THE CENTER FOR ADVANCED STUDY INRELIGION AND SCIENCE, AND ZYGON: JOURNAL OFRELIGION AND SCIENCE-A TWENTY-YEAR VIEW

Abstract. This essay gives a brief history and presents an analysisof the aims and accomplishments of the two institutions as seen bythe author. The analysis seeks to describe and justify some of theirbasic presuppositions. Primary has been their belief that scientifi-cally informed understandings of religion do enrich our apprecia-tion of and faith in it. For instance, religion's recently discoveredroles in the evolution and development of sociocultural systemsand personalities provide new credibility and importance for reli-gious heritage. Recent translations between contemporary scien-tific and ancient religious concepts give new hope for religiousreform, revitalization, and effectiveness for human salvation in anage of science.     

Re-evaluation of Wolpe and Dollard/Miller

The major inadequacy in both Wolpe's and Dollard and Miller's learning-theory approach to therapy, is an oversimplified view of “stimulus” and “response”. Dollard and Miller's analysis of conventional psychotherapy accurately reflects the heavy emphasis on verbal mediation of emotional and instrumental responses in psychotherapy. Wolpe's work, on the other hand, belongs to a different tradition: his techniques involve direct intervention, by a variety of means, into the behaviour patterns to be eliminated, and direct training of new behaviour patterns. The debate over the relative merits of verbal versus non-verbal approaches to therapy has been confounded by a debate over ethical or philosophical attitudes.     

Generalization decrement in human contingency learning

An association between a cue and an outcome will generalize to a similar novel cue to some extent, but not completely. Learning theorists refer to the discrepancy between responding elicited by the original cue and the novel cue as a generalization decrement. Two experiments used a contingency learning task with human participants to compare the size of a generalization decrement between configurations of cues that were altered by adding or subtracting compositional elements. The results suggest that adding elements to a configuration can produce a generalization decrement, but removing elements produces a more robust generalization decrement. Furthermore, the generalization decrement caused by adding elements was not likely to be caused by competing orienting responses. The results are used to contrast Pearce's (1987, 1994) and Wagner's (2003) models of stimulus generalization.     

Outcome additivity and outcome maximality influence cue competition in human causal learning

Recent research suggests that outcome additivity pretraining modulates blocking in human causal learning. However, the existing evidence confounds outcome additivity and outcome maximality. Here the authors present evidence for the influence of presenting information about outcome maximality (Experiment 1) and outcome additivity (Experiment 2) on subsequent forward blocking. The results of Experiment 3 confirm that, with outcome maximality controlled, outcome additivity affects backward blocking but not release from overshadowing. Finally, the results of Experiment 4 demonstrate that information about outcome additivity has a similar effect on forward blocking if presented after the blocking training instead of before. The results are compatible with the idea that blocking results from inferential processes at the time of testing and not from a failure to acquire associative strength during training.     

Recovery from blocking between outcomes

Contemporary associative learning research largely focuses on cue competition phenomena that occur when 2 cues are paired with a common outcome. Little research has been conducted to investigate similar phenomena occurring when a single cue is trained with 2 outcomes. Three conditioned lick suppression experiments with rats assessed whether treatments known to alleviate blocking between cues would also attenuate blocking between outcomes. In Experiment 1, conditioned responding recovered from blocking between outcomes when a long retention interval was interposed between training and testing. Experiment 2 obtained recovery from blocking between outcomes when the blocking outcome was extinguished after the blocking treatment. In Experiment 3, a recovery from blocking between outcomes occurred when a reminder stimulus was presented in a novel context prior to testing. Collectively, these studies demonstrate that blocking of outcomes, like blocking of cues, appears to be caused by a deficit in the expression of an acquired association.     

Phonological neighborhood density in the picture naming of young children who stutter: preliminary study

The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of phonological neighborhood density on the speech reaction time (SRT) and errors of children who do and do not stutter during a picture-naming task. Participants were nine 3-5-year-old children who stutter (CWS) matched in age and gender to nine children who do not stutter (CWNS). Initial analyses indicated that both CWNS and CWS were significantly faster (i.e., exhibited shorter SRTs) and more accurate on phonologically sparse than phonologically dense words, findings consistent with those found with older children (Newman & German, 2002). Further analyses indicated that talker group differences in receptive language scores weakened these findings. These preliminary findings were taken to suggest that phonological neighborhood density appears to influence the picture-naming speed and accuracy of preschool-aged children. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES: The reader will learn about and be able to: (1) recognize the relevance of examining phonological variables in relation to childhood stuttering; and (2) describe the method of measuring speech reaction times and errors during a picture-naming task as a means of assessing linguistic skills.