Nonconsummatory and consummatory behavioral CRs elicited by lithium- and amphetamine-paired flavors

Various behavioral CRs elicited by saccharin solution previously paired with either lithium or amphetamine were measured in a series of four experiments. With one conditioning trial, lithium (Experiment 1), but not amphetamine (Experiment 2), produced nonconsummatory behavioral evidence of conditioning in the form of chin-rub CRs; both drugs, however, produced strong flavor aversions. With 3 conditioning trials, lithium- and amphetamine-paired flavors elicited a pattern of agitated activity, characterized by increased general activity, rearing duration, and body temperature, when the flavor was forcibly presented through an intraoral cannula (Experiment 3). When the flavor was presented in a single-bottle test (Experiment 4), 3 conditioning trials produced a similar pattern of agitated activity characterized by increased general activity, rearing (duration and frequency), stretching (duration and frequency), and limb flicking. Although both drugs supported the pattern of increased agitation-related CRs, only the lithium-paired flavors elicited chin-rub CRs (Experiments 1, 3, and 4). The difference between the drug conditions was not the result of a greater saccharin aversion in the lithium-conditioned group than in the amphetamine-conditioned group (Experiment 4). The results are related to findings that suggest that flavor aversions are mediated by a shift in the hedonic properties of the drug-paired flavors.     

Self-punitive behavior in humans: Effects of a self-fulfilling prophecy

Human subjects were exposed to contingencies which programmed aversive tones (100 db). Two types of contingencies were employed: self-confirming (i.e., self-fulfilling prophecies), in which the aversive tone was occasioned by the prediction it was about to occur; and self-disconfirming, in which the tone was probable when subjects predicted it would not occur. Experiments 1 and 2 used a modified classical conditioning paradigm, and demonstrated that a self-confirming contingency maintained reliable self-punitive responding, i.e., subjects consistently predicted and therefore obtained tones on every trial. Subjects in Experiment 3 were instructed to express predictions continuously throughout four sessions to ensure adequate sampling of the various predictions. Subjects exposed to a self-disconfirming contnngency reliably evidenced awareness of the contingency in effect (judged by answers on a postexperimental questionnaire), whereas subjects exposed to a self-confirming contingency failed to show effective avoidance behavior or contingency awareness. Experiment 4 investigated free-operant self-punitive behavior, utilizing a single prediction response button, which subjects depressed repeatedly. Subjects were exposed to either periodic or aperiodic punishment schedules over as many as four sessions. In general, more persistent self-punitive responding was found in the groups receiving periodic punishment. The results from the four experiments show that self-confirming contingencies can effectively prolong self-punitive responding in human subjects. The findings are consistent with a blocking interpretation of self-punitive behavior, which asserts that when an aversive event is already predicted by stimuli in the situation (including temporal cues), the association between a response and punishment is impaired, and self-punitive responding is likely to be maintained. An integration of human and animal self-punitive research is proposed.     

Nonimmediate language style and inconsistency between private and expressed evaluations

It was hypothesized that certain language style variations would reflect apprehension about affirming the validity of communication content. Wiener and Mehrabian (Language within language: Immediacy, a channel in verbal communication. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts,1968) have identified a cluster of such variations called verbal nonimmediacy, which they describe as indicators of psychological distance between the communicator and his/her communication. Four experiments are reported. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that communication about positive manifestations of disliked traits and negative manifestations of liked traits was more nonimmediate than when positive manifestations of liked traits or negative manifestations of disliked traits were described. This was true both when one's own or another's personality traits were described. In Experiment 3, nonimmediacy was found to increase when communications involved clear fabrications about either one's liked or disliked traits. Experiment 4 showed that when self-regard was experimentally manipulated, low self-regard subjects showed more opinion conformity and nonimmediacy in their disclosures to a confederate than did high self-regard subjects.     

Rate reduction strategies used by normally fluent and stuttering children and adults

Speech rate can be reduced by prolonging the duration of phonetic units, by pausing between words, or through a combination of these approaches. Child and adult normally fluent speakers and stutterers were tested in basal and modified speaking rate conditions. Subjects' utterances in both conditions were converted to spectrographic displays so that measures of phonetic and pause durations could be made. Comparisons of these measures across conditions revealed that all four groups of subjects spontaneously extended pause and phonetic durations, the former more than the latter, when instructed to voluntarily reduce speech rate.     

