Foundations of risk measurement. II. Effects of gains on risk

This paper presents the second part of a two-part study on axiomatizations of perceived risk. The first part (P. C. Fishburn, Foundations of risk measurement, I. Risk as probable loss. Mimeo., Bell Laboratories, 1981) focussed on risk as probable loss. The second part considers measures of risk that include effects of gains on perceived risk. It adopts the position that increased gains can reduce the risk of fixed probable losses without completely negating this risk. Moreover, every prospect that has no chance of yielding a loss is presumed to have no risk. Several numerical measures of risk are axiomatized. The more specialized are separable in gains and losses. Further specializations isolate the effects of loss and gain probabilities.     

The religious physician

In order to understand what it means to be a physician, we must, according to Dr. Edmund Pellegrino, analyze four words that capture the essence of the medical enterprise: profession, patient, compassion, and consent. The resultant model provides a rational and secular basis upon which the Jewish or Christian physician can then build an understanding of medicine in its peculiarly religious form. This religious form is likewise characterized by four words: vocation, neighbor, love, and covenant. An analysis of these words provides a model of and for the religious physician.     

The debilitating effect of exposure to noncontingent escape: A test of the learned helplessness model

Two studies were conducted to test the hypothesis that exposure to non-contingent escape leads to performance deficits similar to those observed when subjects are exposed to noncontingent aversive outcomes from which there is no escape, and that causal attributions mediate these deficits. Previous attempts to produce “appetitive helplessness” (deficits resulting from exposure to noncontingent positive events) have been plagued by subjects' tendency to believe that they are responsible for positive events. In Experiment 1, 40 subjects were exposed to contingent or noncontingent noise escape trials. As predicted by the learned helplessness model, subjects who received inescapable noise performed less well on a subsequent anagram task than subjects exposed to escapable noise. Similarly, subjects who escaped from the noise owing to the benevolence of a powerful other rather than because of their own efforts, showed performance deficits paralleling those of the inescapable noise subjects. In Experiment 2, subjects who escaped an aversive tone through no effort of their own showed subsequent performance deficits, but globality of their self-reported attributions did not predict subsequent anagram performance. The results of these studies provide support for the hypothesis that uncontrollability, independent of the valence of a particular outcome, is responsible for helplessness deficits, but do not support the mediational role of attributions, at least in the laboratory.     

The acquisition and maintenance of behavioral skills: a response to Michael

A response to Michael's (1980) presidential address to the Association for Behavior Analysis is presented. The position is taken that in many instances we have failed to adopt a behavioral approach to dealing with problems within our field concomitant with the shift from an emphasis on behaviorism and a science of behavior to technology. It is argued that we need to be sensitive to the data and consider the contingencies that are operating within the culture. A general strategy and some tactics are presented to acquire and maintain behavioral skills.     

The Headache Symptom Questionnaire: Discriminant classificatory ability and headache syndromes suggested by a factor analysis

A brief Headache Symptom Questionnaire was administered to 129 chronic headache Sufferers. The questionnaire accurately classified 68.42% of headache subjects in their proper diagnostic category, comparable to, but statistically less accurate than, the 86.4% agreement between expert headache diagnosticians using clinical interviews. Results of a factor analysis of the Headache Symptom Questionnaire lend support for their being two commonly accepted global headache categories—vascular/migraine and muscle contraction—and one headache dimension concerned with duration of headache pain. Combined migraine-muscle contraction headache was found to be related more to migraine than to muscle contraction headache, and cluster headaches emerged as a separate clinical entity, not loading positively on any factor and loading negatively on all three.This research was supported in part by Grant NS-15235 from the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke.     

Perceived control in continuous loud noise

The effects of two types of perceived control were assessed for performance during and following exposure to continuous loud noise at 90 dBC. Subjects performed a tracking task during exposure and the Stroop test in the period following exposure. Control could be effected either (1) by attenuating the intensity of the noise or (2) by reducing the difficulty of the tracking task. In both cases subjects were encouraged not to exercise control. Performance in treatments involving loud (90 dBC) and soft (55 dBC) noise served as baseline conditions. Perceived control of task difficulty accentuated the tendency for root-mean-square error to rise during the tracking task. There were no significant effects of noise intensi ty on tracking performance. Loud noise reduced the incidence of errors in the Stroop test but perceived control failed to influence this effect. The results are discussed in terms of the generality of perceived control phenomena.     

A real-time software voice key and an application

This paper describes a real-time software voice key that can be used to “locate” speech onset and offset within a 4-msec “window” and to distinguish among several classes of speech sounds (e.g., sibilance. nonsibilance, aspiration, and silence). It is particularly appropriate for applications in which the course of a program controlling an experiment is dependent on what, when, and how a subject utters. Additionally, an application of this voice key is outlined with the intent of suggesting other methodological possibilities and innovations to phoneticians and psychologists considering research projects in which the precise measurement of speech onset latency or the duration of specific speech segments, including pauses, is desired.