Is Disgust Prepared? A Preliminary Examination in Young Children

Children may be prepared to associate adult disgust reactions with adult disgust elicitors. To test this, three-year olds (and adults) were presented with two images and an emotive vocalization. The images and vocalizations included stimuli adults found disgusting, fear-provoking, and sad. On one set of trials, the main dependent variable (DV) was time spent looking at each image and on a second set of repeat trials the DV was knowledge of image-sound matches. Fear and disgust vocalizations were both more effective at orienting a child's attention to adult fear and disgust images, than sad vocalizations. Parental disgust sensitivity was associated with this effect, moderated by explicit matching knowledge. Matching knowledge was poor in children and good in adults. These data suggest that in children, fear and disgust vocalizations may both promote attention to stimuli that adults find disgusting and/or fear-provoking, suggesting that “preparedness” may not be wholly emotion-specific.     

Can the memory enhancement of the survival judgment task be explained by the elaboration hypothesis?: Evidence from a memory load paradigm1

Many reports have described a survival judgment task that requires participants to judge words according to their relevance to a survival situation, eliciting better recall than that obtained in other judgment tasks (e.g., semantic or self‐judgment tasks). Two explanatory hypotheses (the adaptive hypothesis and the elaboration hypothesis) have been proposed. Here we used the memory load paradigm to investigate whether the adaptive hypothesis or the combination hypothesis can better account for the memory enhancement of the survival judgment task. We used a survival judgment task and an autobiographical recall task with the condition of no memory load or memory load. The 48 participants performed four encoding conditions (memory load—survival, no memory load—survival, memory load—autobiographical, and no memory load—autobiographical). The results showed that memory enhancement of the survival judgment task occurred only in the no memory load condition, but not in the memory load condition. Our results support the elaboration hypothesis. We also discuss the validity of the elaboration hypothesis and future directions to be pursued in this research field.     

The Function, Mechanism, And Evolution Of Learning: A Review Of Sara J. Shettleworth’s Cognition, Evolution, And Behavior.

Behavior is a property of living animals and is therefore a biological phenomenon. This book shows us what it looks like to have a truly biological science of behavior. Such a science needs to discover the laws that control behavior as it is occurring, and it is this that behavior analysts and other psychologists interested in animal behavior and learning have done so well. The science also needs to explain, however, the role that behavior plays in the life of the individual and in the existence of the species, and this has not been part of the agenda for most psychologists. Shettleworth addresses all of these questions about behavior. She views learning in terms of what it accomplishes for the individual and then provides insight into its causal laws and its evolution. All of this is accomplished with a critical eye and unremitting rigor. These accomplishments occur in the context of a theory based on a unique combination of domain‐general and domain‐specific processes that takes a major step in the direction of showing what students of animal behavior and animal learning have to offer each other.