The effects of variable-time delivery of food items and praise on problem behavior reinforced by escape

Prior research indicates that reinforcement of an appropriate response (e.g., compliance) can produce concomitant reductions in problem behavior reinforced by escape when problem behavior continues to produce negative reinforcement (e.g., Lalli et al., 1999). These effects may be due to a preference for positive over negative reinforcement or to positive reinforcement acting as an abolishing operation, rendering demands less aversive and escape from demands less effective as negative reinforcement. In the current investigation, we delivered a preferred food item and praise on a variable-time 15-s schedule while providing escape for problem behavior on a fixed-ratio 1 schedule in a demand condition for 3 participants with problem behavior maintained by negative reinforcement. Results for all 3 participants showed that variable-time delivery of preferred edible items reduced problem behavior even though escape continued to be available for these responses. These findings are discussed in the context of motivating operations.     

MORE ABOUT JUDGMENT AND REASON

Abstract: This paper is a response to Siegel 2004 . I take Siegel's remarks as a basis for clarifying, defending, and further developing my account of the role of judgment in a theory of rationality.     

Subject-centred reasons and bestowal love

Speaking roughly, there are two competing accounts of the basis of love. First, the appraisal view: love is based in reasons derived from the valuable properties of the beloved. Second, the bestowal view: love is not based in reasons derived from the valuable properties of the beloved, but love is based in the lover, who then bestows value onto the beloved. While both models deserve due attention, the bestowal model is of present concern. Despite numerous virtues, the bestowal model faces trenchant objections. In this paper, I outline and defend a version of bestowal love, according to which bestowal love is based in the lover’s motivating reasons, and which preserves the virtues while overcoming the difficulties facing bestowal love.     

助推目标实现：时间标记的动力效应

时间标记是指日常生活中所有突出的独特性事件。个体在经历当下的时间标记或期待未来的时间标记时, 其追求目标的动机水平得到提高, 并表现出更多的目标相关行为, 即时间标记具有一种动力效应。时间标记可能增加了个体对不同时间自我之间的分离感, 继而通过自我效能感、保持一致的自我形象、损失规避及缩小差距等心理过程提高追求目标的动机。未来研究应进一步探讨时间标记在动力效应中的角色定位及动力效应的持续时间、探究时间标记动力效应的普适性、检验可能的心理机制并在实践领域开展时间标记助推行为决策的应用研究。     

Interactions between the effects of food and water motivating operations on food‐ and water‐reinforced responding in mice

Two experiments examined interactions between the effects of food and water motivating operations (MOs) on the food‐ and water‐reinforced operant behavior of mice. In Experiment 1, mice responded for sucrose pellets and then water reinforcement under four different MOs: food deprivation, water deprivation, concurrent food and water deprivation, and no deprivation. The most responding for pellets occurred under food deprivation and the most responding for water occurred under water deprivation. Concurrent food and water deprivation decreased responding for both reinforcers. Nevertheless, water deprivation alone increased pellet‐reinforced responding and food deprivation alone likewise increased water‐reinforced responding relative to no deprivation. Experiment 2 demonstrated that presession food during concurrent food and water deprivation increased in‐session responding for water relative to sessions where no presession food was provided. Conversely, presession water during concurrent food and water deprivation did not increase in‐session responding for pellets. These results suggest that a) the reinforcing value of a single stimulus can be affected by multiple MOs, b) a single MO can affect the reinforcing value of multiple stimuli, and c) reinforcing events can also function as MOs. We consider implications for theory and practice and suggest strategies for further basic research on MOs.     

Are Moral Reasons Morally Overriding?

In this paper, I argue that those moral theorists who wish to accommodate agent-centered options and supererogatory acts must accept both that the reason an agent has to promote her own interests is a nonmoral reason and that this nonmoral reason can prevent the moral reason she has to sacrifice those interests for the sake of doing more to promote the interests of others from generating a moral requirement to do so. These theorists must, then, deny that moral reasons morally override nonmoral reasons, such that even the weakest moral reason trumps the strongest nonmoral reason in the determination of an act’s moral status (e.g., morally permissible or impermissible). If this is right, then it seems that these theorists have their work cut out for them. It will not be enough for them to provide a criterion of rightness that accommodates agent-centered options and supererogatory acts, for, in doing so, they incur a debt. As I will show, in accommodating agent-centered options, they commit themselves to the view that moral reasons are not morally overriding, and so they owe us an account of how both moral reasons and nonmoral reasons come together to determine an act’s moral status.

Epistemic Justice and a Role for Virtue in the Politics of Knowing

The dual aim of this article is to reveal and explain a certain phenomenon of epistemic injustice as manifested in testimonial practice, and to arrive at a characterisation of the anti–prejudicial intellectual virtue that is such as to counteract it. This sort of injustice occurs when prejudice on the part of the hearer leads to the speaker receiving less credibility than he or she deserves. It is suggested that where this phenomenon is systematic it constitutes an important form of oppression.     

Affective States and Epistemic Immediacy

This article defends the view that an adequate response to some central epistemological problems requires us to find a role for emotions and other affective states in epistemic evaluation and also to invoke virtuous traits of character in order to explain how these affective evaluations are regulated. The argument is based on the need for some epistemic evaluations to possess a kind of immediacy, if we are not to face a worrying regress. The closing sections support the claim that epistemic evaluation depends upon appropriate character traits though a discussion of what is involved in being observant .     

The influence of reasons on interpretations of probability forecasts

When providing a probability estimate for an event, experts often supply reasons that they expect will clarify and support that estimate. We investigated the possible unintended influence that these reasons might have on a listener's intuitive interpretation of the event's likelihood. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that people who read positive reasons for a doctor's probability estimate regarding a hypothetical surgery were more optimistic than those who read negative reasons for the identical estimate. Experiment 3 tested whether a doctor's failure forecast for a surgery would result in differing levels of pessimism when the potential risk was attributed to one complication that had a probability of 0.30 versus three complications that had a disjunctive probability of 0.30. Overall, the findings are consistent with the argument that a probability estimate, albeit numerically precise, can be flexibly interpreted at an intuitive level depending on the reasons that the forecaster provides as the basis for the estimate. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.