Delayed Matching to Sample With Outcome-Specific Contingencies in Mentally Retarded Humans

Four mentally retarded human subjects performed delayed identity matching-to-sample tasks under conditions of outcome-specific and nonspecific reinforcement contingencies. With outcome-specific contingencies, experimentally defined correct selections of different discriminative stimuli were perfectly correlated with one of two different consequences (e.g., different foods); with nonspecific contingencies, correct selections were equally likely to be followed by either consequence. Previous studies with pigeons have shown consistently higher accuracy on delayed-matching tasks with outcome-specific contingencies. Results of this study failed to replicate that finding. For three subjects, accuracy scores were similar in specific and nonspecific conditions at fixed delays ranging from 0 s to 5 s. For the other subject, delay duration varied within each session, and accuracy scores improved across sessions regardless of outcome condition.

     

Individuation and paideia

This article attempts to discover an important historical precedent for the concept of individuation in the idea of paideia , which today, mistakenly, is often understood to have been simply the form of 'education' practised in ancient Greece. Paideia , however, was not limited to the instruction of youth and was based on no fixed programmes. It was conceived as continuing throughout the life of the individual, and as a development of natural, in-born potential. Paideia articulated a notion of 'inner culture', or cultura animi , which has since receded from Western civilization, with its anti-psychological emphasis on progress, specialization and extra-version, and with its notion that a civilization's 'culture' is primarily defined by its social structures and material tools. Present-day interest in the Jungian concept of individuation can thus be seen as a return of the repressed. An analysis of the Telemachy - the opening cantos of the Odyssey - in which Odysseus' son, Telemachus, accomplishes his passage to adulthood, reveals the need for the realization of natural potential to be an innate and archetypal ideal. Homeric poetry is then seen to have furnished a unified canon for the whole human being, whereas the subsequent course of European civilization, starting with the Greek Sophists and an ever more specialized notion of philosophy, is seen to have fostered a unilateral mode of maturation. It is argued that nostalgia for paideia indirectly reasserts itself through the widespread cultural interest in the idea of individuation.     

On disregarding deviants: Exemplar typicality and person perception

A pervasive problem in mental life is that of exemplar selectivity or how one isolates specific category members from other instances of a class. This problem is particupared pronounced in person perception, where perceivers may routinely want to personalize selected individuals while continuing to respond towards other members of the category in a stereotype-based manner. To realize these flexible effects, we hypothesized that, when perceivers encounter a group member, they inevitably encode an exemplar-based representation of the individual in mind. Part of this representation, moreover, is information signaling the person's goodness-of-Fit with respect to his or her salient group memberships. When the representation is activated on a subsequent occasion, these inferences of category fit moderate the extent of stereotypical thinking. The results of two studies provided converging evidence for this analysis of stereotype function. Exemplar typicality moderated both the accessibility of Stereotypic knowledge (Study 1) anxd the extent to which perceivers used a stereotype to organize information about a target (Study 2). We consider the theoretical and practical implications of these findings for our understanding of the role of stereotypes in person perception.     

Microcomputer-based programmed instruction in identity matching to sample for persons with severe disabilities

Three individuals with mental retardation, who had failed to learn identity matching to sample with standard fading and prompting procedures, were given microcomputer-based programmed instruction. The methods were based on an analysis of two features of typical identity matching procedures: (a) within each trial, the current sample stimulus must control comparison selection, and (b) across trials, specific comparison stimuli must function both as S+ and as S–, depending upon the sample presented (conditional discrimination). During the first phase of training, one-trial acquisition of discriminative stimulus control was established in a nonconditional discrimination context where the S+ or S– functions of specific stimuli did not change from trial to trial. After one-trial learning was established, conditional discrimination was programmed by gradually introducing reversals of S+/S– stimulus functions. All three participants learned to perform conditional identity matching. Avenues for further analysis of the prerequisites for conditional discrimination and continued development of programmed methods are discussed.     

The appeal of the devil’s eye: social evaluation affects social attention

Humans typically exhibit a tendency to follow the gaze of conspecifics, a social attention behaviour known as gaze cueing. Here, we addressed whether episodically learned social knowledge about the behaviours performed by the individual bearing the gaze can influence this phenomenon. In a learning phase, different faces were systematically associated with either positive or negative behaviours. The same faces were then used as stimuli in a gaze-cueing task. The results showed that faces associated with antisocial norm-violating behaviours triggered stronger gaze-cueing effects as compared to faces associated with sociable behaviours. Importantly, this was especially evident for participants who perceived the presented norm-violating behaviours as far more negative as compared to positive behaviours. These findings suggest that reflexive attentional responses can be affected by our appraisal of the valence of the behaviours of individuals around us.     

Representationalism, peripheral awareness, and the transparency of experience

It is often said that some kind of peripheral (or inattentional) conscious awareness accompanies our focal (attentional) consciousness. I agree that this is often the case, but clarity is needed on several fronts. In this paper, I lay out four distinct theses on peripheral awareness and show that three of them are true. However, I then argue that a fourth thesis, commonly associated with the so-called "self-representational approach to consciousness," is false. The claim here is that we have outer focal consciousness accompanied often (or even always) by inner peripheral (self-)awareness. My criticisms stem from both methodological and phenomenological considerations. In doing so, I offer a diagnosis as to why the fourth thesis has seemed true to so many and also show how the so-called "transparency of experience," frequently invoked by representationalists, is importantly relevant to my diagnosis. Finally, I respond to several objections and to further attempts to show that thesis four is true. What emerges is that if one wishes to hold that some form of self-awareness accompanies all outer-directed conscious states, one is better off holding that such self-awareness is itself unconscious, as is held for example by standard higher-order theories of consciousness.

Processing abstract language modulates motor system activity

Embodiment theory proposes that neural systems for perception and action are also engaged during language comprehension. Previous neuroimaging and neurophysiological studies have only been able to demonstrate modulation of action systems during comprehension of concrete language. We provide neurophysiological evidence for modulation of motor system activity during the comprehension of both concrete and abstract language. In Experiment 1, when the described direction of object transfer or information transfer (e.g., away from the reader to another) matched the literal direction of a hand movement used to make a response, speed of responding was faster than when the two directions mismatched (an action-sentence compatibility effect). In Experiment 2, we used single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation to study changes in the corticospinal motor pathways to hand muscles while reading the same sentences. Relative to sentences that do not describe transfer, there is greater modulation of activity in the hand muscles when reading sentences describing transfer of both concrete objects and abstract information. These findings are discussed in relation to the human mirror neuron system.     

An Emotionally Inexpressive (Type C) Coping Style Influences HIV Disease Progression at Six and Twelve Month Follow-ups

This study examined the effects of specific psychosocial factors on the progression of HIV infection in 200 HIV-1 seropositive but asymptomatic men and women. At baseline, participants' disease status was determined, and they were administered self-report assessments of coping style, social support and loneliness. Participants were classified at 6 and 12 month follow-ups as progressed or unchanged, compared to their baseline status. In logistic regression analyses, higher baseline Type C coping scores (indicating emotional inexpressiveness and decreased recognition of needs and feelings) significantly predicted progression at 6 months ( p <0.01) and 12 months ( p <0.02), but only among participants classified at baseline as CDC-A2 (between 200-499 CD4 cells/mm 3 ). In participants originally classified as CDC-A1 (CD4 cell counts > 500/mm 3 ), no psychosocial variable showed any significant relationship. Results emphasize the need to consider the disease context, as well as the interaction between biological and psychological factors in contributing to disease progression.