Two Theories of Supposition?

In a recent paper Paul Vincent Spade suggests that, although the medieval doctrine of the modes of personal supposition originally had something to do with the rest of the theory of supposition, it became, by the 14th century, an unrelated theory with no question to answer. By contrast, I argue that the theory of the modes of personal supposition was meant to provide a way of making understandable the idea that a general term in a categorical proposition can be used to refer to the individual things that fall under it. Once that idea had been made acceptable, truth conditons for the various forms of categorical proposition could be given without any specific appeal to the ideas of descent and ascent in terms of which the modes had been defined.     

Effects of d-amphetamine, diazepam, and pentobarbital on the schedule-controlled pecking and locomotor activity of pigeons

Pigeons were trained on a variant of the autoshaping procedure devised by Matthews and Lerer (1987) in which a keylight stimulus ramp of increasing brightness signaled the passing of a 30-s interfood interval. This procedure generates two distinct behavioral components: key pecking and locomotor activity. The effects of three psychoactive drugs on these behavior classes were measured. d-Amphetamine had negligible effects on both types of behavior, whereas diazepam and pentobartital increased key pecking and decreased activity in a dose-dependent fashion. In Experiment 2, the possibility that drug effects were suppressed by excessively strong stimulus control exerted in Experiment 1 was tested by decreasing the discriminability of the stimulus ramp. The direction of the effects of diazepam and pentobarbital was the same as in Experiment 1 but the magnitude of the effects tended to be larger. The effects of d-amphetamine, however, remained quite small, suggesting that, under these conditions, locomotor activity and key pecking are less sensitive to d-amphetamine. In Experiments 3 and 4, key pecking was eliminated by removing the keylight. Reinforcers were presented at fixed intervals in Experiment 3 and at variable intervals in Experiment 4. The drug effects on activity observed in Experiments 1 and 2 disappeared in both Experiments 3 and 4. The results suggest that diazepam and pentobarbital affect activity indirectly by increasing key-pecking behavior, which, in turn, competitively decreases activity.     

Cigarette smoking and oral contraceptive use influence women's lipid, lipoprotein, and cardiovascular responses during stress

Investigated the effects of behavioral stress and smoking cigarettes on the lipid, lipoprotein, neuroendocrine, and cardiovascular responses of female smokers who either used or did not use oral contraceptives (OC). Thirty-five healthy female smokers (20 of whom used OC) relaxed, smoked, or sham smoked and then prepared, delivered, and reviewed a speech presented in front of a video camera. Results show that behavioral stress increased total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, triglyceride, and free fatty acid levels, with significant increases in cholesterol, LDL-C, and free fatty acids apparent only among women who smoked during the session. In addition, OC users exhibited larger increases in triglyceride and blood pressure responses during stress than did nonusers whether or not they smoked during the protocol. Possible physiological mechanisms for each of the effects, as well as implications of the findings for understanding epidemiological associations among OC use, smoking, and coronary heart disease in women are discussed.     

Multiple factors of cognitive failure and their relationships with stress vulnerability

Use of the Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ) in clinical research assumes that the questionnaire measures a single factor. A factor analysis of the CFQ was performed, on a sample of 475 students, using accurate procedures for determining the number of factors. These procedures gave mutually inconsistent results: at least two alternative factor structures can be extracted from the CFQ. An interpretable seven factor solution was found, but the CFQ probably has insufficient items to measure more than two strongly defined factors. The capacity of CFQ multiple factors to predict measures related to stress vulnerability was tested in a further study (N=57). Correlations between CFQ total score and neuroticism and use of coping strategies appeared to depend mainly on a single CFQ multiple factor, related to failures of concentration. Some of the other CFQ factors predicted other criteria. Further research on multiple factors of cognitive failure might improve the validity of the CFQ as a predictor of stress vulnerability and of cognitive performance.     

Mental patients as computer operators

Tactics of design are described for programs to be used by chronic psychiatric patients on an accounting task in the maintenance of records of token economies at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center. To address the patients’ cognitive, motoric, and motivational deficiencies, special attention was paid to display features, branching formats, error detection, feedback, and keyboard utilization.     

