Book reviews

BODEN, MARGARET A. Artificial Intelligence and Natural Man. Hassocks : Harvester Press Limited, and New York: Basic Books Inc., 1977. Pp. ix+537. £613.50 hardback; £64.95 paperback. ISBN 0 85527 435 2.

ESTES, W. K. (Ed.). Handbook of Learning and Cognitive Processes. Vol. 6. Linguistics. Functions in Cognitive Theory. Hillsdale, N.J. : Erlbaum Associates. 1979. Pp. 331. £12.70. ISBN o 470 26311 3.

O'KEEFE, J. and NADEL, L. The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map. London: Oxford University Press. 1978. Pp. 543. £25.00. ISBN 0 12 524150 X.

FITZSIMONS, J. T. The Physiology of Thirst and Sodium Appetite. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1979. Pp. 572. £32.50. ISBN 0 521 22292 3.

MURRAY, F. B. and PIKULSKI, J. J. (Eds). The Acquisition of Reading. Baltimore: University Park Press. 1978. Pp. 178. £8.95. ISBN 0 8391 1281 5.

NEWTON, M. J., THOMAS, M. E. and RICHARDS, I. L. Readings in Dyslexia. Wisbech: Benrose Ltd. 1979. Pp. 203. £4.50. ISBN 09 0511 4124.

SENDERS, J. W., FISHER, D. F. and MONTY, R. A. (Eds). Eye Movements and Higher Psychological Processes. Hillsdale, N. J. : Erlbaum. 1978. Pp. 394. £19.95. ISBN 0 470 26489 6.

GRUBER, H. E. and VONECHE, J. J. (Eds). The Essential Piaget. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1977. Pp. 880. £12.95. ISBN 07100 87780.

SIEGEL, L. S. and BRAINERD, C. J. (Eds). Alternatives to Piaget. New York: Academic Press. 1978. Pp. 262. £11.70. ISBN 12 641950 7.

BRANSFORD, J. D. Human Cognition: Learning, Understanding and Remembering. Belmont, California: Wadsworth. 1979. Pp. xii+300. £11.85. ISBN 0 534 00699 X.

VON FIEANDT, K. and MOUSTGAARD, I. K. The Perceptual World. London: Academic Press. 1977. Pp. 680. £32.00. ISBN 0 12 725050 6.

BURTON, A. and RADFORD, J. (Ed.). Thinking in Perspective: Critical Essays in the Study of Thought Processes. London: Methuen. 1978. Pp. xxii+232. £3.95. ISBN 0 416 85840 6.

MAYER, R. E. Thinking and Problem Solving: An Introduction to Human Cognition and Leavning. Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresman and Company. 1977. Pp. viii+214. £4.95. ISBN 0 673 15055 0.

BATES, E. Language and Context: The Acquisition of Pragmatics. New York: Academic Press. 1976. Pp. 375. £14.50. ISBN 0 12 081550 8.

MILGHAM, N. W., KRAMES, L. and ALLOWAY, T. M. Food Aversion Learning. New York: Plenum Press. 1977. Pp. 263. £27. ISBN 0 306 31040 6.

O'CONNOR, N. and HERMELIN, B. Seeing and Hearing and Space and Time. London: Academic. 1978. Pp. 157+viii. £6.80. ISBN 0 12 524150 X.     

Book reviews

Postman, L. And Keppel, G. (Eds.). Norms of Word Association. New York and London: Academic Press. 1970. Pp. vi+ 467. £12.00.

Wolstenholme, G. E. W. and Knight, J. (Eds.). Taste and Smell in Vertebrates. London: J. & A. Churchill. 1970. Pp. x + 402. £4.00.

Tobias, J. V. (Ed.). Foundations of Modern Auditory Theory, Vol. I. New York and London: Academic Press. 1970. Pp. xv + 466. £10.50.

Hexmelin, B. and O'connor, N. Psychological Experiments with Autistic Children. Oxford: Pergamon Press. 1970. Pp. 142. £3.00.

Black, P. (Ed.). Physiological Correlates of Emotion. New York and London: Academic Press. 1970. Pp. xvi + 309. £6.30.

Baird, J. C. Psychophysical Analysis of Visual Space. Oxford: Pergamon Press. 1970. Pp. viii + 321. £4.50.

Flores D'Arcais, G. B. and Levelt, W J. M. (Eds.). Advances in Psycholinguistics. Amsterdam and London: North Holland. 1970. Pp. x + 454. £8.40.

Dodwell, P. C. Visual Pattern Recognition. Holt, Rhinehart & Wilson. 1970. Pp. 276. $9.00.

Gladwin, Thomas. East is a Big Bird. Oxford: University Press. 1970. Pp. 241. £4.75.

GULICR, W. L. Hearing: Physiology and Phychophysics. New York: Oxford University Press. 1971. Pp. viii+257. £4.50.

Plomp, R. and Smoorenburg, G. F. (Eds.). Frequency Analysis and Periodicity Detection in Hearing. Leiden: A. W. Sijthoff. 1970. Pp. xvi+482.

