Big five domain and gender as determinants of rater agreement: a comparison based on self- and peer-rating on the Polish Adjective List

The study tested the hypothesis that with respect to the big five domains associated with temperament, agreement between self- and others' ratings is higher than with respect to other domains. The same was expected with respect to peer–peer agreement. There were two groups of subjects: self-raters (n=639) and peer-raters (n=1278). All subjects completed the Polish Adjective List (PAL), which consists of five scales: Dynamism, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Excitability and Intellect, which are Polish representations of the big five personality factors extracted in American lexical studies. Each target person completed one self-rating inventory and was assessed by two peer-raters. Domains associated with temperament (Dynamism and Excitability) elicited higher agreement between self-and peer-ratings than Agreeableness and Intellect, although in case of Conscientiousness judges appeared to be as accurate as in the case of Excitability. The pattern was even less clear with respect to the peer–peer comparison. The other finding shows that in case of female raters there was more agreement between self- and peer-rating, than in case of male raters.     

Slow echo: facial EMG evidence for the delay of spontaneous,but not voluntary,emotional mimicry in children with autism spectrum disorders

Spontaneous mimicry, including that of emotional facial expressions, is important for socio‐emotional skills such as empathy and communication. Those skills are often impacted in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Successful mimicry requires not only the activation of the response, but also its appropriate speed. Yet, previous studies examined ASD differences in only response magnitude. The current study investigated timing and magnitude of spontaneous and voluntary mimicry in ASD children and matched controls using facial electromyography (EMG). First, participants viewed and recognized happy, sad, fear, anger, disgust and neutral expressions presented at different durations. Later, participants voluntarily mimicked the expressions. There were no group differences on emotion recognition and amplitude of expression‐appropriate EMG activity. However, ASD participants’ spontaneous, but not voluntary, mimicry activity was delayed by about 160 ms. This delay occurred across different expressions and presentation durations. We relate these findings to the literature on mirroring and temporal dynamics of social interaction.     

Patients' interpretations of verbal expressions of probability: implications for securing informed consent to medical interventions

Physicians often use verbal expressions of probability to characterize their uncertainty about outcomes and the risks or side effects of proposed therapies. However, there is an extensive literature that documents the inherent vagueness of such expressions. Because of the potential importance of probability terms to physician-patient communication and decision-making, we asked patients to tell us the odds they thought applicable to the term "rare," as used by their physician to discuss the likelihood of an adverse outcome from surgery. Patients were randomly assigned to one of three outcome groups: death, severe heart attack, or severe pneumonia. Demographic data were elicited from each subject, as were indicators of present health status, medical history for certain diseases and surgery, and life expectancy. Linear regression and ANOVA analyses of the responses indicate that patient age, education level, perceived health status, and recency of experience with disease and medical care influence patients' numeric interpretations. We discuss the implications of these results.     

BASIC AND APPLIED RESEARCH ON CHOICE RESPONDING

Choice responding refers to the manner in which individuals allocate their time or responding among available response options. In this article, we first review basic investigations that have identified and examined variables that influence choice responding, such as response effort and reinforcement rate, immediacy, and quality. We then describe recent bridge and applied studies that illustrate how the results of basic research on choice responding can help to account for human behavior in natural environments and improve clinical assessments and interventions.     

Fixed-ratio performance with and without a postreinforcement timeout

Pigeons pecked a key, producing food reinforcement on fixed-ratio (FR) schedules requiring 50, 100, or 150 responses. In each session, 30-second timeouts were inserted before a random half of the FR trials, whereas the other trials began immediately after reinforcement. In general, preratio pauses were shorter on trials preceded by timeouts. On these trials, the probability of a first response tended to be highest in the first 20 seconds of the trials, suggesting that the shorter pauses were the result of transient behavioral contrast. Direct observations and analyses of interresponse times (IRTs) after the preratio pause indicated that IRTs could be grouped into three categories: (1) IRTs of about .1 second, which were produced by small head movements in the vicinity of the key; (2) IRTs of about .3 second, which were produced by distinct pecking motions; and (3) IRTs greater than .5 second, which were accompanied by pausing or movements away from the key. At all ratio sizes, as a subject progressed through a trial, the probability of a long IRT decreased, whereas the probability of an intermediate IRT usually increased at first and then decreased. The probability of a short IRT increased monotonically across a trial. The results show that responding changes systematically as a subject progresses through a ratio on an FR schedule. Some characteristics of performance varied as functions of the absolute size of the response requirement, whereas others appeared to depend on the relative location within a ratio (i.e., the proportion of the ratio completed at a given moment).     

Preferences for and against stimuli paired with food.

