Testing a positional model of the Hebb effect

In two experiments, we investigated the hypothesis that a strengthening of position-item associations underlies the improvement seen in performance on an immediate serial recall task, for a list that is surreptitiously repeated every third trial. Having established a strong effect of repetition, performance was tested on transfer lists in which half the items held the same position as in the repeated list (S-items) and the remainder moved (D-items). In Experiment 1, S-items showed a small advantage in order errors over control and D-items. A second experiment tested whether a design feature in Experiment 1 underlay this advantage. When the experimental design was better controlled, no improvement was shown for either S- or D-items over controls. These data were shown to be inconsistent with the results of computer simulations of a positional model. An alternative model is outlined.     

Attention to phobic stimuli during exposure: the effect of distraction on anxiety reduction, self-efficacy and perceived control

To replicate and extend the finding that distraction facilitates between session anxiety reduction (), 27 spider phobics underwent three 10-min sessions of in vivo exposure followed by one 10-min exposure session at a 4-week follow-up, while having either stimulus-relevant focused conversation or stimulus-irrelevant distracting conversation with the experimenter. Physiological arousal and subjective anxiety were measured during exposure, and self-efficacy, perceived control and performance on a behavioural task were measured at pre-treatment, post session-3, and follow-up. Monitoring and blunting coping styles were also measured at pre-treatment to assess their impact on treatment outcome. Despite equal physiological activation between the groups, those who underwent distracted exposure showed greater reductions in subjective fear within and between sessions, and showed greater increases in self-efficacy ratings, internal perceived control and performance on a behavioural task. Coping style did not interact with the effect of distraction or focusing during exposure, however blunters had less subjective anxiety reduction overall, particularly when they underwent focused exposure. Results are discussed in terms of the emotional processing model and self-efficacy theory.     

The effects of genotype, foraging role, and sucrose responsiveness on the tactile learning performance of honey bees (Apis mellifera L.)

We analyzed sucrose responsiveness and associative tactile learning in two genetic strains of honey bees under laboratory conditions. These strains differ in their foraging behavior. Bees of the "high" strain preferentially collect pollen. "Low"-strain bees mainly forage for nectar. Responsiveness to different sucrose concentrations and tactile learning were examined using the proboscis extension reflex. Acquisition, extinction of conditioned responses, and responses to an alternative tactile stimulus were tested. High-strain bees are more responsive to sucrose than low-strain bees. Regardless of genotype, pollen foragers are more responsive to sucrose than nectar foragers. In bees of both strains we find the same relationship between responsiveness to sucrose and acquisition. Bees responding to low sucrose concentrations show more often the conditioned response during acquisition than those responding only to higher sucrose concentrations. Extinction of conditioned responses depends on the response probability during acquisition. Discrimination between the two tactile stimuli is affected by genotype but not by responsiveness to sucrose. High-strain bees discriminate better than low-strain bees. Our experiments thus establish links between division of labor, responsiveness to sucrose, and associative learning in honey bees.     

Reverse production effect: children recognize novel words better when they are heard rather than produced

This research investigates the effect of production on 4.5‐ to 6‐year‐old children's recognition of newly learned words. In Experiment 1, children were taught four novel words in a produced or heard training condition during a brief training phase. In Experiment 2, children were taught eight novel words, and this time training condition was in a blocked design. Immediately after training, children were tested on their recognition of the trained novel words using a preferential looking paradigm. In both experiments, children recognized novel words that were produced and heard during training, but demonstrated better recognition for items that were heard. These findings are opposite to previous results reported in the literature with adults and children. Our results show that benefits of speech production for word learning are dependent on factors such as task complexity and the developmental stage of the learner.     