Jaffe, Joseph and Feldstein, Stanley. Rhythms of Dialogue. New York: Academic Press. 1970. Pp. 156. £3.95     

Strategies and learning models

A class of strategies is defined, each member of which possesses a certain plausibility. If a subject follows any strategy in this class in a two-choice learning experiment of the type dealt with by the Estes model, the subject's long-run behavior will be the same as that predicted by the Estes model.     

Disjunctivism and the Epistemological Holy Grail

The grounding or motivating intuitions behind internalism and externalism seem to be fundamentally at odds. If there is ever to be a viable or satisfying solution to the problem, it must satisfy the grounding intuitions behind both sides of the debate. Duncan Pritchard claims his theory of epistemological disjunctivism (ED) does just this, arguing that it could be the holy grail we have all been waiting for. However, I believe the holy grail is already out there in the form of the theory that knowledge is a mental state (KMS). In this article, I defend the idea the KMS is far better able to satisfy the internalist and externalist intuitions than ED.     

Objectification leads to depersonalization: The denial of mind and moral concern to objectified others

Philosophers have argued that when people are objectified they are treated as if they lack the mental states and moral status associated with personhood. These aspects of objectification have been neglected by psychologists. This research investigates the role of depersonalization in objectification. In Study 1, objectified women were attributed less mind and were accorded lesser moral status than non‐objectified women. In Study 2, we replicated this effect with male and female targets and extended it to include perceptions of competence and pain attribution. Further, we explored whether target and perceiver gender qualify depersonalization. Overall, this research indicates that when people are objectified they are denied personhood. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Conditioned suppression of free-operant avoidance

The responses of white rats were maintained on an unsignalled free-operant avoidance schedule. Superimposed on the avoidance schedule was a blinking white light followed immediately by response-independent electric shock. Duration of the light stimulus was either 1 or 3 min. Avoidable shock was 1.5 mA; response-independent shock was 7.5 mA. Suppression of responding during the light stimulus (both durations) developed over sessions. Responding immediately following the response-independent light-shock sequence was neither suppressed nor accelerated. The similarity is noted between the present result and findings of “positive conditioned suppression”.     

Who helping helps: An event-sampling study of how basic psychological needs moderate the impact of acting prosocially

Growing work suggests that prosociality – actions such as kindness and generosity – boosts the well-being of altruists, yet this effect is not universally true for all individuals. Thus, a major question moving forward is who reaps the largest benefits of acting prosocially. Here, we propose that trait differences in satisfaction of needs (i.e. autonomy, competence, and relatedness) act as key moderators of the effect of prosociality on well-being. We tested two competing hypotheses – deprivation vs. sensitization models – in a 14-day event-sampling study of 383 community participants. We found that people with lower trait autonomy experienced a greater well-being boost after acting prosocially than their higher counterparts. Moreover, this relationship was further mediated by state autonomy. Our findings highlight the special role autonomy, but not competence or relatedness, plays in explaining individual differences in who benefits from acting prosocially – and the mechanism behind this process.     

Labeling and family resemblance in the discrimination of polymorphous categories by pigeons

Two experiments examined whether pigeons discriminate polymorphous categories on the basis of a single highly predictive feature or overall similarity. In the first experiment, pigeons were trained to discriminate between categories of photographs of complex real objects. Within these pictures, single features had been manipulated to produce a highly salient texture cue. Either the picture or the texture provided a reliable cue for discrimination during training, but in probe tests, the picture and texture cues were put into conflict. Some pigeons showed a significant tendency to discriminate on the basis of the picture cue (overall similarity or family resemblance), whereas others appeared to rely on the manipulated texture cue. The second experiment used artificial polymorphous categories in which one dimension of the stimulus provided a completely reliable cue to category membership, whereas three other dimensions provided cues that were individually unreliable but collectively provided a completely reliable basis for discrimination. Most pigeons came under the control of the reliable cue rather than the unreliable cues. A minority, however, came under the control of single dimensions from the unreliable set. We conclude that cue salience can be more important than cue reliability in determining what features will control behavior when multiple cues are available.     

The cost in remembering of ruminating on negative memories

This study investigated retrieval mechanisms that may be involved in memory for distressing stimuli. Forty-one nonclinical participants watched a video clip depicting the immediate aftermath of a serious car accident. Following this, half of the participants were instructed to focus attention on the victims of the accident and to consider the negative sequelae of their injuries. The remaining participants were not given any instructions. Following the Victim Focus/Control period, all participants completed a cued-recall task assessing their memory of the video clip. Overall, victim-related details were better recalled than nonvictim related details. It is important to note that participants in the Victim Focus condition retrieved fewer peripheral details than participants in the Control condition. These results suggest that people focusing attention on distressing aspects of an event can experience a cost in remembering other aspects of the event. These findings may be interpreted in terms of enhanced recollection of central events or retrieval-induced forgetting mechanisms to explain patterns of diminished memory for aspects of distressing events.