Incorporating inferences in narrative representations: A study of how and why

Four experiments examined the conceptual organization of narrative passages and the extent to which these representations were explanatory in a variety of experimental tasks. The conceptual representation of a passage consisted of a graph of labeled nodes and labeled, directed arcs which were adopted from the Conceptual Dependency Theory. These representations included both explicitly stated information and inferences which had been empirically extracted by a question-answering procedure. Symbolic procedures for answering how- and why-questions were also delineated. The conceptual representations and the symbolic procedures that operate on these representations together accounted for 91% of the answers generated from question-answering protocols in Experiment 1, and also the rated quality of specific answers to specific questions in Experiment 2. Experiments 3 and 4 supported the hypothesis that structural properties of the representations can predict recall of explicitly stated nodes and verification ratings of inference nodes. The results provide encouraging support for the proposed graphic representations and also for the use of question-answering protocols in uncovering prose inferences.     

Naloxone and Pavlovian fear conditioning

Previous research has shown that pretreating rats with the opiate antagonist naloxone increases the freezing that follows painful electric shock. Three experiments, using freezing behavior as a dependent variable, were carried out to determine whether the drug might cause this effect by enhancing fear conditioning. Two of the studies employed a differential context fear-conditioning paradigm. Naloxone did not affect freezing behavior during the preshock adaptation period. In Experiment 1, naloxone was found to increase resistance to extinction in the S+ context. In Experiment 2, naloxone was found to increase freezing in the S+ context. This effect was dependent upon administering naloxone during training but not dependent on administering it during testing. The third study employed a generalization paradigm. It was found that naloxone's effect on postshock freezing was dependent on the place of testing; as the contextual cues of the test chamber were changed from those of the conditioning chamber, the effect of naloxone on freezing was reduced. The results of these experiments lend strong support to the hypothesis that naloxone increases freezing by enhancing the conditioning of fear to contextual stimuli associated with shock.     

Spontaneous configuring to a tone-light compound using appetitive training

Rats were trained to bar-press for water in the presence of a simultaneous compound tone-light stimulus using a discrete-trial procedure. Different groups were given between 300 and 3900 trials. When subsequently tested in extinction, all rats showed consistent levels of responding to the compound stimulus but responding to the tone and light components declined as a function of number of training trials. This is a demonstration of spontaneous configuring. Two other experiments showed that with similar procedures generalization from a component of the training stimulus to other values on the same continuum decreases with increased training with the compound stimulus. It was concluded that configuring and generalization from a single stimulus involve the same processes.     

A characterization of stochastic independence by association,with an application to random utility theory

A characterization of stochastic independence in terms of association of random variables is given. The result is applied to yield a simple proof of the Sattath-Tversky inequality without continuity assumptions.     

Speaker bias in children's evaluation of the external consistency of statements

The hypothesis of this study is that an assumption of speaker credibility affects children's judgments of the external consistency of statements. In two experiments, first and third grade children (6 and 8 years of age, respectively) and college adults were read short paragraphs containing contradictory information from a contextual source and a speaker. The contextual source was described as either authoritative or nonauthoritative and discredited. The speaker was either an adult or child. Thus the contextual source was either more or less reliable than the speaker. Subjects were asked to affirm or contradict the speaker's statement, and to choose either the source or the speaker as most believable. The results showed that adult responses varied with the contextual source alone, while the responses of the first graders varied primarily with the speaker's age. The responses of the third graders varied with both factors. The results suggest young children can assess the external consistency of statements but frequently do not because of their assumptions about speakers and other performance factors.     

Effects of food priming on instrumental acquisition and performance

Four experiments investigated the effects of a priming food reinforcement, given 0 or 75 sec pretrial, on runway performance of rats. The studies differed in the use of between-versus-within-subject designs, and by using food or water as the goal reinforcer. In Experiment 1, using food as the goal reward, subjects primed with food 0 sec pretrial conditioned slower than subjects primed 75 sec pretrial. In Experiment 2, using water as the goal reward, subjects primed with food 0 sec pretrial conditioned faster. These differences were evident on both prefed trials and on nonprefed test trials. Experiments 3 and 4 showed an opposite pattern of results when within-subject comparisons of 0- and 75-sec pretrial intervals were used: Food priming immediately pretrial facilitated food-rewarded running but inhibited water-rewarded running. The results suggest prefeeding has differential effects on acquisition and performance of instrumental behavior, and also depending upon the similarity of the priming and goal reinforcers.     

Pavlovian processes do mediate control of the “advance” response strategy

Two parallel experiments used pigeons in a transfer of control design to determine the basis of the transfer of the use of the “advance strategy” across successive discriminations (W. K. Honig & H. Lindsay, Learning and Motivation, 1975, 6, 157–178). Pigeons were first trained under instrumental contingencies to use an “advance” response to maximize their exposure to S^D and minimize their exposure to S^Δ. Then orthogonal stimuli (key lights in Experiment 1 and diffuse illuminations in Experiment 2) were independently established through separate discriminative Pavlovian procedures as CS+ and CS? or as CS^o's. Later in special tests, it was demonstrated that the associative values of the Pavlovian CS's were a major factor governing the use of the advance strategy: only pigeons exposed to $\text{CS+}\text{CS?}$ used the advance response to regulate their exposure to either CS. Although these experiments showed that the necessary and sufficient conditions for utilization of the advance strategy are the Pavlovian associative values of the discriminative stimuli, opportunity for differential “operant” responding during the discriminative stimuli seems to be a contributor to the optimal use of the advance response across successive discriminations.     

A case report of pathological rule-governed syllable intrusion

A detailed analysis of a unique speech disturbance, marked by the frequent appearance in the speech stream of a meaningless intrusive syllable, is presented. Following a lengthy thoracic surgery, an American English speaking patient began to speak with non-English prosodic patterns, which evolved to a conspicuous intrusion in his speech of the syllable /sis/. This syllable and its variants were attached to words in a manner which conformed to the regular phonological rules in English (for formation of plural, possessive, and third person singular morphemes). The distribution and frequency of the intrusive syllable are described, and possible explanations for the abnormal occurrence of this particular syllable are discussed.     

Conditioning functional enuresis: follow-up after retraining

Of 52 enuretics treated with bell-and-pad, 44 (84.6%) were initial successes. One year after training, 16 (30.8%) remained continually dry. Positive outcomes increased to 24 (46.2%) with the addition of successful retrainees and to 29 (55.8%), including 5 unretrained relapses who subsequently were found dry. Most clients reach initial success, but less than one third remain continually dry.

In retraining, over 84.2% (16/19) of the clients were again successful, but training time was shorter, and half relapsed a second time. Retraining is an appropriate and relatively easy approach for modifying relapse, at least for many enuretics. More rigorous assessment of retraining requires a balanced follow-up design and comparison with other approaches.