies and a decreased use of compensatory decision strategies. In contrast, the size of the choice tasks, measured by the number of attributes and alternatives, only weakly influences the strategy selection. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The World at 7:00: Comparing the Experience of Situations Across 20 Countries

The purpose of this research is to quantitatively compare everyday situational experience around the world. Local collaborators recruited 5,447 members of college communities in 20 countries, who provided data via a Web site in 14 languages. Using the 89 items of the Riverside Situational Q‐sort (RSQ), participants described the situation they experienced the previous evening at 7:00 p.m. Correlations among the average situational profiles of each country ranged from r = .73 to r = .95; the typical situation was described as largely pleasant. Most similar were the United States/Canada; least similar were South Korea/Denmark. Japan had the most homogenous situational experience; South Korea, the least. The 15 RSQ items varying the most across countries described relatively negative aspects of situational experience; the 15 least varying items were more positive. Further analyses correlated RSQ items with national scores on six value dimensions, the Big Five traits, economic output, and population. Individualism, Neuroticism, Openness, and Gross Domestic Product yielded more significant correlations than expected by chance. Psychological research traditionally has paid more attention to the assessment of persons than of situations, a discrepancy that extends to cross‐cultural psychology. The present study demonstrates how cultures vary in situational experience in psychologically meaningful ways.     

Emotion, directed forgetting, and source memory

We investigated the role of emotion on item and source memory using the item method of directed forgetting (DF) paradigm. We predicted that emotion would produce source memory impairment because emotion would make it more difficult to distinguish between to-be-remembered (R items) and to-be-forgotten items (F items) by making memory strength of R and F items similar to each other. Participants were presented with negatively arousing, positively arousing, and neutral pictures. After each picture, they received an instruction to remember or forget the picture. At retrieval, participants were asked to recall both R and F items and indicate whether each item was an R or F item. Recall was higher for the negatively arousing than for the positively arousing or neutral pictures. Further, DF occurred for the positively arousing and neutral pictures, whereas DF was not significant for the negatively arousing pictures. More importantly, the negatively arousing pictures, particularly the ones with violent content, showed a higher tendency of producing misattribution errors than the other picture types, supporting the notion that negative emotion may produce source memory impairment, even though it is still not clear whether the impairment occurs at encoding or retrieval.     

Selecting a Relevant Mental State in Young Children’s Persuasion

Previous studies have found that understanding another person’s mental states is a requirement for effective responding to that person. This study examined whether effective responding also requires selecting a relevant mental state of another person. Using a hypothetical persuasion paradigm, we investigated if late 4- and 5-year-olds (N = 120) could present information to counter a receiver’s opposition. For example, a boy is attempting to persuade his mother to let him have a bird. If the mother objects to her son having the bird because bird is noisy, then the boy should ask her to have a quiet bird. Presenting appropriate information (e.g., a quiet bird) was found to be more difficult when the person had plural beliefs (e.g., a bird would be clean and noisy) and children had to select the source of opposition (e.g., a bird would be noisy). This suggests that selecting an appropriate mental state of another person is necessary for effective responding. Contingency and developmental analyses revealed that children could present appropriate information only when they could select the source, indicating that the ability to select an appropriate mental state is a key factor in responding effectively to others.     

Comparative study of local structure in Zr70Al10Ni20 and quasi-crystal-forming Zr70Al9Ni20Pd1 metallic glasses

The local structure of Zr₇₀Al₉Ni₂₀Pd₁ metallic glass, in which a nano-icosahedral quasi-crystalline phase (I-phase) is formed in the primary stage of crystallization, has been examined and compared with that of Zr₇₀Al₁₀Ni₂₀, the supercooled liquid state of which has a high stability. Since the local environments around the Zr and Ni atoms do not change drastically by the addition of 1 at.% Pd to Zr₇₀Al₁₀Ni₂₀, as evidenced by radial distribution function (RDF) and extended x-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) studies, we deduce that the icosahedral phase formed in the Zr₇₀Al₉Ni₂₀Pd₁ metallic glass has a local structure similar to that in Zr₇₀Al₁₀Ni₂₀. Although a very slight rearrangement of Zr–Zr atomic pairs occurs during quasi-crystallization, the I-phase formation is achieved without disturbing the dominant local structure in the glassy state of the Zr₇₀Al₉Ni₂₀Pd₁. An icosahedral local structure is proposed for Zr–Al–Ni metallic glass system as well as for primary quasi-crystal (QC)-forming Zr-based metallic glasses.     

Retention and thermal desorption of helium in amorphous and crystalline FeBSi alloys

Helium retention in metals is related to their atomic structure and the type of defects they contain. In order to investigate the dependence of helium retention on structure, amorphous Fe₇₉B₁₆Si₅ and crystalline FeBSi alloys were irradiated by helium ions at room temperature. In the crystalline alloy irradiated with 5 keV He⁺ ions, three types of helium trapping sites were found: surface defects produced by the irradiation, interstitial-type dislocation loops, and voids. Although these defects did not exist in the amorphous FeBSi alloy, we did observe thermal desorption peaks related to all three types. In addition, helium was released during the crystallization of amorphous FeBSi that had been irradiated by He⁺ ions.     

State-Supported Science and Imaginary Lock-in: The Case of Regenerative Medicine in Japan

Abstract

Regenerative medicine (RM) in Japan lays strong emphasis on a specific trajectory of its development, which deploys human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells as the primary sources for the technology. The technique to create these stem cells was developed in 2006 by a Japanese stem cell scientist, Shinya Yamanaka, and since its applicability to human cells was established about a year later, this new type of cells has become to be considered as a potential substitute for human embryonic stem cells. While the clinical value of these cells are yet to be confirmed, the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology decided to concentrate its support on iPS cells research and turned it into a national project. This decision reflected the state's vision of initiating the transition to a knowledge-based society, which was adopted in the 1990s to tackle the prolonged deflation in the country. As the research became intertwined with this policy vision, however, the Ministry came to see bringing its success as more important than ever, while other trajectories of RM were left underrated and largely unsupported. Industrial actors counteracted this situation and developed an initiative to recognize existing technical capability in the country, but its impact has been so far negligible. This indicates that the nation is locked in the particular trajectory of RM. Hence, this Japanese RM research enterprise presents an interesting case to understand how states' commitment may not only shape the course of scientific research but also reduce flexibility in technological development.     

Age-related trends of interference control in school-age children and young adults in the Stroop color-word test

In this cross-sectional study, differences in interference control, one component of executive function, were investigated among three age groups, 15 early childhood (7- to 8-yr.-olds), 25 middle childhood (9- to 12-yr.-olds), and 20 young adults (21- to 30-yr.-olds). Participants were administered a computer version of the Stroop color-word test with an oral response; correct responses, response time (RT), and the interference ratio were examined. The data indicated that (1) most of the participants showed no errors in word reading, color-naming, and incongruent color-naming tasks; (2) in word-reading and color-naming tasks, RT for 7- to 8-yr.-olds was longer than that for 9- to 12-yr.-olds, while RT of 9- to 12-yr.-olds and young adults were comparable; (3) in an incongruent color-naming task, RT for 7- to 8-yr.-olds was longer than RT for 9- to 12-yr.-olds, which was longer than RT for young adults; and (4) the interference ratio was higher in 7- to 8-yr.-olds than in 9- to 12-yr.-olds, which was higher than in young adults. These results suggested the difference in interference control between early and middle childhood reported on the go/no-go task and the stop-signal procedure would be observed in the Stroop color-word paradigm as well. The utility of this modified Stroop color-word test for those with intellectual and developmental disabilities was discussed.