Tyrannical omnipotence in the archetypal father

This paper sets the archetypal relationship between the tyrannical, devouring father and his sons in the context of a disjunction in the parental couple (syzygy) whereby the role of the maternal feminine is eclipsed and excluded. This is shown to originate in an omnipotent defence against infantile dependence on the mother. Successful liberation from the father's tyranny requires the restoration of mutuality between the internal couple. Although the main focus is on the internal world (and a detailed clinical illustration is given, showing the working out of this process in the analytical relationship), reference is also made to political tyranny, attitudes to the control of Nature by technological means and patriarchal forms of masculinity. The Chronos myth is amplified through the use of two modern variants in the films The Terminator and Star Wars.     

Family Processes and Treatment Outcome in the MTA: Negative/Ineffective Parenting Practices in Relation to Multimodal Treatment

To elucidate processes underlying therapeutic change in a large-scale randomized clinical trial, we examined whether alterations in self-reported parenting practices were associated with the effects of behavioral, medication, or combination treatments on teacher-reported outcomes (disruptive behavior, social skills, internalizing symptoms) in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Participants were 579 children with Combined-type ADHD, aged 7–9.9 years, in the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (MTA). We uncovered 2 second-order factors of parenting practices, entitled Positive Involvement and Negative/Ineffective Discipline. Although Positive Involvement was not associated with amelioration of the school-based outcome measures, reductions in Negative/Ineffective Discipline mediated improvement in children's social skills at school. For families showing the greatest reductions in Negative/Ineffective Discipline, effects of combined medication plus behavioral treatment were pronounced in relation to regular community care. Furthermore, only in combination treatment (and not in behavioral treatment alone) was decreased Negative/Ineffective Discipline associated with reduction in children's disruptive behavior at school. Here, children in families receiving combination treatment who showed the greatest reductions in Negative/Ineffective Discipline had teacher-reported disruptive behavior that was essentially normalized. Overall, the success of combination treatment for important school-related outcomes appears related to reductions in negative and ineffective parenting practices at home; we discuss problems in interpreting the temporal sequencing of such process-outcome linkages and the means by which multimodal treatment may be mediated by psychosocial processes related to parenting.     

Reinforcing variability in adolescents with autism

Five adolescents with autism, 5 adult control participants, and 4 child controls received rewards for varying their sequences of responses while playing a computer game. In preceding and following phases, rewards were provided at approximately the same rate but were independent of variability. The most important finding was that, when reinforced, variability increased significantly in all groups. Reinforced variability could provide the necessary behavioral substrate for individuals with autism to learn new responses.     

Progressive-ratio schedules: effects of later schedule requirements on earlier performances

Four rats were studied with variants of a progressive-ratio schedule with a step size of 6 in which different terminal components followed completion of the 20th ratio: (a) a reversal of the progression, (b) a fixed-ratio 6 schedule, or (c) extinction. Responding in the progressive-ratio components of these schedules was compared to performances under conventional progressive-ratio baselines. Under baseline conditions, postreinforcement pauses increased exponentially as a function of increasing ratio size, whereas running rates showed modest declines. The procedure of linking the progressive-ratio schedule to the reversed progression or to the fixed-ratio component resulted in decreased pausing. Linking the progressive-ratio schedule to the extinction component had the opposite effect, that of producing weakened progressive-ratio performances as evidenced by increased pausing. Subjects whose responses were reinforced on half of the ratios also showed exponential increases; however, pauses were substantially shorter following ratios on which the reinforcer was omitted. The results suggested that progressive-ratio pausing reflects the influence of remote as well as local contingencies.     

社会因素对剖宫产率的影响

近二三十年来,剖宫产率在世界范围内不断升高。究其原因,除了医学因素外,社会因素起着重要作用,从社会经济发展,社会科学文化水平、社会习俗观念、法律、医疗道德、国家计划生育政策、医学教育等多个角度分析了社会因素对剖宫产率的影响,并就如何发挥社会因素的积极作用,消除和避免其消极作用,使剖部率维持在合理的范围内进行了讨论。     

Use of a lag differential reinforcement contingency to increase varied selections of classroom activities

The present study evaluated the effects of a lag differential reinforcement contingency on 2 students' activity selections using reversal designs. Results showed that the lag contingency was responsible for promoting increased novel selections, engagement in diverse activities, and greater progress with respect to programmed academic activities.     

