USING INTERMITTENT REINFORCEMENT TO PROGRAM MAINTENANCE OF VERBAL/NONVERBAL CORRESPONDENCE

We investigated the effects of an intermittent reinforcement procedure on maintenance of verbal/nonverbal correspondence with nutritious snack choices in a day-care setting. Nutritious snack choices were first established using correspondence training procedures in a multiple baseline across three children. Withdrawal of the procedures with one subject led to loss of appropriate responding, suggesting the need for a maintenance strategy. The intermittent reinforcement procedure was implemented in a multiple baseline across subjects. Nutritious snack choices were observed consistently during the intermittent reinforcement condition and the subsequent extinction condition.     

Leaps of faith: the role of religious development in recovering integrity among Jewish alcoholics and drug addicts

In the present study we investigated the association between religiosity and schizotypy in teenagers. The Francis Scale of Attitude towards Christianity (Francis &; Stubbs, 1987) and the Multidimensional Schizotypal Traits Questionnaire (Rawlings &; MacFarlane 1994) were completed by 492 school pupils ranging in age from 13 to 18. It was found that higher scores on the Francis scale were associated with higher scores on the perceptual aberration subscale and lower scores on the impulsive nonconformity and magical ideation subscales. However, when the analysis was repeated for girls and boys separately we found that the association with magical ideation was unique to boys and the association with impulsive nonconformity was unique to girls. Certain associations seem to be sex specific. Also, although our data suggest that in some respects religiosity might be an index of psychosis proneness, in other respects it would seem that religiosity is associated with psychological well-being.     

The Effect of Attention Allocation Instructions on Self-paced Task Performance under Quiet and Distracted Conditions

This study examined the effectiveness of external and internal focusing attention instructions on the performance of three throwing tasks under both quiet and distracted conditions. The main finding was that during acquisition, the external focus of attention led to improved performance when compared to internal focus of attention and control, but only under quiet conditions. It was also found that during auditory and visual distraction conditions, both types of focus attention produced similar levels of performance, and both groups were superior to the control condition. It is suggested that sport psychology consultants provide their athletes with external focusing attention instructions.     

Relationship of Type of Product, Shopping Orientations, and Demographics with Preference for Shopping on the Internet

This research examines whether (1) consumers' shopping orientations are significantly related to their preference for shopping online, (2) consumers' demographic characteristics are significantly related to preference for shopping online, (3) relationships of shopping orientation and demographic variables with purchase preferences on the Internet will vary by the type of products (i.e., search, experience, or credence). Deriving from the product classification theory, products are classified into four categories: search products, two types of experience products, and credence products. Data were collected through self-administered surveys from adult population in two metropolitan areas in the Southern United States. The findings significantly support the study's hypotheses that shopping orientations such as convenience and recreational shopper and demographic variables such as gender, education, and household income were significantly related to consumer's online purchase preference. The researchers' findings also confirm that the relationships of shopping orientation and demographic variables with purchase preference for shopping online significantly differ by product category. More specifically, convenience and recreational orientations were positively related to preference for shopping online for experience-1, experience-2, and credence product types, though the directional relationship between recreational shopper orientation and preference for shopping on the Internet was positive rather than negative as hypothesized. The results and discussion section also includes implications drawn from the findings.     

Characterological versus behavioral self-blame: inquiries into depression and rape

Two types of self-blame--behavioral and characterological--are distinguished. Behavioral self-blame is control related, involves attributions to a modifiable source (one's behavior), and is associated with a belief in the future avoidability of a negative outcome. Characterological self-blame is esteem related, involves attributions to a relatively nonmodifiable source (one's character), and is associated with a belief in personal deservingness for past negative outcomes. Two studies are reported that bear on this self-blame distinction. In the first study, it was found that depressed female college students engaged in more characterologial self-blame than nondepressed female college students, whereas behavioral self-blame did not differ between the two groups; the depressed population was also characterized by greater attributions to chance and decreased beliefs in personal control. Characterological self-blame is proposed as a possible solution to the "paradox in depression." In a second study, rape crisis centers were surveyed. Behavioral self-blame, and not characterological self-blame, emerged as the most common response of rape victims to their victimization, suggesting the victim's desire to maintain a belief in control, particularly the belief in the future avoidability of rape. Implications of this self-blame distinction and potential directions for future research are discussed.     

Semantic priming effects on picture and word processing

The effects of semantic priming on picture and word processing were assessed under conditions in which subjects were required simply to identify stimuli (label pictures or read words) as rapidly as possible. Stimuli were presented in pairs (a prime followed by a target), with half of the pairs containing members of the same semantic category and half containing unrelated concepts. Semantic relatedness was found to facilitate the identification of both pictures (Experiment 1) and words (Experiment 2), and obtained interactions of semantic relatedness and stimulus quality in both experiments suggested that semantic priming affects the initial encoding of both types of stimuli. In Experiment 3, subjects received pairs of pictures, pairs of words, and mixed pairs composed of a picture and a word or of a word and a picture. Significant priming effects were obtained on mixed as well as unmixed pairs, supporting the assumption that pictures and words access semantic information from a common semantic store. Of primary interest was the significantly greater priming obtained in picture-picture pairs than in word-word or mixed pairs. This suggests that, in addition to priming that is mediated by the semantic system, priming may occur in picture-picture pairs that results from the overlap in visual features common to the pictorial representations of objects from the same semantic category.     

Control Over Emergence: Images of Radical Sovereignty in Pollock, Rothko, and Rebeyrolle

The form of life which has the desire for or will to control over emergence at its core is, if not the dominant, then at least one of the more significant ones in late modern culture. To be in control over emergence requires a considerable degree of sovereignty. In this contribution I have made an attempt to outline and contrast three rather basic images or models of what might be called radical sovereignty, i.e., the vital-reflexive-transgressive one (which is referred to here as Nietzsche type 1), the existential-reflective-transcendent one (Nietzsche type 2), and the ambivalent-creative-transformative one (Nietzsche type 3). The analysis of paintings by post-war artists such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Paul Rebeyrolle is used to illustrate how the aforementioned types of radical sovereignty may have emerged, fully-fledged, in art, in the wake of the Second World War.     

Speakable in quantum mechanics

At the 1927 Como conference Bohr spoke the famous words “It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature.” However, if the Copenhagen interpretation really adheres to this motto, why then is there this nagging feeling of conflict when comparing it with realist interpretations? Surely what one can say about nature should in a certain sense be interpretation independent. In this paper I take Bohr’s motto seriously and develop a quantum logic that avoids assuming any form of realism as much as possible. To illustrate the non-triviality of this motto, a similar result is first derived for classical mechanics. It turns out that the logic for classical mechanics is a special case of the quantum logic thus derived. Some hints are provided as to how these logics are to be used in practical situations and finally, I discuss how some realist interpretations relate to these logics.     

Weakly Intuitionistic Quantum Logic

In this article von Neumann’s proposal that in quantum mechanics projections can be seen as propositions is followed. However, the quantum logic derived by Birkhoff and von Neumann is rejected due to the failure of the law of distributivity. The options for constructing a distributive logic while adhering to von Neumann’s proposal are investigated. This is done by rejecting the converse of the proposal, namely, that propositions can always be seen as projections. The result is a weakly Heyting algebra for describing the language of quantum mechanics.