A pox on the mind: Disjunction of attention and memory in the processing of physical disfigurement

The unfavorable treatment of people with physical disfigurements is well-documented, yet little is known about basic perceptual and cognitive responses to disfigurement. Here, we identify a specialized pattern of cognitive processing consistent with the hypothesis that disfigurements act as heuristic cues to contagious disease. Disfigurements are often invariant across time and difficult to conceal, and thus observers can detect the presence of such cues without necessarily remembering the particular individuals bearing these cues. Indeed, despite the fact that disfigured faces were especially likely to hold disease-sensitive perceivers’ attention (Study 1), disfigured individuals were often confused with one another and thus not well remembered later (Study 2), revealing a disjunction of the typical relationship between elevated attention and elevated memory. We discuss the implications of our results for stigmatization of people with and without physical abnormalities and suggest the possibility that cognitive mechanisms for processing social information may be functionally tuned to the variant nature of important cues.     

Myopic regret avoidance: Feedback avoidance and learning in repeated decision making

Decision makers can become trapped by myopic regret avoidance in which rejecting feedback to avoid short-term outcome regret (regret associated with counterfactual outcome comparisons) leads to reduced learning and greater long-term regret over continuing poor decisions. In a series of laboratory experiments involving repeated choices among uncertain monetary prospects, participants primed with outcome regret tended to decline feedback, learned the task slowly or not at all, and performed poorly. This pattern was reversed when decision makers were primed with self-blame regret (regret over an unjustified decision). Further, in a final experiment in which task learning was unnecessary, feedback was more often rejected in the self-blame regret condition than in the outcome regret condition. We discuss the findings in terms of a distinction between two regret components, one associated with outcome evaluation, the other with the justifiability of the decision process used in making the choice.     

Disgust Sensitivity and Psychopathological Symptoms: Distinctions from Harm Avoidance

The present study examined the relationship between disgust sensitivity and symptoms of somatization, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, anger/hostility, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation, and psychoticism in a community sample. Participants (n = 121) completed the Disgust Scale-2, the Symptom Checklist-90, and the harm avoidance subscale of the Temperament and Character Inventory. Disgust sensitivity was found to be correlated with a broad range of psychopathological symptoms. However, results also indicated that these correlations were partially mediated by harm avoidance. That is, when controlling for levels of harm avoidance, the association between disgust sensitivity and psychopathological symptoms was either substantially reduced or became nonsignificant. These findings suggest that the tendency towards behavioral inhibition to avoid punishment and non-reward may partially account for the association between disgust sensitivity and a broad range of psychopathological symptoms.

Behavior analysis and the search for the origins of hypertension.

Hypertension is a disorder of sodium regulation that develops over time in a context of the interactions of the individual with the environment. Experimental hypertension can be induced in laboratory animals and normotensive humans via increases in sodium intake under conditions of aversive behavioral control. Readiness for avoidance contingencies includes a breathing pattern characterized by subnormal rate and normal tidal volume. Studies with humans have shown that this inhibitory breathing pattern is associated with increased plasma acidity, increased renal sodium reabsorption, increased secretion of digitalis-like hormones that inhibit sodium-pump activity, and increased vasoconstriction and blood pressure. Behavioral research is needed that defines the necessary and sufficient conditions for inhibitory breathing and its role in the development of hypertension.     

剥夺左眼和单眼学习与雏鸡脑内Jun样蛋白表达的相关性研究

利用免疫组化技术,观察并比较剥夺一侧视觉及单眼一次性味觉厌恶回避学习后Ｊｕｎ样蛋白在雏鸡ＨＶ和ＬＰＯ的表达,结果表明正常雏鸡ＨＶ、ＬＰＯＪｕｎ表达几乎没有,剥夺左眼和单眼视觉学习后均可使Ｊｕｎ样蛋白增高。根据阳性神经元记数结果表明：１．视剥夺２．５、４、２４小时后可使Ｊｕｎ样蛋白的表达逐渐增高,而且它们之间的差异显著;２．剥夺左眼２小时和２４小时后训练,并分别于１０分钟、７０分钟记忆保持测验后可看到Ｊｕｎ样蛋白表达继续增多;３。无论单纯视剥夺组还是单眼视觉学习组,各组ＬＰＯＪｕｎ样蛋白的表达均明显高于ＨＶ的Ｊｕｎ样蛋白表达,它们之间差异显著。     

William Nathan Schoenfeld (1915-1996): innovative scientist, inspiring teacher, relentless questioner, complicated man.