Pigeons were presented with a concurrent-chains schedule in which terminal-link entries were assigned to two response keys on a percentage basis. The terminal links were fixed delays that sometimes ended with food and sometimes did not. In most conditions, 80% of the terminal links were assigned to one key, but a smaller percentage of the terminal links ended with food for this key, so the number of food reinforcers delivered by the two alternatives was equal. When the same terminal-link stimuli (orange houselights) were used for both alternatives, the pigeons showed a preference for whichever alternative delivered more frequent terminal links. When different terminal-link stimuli (green vs. red houselights) were used for the two alternatives, the pigeons showed a preference for whichever alternative delivered fewer terminal links when terminal-link durations were long, and no systematic preferences when terminal-link durations were short. This pattern of results was consistent with the predictions of Grace's (1994) contextual choice model. Preference for the alternative that delivered more frequent terminal links was usually stronger in the first few sessions of a condition than at the end of a condition, suggesting that the conditioned reinforcing effect of the additional terminal-link presentation was, in part, transitory.     

Fixed and variable ratios and delays: further tests of an equivalence rule

A discrete-trial procedure was used to measure pigeons' choices between fixed and variable ratio schedules and between fixed and variable delays before reinforcement. A peck at a green key produced a reinforcement schedule that was constant within a condition but varied across conditions. A peck at a red key produced a ratio schedule (or, in other conditions, a simple delay) whose size was increased or decreased many times a session, depending on the subject's previous choices. The purpose of these adjustments was to estimate an indifference point--a ratio size (or delay duration) at which the subject chose each key about equally often. The results were used to test a simple "equivalence rule" for choices between fixed and variable schedules (Mazur, 1984). This rule, which was applied without using free parameters, predicted the major trends in the obtained indifference points from both ratio and delay conditions. However, some small but consistent deviations from the predictions were apparent. Better predictions were generated with a more complex equation, which included parameters reflecting the subjects' sensitivities to delay of reinforcement and to events of different probabilities. It was concluded that a successful equivalence rule must include parameters that can be adjusted to describe the effects of delay and probability in a given experimental setting. Once these parameters are estimated, however, choices involving both fixed and variable delays and fixed and variable ratios can be accurately predicted with the same equation.     

A comparison of delays and ratio requirements in self-control choice.

In a discrete-trial procedure, pigeons could choose between 2-s and 6-s access to grain by making a single key peck. In Phase 1, the pigeons obtained both reinforcers by responding on fixed-ratio schedules. In Phase 2, they received both reinforcers after simple delays, arranged by fixed-time schedules, during which no responses were required. In Phase 3, the 2-s reinforcer was available through a fixed-time schedule and the 6-s reinforcer was available through a fixed-ratio schedule. In all conditions, the size of the delay or ratio leading to the 6-s reinforcer was systematically increased or decreased several times each session, permitting estimation of an "indifference point," the schedule size at which a subject chose each alternative equally often. By varying the size of the schedule for the 2-s reinforcer across conditions, several such indifference points were obtained from both fixed-time conditions and fixed-ratio conditions. The resulting "indifference curves" from fixed-time conditions and from fixed-ratio conditions were similar in shape, and they suggested that a hyperbolic equation describes the relation between ratio size and reinforcement value as well as the relation between reinforcer delay and its reinforcement value. The results from Phase 3 showed that subjects chose fixed-time schedules over fixed-ratio schedules that generated the same average times between a choice response and reinforcement.     

Matrix representations for structural strengthenings of a propositional logic

The aim of this paper is to show that the operations of forming direct products and submatrices suffice to construct exhaustive semantics for all structural strengthenings of the consequence determined by a given class of logical matrices.     

Mathematical models and the experimental analysis of behavior

The use of mathematical models in the experimental analysis of behavior has increased over the years, and they offer several advantages. Mathematical models require theorists to be precise and unambiguous, often allowing comparisons of competing theories that sound similar when stated in words. Sometimes different mathematical models may make equally accurate predictions for a large body of data. In such cases, it is important to find and investigate situations for which the competing models make different predictions because, unless two models are actually mathematically equivalent, they are based on different assumptions about the psychological processes that underlie an observed behavior. Mathematical models developed in basic behavioral research have been used to predict and control behavior in applied settings, and they have guided research in other areas of psychology. A good mathematical model can provide a common framework for understanding what might otherwise appear to be diverse and unrelated behavioral phenomena. Because psychologists vary in their quantitative skills and in their tolerance for mathematical equations, it is important for those who develop mathematical models of behavior to find ways (such as verbal analogies, pictorial representations, or concrete examples) to communicate the key premises of their models to nonspecialists.