Food sharing and feeding another person suggest intimacy; two studies of American college students

Ethnographic work indicates that food transfer has social significance, but food transfer has not previously been considered as a nonverbal communication channel. We categorize social food transfer along two dimensions: nature of the behaviour in the transfer (X shares food with or feeds Y), and the state of the food transferred (Y's food never contacted by X, or Y's food previously bitten/tasted/touched by X; we call the latter food consubstantiation (shared substance)). These two dimensions generate the four conditions investigated in this study: no sharing, sharing, sharing with consubstantiation, and feeding. The social significance of these types of situations was assessed in two ways. American college students indicated in a questionnaire both the extent to which they transfer food within different relationships, and what they took to be normative among American college students. Second, a different group of students participated in an Asch impression study in which they observed a videotape of two young adults of opposite sex eating at a restaurant, with the variable across subjects being the four conditions designated above. Viewers were asked to assess the relationship between the young adults, and to rate the degree of intimacy between the adults in terms of mutual feelings and acts of intimacy (e.g. sharing drinks, touching, having sexual relations). Results from both studies are congruent, and indicate that sharing implies a positive/friendly social relationship, and feeding implies a stronger, often romantic relationship. Consubstantiation superimposed on sharing modestly increased judgments of intimacy and closeness of relationship. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A comparison of perceptions of counselling in Ireland and the United States

The present study compared 50 Irish and 50 US graduate and undergraduate psychology and counselling students on the ways they rated counsellors, counselling, and group counselling on a semantic differential. Males were also contrasted to females on these concepts. A 2 2 2 2 2 MANOVA was used for the data analysis where the independent variables were country, class, and gender, and the dependent variables were the evaluative and potency scales of the semantic differential for counsellors, counselling, and group counselling. The Irish sample rated the potency of counselling significantly higher as did women. Counselling graduates evaluated group counselling and counsellors significantly higher than psychology undergraduates.     

Impact of Interpersonal Conflict on Individuals High in Unmitigated Communion1

The current study examined the impact of interpersonal conflict on mood and physical symptoms for individuals who scored high on a personality characteristic called unmitigated communion (UC), as compared to individuals who did not score high in UC. UC is defined as a focus on others to the exclusion of the self. Forty‐one undergraduate students participated in 7 consecutive nightly interviews. Participants described their social interactions, indicated whether the interaction involved interpersonal conflict, and indicated their distress and physical symptoms at the end of the day. Multilevel modeling analysis demonstrated that conflict adversely affected UC and non‐UC individuals similarly on the same day, but had a more negative impact for UC individuals on the following day.     

Learning nonwords: the Hebb repetition effect as a model of word learning

Page and Norris [(2008). Is there a common mechanism underlying word-form learning and the Hebb repetition effect? Experimental data and a modelling framework. In A. Thorn &; M. P. A. Page (Eds.), Interactions between short-term and long-term memory in the verbal domain; (2009). A model linking immediate serial recall, the Hebb repetition effect and the learning of phonological word forms. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 364(1536), 3737–3753. doi:10.1098/rstb.2009.0173] have suggested that the Hebb [(1961). Distinctive features of learning in the higher animal. In J. F. Delafresnaye (Ed.), Brain mechanisms and learning (pp. 37–46). Oxford: Blackwell] repetition paradigm can be considered as a laboratory analogue of word learning. In Hebb learning experiments, the lists of items to be learned are presented as discrete sequences. In contrast, novel words are, by definition, always heard as a single coarticulated whole. Might this undermine the claim that Hebb learning can shed light on word learning? Here we report an experiment comparing learning sequences of isolated syllables with learning the same sequences spoken as a single coarticulated nonword. The pattern of learning was similar in the two cases, suggesting that the Hebb repetition paradigm can indeed provide valuable insights into the way novel word forms are learned.     

When Does Sexuality‐Based Discrimination Motivate Political Participation?

The established consensus in political behavior research is that discrimination by political institutions motivates marginalized groups to vote and protest their conditions. However, existing studies miss a comparison between states with high and low levels of political discrimination, and they miss a comparison between states before and after the development of opportunities for groups to mobilize. In particular, a growing body of research shows that sexual‐minority groups face discrimination to varying degrees across Europe. Sexual minorities in states with high levels of discrimination lack the support of other minority‐group members, which encourages political participation. The analysis is based on surveys of 30 European countries, conducted before and after the 2004 European Union enlargement, which provided a stronger political‐opportunity structure for sexual minorities in Eastern Europe. Eastern Europe and Western Europe provided contexts with relatively high and low levels of sexuality‐based discrimination, respectively. In Western Europe, those who report sexuality‐based discrimination exhibited higher levels of participation, in comparison to those who did not report discrimination. In Eastern Europe, those who report sexuality‐based discrimination exhibited lower levels of participation before the 2004 enlargement, but they did not exhibit these lower levels after the 2004 enlargement.