Differential reinforcement of lever-press durations: Effects of deprivation level and reward magnitude

Three experiments investigated the performance of rats on a task involving differential reinforcement of lever-press durations. Experiment 1, which employed a discrete-trials procedure, manipulated deprivation level between subjects and reward magnitude within subjects. The minimum lever-press duration which would result in reward was varied from .4 to 6.4 sec. It was found that low deprivation resulted in longer mean durations and less response variability at the higher criterial values than did high deprivation. The magnitude of reward was not found to affect performance. Experiment 2 manipulated reward magnitude between subjects while holding deprivation level constant, and used the same general procedures as in Experiment 1. Small reward resulted in longer mean lever-press durations and less variability in responding than did large reward at the higher criterial values. The intertrial intervals were omitted in Experiment 3 in which deprivation level was varied between subjects and reinforcement was delivered only for response durations extending between 6.0 and 7.6 sec. Low deprivation resulted in longer mean lever-press durations and less response variability than did high deprivation, but the probability of a rewarded press duration did not differ between groups. The results overall are consistent with the hypothesis that low deprivation and small reward magnitude lead to weaker goal-approach responses and, hence, to less competition with lever holding. The deprivation and reward magnitude manipulations did not appear to influence lever holding performance by affecting the ability of animals to form temporal discriminations.     

Apparent impropriety and procedural fairness judgments

Variation in decision making and allocation procedures has been shown to affect judgments of the fairness of the procedure and its outcome, but such effects have always been studied in the context of properly enacted procedures. It was hypothesized that the appearance of impropriety in the enctment of a fair procedure would increase the extent to which the procedure is judged in terms of its outcome. One hundred twenty undergraduate males and females were placed in the role of either defendant or observer with respect to an adversary procedure trial. Appearance of impropriety was manipulated during the trial by either including or not including evidence of a friendly personal relationship between the judge and the plaintiff's lawyer. The defendant was said to have either won or lost the case. A significant impropriety × outcome interaction on ratings of procedural fairness, unqualified by higher order effect, supported the hypothesis: a favorable outcome increased and an unfavorable outcome decreased the fairness of the procedure more when the impropriety was present. Discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for future investigation and theory on procedural justice and for practical issues.     

Statistical analysis of binary relational data: Parameter estimation

Binary interaction data, measuring the presence or absence of a relation between pairs of actors in a “dyadic interaction situation,” are commonly gathered to study the social structure of the group of actors. Recent developments have made the statistical analysis of such data statistically easier and more substantively sophisticated. These developments allow researchers to simultaneously study several sociometric structural properties, such as reciprocity, differential popularity, and equivalence of actors. Building on this research, we review the stochastic models responsible for this breakthrough, and discuss methods for estimating expected values and model parameters. Throughout, we also highlight recent advances designed to incorporate nodal or actor attribute data into the relational data analysis. We conclude with an example illustrating these ideas based on conversational activities among actors in a group of eight people.     

In God’s House

Abstract

By naming the ways silence and taboo structure the documentary, In God’s House, the article traces the ways personal narratives are deployed as: (1) a cultural practice to consolidate an “Asian” ethnicity; and as (2) a pedagogical strategy to address the silence of sexual discourse—particularly around LGBTQ issues—in Asian American contexts. As cultural practices, silence and taboo undergird the framework of community—protecting individual honor, securing public face and fortifying webs of relationships that sustain individual and social flourishing. More than a façade for the “inscrutable Asian,” silence illuminates a practice of communal relationality that reconfigures “American” significations of community, sexuality, race and identity.     

The professionalization of psychologists as court personnel: Consequences of the first institutional commitment law for the “feebleminded”

The first law providing for the permanent, involuntary institutionalization of “feeble‐minded” individuals was passed in Illinois in 1915. This bill represented the first eugenic commitment law in the United States. Focusing on the consequences of this 1915 commitment law within the context of intelligence testing, eugenics, and the progressive movement, this paper will argue that the then newly devised Binet–Simon intelligence test facilitated the definition and classification of feeble‐mindedness that validated feeble‐mindedness theory, enabled the state to legitimize the eugenic diagnosis and institutionalization of feeble‐minded individuals, and especially empowered psychologists to carve out a niche for themselves in the courtroom as “experts” when testifying as to the feeble‐mindedness of individuals.     

The Conceptual Complexity of Presidents Carter and Clinton: An Automated Content Analysis of Temporal Stability and Source Bias

Previous work on the measurement of leaders' foreign policy orientations by Margaret G. Hermann argues that spontaneous utterances should provide more useful indications of stable personality characteristics than prepared statements. This paper reconsiders this question for Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton through an automated coding system. A large number of spontaneous utterances and prepared statements by these presidents were compared in an effort to determine the stability of their conceptual complexity across source types and over time. The findings support the ability of Hermann's conceptual complexity measurement to capture robust differences between individuals; however, scores derived from spontaneous comments varied significantly from those derived from prepared remarks. In addition, the trait appears to be stable for some subjects (Carter) but not for others (Clinton).     

Electrophysiological correlates of adult decisions made during a conservation of quantity task

Visual evoked responses were recorded from 10 scalp locations over the left and right hemisphere while adults were involved in a conservation of quantity task. Multivariate analyses involving principal components analysis and ANOVA identified bilateral and left hemisphere lateralized components of the visual evoked responses which discriminated between conservation judgments made by subjects.     

The maintenance of fluency after intensive in-patient therapy: Long-term follow-up

Maintenance of fluency after intensive in-patient treatment was studied in eight male stammerers. Reasons for success and failure are discussed in relation to objective and subjective data collected at the final follow-up interview.     

Media presentation of the mental health bill and representations of mental health problems

This paper discusses the findings of a study that examined the way in which the Mental Health Bill of June 2002 was presented in the British national and local media over a 3‐year period. A Lexis Nexis search yielded 256 articles, which were then analysed qualitatively and quantitatively. Overall, and perhaps contrary to what might have been expected given previous studies' conclusions regarding the media's negative portrayal of mental ill health, most articles tended to present a negative view of the Bill as unnecessarily repressive, and consequently were more sympathetic towards mental heath service clients, although this was not the case for tabloid articles. However, this paper then considers the more implicit representations found within the articles. It focuses particularly on the continued linking of mental ill health and violence, and also on the way in which the mental health service user might be portrayed as passive and rather pitiful as an alternative to violent and dangerous. It is suggested that the continued use of such images may stem from the fact that mental health problems have long been constructed as ‘Other’, and are therefore deeply engrained in our society. The implications of this for anti‐stigma campaigns are briefly discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.