A rose by any other name

In this article I describe a mental health programme that has clear, though unstated, adumbrations of the spiritual practice of mindfulness. The programme has been successful in the southern USA, an area noted for its religious and political conservatism. I provide a background of the historical, political, cultural and religious situation affecting spiritual education in the USA with which such programmes contend. Research methodologies include historical research, text analysis and personal interviews.     

A new tool for assessing context conditioning induced by US-unpredictability in humans: The Martians task restyled

Unpredictability of an unconditioned stimulus (US) typically produces context conditioning in animals and humans. We modified the Martians task - a computer game measuring learning of Pavlovian associations through conditioned suppression - for assessing context conditioning in humans. One between-subjects and one within-subjects study are reported. Both experiments comprised four conditions: a predictable (Paired) condition in which the conditioned stimulus (CS) signaled the US, a neutral condition (No-US), one unpredictable condition in which the CS did not signal the US (Unpaired) and another one in which only unsignaled, temporally unpredictable USs were presented (US-only). Results showed more contextual conditioned suppression in the unpredictable conditions compared to the predictable condition. In contrast, more cued conditioned suppression occurred in the Paired condition than in the Unpaired condition. Consistent with animal research, context conditioning was increased by unpredictability. These data support the Martians task as a promising tool to extend research on human context conditioning.     

Selling in an asymmetric retail world: perspectives from India,Russia, and the US on buyer–seller information differential,perceived adaptive selling,and purchase intention

The current research aimed to contribute to our understanding of (a) how adaptive selling is perceived by retail consumers in different types of economies when they have differing levels of buyer–seller information differential and (b) how this phenomenon influences their purchase intention. The focal countries were the US (a developed economy) and India and Russia (both developing economies). These three were selected owing to their disparate economic and cultural contexts. This investigation used a relatively new construct: perceived adaptive selling (PAS). PAS refers to the degree to which the buyer perceives that the salesperson is adapting. The study examined whether the impact of PAS was a function of a country’s level of development and whether such perceptions were influenced by the level of buyer–seller information differential in the retail transaction. The findings suggested that buyers in Russia and India PAS and were influenced by it differently from their US counterparts. This work provided a general framework for understanding tactical implementation of the salesperson’s PAS behavior.     

Eye movements during recall of aversive memory decreases conditioned fear

Cognitive-behavioral therapy for anxiety disorders typically involves exposure to the conditioned stimulus (CS). Despite its status as an effective and primary treatment, many patients do not show clinical improvement or relapse. Contemporary learning theory suggests that treatment may be optimized by adding techniques that aim at revaluating the aversive consequence (US) of the feared stimulus. This study tested whether US devaluation via a dual task – imagining the US while making eye movements – decreases conditioned fear. Following fear acquisition one group recalled the US while making eye movements (EM) and one group merely recalled the US (RO). Next, during a test phase, all participants were re-presented the CSs. Dual tasking, relative to the control condition, decreased memory vividness and emotionality. Moreover, only in the dual task condition reductions were observed in self-reported fear, US expectancy, and CS unpleasantness, but not in skin conductance responses. Findings provide the first evidence that the dual task decreases conditioned fear and suggest it may be a valuable addition to exposure therapy.     

Infant long-term memory for associations formed during mere exposure

We previously found that young infants spontaneously associate stimuli that they merely see together. Using a sensory preconditioning paradigm with 6- and 9-month-olds, we asked how long such associations remain latent before being forgotten and what exposure conditions affect their persistence. Groups were preexposed to two puppets for 1 h/day for 2 days, 1 h on 1 day, or 1 h on 1 day in two sessions; 1-27 days later, target actions were modeled on one puppet, and infants were tested with the other puppet 1 day later. The longest delay after which infants imitated the actions on the other puppet defined how long they remembered the association. The data revealed that the preexposure regimen determined retention. Regardless of exposure time, both ages remembered the association longer after two sessions, and younger infants remembered longer than older infants - for 4 weeks - after two 30-min sessions on 1 day.     

The effects of context extinction on US signal value

Two experiments with rats examined the effects of context extinction on responding to the signal value of an unconditioned stimulus (US). In Experiment 1, US signal value was first trained when a single food pellet signaled the delivery of three additional pellets. After training, rats received either context extinction (CE) or home cage (HC) exposure before testing US signal value by single food pellet presentations. Results showed responding was significantly reduced in Group CE compared to Group HC. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 and showed that exposure to a different context did not reduce responding to the signal value of a US. The results complement research by Kehoe et al. [Kehoe, E. J., Weidemann, G., & Dartnall, S. (2004). Apparatus exposure produces profound declines in conditioned nictitating-membrane responses to discrete conditioned stimuli by the rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus). Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 30, 259–270.] and have key implications for prominent theories of conditioning.     

The ethics of return migration and education: transnational duties in migratory processes

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that most prominent normative theories on immigration neglect a critical dimension of the migratory phenomenon, a neglect that blinds them to important rights that, under some circumstances, immigrants ought to have as a matter of justice. Specifically, the paper argues that these theories fail to appreciate that the children of immigrant families, regardless of whether they were born in their parents’ country or in the host country, should benefit from educational rights addressing needs that are particular to their situation. These children may be forced to move between these two countries. This situation generates an obligation for both states (‘receiving’ and ‘sending’) to act jointly to provide educational opportunities so that these children are fully conversant with both cultures and in both languages. Put succinctly, then, we argue that since children of immigrant families lack any certainty of permanent residence in the host society owing to the threat of deportation and the precarity of their legal status, host and home societies bear the duty to offer an education that allows them to be functional in both societies.     

Thwarting the renewal (relapse) of conditioned fear with the explicitly unpaired procedure: Possible interpretations and implications for treating human fears and phobias

In three experiments using the barpress conditioned suppression task with albino rats, we studied the renewal (relapse) of conditioned fear in an ABA fear-renewal paradigm. We found that explicitly unpaired (EU) deliveries of conditioned stimuli (CSs) and unconditioned stimuli (USs) in Context B thwarted fear renewal in Context A. Evidence contraindicated a suggestion by Rauhut, Thomas, and Ayres (2001) that US habituation plays a key role in this effect. For example, renewal was thwarted only when EU CSs and USs were intermingled rather than given in succession. The possibility that EU treatments thwart renewal by creating a CS that inhibits fear in the test context also received no support. Thus, summation and retardation tests in Context A found no evidence that the EU CS became inhibitory, finding instead evidence for a residual excitation. Other possible interpretations of the results and some implications for clinical practice are noted.     

Cue competition between elementary trained stimuli: US miscuing, interference, and US omission

The present series of experiments was designed to assess whether rule-based accounts of Pavlovian learning can account for cue competition effects observed after elemental training. All experiments involved initial differential conditioning training with A-US and B alone presentations. Miscuing refers to the fact that responding to A is impaired after one B-US presentation whereas interference is the impairment of responding to A after presentation of C-US pairings. Omission refers to the effects on B of A alone presentations. Experiments 1-2a provided clear evidence for miscuing whereas interference was not found after 1, 5 or 10 C-US pairings. Moreover, Experiments 3 and 3a found only weak evidence for interference in an A-US, B ∣ C-US, D ∣ A design used previously to show the effect. Experiments 4 and 5 failed to find any effect of US omission after one or five omission trials. The present results indicate that miscuing is more robust than is the interference effect. Moreover, the asymmetrical effects of US miscuing and US omission are difficult to accommodate within rule-based accounts of Pavlovian conditioning.