Conditioned suppression and variable ratio reinforcement

Conditioned suppression is a decrease in response rate during a relatively short duration stimulus that terminates independently of the animal's behavior and coincidentally with a brief unavoidable shock. The degree of conditioned suppression was measured for each of three birds on three variable ratio schedules; that is, the number of responses required for food reinforcement was varied around a mean of 50, 100, or 200. The results indicated a slight and possibly negligible decrease in the degree of suppression as the mean number of responses required on the schedule was increased from 50, to 100, and 200. In general, it was found that all of the variable ratio schedules tested were quite insensitive to the conditioned suppression procedure, although almost complete suppression was obtained on a few occasions. Since the reinforcement was contingent upon the emission of responses, the birds typically displayed a high rate of response during the pre-shock stimulus on all schedules. In addition, the rate during the pre-shock stimulus often changed abruptly independent of the presentation of a reinforcement. As a result of the high rate of response and the abrupt changes in rate, the degree of suppression from trial to trial was quite variable. A clear analysis of an experimental variable on this baseline is thus difficult.     

The post-reinforcement pause

Measurements of the post-reinforcement pause and response rate were obtained from four birds on a range of fixed ratio schedules from 25 to 150. The results indicated a consistent increase in the length of the pause as the ratio was increased. Response rate tended to decrease, but these data were less consistent and some reversals were apparent.     

Groups as social network members: Overlooked sources of social support

In a study of the link between physical disability and social relationships among the elderly, questions about social network and social support evoked a surprisingly large number of group responses. People mentioned "my grandchildren," "the people in my building," "people at the senior center," and other groups in ways that suggested that the real unit of support was extraindividual and could not be accurately understood by reference to individual people within those groups. This paper describes the frequency of such responses and the circumstances under which they emerged. Definitions of social support and of social network should not be restricted to dyadic relationships between individuals; better understanding of social support processes would derive from consideration of the kinds of social support functions best offered by groups vs. individuals and consideration of differences in the ways in which support is derived from groups and individuals.     

Giving and Receiving Help: Interpersonal Transactions in Mutual-Help Meetings and Psychosocial Adjustment of Members

The helping transactions that occur in group meetings have been theorized to be important therapeutic mechanisms within mutual-help (or self-help) groups. Hypothesized links between giving and receiving help and psychosocial adjustment were examined in a mutual-help group for individuals with serious mental illness (GROW). Participants' adjustment was assessed at two time points and helping behaviors were measured with observational coding of weekly group interactions during the period between assessments. Frequencies of helping behaviors were used to predict Time 2 adjustment after controlling for initial adjustment. Consistent with the helper therapy principle, giving help to others predicted improvements in psychosocial adjustment; giving advice was a unique predictor. Total amount of help received was not associated with adjustment, but receiving help that provided cognitive reframing was associated with better social adjustment. A predicted interaction suggested that receiving help was related to better functioning when members experienced high levels of group integration.     

A relational theory of self-deception

The authors argue that the fragmentary model of consciousness implied in the term ‘self-deception’ has provided the chief metaphor for explaining the apparent discrepancies that can arise between the evaluation of a motivated observer and the evaluation of a less interested external observer. Though self-deception models have explained these discrepancies in terms of both a dualistic opaque consciousness and in terms of cognitive and affective processes, all of these accounts seem to rest on the same essential fragmentation of the psyche. The authors argue that a relational model of consciousness, one that claims the indissolubility of cognition and affect, object and perception, and of past, present, and future can account for the apparent discrepancies involved in the paradigmatic cases of self-deception in a more parsimonious and phenomenologically faithful way than more objectivist and fragmented accounts of self-deception.     

Emergence of attributional style and its relation to depressive symptoms

The development of depressive attributional style (AS) and its role as a cognitive diathesis for depression were examined in children and adolescents (Grades 2-9). In a 4-wave longitudinal study of 3 overlapping age cohorts, AS, negative life events, and depressive symptoms were evaluated every 12 months. Consistency of children's attributions across situations was moderately high at all ages. The cross-sectional structure of AS changed with age, as stability became a more salient aspect of AS than internality and globality. The structure of AS also changed, becoming more traitlike as children grew older. In longitudinal analyses, evidence of a Cognitive Diathesis x Stress interaction did not emerge until Grades 8 and 9, suggesting that AS may not serve as a diathesis for depression at younger ages. Results suggest that attributional models of depression may require modification before they are applied across developmental levels.     

Categories of Historical Thought

This paper argues that the identity of history as a discipline derives from its distinctive combination of intellectual assumptions, or categories. Many of these categories are shared with other fields of thought, including science, literature, and common sense, but in history are understood in a unique way. This paper first examines the general notion of categories of historical understanding, then scrutinises some of the specific categories suggested by classic authors on the philosophy of history such as Dilthey and Collingwood. More recent works by Goldstein, Oakeshott, Bevir, and Tucker are treated as contributions to the same discussion. It concludes that the various categories these writers have proposed are neither trivial nor incompatible and that when collated they do indeed compose a framework capable of characterising historical thought.

Contextual Sources of Ambivalence

When will people become ambivalent about politics? One possibility is that the roots of ambivalence lie within the individual, with differences in political knowledge and attitude strength predicting whether a person internalizes the conflicts of politics. Alternately, attitudinal ambivalence could result from structural differences in the way political choices are presented in the wider political environment. We explore the degree to which different environments promote or limit ambivalence using a matching approach in conjunction with a set of multilevel models. We find that campaign environments can induce candidate ambivalence. In presidential elections, campaign efforts promote ambivalence most when competition between partisan campaign efforts is high. In House elections, campaign spending has a direct effect on levels of candidate ambivalence, where a candidate's spending decreases ambivalence about that candidate and increases ambivalence about opponents.     

Fear Appeals in Political Rhetoric about Terrorism: An Analysis of Speeches by Australian Prime Minister Howard

This paper explores fear-arousing content in Australian former Prime Minister John Howard's political rhetoric about terrorism. We coded 27 speeches delivered between September 2001 and November 2007 for the presence of statements promoting fear-consistent appraisals ( Smith & Lazarus, 1993 ). Fear-arousing content was present in 24 of these speeches, but the amount of fear-arousing content varied markedly. In particular, rhetoric that raised doubts about the capacity of Australia and its allies to cope with terrorism was most strongly present in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq and at times of declining support for government policies. Textual analysis of three key speeches confirmed a marked difference between Howard's speech given immediately after the attacks on September 11, 2001, and the second and third speeches presented prior to and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. These findings indicate that Howard has not consistently employed fear-inducing rhetoric in his speeches about terrorism, but that particular speeches appear to take this form, raising the possibility that fear-arousing rhetoric may have been selectively deployed to support his political purposes at those times.     

Impulsiveness and resource allocation: Testing Humphreys and Revelle’s (1984) explanation of impulsive personality

Humphreys and Revelle [Humphreys, M. S., Revelle, W. (1984). Personality, motivation and performance: A theory of the relationship between individual differences and information processing. Psychological Review, 91, 153–184] suggest that impulsive individuals have relatively greater capacity to improve performance through task-directed resource allocation. This implies that there will be a differential effect of increases in effort intensity on performance for high and low impulsive individuals. Two quasi-experiments tested this prediction using a relative-judgement task (total N = 108, 68 females), however neither revealed the predicted interaction. In light of these findings, we re-consider the Humphreys–Revelle model in relation to independent but potentially related theory and research.