A computer simulation model of rats’ place navigation in the Morris water maze

Rats rapidly learn to swim from a variety of starting locations, including novel ones, to a small invisible platform submerged in a pool of cool opaque liquid. A computer simulation based on a simple perceptual memory-matching model successfully mimics this ability. The model assumes that the rat, when it successfully reaches the platform, notes the distance to prominent extramaze landmarks and stores this perceptual information in memory. When placed in the pool on subsequent trials, the simulated rat attempts to match perceived distance between itself and the landmarks to the remembered distances from the platform to the landmark. The model accounts for many of the known facts about rats’ behavior in the swimming pool and makes some interesting predictions that could be easily tested experimentally. The model has the advantage, relative to other cognitive map models, of specifying how spatial information is represented in memory and how this information guides behavior.     

Pro-environmental attitudes,pro-environmental behaviours and nature-relatedness: Differences based on place preference

IntroductionThis study explored whether place preference, an individual's relationship with place, differentiated people on pro-environmental attitudes, nature-relatedness and pro-environmental behavior.ObjectiveThe aim was to provide a way to segment people and potentially inform behavior change messaging strategies targeting pro-environmental action.MethodOnline participants reported an urban/nature place preference, completed a sense of place measure in reference to this categorisation, followed by counter-balanced nature-relatedness, pro-environmental attitudes and pro-environmental behaviour measures.ResultsParticipants reported moderate-to-high levels of sense of place generally and place attachment specifically. Positive associations between sense of place, nature relatedness, pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours existed; but differed by place preference. Correlations were positive in the nature preference group but negative or non-significant in the urban preference group. Individuals with a nature preference reported higher nature-relatedness, pro-environmental attitudes and pro-environmental behavior.ConclusionThe results suggest place preference can discriminate individuals on a range of pro-environmental concepts and may have potential for behavior change strategies targeting these outcomes.     

Duty of Care,Safety, Normalisation and the Mental Capacity Act: A Discourse Analysis of Staff Arguments about Facilitating Choices for People with Learning Disabilities in UK Services

The benefits of having choice and control for people with learning disabilities 1 are well documented, and front‐line carers often make efforts ensuring that these are facilitated. However, despite this, government policy reports that disempowerment within learning disability services in the UK is a persistent problem. Using critical discursive psychology, 15 interviews with support workers about empowering people with learning disabilities were analysed. Interpretative repertoires about ‘duty of care’, ‘safety’ and ‘normalisation’ and discursive strategies involving ‘comparative evaluations’ were found, which opened speaker positions of granting or withholding choice, assuming responsibility for those in care and constructing service users as lacking capacity. These resources also allowed speakers to regulate the choices of service users and to normalise limited choice in ways that undermined taking up more empowering practices. The findings may explain the persistence of disempowerment within services by indicating how such discourses are deeply entrenched in service talk and are invoked to justify disempowering practices. This is discussed in view of the implications for empowerment and also current legislative frameworks such as the Mental Capacity Act. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Implicit sources of bias in employment interview judgments and decisions

This study empirically examined implicit sources of bias in employment interview judgments and decisions. We examined two ethnic cues, accent and name, as sources of bias that may trigger prejudicial attitudes and decisions. As predicted, there was an interaction between the applicant name and accent that affected participants’ favorable judgments of applicant characteristics. The applicant with the ethnic name, speaking with an accent, was viewed less positively by interviewers than the ethnic named applicant without an accent and non-ethnic named applicants with and without an accent. Furthermore, modern ethnicity bias had a negative association with the favorable judgments of the applicants, which, in turn, affected hiring decisions. Implications of the results, limitations of the study, and directions for future research are discussed.     

digital career portfolios: expanding institutional opportunities

Faculty at a small university discussed digital portfolios for technology support students who were entering the senior year without a portfolio that illustrated their knowledge and skills for potential employers. Business leaders expressed the need for graduates to demonstrate technological skills and other critical competency areas. Recent trends replace the traditional résumés and portfolios with digital portfolios, which capture student accomplishments by electronic methods. The authors note that smaller institutions may not have the funding, administrative support, or technical support necessary for such large‐scale projects. They discuss how smaller institutions can provide students with opportunities to develop digital portfolios despite these constraints.     

Duration discrimination is better with food access as the signal than with light as the signal

In Experiment 1 a go/no-go discrimination procedure was used to compare control of five pigeons' keypecking by food-access duration with control by light duration. Pecks to an illuminated key were reinforced with grain following 10-sec presentations of food access or houselight, but not after 5-sec presentations of either stimulus. Each subject discriminated food-access duration faster and to a greater degree than light duration. In four between-subject replications, pigeons discriminated food-access duration better than the duration of a localized light, the feeder light and a keylight, and with either water or food as reinforcement. In Experiment 2 control by durations of food access and light was compared using a conditional right-left choice procedure (two pigeons), and a delayed symbolic matching-to-sample procedure (six pigeons). Under both, choice accuracy again was higher on food-access trials. The results of Experiment 3, in which two pigeons received generalization trials with durations of food access and light that were intermediate to the training values, confirmed that responding was controlled by the duration dimension of both food access and light. The superior control by food access is consistent with previous evidence that food is an effective and memorable stimulus, possibly because of its biological importance. These results also provided empirical support for the commonly made assumption that stimuli differ in effectiveness. As well, the results show that the stimulus to be discriminated can play an important role in the accuracy of duration disciminations, a fact which has implications for the study of temporal discriminations in animals.     

Behavioral interactions and stimulus control during conditional discriminations

Two pigeons were exposed to factorial combinations of two values of line tilt and two frequencies of houselight flashes. During each of four baseline stages, key pecking in the presence of all four combinations was reinforced according to a variable-interval schedule. The baseline phases were followed by four different conditional discrimination training procedures in which reinforcement availability for pecking in the presence of the line tilts depended upon the houselight frequency. The subjects acquired each conditional discrimination. Behavioral contrast occurred during the acquisition and abolition of the discriminations. Generalization tests, given after each conditional discrimination, revealed that both the line tilt and houselight frequency dimensions controlled pecking only after conditional discriminations in which reinforcement availability depended upon the value of both dimensions.     

Rat defensive behavior: burying noxious food.

In Experiment 1, rats living in chambers containing bedding material were injected with a toxicosis-producing dose of lithium chloride shortly after their initial taste of sweetened condensed milk. They consumed no additional milk and used the bedding to bury the spout through which the milk had been delivered, although they did not bury a concurrently available water spout. In another control condition, rats did not bury a spout containing a novel solution (saccharin) not paired with toxicosis. In Experiment 2, rats did not bury a milk spout until milk consumption was followed by toxicosis. In Experiment 3, rats buried a spout containing Tabasco pepper sauce but not a concurrently available water spout. Thus, burying the food source appears to be an integral component of the rat's defensive reaction to noxious food.