Facing the Holocaust in Generations of Families of Survivors: The Case of Partial Relevance and Interpersonal Values

This qualitative study examined the meaning of the Holocaust for 10 Israeli families of survivors in which there are three generations. Thirty-two individuals (24 women, 8 men) were asked to tell their life story. The interviews were analyzed for themes related to PR (Partial Relevance, Bar-On & Selah, 1991) and the interpersonal values held by family members, using SYMLOG methods (Bales, 1999). The first generation agreed on the importance of the value of family teamwork and showed medium to high range PR scores. The second and the third generations showed low, medium, and high range PR scores and tended to value both family teamwork and more non- conforming behavior.     

The role of Hebrew letter names in early literacy: the case of multiphonemic acrophonic names

English-speaking children spell letters correctly more often when the letters' names are heard in the word (e.g., B in beach vs. bone). Hebrew letter names have been claimed to be less useful in this regard. In Study 1, kindergartners were asked to report and spell initial and final letters in Hebrew words that included full (CVC), partial (CV), and phonemic (C) cues derived from these letter names (e.g., kaftor, kartis, kibepsilonl, spelled with /kaf/). Correct and biased responses increased with length of congruent and incongruent cues, respectively. In Study 2, preschoolers and kindergartners were asked to report initial letters with monosyllabic or disyllabic names (e.g., /kaf/ or /samepsilonx/, respectively) that included the cues described above. Correct responses increased with cue length; the effect was stronger with monosyllabic letter names than with disyllabic letter names, probably because the cue covered a larger ratio of the letter name. Phonological awareness was linked to use of letter names.     

Memories of reward and nonreward regulate the extinction and reacquisition of both excitatory and inhibitory associations

The memories of the unconditioned stimulus (US) and its absence (No US), symbolized as S^R and S^N, respectively, may be retrieved on US or No US trials giving rise to four types of associations, S^R → US, S^R → No US, S^N → US, and S^N → No US. Here, following acquisition under partial reward (PRF), rats were shifted either to different schedules of PRF (Experiment 1) or extinction (Experiments 1 and 2). Inhibitory S^R → No US associations formed in acquisition survived extinction and shifts to one, but not another type of PRF schedule (Experiments 1 and 2). Excitatory S^R → US associations also survived extinction (Experiment 2). These findings, as well as the acquisition findings of Experiment 2, are consistent with the sequential model but not with the only other two theories said to be able to explain PRF findings, the frustration hypothesis of Amsel and the attention hypothesis of Mackintosh [see Haselgrove, M., Aydin, A., & Pearce, J. M. (2004). A partial reinforcement extinction effect despite equal rates of reinforcement during Pavlovian conditioning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 30, 240–250]. Also, the reacquisition findings obtained here are inconsistent with two views applied to several learning phenomena, the rule-learning view and the position-item view.     

Partial reinforcement and context switch effects in human predictive learning

Human participants were trained in a trial-by-trial contingency judgements task in which they had to predict the probability of an outcome (diarrhoea) following different cues (food names) in different contexts (restaurants). Cue P was paired with the outcome on half of the trials (partial reinforcement), while cue C was paired with the outcome on all the trials (continuous reinforcement), both cues in Context A. Test was conducted in both Context A and a different but equally familiar context (B). Context change decreased judgements to C, but not to P (Experiment 1). This effect was found only in the cue trained in the context where a different cue was partially reinforced (Experiment 2). Context switch effects disappeared when different cues received partial reinforcement in both contexts of training (Experiment 3). The implications of these results for an explanation of context switch effects in terms of ambiguity in the meaning of the cues prompting attention to the context (e.g., Bouton, 1997) are discussed.     

Bears in our midst: Familiarity with Level 2 driving automation and attending to surprise on-road events

This study presents an on-road paradigm to measure the effect of Level 2 (L2) system familiarity on attention strategies to salient, but non-hazardous, driving-related events when using the driving automation. A vehicle with an oversized pink teddy bear on the back overtook participants three times while they drove a 2019 Mercedes-Benz C300 equipped with a L2 system for 1 h. This L2 system requires drivers to keep their hands on the wheel while activated. The L2 system was turned on or off, depending on the assigned condition, and participants varied in their familiarity with L2 systems. Cameras recorded participant eye glance behavior. After the drive, participants were asked to recall the bear and the number of times their mind had wandered from the driving task during the drive. Results show that the driving automation support gave only participants familiar with L2 systems an advantage for greater bear recall. Unfamiliar participants were at a relative disadvantage when assisted by the L2 system, with generally poorer bear recall than unfamiliar participants who drove with the system off. Better bear recall corresponded with wider on-road gaze dispersion and more instances of mind wandering. Our findings support the effectiveness of this paradigm to measure driver attention when using a L2 system under real-world conditions and highlight the need to consider the role of driving automation familiarity in future research.     

