Conditional reasoning following contradictory evidence: A developmental analysis

Recent evidence suggests that young adults do not correctly understand the logical relationship of the conditional (if p the q) as it applies to hypothesis testing, and most training procedures have not been productive. However, the introduction of contradictory evidence following faulty inferences has led to accurate inferences with conditional statements. Third and seventh grade and college studients (9, 13, and 21 years of age, respectively) were tested to assess developmental differences in improvement following contradiction training and to test whether improved performance transfers to other conditional reasoning tasks. Significant improvement in conditional reasoning was found for the young adult group following the introduction of contradictory evidence, and the positive effect of the treatment transferred across tasks. The third grade students showed no effects from the introduction of the contradiction, but the seventh graders were often confused by the introduction of the contradiction. Seventh grade and college student performances were generally worse than that of the third graders for the positive instances (p · q), but while the contradiction training improved college studients' performance it did not affect the seventh graders. The results are discussed in terms of changes in cognitive structures.     

Depression and achievement in subgroups of children with learning disabilities

Eighty-five learning disabled children were assigned to four subgroups and administered measures designed to assess the relationship between depression and academic achievement. As a group, these children were more depressed than nondisabled children. The subgroups, which were identified as learning disabled only, learning disabled with low IQ, learning disabled with socio-emotional disturbance, and learning disabled with hyperactivity, did not differ in magnitude of depression; however, the relationships between depression and achievement and IQ were substantially different in each subgroup. For the two largest subgroups, learning disabled only and learning disabled with socio-emotional disturbance, it was suggested that depression is the consequence of learning failure in the former and a possible cause of learning failure in the latter. These findings underscore the importance of depression, a heretofore neglected variable, for the understanding and remediation of learning disabilities.     

Does experienced pain affects local brain volumes? Insights from a clinical acute pain model

Background/Objective:To study pain-brain morphometry associations as a function of post-surgery stages (anesthesia, pain and analgesia) in an acute pain model. Method:Impacted mandible third molar were extracted. Before surgery, an anatomical T1 scan was obtained. Regional brain volumen and subcortical nuclei shapes were obtained. Statistical analyses were done using multiple regression, being pain scores the predictors and voxel volumes, subcortical nuclei volumes and subcortical nuclei shapes, the outcomes. Results:Pain was significantly larger at pain than at anesthesia and analgesia stages, and was higher during anesthesia than during analgesia. Pain intensity was related to grey matter in several cortical (Insula, Mid Frontal and Temporal Gyruses, Precuneus, Anterior Cingulate), and subcortical nuclei (Hippocampus, Thalamus, Putamen, Amygdala), depending of the post-surgical stage. A larger number of brain areas showed significance at pain that at anesthesia and analgesia stages. Conclusions:The relationships of regional brain volumes and subcortical nuclei shapes with pain scores seemed to be unsteady, as they changed with the patient's actual pain stage.     

Fear as a discriminative stimulus for an appetitive instrumental response

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that anticipation of shock could be established as a discriminative stimulus for an appetitive instrumental response. In multiphase experiments, bar pressing for food was brought under the discriminative control of intermittent and gradually increasing electric shock. In a second phase, tones were estalished as either a CS+, or CS? for shock. Subsequently, the CSs were introduced on to the operant baseline. Animals trained with shock as the S^D showed an increase in responding to the CS+ and a slight decrease to the CS?. Conversely, animals trained with shock as the S^Δ showed decreased responding to the CS+ and slight increase to the CS?. These findings are seen as supportive of the Discriminative Stimulus hypothesis of learned resistance to punishment.     

Irrelevant incentive learning revisited: Associating flavors and exteroceptive cues with positive incentives

In “irrelevant incentive learning” information stored about an incentive when it is not desired is used later when the incentive is desired. In “habit learning” responses learned under one motive state continue to be made under a new motive state even though they produce goal events that are not appropriate to that motive state. Experiment 1 showed that both types of learning occur simultaneously whether flavor or texture cues are used and whether or not position is also a relevant cue. Thus, contrary to previous suggestions, irrelevant incentive learning is not limited to interoceptive cues, nor is habit learning limited to exteroceptive cues. In both Experiments 1 and 2 it was also shown that motivation affects what is learned as well as affecting current performance. This contrasts with views of motivation as solely a determinant of performance.     

Habituation during exposure treatment: Distraction vs attention-focusing

To investigate the effects of distraction and attention-focusing during in-vivo exposure to feared stimuli, the responses of 16 obsessive-compulsives with washing rituals were studied. A cross-over design was employed in which 6 of the subjects underwent exposure with attention focusing on the first day followed by exposure with distraction on the second day. The remaining subjects received the reverse order. Habituation of both heart rate and subjective anxiety was observed under both conditions, the rate of habituation tending to remain constant throughout the 90-min exposure. Greater between-session habituation and greater synchrony between the psychophysiological and the subjective measures of anxiety was observed when attention-focusing preceded distraction. Since habituation and synchrony have previously been found to be positively related to treatment outcome, the present results suggest that treatment by exposure to feared stimuli may be more effective if attention-focusing is promoted.     

Conditional reasoning and the competence-performance issue: A developmental analysis of a training task

Empirical investigations of conditional reasoning have generally found that both children and young adults perform poorly on tasks that require the selection or evaluation of those propositions that test the truth status of conditional statements (if p then q). Earlier work (D. O'Brien & W. F. Overton, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 1980, 30, 44–60) suggested that poor performances with these tasks by young adults show improvement following the introduction of evidence that contradicts earlier faulty inferences, and this improvement generalizes to other conditional reasoning tasks. The effects of the contradiction training were not found with younger subjects. The present research is an extension of the contradiction training paradigm. Ten-, fourteen-, and eighteen-year-olds were tested to assess developmental differences in improvement with an evaluation and a conditional syllogism task. Significant improvement in performance was found for the twelfth grade students following the contradiction training, and this generalized across tasks. This effect was not found for the two younger groups. The usual poor performance of the oldest group is considered to be a false negative assessment of their conditional reasoning competency. Further, it is suggested that several correct performances of younger reasoners are false positive assessments of their conditional reasoning competency.     

A case of adult onset of stuttering

A 36-yr-old adult male was treated for stuttering after a “sudden onset” of disfluency according to the client, 3 yr before. The treatment method and results are described and the “awareness” feature of stuttering onset is discussed.     

A Fishbein-Ajzen model of intention to work following childbirth

This research identifies factors which influence college women's intention to work during the first 3 years following childbirth. It uses a model, derived from M. Fishbein and I. Ajzen (1975, Belief, attitude, intention, and behavior, Reading, MA, Addison-Wesley) as modified by P. M. Bentler and G. Speckart (1979, Psychological Review, 86, 452–464), which proposes that intentions are a function of own work experience, vicarious experience with a working mother, subjective normative pressure, and attitudes. Data collected via a mailed questionnaire from 202 white women and analyzed using maximum likelihood estimation of structural equation parameters supported the fit of the model. Attitudes had the strongest influence on intentions.