The CS-US interval function in rabbit nictitating membrane response conditioning: Single vs multiple trials per conditioning session

The effect of varying trials per day conditions on the CS-US interval or interstimulus interval (ISI) function in rabbit nictitating membrane response conditioning was studied in two experiments. Experiment 1 showed that a 1250-msec ISI was more effective than a 250-msec ISI when there was 1 trial/day. Experiment 2 showed that as the number of trials per day decreased from 20 to 1, the superiority of the 250-msec ISI group over the 1250-msec ISI group declined, with a reversal at 1 trial/day. Results are interpreted in terms of the role of a hypothesized CS-elicited short-duration orienting response in CR performance.     

The intermediate-hue transposition of children after same-different and seriation pretraining

The intermediate-hue transposition of first- and second-grade children was investigated in two experiments. In Expt. 1, it was found that seriation pretraining increased the amount of far transposition regardless of whether or not the same hues were used in pretraining and subsequent tasks. In Expt. 2, seriation pretraining produced more far transposition than did same-different pretaining and a no-pretraining control. The latter two conditions were not significantly different. Three assumptions about the effects of perceptual pretraining on subsequent transposition were described and related to the data.     

A developmental study of recognition of pictures and nouns

Children at four age levels (4, 6, 8, and 10 years) were given continuous recognition tasks using concrete noun, abstract noun, and pictorial stimuli in a 4 × 3 factorial design. Pictures were recognized significantly better than concrete and abstract nouns at the 4- and 6-year age levels and significantly better than abstract nouns at the 8- and 10-year age levels. This supported Paivio's contention that pictures are easier to remember than words because of a greater possibility of dual encoding, while Rohwer's contention that there is a shift in recognition memory development received no support. There were no significant differences between recognition of concrete and abstract nouns at any age level, which opposed the findings from adult studies and suggested that Paivio's theoretical orientation would have to be extended in order to account for developmental data. Recognition for both concrete and abstract nouns was found to be linear and increasing significantly with age, but no age trends for picture recognition were found.     

TheOperational Code of John F. Kennedy During the Cuban Missile Crisis: A Comparison of Public and Private Rhetoric

This study examines the manner in which the Cuban missile crisis affected the belief system of President John F. Kennedy. The analysis uses data derived from primary source materials that have become available only in the last 2 years, in addition to well-known public statements by the president. The Verbs in Context System (VICS) was used to generate insights into how Kennedy's operational code differed across sources and changed during the period of the crisis. The results provide evidence of Kennedy's initial private belligerence and provisional support for the 'Gettysburg thesis' while calling into question some other potential interpretations of the effects of the crisis on the president's beliefs.     

THE PROBLEM OF “GOD” IN PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION: LONERGAN'S “COMMON SENSE” (RELIGION) VERSUS “THEORY” (THEOLOGY)

The emphasis on God in American psychology of religion generates the problem of explaining divine‐versus‐natural causality in “spiritual experiences.” Especially “theistic psychology” champions divine involvement. However, its argument exposes a methodological error: to pit popular religious opinions against technical scientific conclusions. Countering such homogenizing “postmodern agnosticism,” Bernard Lonergan explained these two as different modes of thinking: “common sense” and “theory”—which resolves the problem: When theoretical science is matched with theoretical theology, “the God‐hypothesis” explains the existence of things whereas science explains their natures; and, barring miracles, God is irrelevant to natural science. A review of the field shows that the problem is pervasive; attention to “miracles”—popularly so‐named versus technically—focuses the claims of divine‐versus‐natural causality; and specifications of the meaning of spiritual, spirituality, science, worldview, and meaning itself (suffering that same ambiguity: personal import versus cognitive content) offer further clarity. The problem is not naturalism versus theism, but commonsensical versus theoretical thinking. This solution demands “hard” social science.     

Beyond freedom and dignity at 40: comments on behavioral science, the future, and chance (2007)

Forty years after the publication of Beyond Freedom and Dignity (Skinner, 1971) and the continuing growth of behavior analysis, the future of humanity and the role of behavioral science in that future remain uncertain. A recent paper by Chance (2007) documented a shift in Skinner's views during the last years of his life. Skinner had long advocated a science and technology of behavior for finding and engineering solutions to cultural and global problems and advancing human development. This optimism had given way under a gradual realization that the science of behavior was in fact showing how such problems were unlikely to be solved in time to avert a variety of possible disasters. Chance described nine behavioral phenomena that appear to interfere with effective problem-solving behavior on a large scale and in effective time frames. These phenomena are reviewed toward an analysis of common themes. Research is also reviewed that involves nonverbal, verbal, and cultural contingencies that may lead to applications designed to address the common themes. Problems and strategies of implementation are also discussed. The challenges are daunting, but may nevertheless be regarded as technical problems best suited for a science and technology of behavior.     

SKINNER AS MISSIONARY AND PROPHET: A REVIEW OF BURRHUS F. SKINNER: SHAPER OF BEHAVIOUR

Do we need another book about B. F. Skinner? According to Frederick Toates, the answer is “yes” because “there is still much to be said” (p. vii) about Skinner. In his recent biography, Burrhus F. Skinner: Shaper of Behaviour (2009), Toates attempts to integrate Skinner into the mainstream of psychology by showing areas of commonality between Skinner''s radical behaviorism and subdisciplines within psychology such as cognitive, social, and biological psychology. Admirably, although in some instances understandably naively, Toates attempts to demonstrate the power of positive reinforcement to explain myriad complex behaviors, including a fairly lengthy interpretation of religious behavior. In addition, Toates credits Skinner for being ahead of his time on both social and environmental issues. Toates falters, however, in his insistence that behavior analysis still needs and can benefit from cognitive concepts. He nevertheless provides an otherwise objective and sympathetic view of Skinner the person and the behavioral science he helped to create in a book that should be informative for both behavior analysts and those outside the field.     

"THEISTIC PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHOTHERAPY": A THEOLOGICAL AND SCIENTIFIC CRITIQUE

I take the APA publication A Spiritual Strategy for Counseling and Psychotherapy (Richards and Bergin 2005), along with a devoted issue of Journal of Psychology and Theology (Nelson and Slife 2006), as a paradigmatic example of a trend. Other instances include the uncritical use of "Eastern" philosophy in Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology, almost normative appeal to the "Sacred" within the psychology of spirituality, talk of "God in the brain" within neurological research, the neologism entheogen referring to psychedelic drugs, and calls for new specializations such as neurotheology and theobiology. In response to the legitimate ethical requirements of respect and openness regarding clients' religious worldviews, the trend is to make God an essential component in psychological theory. The argument is that God is active in the universe and especially in human affairs to such an extent that any accurate account of strictly psychological matters, not just a comprehensive, interdisciplinary purview that could include a distinct theological dimension, must include God as an explanatory factor. Less nuanced than standard theological thought about divine intervention—including a range of opinions from supernaturalism, to occasionalism, to providential and deistic naturalism—this trend would blur the epistemological differences between religion and science by appeal to claimed knowledge sources such as inspiration and revelation and thus undermine the achievements of evidence-based science and establish particularistic religious beliefs as standard explanatory accounts. The concern to include a spiritual, in contrast to a religious or theist, dimension in psychological theory is welcome; but elaborated approaches, such as my own and those of Roberto Assagioli, Viktor Frankl, and Ken Wilber, open to varied theological applications, already exist.