Working memory load and its impact on space-based and motion-based stimulus-response correspondence (SRC) effects

ABSTRACT

If spatial stimulus-response correspondence (SRC) effect results from automatic processes, cognitive load should not affect this effect. However, if spatial SRC effect is based on the interference of cognitive codes, cognitive load should influence it. Furthermore, the motion-based SRC effect should be affected by the cognitive load, as this SRC effect is related to the cognitive codes interference. In this study, participants performed combined tasks for space-based and motion-based SRC effects without working memory load (WML), or under spatial and verbal WML to see if cognitive load affects both SRC effects or just one. Results demonstrated that space-based SRC remained intact from WML, while the motion-based SRC was influenced by WML, although only in limited degree. This supports the notion that automatic processes underlie space-based SRC effect, whereas the motion-based SRC effect is related to cognitive codes interference, but the latter requires further investigation.     

Effects of Rate of Reinforcement and Rate of Change on Choice Behaviour in Transition

In two experiments with pigeons, a single variable-interval schedule assigned reinforcers to two response keys on a percentage basis. The percentage of reinforcers assigned to each key was changed every few sessions, and subjects' choice responses were recorded before and after each change. In Experiment 1, the overall rate of reinforcement was varied across conditions. The pigeons' choice responses adapted more quickly to a change in the reinforcement percentages when the overall reinforcement rates were higher, but acquisition rates varied by only about a factor of 3, whereas reinforcement rates were varied by about a factor of 9. In Experiment 2, the reinforcement percentages changed about every 8 sessions in Phases 1 and 3, but every 1 or 2 sessions in Phase 2. Pigeons' choice responses adapted to a change in reinforcement percentages more quickly in Phase 2 than in Phases 1 and 3. The results from both experiments pose difficulties for several prominent models of transitional choice behaviour. The results suggest that each successive reinforcer has more impact on a subject's subsequent choice behaviour when the overall rate of reinforcement is lower and when the reinforcement contingencies have changed frequently in the recent past.     

Philosophy,history, and the social commitment

Studies in East European Thought -     

Rear negativity: Verbal messages coming from behind are perceived as more negative

Many studies have explored the evaluative effects of vertical (up/down) or horizontal (left/right) spatial locations. However, little is known about the role of information that comes from the front and back. Basing our investigations on multiple theoretical considerations, we propose that spatial location of sounds is a cue for message valence, such that a message coming from behind is interpreted as more negative than a message presented in front of a listener. Here we show across a variety of manipulations and dependent measures that this effect occurs in the domain of social information. Our data are most compatible with theoretical accounts which propose that social information presented from behind is associated with uncertainty and lack of control, which is amplified in conditions of self-relevance.     

Is It Harmful? A Thomistic Perspective on Risk Science in Social Welfare

Journal of Religion and Health - Probabilistic information is used increasingly, from medical research to weather forecasting. The relationship between probability and causality requires an...     

The Middle Wittgenstein’s Critique of Frege

ABSTRACT

This article aims to analyse Wittgenstein’s 1929–1932 notes concerning Frege’s critique of what is referred to as old formalism in the philosophy of mathematics. Wittgenstein disagreed with Frege’s critique and, in his notes, outlined his own assessment of formalism. First of all, he approvingly foregrounded its mathematics-game comparison and insistence that rules precede the meanings of expressions. In this article, I recount Frege’s critique of formalism and address Wittgenstein’s assessment of it to show that his remarks are not so much a critique of Frege as rather a defence of the formalist anti-metaphysical investment.