Organisational processes in free recall

In a free recall task, homogeneity of semantic reference and strong associative connections facilitated the recall after a twenty second filled interval of lists of 18 words. Facilitation in the recall of lists consisting of three sets of six related words when compared with six sets of three related words was also obtained. The organisation present in the recalled sequences is reported using various clustering measures and differences between the measures are indicated and discussed. Difficulties in the use of such measures in evaluating an hypothesis about the relationship between recall and organisation are illustrated and the general theoretical issue of selecting between alternative measures of organisation is considered.     

Verification of algebra step problems: A chronometric study of human problem solving

A class of simple problem solving tasks requiring fast accurate solutions is introduced. In an experiment subjects memorized a mapping rule represented by lists of words labeled by cue words and made true/false decisions about conjunctions of propositions of the form “Y is in the list labeled by X”, written “X → Y”. Response times are analyzed using a “stage modeling” technique where problem solving algorithms are composed using a small set of psychological operations that have real time characteristics specified parametrically. The theoretical analysis shows that response time performance is adequately described in terms of the sequential application of elementary psychological operations. Unexpectedly, it was found that the proposition “X → YandX → Z” was verified as quickly as the apparently simpler “X → Y”. A case is presented for the modeling technique as applied to memory and problem solving tasks in terms of theoretical parsimony, statistical simplicity, and flexibility in investigative empirical research. Suggestions are made as to possible theoretical relations among fast problem solving, more complex and slower problem solving, and research in fundamental memory processes.     

Type A behavior pattern, parental history of hypertension, and cardiovascular reactivity in college males

Two risk factors for cardiovascular disorders, parental history of hypertension and the Type A behavior pattern, were investigated concurrently with respect to cardiovascular reactivity to challenging situations. Sixty-four college males were given both the Structured Interview (SI) and Jenkins Activity Survey (JAS) for the Type A behavior pattern and a family health questionnaire to determine parental history of hypertension. The students were monitored for blood pressure (BP), heart rate (HR), and pulse transit time (PTT) response to four tasks: cold pressor, isometric handgrip exercise, a reading comprehension task, and backwards digit span. Type As based on SI classification had significantly higher HR levels across all tasks than did Type Bs, as well as higher diastolic BP levels in the cold pressor task. No main effects for Type A-B using JAS classification were found. Positive parental history students had higher HR and shorter PTT levels across all the tasks. Type A and parental history did interact in a limited way on some tasks, but the interactions were also dependent on the Type A classification used.     

Instructed versus shaped human verbal behavior: Interactions with nonverbal responding

Undergraduate students' presses on left and right buttons occasionally made available points exchangeable for money. Blue lights over the buttons were correlated with multiple random-ratio random-interval components; usually, the random-ratio schedule was assigned to the left button and the random-interval to the right. During interruptions on the multiple schedule, students filled out sentence-completion guess sheets (e.g., The way to earn points with the left button is to...). For different groups, guesses were shaped with differential points also worth money (e.g., successive approximations to “press fast” for the left button), or were instructed (e.g., Write “press slowly” for the left button), or were simply collected. Control of rate of pressing by guesses was examined in individual cases by reversing shaped or instructed guesses, by instructing pressing rates, and/or by reversing multiple-schedule contingencies. Shaped guesses produced guess-consistent pressing even when guessed rates opposed those characteristic of the contingencies (e.g., slow random-ratio and fast random-interval rates), whereas guesses and rates of pressing rarely corresponded after unsuccessful shaping of guesses or when guessing had no differential consequences. Instructed guesses and pressing were inconsistently related. In other words, when verbal responses were shaped (contingency-governed), they controlled nonverbal responding. When they were instructed (rule-governed), their control of nonverbal responding was inconsistent: the verbal behavior sometimes controlled, sometimes was controlled by, and sometimes was independent of the nonverbal behavior.