Speech timing skills of normally fluent and stuttering children and adults

This study was designed to explore the speech timing skills of normally fluent and stuttering children and adults producing two sentences, ten consecutive times at basal and modified speaking rates. Spectrographic displays of subjects' utterances in both conditions were made in order to obtain consonant, vowel, pause, and utterance duration measures. Results showed that (1) the two groups of children produced speech durational values similar to those of the two adult groups and (3) there were no consistent between- and within-group differences in the basal and modified rate conditions. Findings are discussed in terms of methodological and sampling differences that exist between the present study and past research on stutterers' speech production abilities.     

The analysis of semigroups of multirelational systems

A finite family of binary relations on a finite set, termed here a relational system, generates a finite semigroup under the operation of relational composition. The relationship between simplifications of the semigroup of a relational system in the form of homomorphic images, and simplifications of the relational system itself is examined. First of all, the list of relational conditions establishing a relationship between a homomorphic image of the semigroup of a relational system and a simplified, or derived, version of that relational system, is reviewed and extended. Then a definition of empirical relationship is introduced (the Correspondence Definition) and it is shown how, in conjunction with a factorization procedure for finite semigroups (P. E. Pattison & W. K. Bartlett, Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 1982, in press), it leads to a systematic and efficient analysis for a relational system. Applications of the procedure to an empirical blockmodel and to a class of simple relational systems are presented.     

Attention as a predictor of learning in infants

A total of 240 fourteen-week-olds were rewarded with a pattern of lights and tones for kicking. The reward display interrupted a background of random alternation between two lights and tones. In experiment 1, attention to this background stimulus during a 1-min baseline was assessed using the number of fixations of alternating lights. During 6 min of reward, high-attention subjects showed significantly greater changes in kicking rate from baseline than low-attention subjects. In experiment 2, the proportion of subjects with low attention ratings increased dramatically during an extended 5-min baseline period, and those subjects with low attention ratings at the end of baseline did not show an increase in kicking from baseline to the reward phase, while high-attention subjects did show evidence of learning. Thus, an objective measure of attention, empirically separate from the dependent learning measure, provided a significant prediction of the effectiveness of subsequent reinforcement, and could be manipulated simply by extending the baseline by as little as 4 min.     

Acting on one's attitudes: Procedures for linking attitude and behavior

Two investigations examined the determinants of correspondence between attitudes and behaviors. The first investigation examined the relationship between previously measured attitudes toward affirmative action and subsequent behavioral verdicts in a sex discrimination court case. In this basic situation, correspondence between measured attitudes and judicial decision-making behavior was minimal, for both low-self-monitoring individuals and high-self-monitoring individuals. Increasing the availability of attitudes generated substantial correspondence between attitudes and behavior for low-self-monitoring individuals, but not for high-self-monitoring individuals. Increasing the relevance of attitudes generated substantial correspondence between attitudes and behavior for both low-self-monitoring individuals and high-self-monitoring individuals. The second investigation examined the decisions of individuals with favorable attitudes toward psychological research to volunteer to participate in extra sessions of a psychology experiment. Once again, increasing the relevance of attitudes was an effective procedure for inducing individuals to translate existing attitudes into corresponding behaviors. These empirical outcomes are interpreted within a theoretical framework that specifies the interactive contributions of availability, relevance, and self-monitoring to the creation of “action structures” that link attitudes and behavior. Practical implications of this viewpoint are discussed.     

Effects of age,stimuli, and category recognition factors in children's inquiry behavior

One hundred twenty-eight children of average intellectual ability from grades K, 1, 2, and 5 (ages 6, 7, 8, and 11, respectively) were administered a 20-questions task involving the presentation of 24 stimulus pictures and a forced-choice post-test. The four-factor design included four grade levels, two stimulus conditions (basic-level and superordinate), and two instruction conditions (cueing and non-cueing) for boys and girls. Results indicated older children generated more efficient questions, all children in the Cued-instruction condition asked more constraint-seeking questions in the Basic-level condition than in the Superordinate condition on the 20-questions task, and all children in the Basic-level condition selected more efficient questions in the post-test forced-choice task than in Superordinate condition. It was concluded that even younger school-age children will generate efficient constraint-seeking questions when Basic-level stimuli are used and when children are cued.