Inversive meadows and divisive meadows

Inversive meadows are commutative rings with a multiplicative identity element and a total multiplicative inverse operation satisfying ⁰−1=0. Divisive meadows are inversive meadows with the multiplicative inverse operation replaced by a division operation. We give finite equational specifications of the class of all inversive meadows and the class of all divisive meadows. It depends on the angle from which they are viewed whether inversive meadows or divisive meadows must be considered more basic. We show that inversive and divisive meadows of rational numbers can be obtained as initial algebras of finite equational specifications. In the spirit of Peacock?s arithmetical algebra, we study variants of inversive and divisive meadows without an additive identity element and/or an additive inverse operation. We propose simple constructions of variants of inversive and divisive meadows with a partial multiplicative inverse or division operation from inversive and divisive meadows. Divisive meadows are more basic if these variants are considered as well. We give a simple account of how mathematicians deal with 1/0, in which meadows and a customary convention among mathematicians play prominent parts, and we make plausible that a convincing account, starting from the popular computer science viewpoint that 1/0 is undefined, by means of some logic of partial functions is not attainable.     

An analysis of sequential variables in Pavlovian conditioning employing extended and limited acquisition training

Sequential theory’s memory model of learning has been successfully applied in response contingent instrumental conditioning experiments (Capaldi, 1966, Capaldi, 1967, Capaldi, 1994 and Capaldi and Miller, 2003). However, it has not been systematically tested in nonresponse contingent Pavlovian conditioning experiments. The present experiments attempted to determine if several sequential variables affect responding in Pavlovian situations as they do in instrumental ones. Of primary concern here were the effects on extinction of number of NR transitions (the number of times a nonreinforced trial is followed by a reinforced trial), N-length (the number of successive nonreinforced trials that precede a reinforced trial), and percentage of reinforcement (50 versus 100%) following either extended acquisition training (Experiment 1, 720 trials) or limited acquisition training (Experiment 3, 24 trials). In agreement with a sequential analysis, N-length increased resistance to extinction more than number of NR transitions following extensive training with the opposite occurring following limited training. In Experiment 1, greater resistance to extinction was associated with 50% than with 100% reinforcement, a partial reinforcement extinction effect (PREE). Experiment 2 examined an anomalous finding obtained in Experiment 1. A major theoretical difference between instrumental and Pavlovian conditioning has been held to be the greater ease of producing a PREE in instrumental than in Pavlovian conditioning (Kimble, 1961 and Mackintosh, 1974). However, the findings obtained here suggest that the probability of obtaining a PREE and other Pavlovian extinction effects, as in instrumental conditioning, increases along with the effectiveness of the sequential variables employed.     

Supporting the changing driver’s task: Exploration of interface designs for supervision and intervention in automated driving

Driving automation leads to a changing role for drivers, that is from manual vehicle control to supervising automation. Supervision of partial automation requires now and then intervention. Since the automation causes low vigilance and out-of-the-loop performance problems, this changing role is not well suited for human operators. To explore how driver-vehicle interfaces can support drivers in their changed role, we tested three concepts. Concept A was a baseline reference, providing only acoustic warnings. Concept B presented status-information and warnings behind the steering wheel. Concept C used illumination and haptic feedback in the seat-pan to direct attention outside the vehicle and to stimulate response. Concept C only provided vibrotactile feedback when intervention was needed. Results of our study show improved support for supervision with the illumination-concept, i.e. better hazard-detection and raised levels of Situation Awareness in some scenarios relevant for supervisory control. Knowing that supervision will be the dominating driver’s responsibility during partially automated driving, the illumination-concept is a recommended solution for support of the driver’s changing role. Nonetheless, neither concept B, nor C, showed additional support for intervention compared to the baseline. It was hypothesised that the combination of concept C’s stimuli for intervention-support caused counter-productive levels of annoyance. Furthermore, we concluded that intervention and supervision benefit from different interface-features and discussed possible causes underlying ambiguity between support for supervision and support for intervention shown with concept C. Therewith, the considerations in this paper contribute to further development of – and knowledge about – appropriate driver-vehicle interaction while vehicle-operation advances into operating partially automated driving systems.     

Purchasing decisions,partial knowledge,and economic search experimental and simulation evidence

Several experimental studies have discovered high-performing heuristic strategies in the search for the most economic price of a good in situations where a searcher has both full prior knowledge and no prior knowledge of the underlying price distribution. This paper describes a new experiment set in a more realistic ‘partial-knowledge’ framework. Several new search heuristics are suggested which match well with observed behaviour, and which, over a large number of simulated trials, perform well in comparison with the optimal model and better than previously reported ‘no-knowledge’ rules.     

Factors affecting the turnover of different groups of part-time workers

Past research on employee attitudes and behavior has focused mainly on full-time employees. When part-time employees have been studied, the research has concentrated on the differences between full-time and part-time employees. Recent research has suggested that part-time employees should not be viewed as a single, undifferentiated group. Instead part-time workers can be classified into separate groups using theoretically based demographic variables, attachments, and roles outside of the focal employer. The present study provides support for the proposition that part-time employee group membership accounts for incremental variance in predicting turnover. The present study also provides additional support for the premise that organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and perceived employment alternatives differentially predict turnover for these part-time groups. Implications for researchers and employers are discussed.