The scientific and academic contributions of the late William N. Schoenfeld (1915–1996) are large and, together with his personal qualities as a researcher, thinker, and teacher, supply the themes for this memorial essay on his work and life.     

EFFECTS OF REINFORCEMENT CHOICE ON TASK RESPONDING IN INDIVIDUALS WITH DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES

The effects of reinforcement choice on task performance were examined with 6 individuals who had been diagnosed with severe to profound mental retardation. Five highly preferred items were identified for each participant via stimulus preference assessments. Participants then were exposed to choice and no-choice conditions that were alternated within reversal and multielement designs. During choice sessions, participants were permitted to select between two preferred stimuli contingent on responding. During no-choice sessions, the therapist delivered a single item contingent on responding. Preference for the stimuli was held constant across conditions by yoking the items delivered during no-choice sessions to those selected during the immediately preceding choice sessions. All participants exhibited similar rates of responding across choice and no-choice conditions. These findings indicate that for individuals with severe disabilities, access to choice may not improve task performance when highly preferred items are already incorporated into instructional programs.     

Reductions in shock frequency and response effort as factors in reinforcement by timeout from avoidance

Rats' presses on one lever canceled shocks programmed after variable cycles, while presses on a second lever occasionally produced a 2-min timout during which the shock-delection schedule was suspended and its correlated stimuli removed. These concurrent schedules of avoidance and timeout were embedded in a multiple schedule whose components differed, within and across conditions, in terms of the programmed shock rate associated with the shock-deletion schedule. Analyses based on the generalized matching law suggest that the reduction in the response requirement correlated with termination of the avoidance schedule was a more important factor in the reinforcing effectiveness of timeout than was shock-frequency reduction, at least in 2 of 3 rats. After training in each condition, responding on the timeout lever was extinguished by withholding timeouts in both components over seven sessions. Resistance to extinction varied directly with the rates of both shock-frequency reduction and avoidance-response reduction experienced during training. Although reduction in response effort appeared to dominate shock-frequency reduction in the maintenance of responding, neither factor had a clear advantage in predicting the course of extinction.     

Extinction of responding maintained by timeout from avoidance

The resistance to extinction of lever pressing maintained by timeout from avoidance was examined. Rats were trained under a concurrent schedule in which responses on one lever postponed shock on a free-operant avoidance (Sidman) schedule (response-shock interval = 30 s) and responses on another lever produced 2 min of signaled timeout from avoidance on a variable-ratio 15 schedule. Following extended training (106 to 363 2-hr sessions), two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1 two different methods of extinction were compared. In one session, all shocks were omitted, and there was some weakening of avoidance but little change in timeout responding. In another session, responding on the timeout lever was ineffective, and under these conditions timeout responding showed rapid extinction. The within-session patterns produced by extinction manipulations were different than the effects of drugs such as morphine, which also reduces timeout responding. In Experiment 2 shock was omitted for many consecutive sessions. Response rates on the avoidance lever declined relatively rapidly, with noticeable reductions within 5 to 10 sessions. Extinction of the timeout lever response was much slower than extinction of avoidance in all 4 rats, and 2 rats continued responding at baseline levels for more than 20 extinction sessions. These results show that lever pressing maintained by negative reinforcement can be highly resistant to extinction. The persistence of responding on the timeout lever after avoidance extinction is not readily explained by current theories.     

MK-801-Induced Disruptions of One-Trial Inhibitory Avoidance Are Potentiated by Stress and Reversed by Naltrexone

Five experiments were carried out to investigate opioid and NMDA receptor-mediated responses to one-trial inhibitory avoidance training in CD1 mice. In the first experiment immediate posttraining intraperitoneal administration of the noncompetitive N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist MK-801 impaired the performance of mice. The effects of MK-801 were time-dependent (they were absent in mice injected with the drug starting 120 min after training). No effect was evident in no-foot-shock groups, showing lack of proactive influence of the treatment on performance. In the second experiment preexposure of the mice to the testing apparatus decreased the effects of MK-801. In the the third experiment naltrexone antagonized the effects of MK-801, suggesting an involvement of opioid neurons. In the fourth experiment immediate posttraining immobilization stress exerted a potentiating effect on the performance of MK-801-injected animals. In the fifth experiment the potentiation of the impairing effect of MK-801 induced by immobilization stress was antagonized by naltrexone.