Global processing speed as a mediator of developmental changes in children's auditory memory span

This study examined the role of global processing speed in mediating age increases in auditory memory span in 5- to 13-year-olds. Children were tested on measures of memory span, processing speed, single-word speech rate, phonological sensitivity, and vocabulary. Structural equation modeling supported a model in which age-associated increases in processing speed predicted the availability of long-term memory phonological representations for redintegration processes. The availability of long-term phonological representations, in turn, explained variance in memory span. Maximum speech rate did not predict independent variance in memory span.     

Representation of subjective preferences under ambiguity

The objective of this paper is to show how potentially incomplete preferences of a decision maker (DM) on acts can be modelled formally in a subjective ambiguity perspective. We identify acts as functions from a state space Ω to bounded support (finitely additive) probabilities over a set X of prizes. Then, we characterize preferences over equibounded acts a which have a numerical representation by the family of functionals , where u is a cardinal utility on X (representing the risk attitude of the DM) and Π is a unique pointwise closed convex set of probabilities on all events in Ω (representing the ambiguity perceived by the DM). To this end, in addition to the usual independence and continuity assumptions, we add completeness and dominance for preferences restricted to constant acts; moreover, we consider two other properties (subjective monotonicity and coherence) related with the preferences of a DM who is not able, owing to his partial knowledge, to evaluate any event in Ω.     

Rate of conditioned reinforcement affects observing rate but not resistance to change

The effects of rate of conditioned reinforcement on the resistance to change of operant behavior have not been examined. In addition, the effects of rate of conditioned reinforcement on the rate of observing have not been adequately examined. In two experiments, a multiple schedule of observing-response procedures was used to examine the effects of rate of conditioned reinforcement on observing rates and resistance to change. In a rich component, observing responses produced a higher frequency of stimuli correlated with alternating periods of random-interval schedule primary reinforcement or extinction. In a lean component, observing responses produced similar schedule-correlated stimuli but at a lower frequency. The rate of primary reinforcement in both components was the same. In Experiment 1, a 4:1 ratio of stimulus production was arranged by the rich and lean components. In Experiment 2, the ratio of stimulus production rates was increased to 6:1. In both experiments, observing rates were higher in the rich component than in the lean component. Disruptions in observing produced by presession feeding, extinction of observing responses, and response-independent food deliveries during intercomponent intervals usually were similar in the rich and lean components. When differences in resistance to change did occur, observing tended to be more resistant to change in the lean component. If resistance to change is accepted as a more appropriate measure of response strength than absolute response rates, then the present results provide no evidence that higher rates of stimuli generally considered to function as conditioned reinforcers engender greater response strength.     

Variability of the MAX and MIN Statistic: A Theory of the Quantile Spread as a Function of Sample Size

The maximum and minimum of a sample from a probability distribution are extremely important random variables in many areas of psychological theory, methodology, and statistics. For instance, the behavior of the mean of the maximum or minimum processing time, as a function of the number of component random processing times (n), has been studied extensively in an effort to identify the underlying processing architecture (e.g., Townsend & Ashby, 1983; Colonius & Vorberg, 1994). Little is known concerning how measures of variability of the maximum or minimum change with n. Here, a new measure of random variability, the quantile spread, is introduced, which possesses sufficient strength to define distributional orderings and derive a number of results concerning variability of the maximum and the minimum statistics. The quantile spread ordering may be useful in many venues. Several interesting open problems are pointed out. This work was supported by an NIH Grant R01 MH57717 to the first author. Some of the collaboration took place during the year 2000 while J.T. Townsend was a Fellow at the Hanse Institute for Advanced Study (HWK), sponsored by H. Colonius at Oldenburg University.