Renewal of cue-elicited urge to smoke: implications for cue exposure treatment

The effects of cue exposure therapy are limited, because renewal after extinction is an important source of relapse. In this study, 33 smokers were exposed to a cue predicting smoking availability and a cue predicting smoking unavailability in one context (acquisition context A). Following extinction in another context (extinction context B), a test for renewal took place in the original acquisition context A (i.e. ABA renewal). Urge to smoke was measured using a Visual Analogue Scale. Renewal of differential conditioned urge responding occurred when participants were tested in the acquisition context, while differential urge responding remained extinguished when tested in the extinction context. This experiment provides evidence that ABA renewal occurred in smokers. Clinical implications are discussed.     

Consequences of lexical stress on learning an artificial lexicon

Four experiments examined effects of lexical stress on lexical access for recently learned words. Participants learned artificial lexicons (48 words) containing phonologically similar items and were tested on their knowledge in a 4-alternative forced-choice (4AFC) referent-selection task. Lexical stress differences did not reduce confusions between cohort items: KAdazu and kaDAzeI were confused with one another in a 4AFC task and in gaze fixations as often as BOsapeI and BOsapaI. However, lexical stress did affect the relative likelihood of stress-initial confusions when words were embedded in running nonsense speech. Words with medial stress, regardless of initial vowel quality, were more prone to confusions than words with initial stress. The authors concluded that non-initial stress, particularly when wor segmentation is difficult, may serve as "noise" that alters lexical learning and lexical access.     

Leadership in multiteam systems

This study examined 2 leader functions likely to be instrumental in synchronizing large systems of teams (i.e., multiteam systems [MTSs]). Leader strategizing and coordinating were manipulated through training, and effects on functional leadership, interteam coordination, and MTS performance were examined. Three hundred eighty-four undergraduate students participated in a laboratory simulation modeling a 3-team MTS performing an F-22 battle simulation task (N = 64 MTSs). Results indicate that both leader training manipulations improved functional leadership and interteam coordination and that functional leader behavior was positively related to MTS-level performance. Functional leadership mediated the effects of both types of training on interteam coordination, and interteam coordination fully mediated the effect of MTS leadership on MTS performance.     

The structure of frontoparallel haptic space is task dependent

In three experiments, we investigated the structure of frontoparallel haptic space. In the first experiment, we asked blindfolded participants to rotate a matching bar so that it felt parallel to the reference bar, the bars could be at various positions in the frontoparallel plane. Large systematic errors were observed, in which orientations that were perceived to be parallel were not physically parallel. In two subsequent experiments, we investigated the origin of these errors. In Experiment 2, we asked participants to verbally report the orientation of haptically presented bars. In this task, participants made errors that were considerably smaller than those made in Experiment 1. In Experiment 3, we asked participants to set bars in a verbally instructed orientation, and they also made errors significantly smaller than those observed in Experiment 1. The data suggest that the errors in the matching task originate from the transfer of the reference orientation to the matching-bar position.     

Acting intentionally and the side-effect effect

The concept of acting intentionally is an important nexus where theory of mind and moral judgment meet. Preschool children's judgments of intentional action show a valence-driven asymmetry. Children say that a foreseen but disavowed side effect is brought about "on purpose" when the side effect itself is morally bad, but not when it is morally good. This is the first demonstration in preschoolers that moral judgment influences judgments of whether something was done on purpose (as opposed to judgments of purpose influencing moral judgment). Judgments of intentionality are usually assumed to be purely factual. That these judgments are sometimes partly normative-even in preschoolers-challenges current understanding. Young children's judgments regarding foreseen side effects depend on whether the children process the idea that the character does not care about the side effect. As soon as preschoolers effectively process the theory-of-mind concept "not care that P," children show the side-effect effect.     

One hundred and fifty years of philosophy

Looking back from 2049 over one-hundred and fifty years of philosophy, a student's essay reveals what became of rival strands in Western philosophy – with a sidelong glance at the special Topoi issue on the theme “Philosophy: What is to be Done?” that was published almost half a century earlier.     

A reconstructive-processing interpretation of the recognition failure phenomenon

The generality of the recognition failure phenomenon was the primary basis for the present research. It was hypothesized that the phenomenon obtains whenever an insufficient degree of compatibility exists between the task demands at recognition and those present during study. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that, despite a recognition task that was incompatible to conditions of encoding, subjects could actively reconstruct aspects of the initial situation, and hence recognition failure was minimized. It was assumed that the stimulus material — categorized word pairs — facilitated this reconstructive process. Experiment 3 was designed specifically to examine further the reconstructive process as well as recognition failure. The results indicated that (a) the nature of this process could be mathematically predicted, and (b) subjects seldom failed to recognize words they recalled. The results of the present study strongly suggest an important boundary condition of the phenomenon of recognition failure. Moreover, Tulving and Wiseman's (1975) quadratic function could not predict accurately the obtained magnitude of recognition failure.     

Instructed versus pharmacological effects of alcohol in alcoholics and social drinkers

Twelve alcoholics and 12 social drinkers were studied in an experiment where instructions about alcohol or placebo were orthogonally crossed with administration of alcohol or placebo in a Balanced Placebo Design. Three subjects were simultaneously observed while watching soccer games on the TV together and having free access to a mixed drink, which in the alcohol conditions contained 150ml of 80% proof vodka. The assessment procedure included several aspects of drinking behavior, behavioral observations during the session, psychiatric ratings and nurse observations before and after each session, ratings for craving, self-reported state anxiety and physiological changes (heart rate and blood pressure). In general, the results showed the alcoholic's behavior to be controlled by instruction-induced expectancies rather than by the actual beverage given, whereas the social drinkers showed tendencies in the opposite direction. The implications of these results for the traditional disease conception of alcoholism and for learning theory approaches are discussed.