Economics, ecologics, and mechanics: The dynamics of responding under conditions of varying motivation

The mechanics of behavior developed by Killeen (1994) is extended to deal with deprivation and satiation and with recovery of arousal at the beginning of sessions. The extended theory is validated against satiation curves and within-session changes in response rates. Anomalies, such as (a) the positive correlation between magnitude of an incentive and response rates in some contexts and a negative correlation in other contexts and (b) the greater prominence of incentive effects when magnitude is varied within the session rather than between sessions, are explained in terms of the basic interplay of drive and incentive motivation. The models are applied to data from closed economies in which changes of satiation levels play a key role in determining the changes in behavior. Relaxation of various assumptions leads to closed-form models for response rates and demand functions in these contexts, ones that show reasonable accord with the data and reinforce arguments for unit price as a controlling variable. The central role of deprivation level in this treatment distinguishes it from economic models. It is argued that traditional experiments should be redesigned to reveal basic principles, that ecologic experiments should be redesigned to test the applicability of those principles in more natural contexts, and that behavioral economics should consist of the applications of these principles to economic contexts, not the adoption of economic models as alternatives to behavioral analysis.     

Nap timing makes a difference: Sleeping sooner rather than later after learning improves infants’ locomotor problem solving

Twenty-nine newly-walking infants who had recently given up crawling trained to navigate a shoulder-height, nylon tunnel to reach a caregiver waiting at the other end. Infants in the Nap First group napped within 30 min of initial training. Infants in the Delay First group napped four hours after training. All infants were retested six hours after training on the same locomotor problem. Learning was measured by the number of training prompts required to solve the task, exploration, and time to solve the problem. Nap First infants benefited the most from a nap; they required fewer training prompts, used fewer posture shifts from training to test, and solved the task faster compared to Delay First infants, suggesting that optimally timed sleep does not merely protect against interference, but actively contributes to memory consolidation. This study highlights the importance of nap timing as a design feature and was a first step towards limit-testing the boundaries of the relation between sleep and learning. Infants’ fragile memories require regular consolidation with intermittent periods of sleep to prevent interference or forgetting.     

A comprehensive model of women’s social cognition and responsiveness to infant crying: Integrating personality,emotion, executive function,and sleep

Disparate lines of research suggest that women’s (a) emotion regulation and personality, (b) executive function and (c) sleep may be important predictors of mothers’ cry responding in part through their effects on social cognition. However, the extent to which each contributes to cry responding independently remains unknown. We examined this question in a convenience sample of 109 nulliparous undergraduate women. Women completed online surveys to assess personality and emotion dysregulation traits, then visited the lab for a testing session during which they reported on sleep the night before and reactions to videotapes of crying infants and completed computerized working memory and inhibitory control tasks under challenging noise conditions (exposure to traffic and cry sounds). Results indicate that women’s positive personality and higher working memory were associated with higher levels of infant-oriented cry processing (i.e., accurate distress detection, empathy and situational/emotional attributions about distress), which in turn was associated with higher intended responsiveness to infant crying. Emotion dysregulation and deficits in inhibitory control were associated with higher levels of self-oriented cry processing (i.e., anger, anxiety, negative and emotion minimizing attributions in response to infant distress), which in turn was associated with lower cry responsiveness. Short-term sleep deprivation was associated with lower intended responsiveness via the above path from poorer inhibitory control to heightened self-oriented cry processing. Findings suggest that sleep, emotional and cognitive factors are associated with cry processing and subsequent responsiveness independent of one another.     

单亲家庭儿童相对剥夺感与心理适应的循环作用关系：一项追踪研究

本研究基于经典相对剥夺理论和发展情境理论, 采用纵向设计, 以湖北省某地区273名单亲家庭儿童为被试, 进行连续3次的追踪测查, 考察单亲家庭儿童相对剥夺感与心理适应的特点及其循环作用关系。结果发现: (1)单亲家庭男生的抑郁和孤独感水平比女生高; 贫困单亲家庭儿童的相对剥夺感、抑郁和孤独感水平比非贫困单亲家庭儿童高, 自尊水平比非贫困单亲家庭儿童低; (2)控制了性别、学段和家庭经济状况后, 在个体内水平上T1时的相对剥夺感显著负向预测T2时的心理适应, 进而显著负向预测T3时的相对剥夺感, 同时T2时的相对剥夺感也能显著负向预测T3时的心理适应; (3)相对剥夺感与心理适应的循环作用在不同家庭经济状况单亲儿童中存在显著差异, 贫困单亲家庭儿童的心理适应对其相对剥夺感的作用比非贫困单亲家庭儿童更大。可见, 单亲家庭儿童的相对剥夺感与心理适应存在循环作用关系, 即前测(T_n)的相对剥夺感会导致后测(T_n+1)的心理适应不良, 进而影响后测(T_n+2)的相对剥夺感, 研究结果对于单亲家庭儿童心理适应的干预具有一定启示意义。     

Further Evidence That Sleep Deprivation Effects and the Vigilance Decrement Are Functionally Equivalent: Comment on Altmann (2018)

Veksler and Gunzelmann (2018) argue that the vigilance decrement and the deleterious effects of sleep loss reflect functionally equivalent degradations in cognitive processing and performance. Our account is implemented in a cognitive architecture, where these factors produce breakdowns in goal‐directed cognitive processing that we refer to as microlapses. Altmann (2018) raises a number of challenges to microlapses as a unified account of these deficits. Under scrutiny, however, the challenges do little to discredit the theory or conclusions in the original paper. In our response, we address the most serious challenges. In so doing, we provide additional support for the theory and mechanisms, and we highlight opportunities for extending their explanatory breadth.     

Does Global Inequality Matter?

Global economic and political inequalities are in most respects greater today than they have been for decades. From one point of view inequality is a bad thing simply because it involves a deviation from equality, which is thought to have value for its own sake. But it is controversial whether this position can be defended, and if it can, whether the egalitarian ideal on which the defense may depend applies at the global level as in individual societies. Setting aside directly egalitarian reasons for concern about global inequality, this paper explores several reasons for concern that derive from nonegalitarian values – primarily those associated with poverty and material deprivation, humiliation, the impact of inequality on the capacity for self-control and self-government, and the unfairness of political decision-making procedures with large economic inequalities in the background.     

Effect of external motion on correspondence between infant actigraphy and maternal diary

Correspondence between infant actigraphy and mother-recorded diary differed significantly when receiver–operator function area under the curve, correlation, and logistic regression was calculated with and without excluding periods of external motion. External motion occurred in 40% of recording time and significantly changed activity count per epoch.