重复刺激的末位优势效应

探讨在RSVP任务中重复刺激的呈现位置和报告方式对重复知盲效应的影响, 检验该研究提出的注意资源最优化假设和末位优势效应。实验1操作了刺激性质和重复刺激位置, 得出了刺激性质和重复刺激位置的交互效应; 实验2操作了刺激性质和情景信息, 结果是交互效应不显著; 实验3操作了刺激性质和报告方式, 出现了刺激性质和报告方式的交互效应。该结果表明: (1)由于注意资源分配的优化, 重复刺激有末位优势效应。(2)重复知盲的产生不是发生在知觉阶段, 而是发生在报告阶段。(3)注意资源分配最优化理论比建构/归因理论能更合理地解释重复知盲的发生。     

汉字识别侧抑制效应的实验研究

以汉字作为实验材料,采用侧抑制任务范式,考察了不同性质冲突任务下的汉字识别情况.结果发现:反应冲突条件下的反应时显著长于无冲突条件,侧抑制效应非常明显;刺激冲突任务中,只有字音干扰条件表现出了侧抑制效应,字形和字义干扰条件下的反应时与无冲突条件均无显著差异.实验结果说明,侧抑制效应可能受认知加工阶段的影响;汉字字音与形、义特征的加工过程可能并不相同,语音的激活可能要早于语义和字形的激活.     

Evaluation of an efficient method for training staff to implement stimulus preference assessments

We used a brief training procedure that incorporated feedback and role-play practice to train staff members to conduct stimulus preference assessments, and we used group-comparison methods to evaluate the effects of training. Staff members were trained to implement the multiple-stimulus-without-replacement assessment in a single session and the paired-stimulus method in another single session. In all 16 cases (2 assessments for 8 trainees), correct responding increased to over 80% accuracy; in 14 of those 16 cases, it increased to over 90% accuracy. Thus, training produced mastery-level performance in a single training session in almost all cases.     

Developing stimulus control of young children's requests to teachers: classwide applications of multiple schedules

Children may recruit their teachers' attention at undesirably high rates or at inconvenient times. Tiger and Hanley (2004) described a multiple-schedule procedure to reduce ill-timed requests, which involved providing children with two distinct continuous signals that were correlated with periods in which teacher attention was either available or unavailable. The current study extended the application of multiple schedules by evaluating the effectiveness of the procedure when implemented by private-school teachers in 3 elementary classrooms. Following the introduction of the multiple schedules, student approaches toward their teacher were maintained during desirable periods but were minimized during undesirable periods.     

Empirical validation of a procedure to correct position and stimulus biases in matching-to-sample

The development of position and stimulus biases often occurs during initial training on matching-to-sample tasks. Furthermore, without intervention, these biases can be maintained via intermittent reinforcement provided by matching-to-sample contingencies. The present study evaluated the effectiveness of a correction procedure designed to eliminate both position and stimulus biases. Following key-peck training, a group of 6 pigeons had extended exposure to matching-to-sample contingencies without a correction procedure, a group of 4 pigeons was briefly exposed to a simultaneous matching-to-sample procedure to assess biases prior to exposure to the correction procedure, and a group of 5 pigeons was exposed directly to the correction procedure. The correction procedure arranged that every time an incorrect match was made, the trial configuration was repeated on the subsequent trial until a correct match was made. Extended exposure to matching-to-sample contingencies without a correction procedure was associated with reduced biases eventually for most subjects, but rapid development of near-perfect accuracy and bias-free performance was observed upon the implementation of the correction procedure regardless of the type of bias. Bias-free performance was maintained following subsequent exposure to a zero-delay MTS procedure.     

Translational behavior analysis: from laboratory science in stimulus control to intervention with persons with neurodevelopmental disabilities

Throughout its history, laboratory research in the experimental analysis of behavior has been successful in elucidating and clarifying basic learning principles and processes in both humans and nonhumans. In parallel, applied behavior analysis has shown how fundamental behavior-analytic principles and procedures can be employed to promote desirable forms of behavior and to prevent or ameliorate undesirable forms in clinical, educational, and other settings. Less obviously, there has also emerged a small but identifiable bridging field that can potentially connect and inform both basic and applied behavior analysis. Although such translational behavior analysis uses laboratory methodologies, research targets are selected largely for their value in ultimate application to improve the human condition. I will discuss the distinction of translational behavior analysis from basic and applied behavior analysis and consider the potential contribution that translational research can make in the development of the science of behavior.     

Producing and Recognizing Analogical Relations

Analogical reasoning is an important component of intelligent behavior, and a key test of any approach to human language and cognition. Only a limited amount of empirical work has been conducted from a behavior analytic point of view, most of that within Relational Frame Theory (RFT), which views analogy as a matter of deriving relations among relations. The present series of four studies expands previous work by exploring the applicability of this model of analogy to topography-based rather than merely selection-based responses and by extending the work into additional relations, including nonsymmetrical ones. In each of the four studies participants pretrained in contextual control over nonarbitrary stimulus relations of sameness and opposition, or of sameness, smaller than, and larger than, learned arbitrary stimulus relations in the presence of these relational cues and derived analogies involving directly trained relations and derived relations of mutual and combinatorial entailment, measured using a variety of productive and selection-based measures. In Experiment 1 participants successfully recognized analogies among stimulus networks containing same and opposite relations; in Experiment 2 analogy was successfully used to extend derived relations to pairs of novel stimuli; in Experiment 3 the procedure used in Experiment 1 was extended to nonsymmetrical comparative relations; in Experiment 4 the procedure used in Experiment 2 was extended to nonsymmetrical comparative relations. Although not every participant showed the effects predicted, overall the procedures occasioned relational responses consistent with an RFT account that have not yet been demonstrated in a behavior-analytic laboratory setting, including productive responding on the basis of analogies.     

Net Amount of Food Affects Autoshaped Response Rate, Response Latency, and Gape Amplitude in Pigeons

The contribution of net amount of food to conditioned response strength and topography was assessed in four pigeons under autoshaping contingencies. In each session, under one baseline phase and three replication phases, three trial types were presented sequentially: One conditioned stimulus (keylight) signaled one small pellet, another signaled one large pellet, and a third signaled seven small pellets which were weight-matched to one large pellet. Five dependent variables were response rates and latencies based on the occurrence of both keyswitch closures and gapes (beak openings) and gape amplitudes. In result, net amount of food, not pellet diameter or number, affected all dependent variables. Notably, gape amplitudes elicited by the seven-small pellet keylights were larger than the gape amplutides elicited by the one-small pellet keylights even though the gape amplitudes elicited by both unconditioned stimuli (one or seven pellets) were equally small. This mismatch between conditioned and unconditioned responses is incompatible with stimulus substitution accounts but is compatible with an associative strength account. Furthermore, the changes in the dependent variables were most likely determined by Pavlovian and not by inadvertent operant contingencies. The findings demonstrate that an analysis of classical conditioning benefits from the inclusion of topographical measures.     

STROOP效应及其反转：无意识和意识知觉

该研究基于Stroop效应确立了意识知觉和无意识知觉间的质的差异,刺激特性(呈现时间)的改变和注意的改变引起了非常类似的行为上的质差模式,二者在决定意识时存在着补偿作用。当色词短暂呈现而被无意识知觉时,被试在对靶颜色进行命名时不能利用色词提供的预期信息,从而反应时出现典型的Stroop效应;而通过增强刺激特性或提高注意水平可以使色词被有意识知觉。从而出现了Stroop效应的反转。