Effects of food deprivation and reinforcement magnitude on conditioned suppression

In Experiment I, the responding of rats lever pressing on a variable-interval schedule for sucrose solution was partially suppressed by a variable duration conditioned stimulus followed by shock. When food deprivation was increased, response rates during and before the conditioned stimulus increased monotonically. Varying the concentration of sucrose across blocks of sessions or from session to session in a semi-random sequence had little effect on response rates either before or during the conditioned stimulus. With a fixed sequence of increasing concentrations across a five-session block, increased concentration produced much more rapid increases in response rates before than during the conditioned stimulus. In Experiment II, rats were presented with the same sequence of increasing concentrations across a five-session block. When tested at 80% body weight, response rates increased rapidly as concentration increased, but at 100%, body-weight rates increased only slightly. The effect of a change in body weight in Experiment II thus mimicked the effect of the conditioned stimulus in the latter part of Experiment I. These findings support the view that the effect of a pre-aversive conditioned stimulus is similar to that of a change in food deprivation, but unlike that of a change in reinforcement magnitude.     

Book reviews

Hamilton, Vernon and Veronon, Magdalen D. (Eds). The Development of Cognitive Processes. London and New York: Academic Press. 1976. Pp. 772. £21.00. ISBN 0 12 321750 4.

Miller, G. A, and Johnson-Laird, P. N. Language and Perception. Cambridge University Press. 1976. Pp. viii + 760. £12.50. ISBN 0 521 21242.

Neisser, U. Cognition and Reality. San Francisco: Freeman. 1976. pp. 230. Hardback $11.00; paperback $4.95. ISBN 0 7167 04781.

Norman, D. A. Memory and Attention. Second edition. New York: Wiley. 1976. Pp. 262. £8.45.

Hammond, K. R. and Joyce, C. R. B. (eds). Psychoactive Drugs and Social Judgment: Theory and Research. New York and London: Wiley. 1975. Pp. 278. £9.25. ISBN

Fodor, J. D. Semantics : Theories of Meaning in Generative Grammer. Sussex: Harvester Press. 1977. Pp. 225. £12.95. ISBN 0 85527 500 6.

Plomp, R. Aspects of Tone Sensation. London: Academic Press. 1976. Pp. id + 167. £6.50. ISBN 0 12 558350 8.

Fite, K. V. The Amphibian Visual System. London: Academic Press. 1977. Pp. 374. £20.95. ISBN 0 12 257450 8.

Eliot, J. and Salkind, N. J. Children's Spatial Development. Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas. 1975. $23.50. Pp. 296. ISBN 0398 03210 6.

Wong, R. Motiviation : A Biobehavioral Analysis of consummatory Activities. London: Collier-Macmillan. 1976. Pp. 326. £ 4.95. ISBN 0 0242 9400 4.     

On the limits of Kagan’s impulsive reflective distinction

A logical analysis is made of the Matching Familiar Figures (MFF) Test on the basis of which children have been classified as "impulsive" or "reflective." The reflective strategy is implicitly preferred to the impulsive because the reflective child makes fewer errors though generally taking longer to make his first response. We show that the test allows the choice of a number of "game plans" and speed-accuracy tradeoffs which in practice may not be very different. Error rates may not indicate perceptual sensitivity, in any case, since sensitivity and response factors may be confounded in the error rate. Using a visual running-memory-span task to avoid the inherent difficulties of the MFF test, we found that children previously classified on the basis of that test as impulsive or reflective did not differ in recognition accuracy but did differ in response bias and response latency. Accuracy and bias are estimated by way of Luce's choice theory (Luce, 1963), and the results are discussed in those terms.     

Overselectivity,developmental level,and overtraining in autistic and normal children

Thirteen autistic children were compared to 13 normal children, matched to them in mental age, on performance of a visual discrimination task. Form, color, and size were relevant and redundant cues. The groups did not differ significantly in mean trials to reach criterion or in breadth of learning, and both groups increased their breadth of learning after 50 trials of overtraining. Form was preferred to color and size by both autistic and normal children. Within each group, rank on mental age was highly correlated with rank in breadth of learning. Verbal and nonverbal autistic children did not differ in breadth of learning or in dimensional preference. Even nonverbal autistics equaled the performance of their normal controls. Our results suggest that overselective attention is better understood as part of a general developmental lag in cognition in autistic children than as a specific deficit underlying psychotic behavior.This research was supported in part by NIMH Grant 11440, O. I. Lovaas, principal investigator. The authors thank Dr. Lovaas and Dennis C. Russo for their helpful criticisms of an earlier draft.     

A new method for calibrating perceptual salience across dimensions in infants: the case of color vs. luminance

We report a new method for calibrating differences in perceptual salience across feature dimensions, in infants. The problem of inter-dimensional salience arises in many areas of infant studies, but a general method for addressing the problem has not previously been described. Our method is based on a preferential looking paradigm, adapted to determine the relative salience of two stimuli. We report here on the case of stimuli differing in color and luminance, though the method has wider potential. We were able to determine on a psychophysical curve the point at which a color contrast was equally salient to infants as a given luminance contrast. We then used these calibrated, 'iso-salient' stimuli in an object memory study. Results showed that 6.5-month-old infants noticed a color, but not a luminance, change while tracking an occluded object. Our method should have numerous applications in the study of bottom-up effects on infant attention and visual working memory.     

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.     

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.     

How do we evaluate learning from the curriculum? Thirty phone interviews with Institutes of the American Psychoanalytic Association

A telephone survey of curriculum directors of the thirty institutes of the American Psychoanalytic Association revealed that 75 percent of institutes highly value the importance of evaluating what candidates learn from the curriculum. Paradoxically, however, most institutes do not do evaluations in this area. Typically, institutes evaluate candidates' satisfaction with courses, or their attendance and conduct in classes, rather than learning per se. Some institutes have more rigorous evaluation methods, including oral exams. Objections to evaluating what candidates learn included (1) evaluations involve too much work; (2) evaluations of learning are considered inappropriate or invalid; (3) evaluations would hurt candidates, faculty, the learning process, and the institute. Some curriculum directors dismissed these objections, contending that it is the responsibility of psychoanalytic educators to set teaching goals and evaluate learning.