Active avoidance conditioning in zebrafish (Danio rerio)

The zebrafish represents a potentially useful organism for studying genes involved in learning and memory function in vertebrates, because a number of genetic techniques in zebrafish have been developed to produce a wide variety of genetic mutants. While zebrafish mutants are being developed, behavioral studies on learning and memory function in zebrafish are in urgent need. The present study investigated active avoidance conditioning in normal zebrafish. Zebrafish were trained to swim from a lighted (CS) compartment to a dark compartment to avoid an electrical body shock (US) in a shuttle-box that consisted of a water-filled tank separated by an opaque barrier into two equal compartments. By varying the number of trials per training session and the duration of the intertrial interval, Experiments 1 and 2 showed that, with the CS, US, and intertrial interval being 12s, zebrafish learned avoidance responses within a training session consisting of 30 trials and retained the avoidance responses. Experiment 3 showed that zebrafish learned avoidance responses following the association between the CS of light and the US of shock in the avoidance conditioning paradigm. Using the avoidance conditioning paradigm, Experiment 4 investigated the amnestic effects of N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor antagonist MK-801 and nitric oxide synthase inhibitor L-NAME in zebrafish. Experiment 4 showed that post-training injection of L-NAME significantly impaired retention of avoidance responses while MK-801 did not, confirming previous results with other vertebrates. The results of the present study suggest the similar involvements of neurochemicals in learning and memory among vertebrates. Thus, future studies with zebrafish mutants may identify genes involved in learning and memory in vertebrates.     

Sibling Maltreatment: The Forgotten Abuse

Great advances have been made in the study of family violence in the past 30 years. However, sibling abuse and its prevalence in the family have largely been overlooked. In this article, the major issues associated with sibling maltreatment are highlighted, and strategies for helping the victims and perpetrators of sibling abuse and their families are described.     

Why are women more religious than men? Testing the explanatory power of personality theory among undergraduate students in Wales

This study tests the explanatory power of personality-based psychologically grounded theories to account for the well-established finding within the psychology of religion that within Christian and post-Christian contexts women are more religious than men. A sample of 1682 undergraduate students in Wales completed the short form of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised together with the adult form of the Francis Scale of Attitude towards Christianity and measures of frequency of church attendance, and frequency of personal prayer. These data confirm that women record higher levels of religiosity and lower levels of psychoticism, and demonstrate that psychoticism is the strongest predictor of individual differences in religiosity. Multiple-regression analyses show that, when individual differences in personality are taken into account, biological sex adds no further impact on religiosity. This finding suggests that higher levels of religiosity among women may be interpreted as a function of basic psychological differences in levels of psychoticism rather than as a sociological function of being female.     

Punishment and Blame for Culpable Indifference

Abstract

In criminal law, the mental state of the defendant is a crucial determinant of the grade of crime that the defendant has committed and of whether the conduct is criminal at all. Under the widely accepted modern hierarchy of mental states, an actor is most culpable for causing harm purposely and progressively less culpable for doing so knowingly, recklessly, or negligently. Notably, this hierarchy emphasizes cognitive rather than conative mental states. But this emphasis, I argue, is often unjustified. When we punish and blame for wrongful acts, we should look beyond the cognitive dimensions of the actor’s culpability and should consider affective and volitional dimensions as well, including the actor’s intentions, motives, and attitudes. One promising alternative mental state is the attitude of culpable indifference. However, we must proceed carefully when permitting criminal liability to turn on culpable indifference and similar attitudes, lest we punish vicious or unvirtuous feelings that are not sufficiently connected to wrongful acts, and lest we punish disproportionately for attitudes that reflect only a very modest degree of culpability.     

Training Public School Special Educators to Implement Two Functional Analysis Models

The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacy and efficiency of a training package to teach public school special educators to conduct functional analyses of challenging behavior. Six public school educators were divided into two cohorts of three and were taught two models of functional analysis of challenging behavior: traditional and trial-based functional analysis. The effect of the training package on functional analysis implementation was evaluated using multiple-baseline designs across participants for each functional analysis model. The sequence of functional analysis models taught was counterbalanced across cohorts. Following the training package, all participants reached 100 % implementation fidelity during role-plays and classroom sessions with students, and maintained high fidelity at follow-up role-play sessions. Data on training duration, trials to criterion, and social validity revealed that trial-based functional analysis training had a shorter duration and was rated as the more favorable functional analysis model.