Stagewise multidimensional visual discrimination by pigeons

We trained six pigeons in a stagewise Multiple Necessary Cues (MNC) go/no‐go task to document the dynamics of discrimination learning involving increasingly complex visual stimuli. The compound stimuli were composed from four dimensions, each of which could assume either of two extreme values or their intermediate value: Shape, Size, Line Orientation, and Brightness. Starting with a stimulus composed entirely from intermediate values, we replaced those values with each of the two extreme dimensional values in four successive stages, thereby increasing the stimulus set from 2 in Stage 1 to 16 in Stage 4. In each stage, only one combination of values signaled food (S⁺), whereas the remaining combinations did not (S^?s). We calculated the rate of pecking during the first 15 s of each stimulus presentation and, in any given stage, training continued until the rate of responding to all of the S^?s was less than 20% of the rate of responding to the S⁺. All pigeons successfully acquired the final discrimination, suggesting that they attended to all of the dimensions relevant for the discrimination. We also replicated the key results of prior MNC studies: (1) the number of extreme dimensional values in each stage was positively related to the amount of training required for pigeons to acquire the discrimination; (2) attentional tradeoffs were most often observed when three or four dimensions were being trained; and (3) throughout training, the number of dimensional values in the S^?s that differed from the S⁺ was positively related to their discriminability from S⁺.     

No Room of her Own: Married Couples’ Negotiation of Workspace at Home During COVID-19

Sex Roles - The current study examined the right to a professional workspace and separation between private and public within the home as an arena of gendered negotiation and struggle between...     

African American clergy: what are their perceptions of pastoral care and pastoral counseling?

This qualitative study explores African American clergy’s perspectives on pastoral care and pastoral counseling. Interviews were conducted with 18 African American clergy of diverse ages, locales, and educational levels who were recruited from a southern state. Two major themes emerged from the data: (a) Shepherding the Flock and (b) Distinguishable Concepts with Different Meaning and Functions. Implications for social work practice and research are addressed.     

Development of the Significant Other Survey: An Interview for Family Members of Substance Users

The Significant Other Survey (SOS) is a semi-structured interview designed to measure the multidimensional problems experienced by family members with a substance abusing loved one. This article describes the development of the SOS and its psychometric properties based on data obtained from significant others of 110 substance abusing adults. Interrater and test-retest reliability estimates were within acceptable ranges, adequate internal consistency was demonstrated for six of seven problem domains, and the problem domains were low to moderately correlated with each other. Issues related to future instrument development and the utility of the SOS for both family practitioners and researchers are described.     

Talking with Feeling: Integrating Affective and Linguistic Expression in Early Language Development

Abstract

The purpose of the longitudinal study reported here was to determine the developmental relation between the two systems of expression available to the young child in the period of early language learning: affect and speech. Two achievements in language were identified for a group of 12 infants: First Words, at the beginning of the single-word period (mean age about 13 months), and a Vocabulary Spurt, which occurred toward the end of the period (mean age about 19 months). Affect expression was coded continuously in the stream of the infants' activity as they and their mothers played with groups of toys and ate a snack. The occurrence of words was examined in relation to the expression of affect and the results of this study concern developments in the integration of these two forms expression. The children's words occurred closely in time with their expression of emotionally toned affect. We concluded, then, that they were learning words to express what their feelings were about even though none of the actual words they said were emotion terms. However, the cognitive requirements for emotional expression and expression through speech resulted in several constraints on their integration. Words were said with neutral affect expression most often, with a peak in emotional expression in the moments immediately after words but a decrease in emotional expression before words. The peak in emotional expression with words was significantly greater, and the pre-word dip in emotional expression was significantly less, at the Vocabulary Spurt than at First Words. Thus, the two systems of expression converged in the period of single-word development as the children came to be able to say words with emotional affect. However, the words that were said together with emotional expression were said with positive rather than negative valence, with low rather than heightened intensity, and were among the most frequent and earliest learned words. These results are discussed in terms of the acquisition of language for expression and the different cognitive requirements for expression through affect and speech.     

The pigeon's discrimination of shape and location information

Two groups of pigeons (n = 4) were trained with 16 line drawings portraying a fixed shape and a variable shape. The four variable shapes (a wedge, a cone, a cylinder, and a handle) appeared to the left of, to the right of, above, or below the fixed shape (a cube). Group Shape (S) was required to discriminate the identity of the variable shape that was mated with the cube, whereas Group Location (L) was required to discriminate where the variable shape appeared relative to the cube. Three of the four pigeons in each group mastered their respective tasks. Later tests revealed that the two groups of pigeons had attended to different aspects of the shape pairs, even though the visual stimuli and general procedures they had been given were the same. Group S had attended to the identity of the variable shape and had ignored the identity and location of the cube, whereas Group L had attended to the configuration of the two shapes. The methods and stimuli could be useful in delineating the biological bases of shape and location perception.     

emotionally layered accounts: homeschoolers' justifications for maternal deviance

Drawing on six years of field research with homeschooling mothers, I show four ways they were accused of maternal deviance for keeping their children out of conventional schools, and I uncover the four justifications they used in response. On the surface, critics objected to the behavior of homeschooling; however, their specific accusations—and the accounts they engendered—revealed that it was mothers' (alleged) emotions that were at issue. I conclude by discussing how attention to emotions enhances our theoretical understanding of accounts, as well as how these data begin to map out the emotional complexities in the social construction of good mothering.     

Vagueness and the Laws of Metaphysics

This is a paper about the nature of metaphysical laws and their relation to the phenomenon of vagueness. Metaphysical laws are introduced as analogous to natural laws, and metaphysical indeterminism is modeled on causal indeterminacy. This kind of indeterminacy is then put to work in developing a novel theory of vagueness and a solution to the sorites paradox.     

Monitoring same/different discrimination behavior in time and space: Finding differences and anticipatory discrimination behavior

Discrimination behavior in a standard, two-alternative forced choice same/different task is usually measured by the pigeon’s pecking one or the other of two arbitrary report areas. We found that pigeons make anticipatory, discriminative responses to the visual display during the stimulus observing period prior to the availability of the report areas; the spatial distribution of these anticipatory discriminative responses strongly correlated with the upcoming choice response. These anticipatory pecks provide evidence that the process of discrimination occurs well before the moment of choice and that key aspects of this process can be revealed by looking at the distribution of observing responses. We also manipulated the variability of the displayed items to study the nature of these anticipatory responses; again, the spatial distribution of responding during the stimulus observing period strongly correlated with the upcoming choice response. The distribution of these prechoice pecks supports the theory that pigeons search for differences in the displayed items. If differences are found, then pigeons prepare to report “different”; if not, then they report “same.”