Reinforcement probability and ordinal position of response in fixed-interval schedules

Four rats pressed levers and received food pellets under fixed-interval reinforcement schedules of 20, 60, and 180 seconds. The number of responses in each interval was recorded. From these data, the probability of reinforcement was determined as a function of response count. These functions were generally increasing. This finding is consistent with previous suggestions that increasing response rates within fixed intervals may be a function of response count in addition to or instead of elapsed or remaining time.     

A new estimator of the uniqueness in factor analysis

A closed form estimator of the uniqueness (unique variance) in factor analysis is proposed. It has analytically desirable properties—consistency, asymptotic normality and scale invariance. The estimation procedure is given through the application to the two sets of Emmett's data and Holzinger and Swineford's data. The new estimator is shown to lead to values rather close to the maximum likelihood estimator.     

Books received

Analytical Psychology
Main, Roderick (ed.). Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal
Robertson, Robin. Your Shadow
Schoenl, William (ed.). Major Issues in the Life and Work of C. G. Jung
Psychoanalysis
König, Karl. Self-Analysis for Analysts
Volkan, V. D. & Ast, G.. Siblings in the Unconscious and Psychopathology
Carlson, Kathie. Life's Daughter/Death's Bride
Fromm, Erika & Nash, Michael. Psychoanalysis and Hypnosis
Gedo, John E. Spleen and Nostalgia – A Life and Work in Psychoanalysis
Grubrich-Simitis, Ilse. Early Freud and Late Freud
Molino, Anthony (ed.). Freely Associated
Quinodoz, Danielle. Emotional Vertigo – Between Anxiety and Pleasure
Serrano, Miguel. C. G. Jung and Hermann Hesse – A Record of Two Friendships
Taylor, Charles H. & Finley, Patricia. Images of the Journey in Dante's Divine Comedy     

Measuring sport fantasy proneness and deflated reality in sport and performance: Development and validation of two context-specific instruments

Fantasy-prone personalities and generalized states of pessimism and hopelessness have been linked to various behavioural, cognitive, and health related outcomes in the general population. Nevertheless, to date, knowledge of sport-specific fantasy proneness and athletes’ perception of deflated reality in sport is scarce, possibly due to a lack of appropriate psychometric instruments to examine these two important context-specific constructs. In this research, we developed the Sport Fantasy Proneness Scale (SFPS) and the Deflated Reality in Sport Scale (DRSS), first assessing the content validity of items for the instruments following a rigorous process. Through two cross-sectional samples (Study 1: Sample 1 N = 255, Sample 2 N = 260) and one longitudinal sample (Study 2: Sample 3 N = 118) of competitive athletes in the UK, we then examined factorial, convergent, discriminant, and concurrent validity and measurement invariance (Study 1), as well as internal consistency, and test-retest reliability (Study 2) of the two new scales. Results revealed robust construct validity and reliability of scores on the two instruments and suggested very good invariance when implementing the new scales to athletes from different sports and competitive levels and good invariance for cross-gender comparisons. The new scales fill a gap in the sport psychology literature and provide researchers and practitioners with robust psychometric instruments to examine new research questions and tackle issues relevant to athletes’ sport-specific fantasy proneness and perceptions of deflated reality.     

National glorification and attachment differentially predict support for intergroup conflict resolution: Scrutinizing cross-country generalizability

Research on national identity distinguishes between national glorification and attachment. We tested whether glorification and attachment differentially predicted support for military and diplomatic conflict resolution strategies (CRS) in response to international conflicts. Using data collected in seven countries (Australia, United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Israel, China; total N = 1784), we investigated whether glorification and attachment can be equivalently measured (using tests of measurement invariance) and whether their relationships with CRS were generalizable across countries. The results revealed metric, but not scalar, measurement invariance of the two-factor structure of national identification across six countries, excluding China. Among these six countries, glorification predicted more support for military CRS, whereas attachment predicted more support for diplomatic CRS. Our study is novel in scrutinizing the cross-cultural generalizability of the bi-dimensional model of national identification. Implications for studying national identification and intergroup conflict cross-culturally are discussed.     

邓小平伦理思想的独特地位——纪念邓小平诞辰100周年

邓小平伦理思想是继毛泽东伦理思想之后我们党和人民又一重大的伦理学成果和宝贵财富 ,它以改革开放的道德价值视野、“三个有利于”的道德价值取向和在“三个面向”中培养“四有新人”的理想关怀 ,贡献给了 2 0世纪马克思主义伦理思想宝库许多新的内容。邓小平伦理思想体现了解放思想 ,实事求是和与时俱进的理论特质 ,全面回答了在中国这样一个经济文化还比较落后的社会主义大国如何建设先进的现代化的伦理文化的问题 ,并以立足本国而又面向世界和未来的开放胆识昭示于世界伦理学之林     

汉字词在不同方位与不同排列组合条件下对念读速度与准确性的影响

本研究探讨了汉字词在不同方位与不同排列组合条件下对念读速度与准确性的影响.实验结果表明逆意排列的汉字词处于不同方位(正位、左右倾斜90°、倒位),对汉字词的念读速度产生明显影响.汉字词处于正位时,念读速度最快;其次是处于左斜与右斜90°;对汉字词的念读速度最慢而准确性最低是处于倒位时(汉字词颠倒).汉字词无论是顺意排列或是逆意排列,正位结果均明显优于倒位结果;但汉字词在倒位顺意排列条件下,结果优于正位逆意排列的结果,这表明,字词间的意义联系的作用大于字词方位的作用.     

Contractualism and Global Economic Justice

This article examines Rawls's and Scanlon's surprisingly undemanding contractualist accounts of global moral principles. Scanlon's Principle of Rescue requires too little of the world's rich unless the causal links between them and the poor are unreliable. Rawls's principle of legitimacy leads him to theorize in terms of a law of peoples instead of persons, and his conception of a people leads him to spurn global distributive equality. Rawls's approach has advantages over the cosmopolitan egalitarianism of Beitz and Pogge. But it cannot generate principles to regulate the entire global economic order. The article proposes a new cosmopolitan economic original position argument to make up for this lack in Rawls's Law of Peoples.     

A checklist for testing measurement invariance

The analysis of measurement invariance of latent constructs is important in research across groups, or across time. By establishing whether factor loadings, intercepts and residual variances are equivalent in a factor model that measures a latent concept, we can assure that comparisons that are made on the latent variable are valid across groups or time. Establishing measurement invariance involves running a set of increasingly constrained structural equation models, and testing whether differences between these models are significant. This paper provides a step-by-step guide to analysing measurement invariance.     

The effects of interval duration on temporal tracking and alternation learning

On cyclic-interval reinforcement schedules, animals typically show a postreinforcement pause that is a function of the immediately preceding time interval (temporal tracking). Animals, however, do not track single-alternation schedules-when two different intervals are presented in strict alternation on successive trials. In this experiment, pigeons were first trained with a cyclic schedule consisting of alternating blocks of 12 short intervals (5 s or 30 s) and 12 long intervals (180 s), followed by three different single-alternation interval schedules: (a) 30 s and 180 s, (b) 5 s and 180 s, and (c) 5 s and 30 s. Pigeons tracked both schedules with alternating blocks of 12 intervals. With the single-alternation schedules, when the short interval duration was 5 s, regardless of the duration of the longer interval, pigeons learned the alternation pattern, and their pause anticipated the upcoming interval. When the shorter interval was 30 s, even when the ratio of short to long intervals was kept at 6:1, pigeons did not initially show anticipatory pausing-a violation of the principle of timescale invariance.