Conditional Reinforcers and Informative Stimuli in A Constant Environment

Five pigeons responded on steady-state concurrent variable-interval variable-interval schedules of food presentation in which half of the foods were removed and replaced with nonfood stimuli. Across conditions, the stimuli were either paired or unpaired with food, and the correlation between the ratio of food deliveries on the two alternatives and the ratio of nonfood stimuli was either −1, 0, or +1. Neither the pairing of stimuli with food, nor the correlation between stimuli and food, affected generalized-matching performance, but paired stimuli had a demonstrable effect at a local level of analysis. This effect was independent of the food–stimulus correlation. These results differ from results previously obtained in a frequently changing environment. We attribute this difference in results to differences in the information value of response-contingent stimuli in frequently changing versus relatively constant environments, as well as to differences between forward pairing and simultaneous pairing of the stimuli with food.     

Common Genetic but Specific Environmental Influences for Aggressive and Deceitful Behaviors in Preadolescent Males

Although both aggressive (AGG) and deceitful behaviors (DEC) are symptoms of childhood conduct problems, few studies have examined common vs. specific etiological influences. Early intervention is encouraged for conduct problems and findings from genetically informative studies can suggest whether interventions should focus on conduct problems in general or groupings of conduct problems more specifically. Twin model-fitting analyses were conducted on same and different teacher ratings of AGG and DEC for 872 9-year old male twin pairs. Common genetic influences were found to underlie the susceptibility for both AGG and DEC. The same teacher ratings resulted in somewhat higher heritability estimates than different teacher ratings. Results also indicated stronger environmental effects for DEC as compared with AGG, with a significant shared environmental component for same teachers and a substantial non-shared environmental component for different teachers. Our data suggest that AGG and DEC share risk genes and environmental factors may differentiate these two types of conduct problems. Characterizing these specific environmental factors may be useful when developing interventions.     

C. G. Jung and intuition: from the mindscape of the paranormal to the heart of psychology

Intuition is central in the work, practice, and philosophical legacy of C. G. Jung. In this paper, I will first discuss the importance of intuition for Jung in the paradigm usually designated the ‘paranormal’. Jung was attracted to intuition as an extra‐ordinary gift or function in the traditional sense, and this is considered here in relation to his 1896‐1899 Zofingia Lectures and 1902 On the Psychology and Pathology of So‐called Occult Phenomena: A Psychiatric Study. A significant development then occurred in 1913, when esotericist intuitions were turned toward psychological use with Jung's Red Book. There, his personal and private use of intuition – and we know how extraordinarily intuitive he was – led Jung to fully incorporate intuition at the core of his psychology. Not only in his practice, in the crucial intuitive form of empathy, but as we will see, also at the very heart of his theory. In 1921, Jung wrote Psychological Types, where intuition became one – the first – of the four fundamental functions and types of the psyche next to thinking, feeling, and sensation. In 1921, Jung proved to the world in rational argument that intuition was no longer a psychologist's hobby for table turning, but the most significant function of the psyche.     

Improving generalisation skills in a neural network on the basis of neurophysiological data

The distribution of striate cortex cells exhibits a maximum number of cells tuned to vertical and horizontal orientations (Mansfield, 1974). This was interpreted as an adaptation of the visual system to the presence in the visual environment of greater amounts of vertical and horizontal information compared to information from other orientations (Keil & Cristobal, 2000). The present research confirms that vertical and horizontal orientations are, indeed, present in greater number in natural scenes. After normalization of the amount of information across all orientations, vertical information appeared to be better for bottom-up categorization. We demonstrate this using a connectionist autoassociator model of categorization used elsewhere in simulations of early infant categorization.     

Preschoolers' fantasy-reality distinctions of emotional events

Research suggests that emotions influence children's ability to discern fantasy from reality; however, reasons for this association remain unknown. The current research sought to better understand the mechanisms underlying children's distinctions by examining the roles discrete emotions and context have in 3- to 5-year-olds' evaluations of fantasy and reality. In Study 1, children's fantasy-reality distinctions of images depicting happy, frightening, or sad events were obtained under two conditions: Children responded freely or were motivated to respond accurately. When responding freely, older children reported that happy and sad fantastic and real events could occur but frightening events could not. When motivated to respond accurately, children's accuracy improved for fantasy but not for reality. Study 2 examined real events exclusively and found that children may lack the knowledge that frightening, but not happy or sad, real events can occur. The findings provide new insight into how emotions affect children's fantasy-reality distinctions.     

Theory of mind: is training contagious?

In this study, preschool children were successfully trained in theory of mind tasks, namely false belief inference and appearance–reality distinction. Results show that both types of training had a direct effect, as measured by the improvement of performance on the FB and AR delayed post‐tests. Both types of training also had an indirect effect, as measured by transfer of the benefits of the training to the task that was not in the training. Finally, both types of training were effective even when the children were trained in a task they had already mastered.     

Quo Vadis,Dottore? Religious,Philosophical and Medical Perspectives on the Quest for Immortality

Journal of Religion and Health - In the daily practice of medicine, health care providers oftentimes confront the dilemma of offering ‘maximum care’ based on available technologies and...     

SHALL WE DANCE? MUSIC AS A PORT OF ENTRANCE TO MATERNAL–INFANT INTERSUBJECTIVITY IN A CONTEXT OF POSTNATAL DEPRESSION

The present study introduces the concept of a mother–infant group therapy that makes use of music, singing, and moving to establish maternal–infant intersubjectivity. It was conducted in a residential mother–baby unit for mothers with postnatal depression and their infants over a 5‐week period. Maternal–infant intersubjectivity of four dyads in relation to the group dynamics were microanalyzed for Sessions 1 and 5. We made within‐session (i.e., beginning–middle–end) and between‐session (Session 1 vs. Session 5) comparisons for the number of intersubjectivity moments (ISMs), total time of intersubjectivity (IST), and the mean duration of ISMs on a dyadic (i.e., own mother/infant involved) and a nondyadic level (i.e., own mother/infant not involved). In addition, three ISM levels (degree of group contribution) were distinguished. The results indicated a significant increase of ISMs/IST from Session 1 to Session 5. Within‐session analyses showed that ISMs/IST significantly decreased through Session 1 and remained stable throughout Session 5. Intersubjectivity occurred mainly on ISM Level 1 during Session 1 and on ISM Level 3 during Session 5, suggesting increased dyadic autonomy and self‐efficacy. The results are discussed in relation to the musical characteristics of mother–infant dyads, music improvisation techniques, group processes, and intersubjective development.     

Genetic Counseling Practice in Next Generation Sequencing Research: Implications for the Ethical Oversight of the Informed Consent Process

The potential for next generation sequencing research (NGS) to generate individual genetic results could have implications for the informed consent process and the provision of genetic counseling. We undertook a content analysis of informed consent templates and guidelines produced by Canadian institutional review boards, purposively sampling documents used by researchers to obtain consent from participants in genetics studies. Our goal was to examine the extent to which the informed consent documents addressed genetic counseling and the return of individual genetic results. Our analysis reveals that the majority of informed consent documents did not mention genetic counseling while several did not mention the return of results. We found differences in the ways in which documents addressed availability of counseling, eligibility criteria for referral to a genetic counselor, genetic counselor involvement, provision of services to family members of participants and incidental findings. From an ethical standpoint, consent documents should provide appropriate information so that participants may make an informed decision about their participation in research. The need to ensure adequate counseling for study populations in an NGS research context will necessarily involve adapting values that underlie care in genetic counseling practice. If the interests of research participants are to be truly promoted, the drafting and review of informed consent documents should give proper due to genetic counseling.