The gap between inattentional blindness and attentional misdirection

Kuhn and colleagues described a novel attentional misdirection approach (deliberate diversion of attention away from a visually salient stimulus) to investigate overt and covert attention mechanisms in connection with inattentional blindness (not being able to perceive something that is plainly visible because one’s attention has not been focused on it). This misdirection paradigm is valuable to study the temporal relationship between eye movements and visual awareness. Although, as put forth in this comment, the link between attentional misdirection and inattentional blindness needs to be developed further. There are at least four differences between the two paradigms which concern the conceptual aspects of the unexpected object and the methodological aspects of the task design. This highlights the need for a broader theoretical framework incorporating inattentional blindness and overt and covert attention mechanisms. Two possible research lines focusing on the orienting attention research and the “selection-for-action” paradigm are discussed.     

Programmed Instruction: Construction Responding, Discrimination Responding, and Highlighted Keywords

Skinner (1958) expressed the need for an increase in the effectiveness and efficiency of education. In particular, he suggested that programmed instruction could provide such efficiency. The present study used a within-subject design to compare the effects of four types of instructional materials; those requiring overt construction responses, overt discrimination responses, covert reading of text with highlighted key words, and covert reading of standard text. The materials requiring overt responding produced greater learning than did the covert reading materials, with or without highlighting. There was no difference found between the two types of overt responding; nor were there differences between the two types of covert reading materials. Thus, this study supports the assumption that overt responding is more effective. However, the overt response materials also required proportionately more time. Therefore, this showed no benefit of overt responding in terms of efficiency.     

社会称许性量表的测量等价性探讨

若观测变量和潜在特质之间的关系在相比较的群体之间等同,就称该量表具备测量等价性。测量工具满足测量等价性的要求是进行组间差异比较的前提条件。该文首先明确测量等价性的概念及在结构方程模型中所要满足的5个条件,然后以社会称许性的性别差异为例,阐述测量等价性检验和建立的方法。结果表明,男性群体和女性群体的测量等价。文章最后讨论了该研究的理论意义和不足之处。     

Failure to loose fear: The impact of cognitive load and trait anxiety on extinction

Exposure therapy is an effective technique for fear reduction. However, whether effective exposure requires attentional allocation to the feared situation remains a debated clinical issue. In the present study, the impact of attention allocation in extinction was investigated in an experimental conditioning study. Through a between-subjects manipulation of cognitive load, we created a condition in which participants could allocate their attention to the feared stimulus during extinction (low load condition), and a condition in which attentional allocation was impaired (high load condition). The influence of cognitive load on extinction was examined by comparing electrodermal responses and verbal ratings for the conditioned stimuli in the two extinction load conditions. The results show less successful extinction in the high load condition than in the low load condition. However, this effect was found only in low anxious participants, and it was prominent only on the skin conductance responses. The present results suggest that extinction is not automatic but requires cognitive resources.     

Within-session changes in responding during several simple schedules

Pigeons' key pecking was reinforced by food delivered by several fixed-interval, variable-ratio, and differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate schedules. Rate of responding, number of responses per reinforcer, length of postreinforcement pause, running response rate, and the time required to collect an available reinforcer changed systematically within sessions when the schedules provided high rates of reinforcement, but usually not when they provided low rates. These results suggest that the factors that produce within-session changes in responding are generally similar for different schedules of reinforcement. However, a separate factor may also contribute during variable-ratio schedules. The results question explanations for within-session changes that are related solely to the passage of time, to responding, and to one interpretation of attention. They support the idea that one or more factors related to reinforcement play a role.     

EFFECTS OF REINFORCEMENT CHOICE ON TASK RESPONDING IN INDIVIDUALS WITH DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES

The effects of reinforcement choice on task performance were examined with 6 individuals who had been diagnosed with severe to profound mental retardation. Five highly preferred items were identified for each participant via stimulus preference assessments. Participants then were exposed to choice and no-choice conditions that were alternated within reversal and multielement designs. During choice sessions, participants were permitted to select between two preferred stimuli contingent on responding. During no-choice sessions, the therapist delivered a single item contingent on responding. Preference for the stimuli was held constant across conditions by yoking the items delivered during no-choice sessions to those selected during the immediately preceding choice sessions. All participants exhibited similar rates of responding across choice and no-choice conditions. These findings indicate that for individuals with severe disabilities, access to choice may not improve task performance when highly preferred items are already incorporated into instructional programs.     

Local rates of responding and reinforcement during concurrent schedules

The literature was searched for information about the local rates of responding and reinforcement during concurrent schedules. The local rates of reinforcement obtained from the two components of a concurrent schedule were equal when a long-duration changeover delay was used and when many sessions were conducted, except when the two components provided different simple schedules. The local rates of responding were equal under some conditions, but they differed when one component provided a ratio and the other an interval schedule. Across schedules, local rates of reinforcement changed with changes in the schedule of reinforcement. Local rates of responding did not change with changes in change-over-delay duration but did with changes in the changeover ratio and with changes in the programmed rates of reinforcement. The results generally conform to the Equalizing and Melioration Principles and help to clarify current statements of the Matching Law. The results also suggest that changes in the local rates of responding and reinforcement may be orderly across schedules.     

Behavioral economics and within-session changes in responding

Pigeons and rats responded on fixed-ratio schedules with requirements ranging from 5 to 120 responses. Consistent with past results from several schedules and procedures, responding usually changed systematically within experimental sessions. The within-session changes were usually larger and were less symmetrical around the middle of the session for schedules that provided higher, rather than lower, rates of reinforcement. These results suggest that similar variables contribute to within-session changes in responding under different schedules. When an economic demand function was fit to the data, the intensity and elasticity of demand for food and the percentage of the variance accounted for decreased within sessions, although the trend for elasticity did not reach statistical significance for pigeons. These results suggest that relatively short sessions should be used to study economic demand in open economies and that demand may differ at different times in a session and in sessions of different lengths. Within-session changes in intensity, but not necessarily elasticity, of demand are consistent with behavioral economic theories.     

The effects of a variety of instructions on human fixed-interval performance

College students were instructed to press a button for points under a single reinforcement schedule or under a variety of reinforcement schedules. Instructions for a single schedule were either specific or minimal. Instructions on a variety of schedules involved specific instructions on eight different schedules of reinforcement. Subsequent to the varied training, responding under a fixed-interval schedule occurred at a low rate. Both the minimal and specific instruction training led to fixed-interval responding that was similar to the responding exhibited during training. These findings suggest that under certain conditions instructed behavior is sensitive to changes in contingencies.     

THE INFLUENCE OF CHILD-PREFERRED ACTIVITIES ON AUTISTIC CHILDREN'S SOCIAL BEHAVIOR

One of the characteristics of autistic children is severe social avoidance behavior. We assessed whether the type of activity (child-preferred vs. activities that were arbitrarily determined by an adult) engaged in during an interaction was correlated with the amount of social avoidance behaviors these children exhibit. Results revealed a negative correlation between appropriate child-preferred activities and social avoidance behavior. Additional analyses revealed that (a) social avoidance behaviors could be manipulated within a reversal design, and would predictably decrease when the children were prompted to initiate appropriate child-preferred activities; and (b) these procedures could be used to teach children to initiate child-preferred activities in community settings, resulting in reductions in social avoidance responses even after the therapist's prompts were completely removed. These data suggest that the manipulation of task variables may influence the severe social unresponsiveness that is characteristic of autistic children.