Learning and motivation: Computer simulations of the Rescorla-Wagner,Solomon-Corbit,and Schull models

A suite of programs is described for simulating the Rescorla-Wagner (1972) model of associative learning, the Solomon and Corbit (1974) opponent-process theory, and Schull’s (1979) extension of the latter. The programs are written for the Commodore 64 computer.     

Developing Work-Related Education on Alcohol and Drugs

The development of a pack of materials for use at the intersection of youth training and health and social education is described. The resulting pack - WREAD (Work Related Education on Alcohol and Drugs) - is designed to be used in several milieux, including the Youth Training Scheme and associated developments, the new college-based pre-vocational education courses and, in the longer term, schools and other social education settings. The paper describes the context, the development of a draft, a consultation exercise with people working in and around YTS who were asked to comment on the draft, conversations with young people, and the revision and publication of the materials.     

Unnecessary Supplement

Studies in Philosophy and Education -     

Eye movements reveal sustained implicit processing of others' mental states

The ability to attribute mental states to others is crucial for social competency. To assess mentalizing abilities, in false-belief tasks participants attempt to identify an actor's belief about an object's location as opposed to the object's actual location. Passing this test on explicit measures is typically achieved by 4 years of age, but recent eye movement studies reveal registration of others' beliefs by 7 to 15 months. Consequently, a 2-path mentalizing system has been proposed, consisting of a late developing, cognitively demanding component and an early developing, implicit/automatic component. To date, investigations on the implicit system have been based on single-trial experiments only or have not examined how it operates across time. In addition, no study has examined the extent to which participants are conscious of the belief states of others during these tasks. Thus, the existence of a distinct implicit mentalizing system is yet to be demonstrated definitively. Here we show that adults engaged in a primary unrelated task display eye movement patterns consistent with mental state attributions across a sustained temporal period. Debriefing supported the hypothesis that this mentalizing was implicit. It appears there indeed exists a distinct implicit mental state attribution system.     

Inductive reasoning and judgment interference: experiments on Simpson's paradox

In a series of experiments on inductive reasoning, participants assessed the relationship between gender, success, and a covariate in a situation akin to Simpson's paradox: Although women were less successful then men according to overall statistics, they actually fared better then men at either of two universities. Understanding trivariate relationships of this kind requires cognitive routines similar to analysis of covariance. Across the first five experiments, however, participants generalized the disadvantage of women at the aggregate level to judgments referring to the different levels of the covariate, even when motivation was high and appropriate mental models were activated. The remaining three experiments demonstrated that Simpson's paradox could be mastered when the salience of the covariate was increased and when the salience of gender was decreased by the inclusion of temporal cues that disambiguate the causal status of the covariate.     

The power of the spoken word: sociolinguistic cues influence the misinformation effect

We investigated whether the sociolinguistic information delivered by spoken, accented postevent narratives would influence the misinformation effect. New Zealand subjects listened to misleading postevent information spoken in either a New Zealand (NZ) or North American (NA) accent. Consistent with earlier research, we found that NA accents were seen as more powerful and more socially attractive. We found that accents per se had no influence on the misinformation effect but sociolinguistic factors did: both power and social attractiveness affected subjects' susceptibility to misleading postevent suggestions. When subjects rated the speaker highly on power, social attractiveness did not matter; they were equally misled. However, when subjects rated the speaker low on power, social attractiveness did matter: subjects who rated the speaker high on social attractiveness were more misled than subjects who rated it lower. There were similar effects for confidence. These results have implications for our understanding of social influences on the misinformation effect.     

Spontaneous and learned turning behaviour in food- or water-restricted hooded rats

Some laboratory studies have suggested that whereas food restriction in animals leads to response alternation (behavioural flexibility), water restriction induces perseverative, stereotyped responding. Hooded rats, restricted to 1 hour per day access to either food or water, were tested on a radial-arm maze (using a procedure that eliminates algorithmic response strategies), for alternation in a 3-arm maze (both when the maze was familar and unfamilar, and with or without differential reward) and a 2-choice maze in which some animals were taught to alternate direction of turn, and others to perseverate. Both groups performed the radial-arm maze task competently and spontaneously alternated at a high rate. In the learned task, food-restricted rats were slower than water-restricted to reverse a consistent direction of turn; in the alternation condition, water-restricted rats developed a temporary, but strong, directional bias when making their first choice each day. Water-restricted subjects took water more readily than food-restricted took food when initially introduced to the apparatuses, but there was no consistent difference in motivation in the two conditions. The results provide little support for the notion that distinct cognitive-motivational states or behavioural strategies are induced by food- and water-restriction.     

Psychotropic placebos create resistance to the misinformation effect

Can a placebo for a psychotropic drug help participants resist the misinformation effect? To answer this question, we gave participants a mixture of baking soda and water and told half of them that the mixture was a cognition-enhancing drug called R273 and told the other half that it was an inactive version of the drug. Shortly thereafter, all participants took part in a three-stage misinformation experiment. Compared with participants who were told that they had taken the placebo, the participants who were told that they had taken the drug reported improved cognitive abilities and were less susceptible to the misinformation effect. We provide sourcemonitoring and mindfulness accounts of our findings.