The economics of the law of effect.

A corollary of the law of effect predicts that the larger the reinforcement, the greater the rate of responding. However, an animal must eat more small portions than large portions to obtain the same daily intake, and one would predict, therefore, that when eating smaller portions an efficient animal would eat less (conserving time and energy) and/or respond faster (conserving time). The latter of these predictions was supported by the present experiments with free-feeding rats for which portion size (pellet size or duration of feeder presentation) and portion price within meals were varied. Response rate was a function of the unit price (responses/g) of food: Rats responded faster when portions were smaller or when prices were higher. Meal size and frequency were relatively unaffected by unit price, but were influenced by the price of meal initiation. The results are discussed in relation to the economic differences between traditional operant and free-feeding paradigms and to both traditional and more recent formulations of the law of effect.     

A path-analytic approach to the relations between parental traits and acceptance and adolescent adjustment

A path-analytic model was employed to examine relations between parent-reported instrumental and expressive traits, child-reported parental acceptance, and adolescent self-esteem and self-consciousness. Analyses were run separately for each parent-child dyad. It was predicted that any relations between parental traits and child adjustment would be mediated by parental acceptance, especially for expressive traits. This prediction was confirmed for families with daughters. The findings suggest, for the daughter dyads, that parents with expressive traits are more likely to communicate acceptance which, in turn, fosters child adjustment. Of the total variance accounted for in the child adjustment indices, most was due to the contribution of parental acceptance to the model. A comparison of these results with those of previous studies suggests that relations between parental traits and the other variables in the path model are less dramatic when parents' report of their own personality characteristics are employed than when child report is employed. Future research may be improved by serious consideration of mediating variables rather than examining relations between distally-related parent and child variables.The research reported here was supported by Father Flanagan's Boys Home, Inc., by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Family Relations in Early Adolescence, and by a Graduate School Research Fellowship awarded to the senior author from Virginia Commonwealth University. The authors are grateful to Karl Kelley for his statistical advice.     

On the status of nonconscious processes in human cognition: comment on Reber

Two issues are discussed. The first one pertains to the generality of the nonconscious learning processes and their somewhat paradoxical status in cognitive psychology. We argue that the ability of the human cognitive system to nonconsciously acquire complex knowledge structures is one of its elementary and indispensable properties. Moreover, the existence of this ability constitutes one of the necessary metatheoretical assumptions of contemporary cognitive psychology. Nevertheless, the contemporary cognitive psychology literature often implies that it is only one of many controversial and unusual phenomena. The second issue pertains to the distinction between the so-called primitive unconscious and the sophisticated unconscious as proposed by Reber (1989).     

Imagery mnemonic training in a patient with primary degenerative dementia

A visual-imagery mnemonic was used as a memory training aid for a 66-year-old patient with primary degenerative dementia. Length of retention time was used as the primary outcome measure. The application of the mnemonic procedure extended the length of retention time for name-face recall from baseline. Performance gains were sustained at one month.