Control of responding by location of auditory stimuli: role of differential and non-differential reinforcement

Sound was presented to monkeys through one of two loudspeakers, each adjacent to a response key. A response on the key adjacent to the sound source was reinforced (correct response). A response on the other key produced a timeout (incorrect response). Under these conditions, over 90% of responses were correct within one or two sessions. When the procedure was changed so that a response on either key was reinforced independently of which speaker was sounding, similar control by location developed within one or two sessions. When conditions were modified by moving the keys away from the immediate vicinity of the speakers, the animals required about 20 sessions to reach a stable level of greater than 90% correct responses under differential reinforcement conditions. No control by location developed under nondifferential reinforcement conditions.     

Responses of seventh grade students to "do you have a partner with whom you would like to have a baby?"

This study investigated differences in demographic data, self-esteem, and coping skills for 225 students in Grade 7 who reported having a partner with whom they wanted to have a baby and 946 students who did not. Data were collected on the Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale, the Family Crisis-oriented Personal Evaluation Scale, and questions related to attitudes towards teen pregnancy and demographic data. The sample included 548 (46.8%) boys and 624 (53.2%) girls whose mean age was 13.2 yr. Students with a partner had significantly lower scores on the curriculum questions, self-esteem, and family coping skills, combined with higher scores in passivity. They indicated a desire to have a greater number of children, beginning by having their first child at a younger age and believed that having a baby improves a couple's relationship. Possible approaches may include effective teaching methods to overcome passivity through boosting self-confidence, goal-setting, and acquiring a purpose in life besides parenting a child.     

NATURALISM AND THE CATEGORIES “SCIENCE” AND “RELIGION”: A RESPONSE TO JOSH REEVES

This article is a response to Josh Reeve's “A Defense of Science and Religion.” I begin with the disclaimer that this was not solely my project but a joint enterprise. A common commitment of participants was to make the disciplines of history and theology central to the discussion and explore what new possibilities follows for the field of science and religion. I then address Reeves's two central concerns: first that I am too dismissive of the categories “science” and “religion.” In fact I have not advocated dispensing with these categories, but have insisted than we employ them critically and with a sense of their history. The second concern is that my position on naturalism seems to place me perilously close to advocates of ID or scientific creationism. I deny this, but point out that more work needs to be done, beyond simply invoking methodological naturalism, to clarify the differences between naturalistic and theological approaches to the world.     

Current scientific interest in dissociative amnesia: A bibliometric analysis

In a bibliometric analysis, we used the PubMed search engine to count the number of publications identified by the search term “dissociative amnesia” for the years 2011–2020. We then counted publications from the same decade for five representative comparison disorders: “panic disorder,” “anorexia nervosa,” “obsessive–compulsive disorder,” “attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,” and “bipolar disorder.” Our search yielded only 89 publications for “dissociative amnesia,” and only seven of these involved localized or selective amnesia for specific events. By contrast, we found between 3000 and 21,000 publications for each of the five comparison disorders during 2011–2020. We performed several additional secondary analyses, all of which suggested that the diagnosis of “localized or selective dissociative amnesia” has generated little scientific interest in recent years. Examining possible hypotheses to explain this lack of interest, it appears most likely that the concept of localized or selective dissociative amnesia is not widely accepted among scientists at present.     

Victor Frankenstein’s Institutional Review Board Proposal, 1790

To show how the case of Mary Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein brings light to the ethical and moral issues raised in Institutional Review Board (IRB) protocols, we nest an imaginary IRB proposal dated August 1790 by Victor Frankenstein within a discussion of the importance and function of the IRB. Considering the world of science as would have appeared in 1790 when Victor was a student at Ingolstadt, we offer a schematic overview of a fecund moment when advances in comparative anatomy, medical experimentation and theories of life involving animalcules and animal electricity sparked intensive debates about the basic principles of life and the relationship between body and soul. Constructing an IRB application based upon myriad speculations circulating up to 1790, we imagine how Victor would have drawn upon his contemporaries’ scientific work to justify the feasibility of his project, as well as how he might have outlined the ethical implications of his plan to animate life from “dead” tissues. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Victor failed to consider his creature’s autonomy, vulnerability, and welfare. In this IRB proposal, we show Victor facing those issues of justice and emphasize how the novel can be an important component in courses or workshops on research ethics. Had Victor Frankenstein had to submit an IRB proposal tragedy may have been averted, for he would have been compelled to consider the consequences of his experiment and acknowledge, if not fulfill, his concomitant responsibilities to the creature that he abandoned and left to fend for itself.     

The Muddle of Anticipation

In J. J. Gibson's classic paper “The Problem of Temporal Order in Stimulation and Perception” (1966a Gibson, J. J. (1966a). The problem of temporal order in stimulation and perception. Journal of Psychology, 62, 141–149.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), he referred to the difficulties encountered when attempting a sharp distinction between memory and perception as “the muddle of memory.” Resolution of the muddle by J. J. Gibson proceeded by blurring the distinction itself. We develop the conjugate “muddle of anticipation” similarly by blurring the sharp distinction traditionally drawn between anticipation and perception. The subsequent redefinition of the problem is grounded in strong anticipation equated with anticipating synchronization—that which arises from a system itself via lawful regularities embedded in the system's ordinary mode of function. We identify the fit of strong anticipation's properties to J. J. Gibson's ecological approach and in so doing introduce the possibility of a potentially deep connection between them, namely, that the coordination of perception with surroundings (direct perception) is a special case of strong anticipation.     

The functional‐cognitive framework as a tool for accelerating progress in cognitive neuroscience: On the benefits of bridging rather than reducing levels of analyses

The subject matter of neuroscience research is complex, and synthesising the wealth of data from this research to better understand mental processes is challenging. A useful strategy, therefore, may be to distinguish explicitly between the causal effects of the environment on behaviour (i.e. functional analyses) and the mental processes that mediate these effects (i.e. cognitive analyses). In this article, we describe how the functional‐cognitive (F‐C) framework can accelerate cognitive neuroscience and also advance a functional treatment of brain activity. We first highlight that cognitive neuroscience can particularly benefit from the F‐C approach by providing an alternative to the problematic practice of reducing cognitive constructs to behavioural and/or neural proxies. Next, we outline how functional (behaviour–environment) relations can serve as a bridge between cognitive and neural processes by restoring mental constructs to their original role as heuristic tools. Finally, we give some examples of how both cognitive neuroscience and traditional functional approaches can mutually benefit from the F‐C framework.     

Gender differences in supervisors’ multidimensional performance ratings: Large sample evidence

We examined gender differences in supervisor ratings of overall job performance and 37 performance dimensions. Based on data from a large, diverse sample of managers (N = 3,367) and nonmanagers (N = 9,670), we found that gender had only minimal effects on ratings for a small number of specific job performance dimensions. This was generally true regardless of whether the job performance dimension was more agentic or communal in nature, whether the job was a managerial or a nonmanagerial position, and regardless of the proportion of men or women that traditionally occupy a specific job. Overall, our results are more consistent with the gender similarities hypothesis than the agency/communion paradigm, role congruity theory, and the lack of fit model. We discuss future research avenues and implications.