Failure to exploit learned spatial value information during visual search

ABSTRACT

In recent years there has been rapid proliferation of studies demonstrating how reward learning guides visual search. However, most of these studies have focused on feature-based reward, and there has been scant evidence supporting the learning of space-based reward. We raise the possibility that the visual search apparatus is impenetrable to spatial value contingencies, even when such contingencies are learned and represented online in a separate knowledge domain. In three experiments, we interleaved a visual choice task with a visual search task in which one display quadrant produced greater monetary rewards than the remaining quadrants. We found that participants consistently exploited this spatial value contingency during the choice task but not during the search task – even when these tasks were interleaved within the same trials and when rewards were contingent on response speed. These results suggest that the expression of spatial value information is task specific and that the visual search apparatus could be impenetrable to spatial reward information. Such findings are consistent with an evolutionary framework in which the search apparatus has little to gain from spatial value information in most real world situations.     

The relationship between reward and probability: Evidence that exploration may be intrinsically rewarding

ABSTRACT

The probability of an event occurring and the reward associated with the event can both modulate behaviour. Response times are decreased to stimuli that are either more rewarding or more likely. These two factors can be combined to give an Expected Value (EV) associated with the event (i.e., probability of the event x reward magnitude). In four experiments we investigate the effect of reward and probability on both saccadic and manual responses. When tested separately we find evidence for both a reward and probability effect across response types. When manipulations of reward magnitude and probability of the event were combined, the probability modulations dominated and these data were not well accounted for by the EV. However, a post-hoc model that included an additional intrinsic reward associated with responding provided an excellent account for the data. We argue that reward consists of both an explicit and intrinsic component. In our task, the saccadic and manual responses are linked to the information provided by the targets and the goals of the task, and successful completion of these is in itself rewarding. As a result, targets associated with a higher probability of being presented have a higher intrinsic reward.     

Homelessness and the problem of containment

Homelessness is a problem that is hardly spared to any society in our modern world. Usually discussed by people concerned with social policy, sociology, public health and politics, homelessness has only quite recently begun to command the attention of professionals concerned with psychological and psychotherapeutic processes. Following from the author's experience of working therapeutically with homeless people, as well as in discussions with homeless services, the paper follows a line of thinking around homelessness that is explicitly psychodynamic in orientation. The central argument here is that homelessness is an experience that is, so to speak, waiting to happen. Homelessness is portrayed as a natural extension of an underlying experience of the sister states of uncontainment and alienation. I argue that the homeless person not only experienced a lack of containment in his earliest interactions, but has grown through life with significant difficulties in this area. Homelessness then is an extreme response to a deeper psychological reality that projects into a part of the person's life the agonies associated with uncontainment. Homelessness is the realization of an internal situation –a shifting of a personal struggle into a new and more visible stage. This view of homelessness is designed to provide an amendment to current views that privilege the roles of poverty and social exclusion in the origins of homelessness rather than as an alternative account of the origins of homelessness.     

Reception of experimental pedagogy and psychology in Chile. Analysis of the intellectual influences of Wilhelm Mann, 1904–1915

This article provides a detailed analysis of the intellectual research project of Wilhelm Mann, one of the pioneers of experimental and educational psychology in Chile. Mann's work has been the object of so little analysis that his intellectual influences and networks are not clearly known. We analyzed 338 intratext citations from 22 works by Wilhelm Mann published during the period 1904–1915. As a result, we obtained a mapping of his cooperation networks and used a quantitative approach to study the authors who most influenced his career, among whom were William Stern, Herbert Spencer, Wilhelm Wundt, Alfred Binet, and Ernst Meumann. Mann was closely connected to the international and contemporary advances and discussions of his time, despite the lack of infrastructure and difficulties in communication. Mann was the first psychologist to develop a long-term project in Chile that aimed to measure the individualities of Chilean students and their intellectual development.     

进化心理学视角下母亲教养行为的代际传承性研究

采用问卷法,从生命史理论的角度探讨母亲教养行为的代价传递性。研究问题一显示,童年期家庭环境的艰苦性和不可预测性不能预测个体成年后的生命史策略,原生家庭母亲的专制型教养方式通过焦虑型依恋行为的中介作用可以间接地负向预测成年女儿的生命史慢策略,原生家庭母亲的民主型教养方式可以直接预测成年女儿的生命史慢策略;研究问题二显示,生命史慢策略在原生家庭母亲的民主型教养行为和成年女儿的合作型协同教养行为之间起着完全中介作用。     

Marital History and Current Marital Satisfaction in Chronic Depression

Marital functioning is an important consideration in the treatment of depression. Although there are several studies of the marriages of depressed individuals, there is little data on the marital lives of those with chronic depression. In this article, we compare the marital history and marital satisfaction in a sample of carefully diagnosed outpatients with chronic depression compared to those with nonchronic depression. The groups were similar in terms of a history of divorce and for the percentage who had ever been married. However, the chronic group had significantly lower levels of marital satisfaction. Increased attention to marital functioning in this group may be beneficial during treatment.     

Computation and Causation

The computer's effect on our understanding of causation has been enormous. By the mid-1980s, philosophical and social-scientific work on the topic had left us with (1) no reasonable reductive account of causation and (2) a class of statistical causal models tied to linear regression. At this time, computer scientists were attacking the problem of equipping robots with models of the external that included probabilistic portrayals of uncertainty. To solve the problem of efficiently storing such knowledge, they introduced Bayes Networks and directed graphs. By attaching a causal interpretation to Bayes Networks, the philosophy of causation changed dramatically. We are now able to be extremely general about how causal structure connects to data, and systematic about when causal structures are empirically indistinguishable. In this essay I try to motivate and describe this synthesis.     

On the Boundary of Two Worlds: Lithuanian Philosophy in the Twentieth Century

Modern Lithuanian philosophy originated as aresponse to the questions formulated in Russianphilosophy – religious, moral, and social.Later it turned to Continental Europeanphilosophy, preoccupying itself with German andFrench existentialism, hermeneutics, andphenomenology. Yet the loss of independentpolitical and intellectual existence Lithuaniaexperienced for five decades isolated andmarginalized the then lively and promisingintellectual culture. In the 1980s, Lithuanianphilosophy started recovering and reorientingitself, again, to Western currents of moderntheoretical thought. Drawing on the example ofmodern Lithuanian philosophy, the articlepresents a detailed historical overview of whatmight be termed the East-Central European routeto political and cultural modernity.     

维果茨基心理学理论述评

维果茨基是苏联早期一位才华横溢的杰出心理学家,社会文化历史学派的创始人。近年来国际上出现的维果茨基研究热,充分显示了维果茨基心理学思想对现代心理科学的重要的现实意义。维果茨基的心理学理论异常丰富,主要包括活动理论、工具理论、思维和言语理论、教学和发展理论、心理学方法论等。维果茨基心理学理论是对意识的文化历史决定的研究的重要贡献,其理论不足之处主要带有抽象社会观点的色彩等。     

Why Can't Psychology Get a Stamp?

In the latter half of the 1980s as the centennial of the American Psychological Association approached, the APA organized an effort to persuade the United States Postal Service to issue a stamp recognizing the contributions of psychology to the quality of life in America. That effort failed. The history of psychology and psychologists represented on stamps worldwide is described, as is a recent attempt to create a United States stamp focused on mental health. The failure of psychology to achieve recognition on a U. S. stamp is discussed in the context of the stigma of mental illness and the public image of psychology.