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.     

Response styles in the assessment of anger expression

This study demonstrates how mixture distribution item response models can be used to detect different response styles in the clinical assessment of anger expression. Analyses of 3 subscales of the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory in a clinical sample of 4,497 patients revealed that there are different response styles that manifest themselves in 2- and 3-class solutions. These solutions are robust across subsamples. Response styles reflect both psychologically meaningful biases (i.e., social desirability) and nonmeaningful response category preferences. Person parameters that correct for class membership (and thus, for response styles) are computed and compared with raw scores. The implications of these results for research on clinical assessment are discussed.     

Backward conditioning: mediation by the context

The information acquired in backward conditioning (i.e., outcome-->cue) was assessed in 3 Pavlovian lick-suppression experiments with water-deprived rats as subjects. Experiment 1 confirmed previous research that few outcome-->cue pairings made the cue into a conditioned excitor and additionally showed that massive posttraining extinction of the training context attenuated a backward-trained cue's excitatory value. Experiment 2 found that many outcome-->cue pairings made the cue into a conditioned inhibitor and that the same context manipulation attenuated this inhibitory value. Experiment 3 confirmed the observations of Experiments 1 and 2 and demonstrated that these effects of context extinction were specific to backward-trained cues conditioned in the extinguished context. These results are interpreted in terms of cue-->context and context-->outcome associations.     

Economic Antecedents of Foster Care

Individual and ecological research suggests that rising unemployment may affect the incidence of violence through two countervailing mechanisms suggested by frustration–aggression theory. The first, or provocation effect, assumes increased violence among persons who feel anger because they believe their job loss was arbitrary. The second, or inhibition effect, posits less violence among employed persons who attempt to reduce their chances of job loss by curtailing behavior objectionable to employers. The literature also reports that these mechanisms affect victimization measured as foster care sought by the state for abused children. The foster care finding, although consistent with theory and important for basic as well as applied reasons, arises from methods that cannot rule out several rival hypotheses. We revisit this research and apply improved methods to test the reported association in Los Angeles and San Francisco counties. We find that, as implied by the provocation and inhibition mechanisms, differences in monthly prevalence of foster care placements increase with modest increases in unemployment but decline when unemployment becomes much higher than usual levels.     

Demonstrating a wordlikeness effect on nonword repetition performance in a conduction aphasic patient

The purpose of this study was to identify the nature of the deficit for a conduction aphasic patient in order to evaluate two different theories of conduction aphasia. First, a conduction aphasic patient FS was tested on auditory word-pair discrimination, word-repetition, and picture-naming. The results of these tasks indicated that her deficit was likely to be post-lexical rather than perceptual or lexical. Next, we examined her repetition performance for two types of nonwords (high-wordlike and low-wordlike nonwords) to distinguish the two theories. FS exhibited a wordlikeness effect: she produced more correct moras and more correct combinations of moras for high-wordlike nonwords than low-wordlike nonwords. We conclude that she had difficulty in maintaining stable phonological representations of verbal materials in the output buffer.     

Gay Identity and the Experience of Gay Social Stress1

The hypothesis that identity commitment affects the experience of identity-related stressors brings identity theory and social stress research together. Research findings are not yet conclusive regarding this hypothesis. Part of the contradictory research findings stem from inadequate knowledge about the causal direction of the relationship between depression and commitment. The authors analyze if identity commitment interacts with social stress in its impact on mental well-being. Only chronic stress has a moderate impact on the experience of depression. Commitment toward the gay identity did not buffer the experience of stress. The authors also use a nonrecursive model to establish the causal relationship between depression and commitment. They show that it is depression that lowers identity commitment. It is concluded that identity commitment cannot act as a buffer against identity-related stress because commitment is affected by the resulting distress.