Reconciling reinforcement learning models with behavioral extinction and renewal: implications for addiction, relapse, and problem gambling

Because learned associations are quickly renewed following extinction, the extinction process must include processes other than unlearning. However, reinforcement learning models, such as the temporal difference reinforcement learning (TDRL) model, treat extinction as an unlearning of associated value and are thus unable to capture renewal. TDRL models are based on the hypothesis that dopamine carries a reward prediction error signal; these models predict reward by driving that reward error to zero. The authors construct a TDRL model that can accommodate extinction and renewal through two simple processes: (a) a TDRL process that learns the value of situation-action pairs and (b) a situation recognition process that categorizes the observed cues into situations. This model has implications for dysfunctional states, including relapse after addiction and problem gambling.     

An item response theory analysis of DSM-IV personality disorder criteria across younger and older age groups

Many of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) personality disorder (PD) diagnostic criteria focus on a younger social and occupational context. The absence of age-appropriate criteria for older adults forces researchers and clinicians to draw conclusions based on existing criteria, which are likely inadequate. To explore which DSM-IV PD criteria contain age group measurement bias, the authors report 2 analyses of data on nearly 37,000 participants, ages 18-98 years, taken from a public data set that includes 7 of the 10 PDs (antisocial, avoidant, dependent, histrionic, obsessive-compulsive, paranoid, and schizoid). The 1st analysis revealed that older age groups tend to endorse fewer PD criteria than younger age groups. The 2nd analysis revealed that 29% of the criteria contain measurement bias. Although the latent variable structure for each PD was quite similar across younger and older age groups, some individual criteria were differentially endorsed by younger and older adults with equivalent PD pathology. The presence of measurement bias for these criteria raises questions concerning the assessment of PDs in older adults and the interpretation of existing data.     

Causal attribution for interfirm contract violation: a comparative study of Chinese and American commercial arbitrators

In this study, the authors examined differences between Chinese and American commercial arbitrators. They predicted and found that Chinese arbitrators make higher awards for interfirm contract violations than Americans. This difference is partially explained by differences in attributions. Prior theory suggests, and the authors found, that the Chinese tend to have more internal attributions for events when observing group actions. When evidence provided to arbitrators is mixed (evidence is provided for both internal and external attributions), Chinese-American differences in awards become even stronger.     

Relationships between mind-wandering and attentional control abilities in young adults and adolescents

Recent findings suggest that mind-wandering—the occurrence of thoughts that are both stimulus-independent and task-unrelated—corresponds to temporary failures in attentional control processes involved in maintaining constant task-focused attention. Studies supporting this proposal are, however, limited by a possible confound between mind-wandering episodes and other kinds of conscious experiences, such as external distractions (i.e., interoceptive sensations and exteroceptive perceptions). In the present study, we addressed this issue by examining, in adolescents and young adults, the relations between tasks measuring attentional control abilities and a measure of mind-wandering that is distinct from external distractions. We observed (1) that adolescents experienced more frequent external distractions, but not more mind-wandering, than young adults during the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) and (2) that, in young adults, the influence of external distractions on SART performance was fully accounted for by attentional control abilities, whereas mind-wandering was associated with decreases in SART performance above and beyond what was explained by attentional control abilities. These results show that mind-wandering cannot be entirely reduced to failures in the ability to maintain one's attention focused on task, and suggest that external distractions rather than mind-wandering are due to attentional control failures.     

Pathologizing the Normal,Individualism, and Virtue Ethics

Recently, a number of distinguished critics have raised fundamental questions about the knowledge claims and practices of the mental health professions. We review a few of these critiques concerning such matters as pathologizing normal experiences and reactions to events and spreading not only our brain disease conception of mental illness but our Western “symptom repertoire” as well around the globe in a detrimental manner. It is striking that for the most part these critics have almost nothing to say about genuine alternatives to the problems and cultural deficits they identify. We suggest that work done by theoretical psychologists and others working in a similar vein in recent years might help both sharpen the analysis of these dilemmas and contribute something valuable to envisioning alternative therapeutic and cultural pathways of a better sort.