Contributions of the striatum to learning, motivation, and performance: an associative account

It has long been recognized that the striatum is composed of distinct functional sub-units that are part of multiple cortico-striatal-thalamic circuits. Contemporary research has focused on the contribution of striatal sub-regions to three main phenomena: learning of associations between stimuli, actions and rewards; selection between competing response alternatives; and motivational modulation of motor behavior. Recent proposals have argued for a functional division of the striatum along these lines, attributing, for example, learning to one region and performance to another. Here, we consider empirical data from human and animal studies, as well as theoretical notions from both the psychological and computational literatures, and conclude that striatal sub-regions instead differ most clearly in terms of the associations being encoded in each region.     

Spiritual Versus Religious Identity: A Necessary Distinction in Understanding Clinicians’ Behavior and Attitudes Toward Clinical Practice and Medical Student Teaching in This Realm

Social sciences view spirituality and religion separately; medicine views them together. We identified distinctions regarding clinical practice and teaching among clinician educators based on their self-identified spirituality versus religiosity. We emailed a 24-item survey on spiritual/religious (S/R) issues to clinician educators (n = 1,067) at our institution. Three summary scales were created. Responses to statements, ‘I consider myself to be spiritual’ and ‘I consider myself to be religious’ generated four comparison groups: ‘spiritual only,’ ‘religious only,’ ‘both spiritual and religious’ and ‘neither.’ Analyses employed ANOVA and T tests. A total of 633 (59 %) surveys were completed. Four percentage self-identified as ‘religious only’; remaining respondents divided evenly, about 30 % into each of the other categories. Groups differed from one another on all summary scales (p < .0001). Using T tests, the ‘spiritual only’ group differed from the ‘religious only’ group regarding teaching. The ‘spiritual and religious’ group had the highest mean ratings for all summary scales. The ‘neither’ and ‘religious only’ group had the lowest mean ratings. Clinicians’ spiritual versus religious identity is associated with differences in behavior/attitudes regarding S/R toward clinical practice and medical student teaching. These findings elucidate opportunities for faculty development to explore effects of beliefs on behavior and attitudes within this realm.     

Prescriptive Analysis: Further Individualization of Hypothesis Testing in Brief Experimental Analysis of Reading Fluency

Brief experimental analyses (BEA) have been used to identify effective individualized interventions for improving reading fluency with school-age children. Interventions involving incentives, modeling, repeated reading, and error correction are most often tested in a BEA. However, these interventions are rarely modified according to individual student needs. The current study examined the effects of varied levels of modeling (passage, sentence, word) and varied contingencies (tracking and fluency) on fluency in non-treated high-word overlap passages and general outcome measure passages. BEA-identified interventions were effective for improving reading fluency on non-treated passages for both second grade students and the third grade student. Notably, the effects reversed when intervention was withdrawn with one of the second grade students. Results are discussed in terms of considerations in the application of BEA technology in the schools.     

The influence of rumination and defensiveness on negative affect in response to experimental stress

Previous experiments investigating the influence of rumination on negative affect have often manipulated the timing and content of rumination, which may be problematic as rumination is phenomenologically experienced as uncontrollable. In the present experiment, rumination was not manipulated, but measured as an individual tendency before the experiment. Furthermore, it was tested whether defensiveness would reduce the higher degree of negative affect often associated with rumination. Fifty-six participants completed questionnaires measuring rumination and defensiveness and participated in a phrase completion task, rating negative affect before and after the task. Correlational analyses showed that rumination was positively associated (p < 0.05) with affect responses (r range = 0.35-0.61), whereas defensiveness was negatively associated with affect responses (r range =-0.27-0.32). Four groups of high and low rumination and defensiveness scorers were created using median splits. An ANOVA showed that scoring high on defensiveness did not reduce the negative affect experienced by high ruminating participants.     

Attitudinal versus ecological approaches to the characterization of institutional treatment environments

The relational and discriminative properties of attitudinal and ecological measures of environments were examined within the context of a state hospital for mentally retarted clients. Three hypotheses were advanced, and the results gave substantial support for one of these and partial support for a second: (a) that the correlations between attitudinal and ecological measures should not differ significantly from zero, and (b) that differences among hospital treatment programs and living units should be reflected in ecological but not in attitudinal measures. However, the results did not provide clear confirmation for a third hypothesis: that differences among staff demographic characteristics and employment history should be reflected in attitudinal but not in ecological measures. It was suggested that these background variables may not be appropriate measures of personality-linked attributes.     

An examination of learned helplessness among attention-deficit hyperactivity disordered boys

We employed a learned helplessness paradigm to compare the performance of 23 boys with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and a comparable group of 22 nonreferred boys. The boys attempted to solve two different sets of 10 find-a-word puzzles, one set following exposure to solvable puzzles, and one set following exposure to insolvable puzzles. Results revealed that the ADHD boys solved significantly fewer puzzles than did the control boys. In addition, the ADHD boys gave up on significantly more puzzles, and this was especially true following the insolvable condition when it occurred during the second set of puzzles. The ADHD boys also reported being more frustrated by the task than were the control boys. Finally, among the control boys, support was obtained for Diener and Dweck's (1978) distinction between mastery-oriented and helpless children. However, this distinction did not appear to operate in the same fashion for the ADHD boys.The auhors thank Caryn Carlson and William Pelham for their help in creating the task stimuli and Monica Harris and Steven Landau for their helpful comments.     

When is a cause the "same"? Coherent generalization across contexts

Two competing psychological approaches to causal learning make different predictions regarding what aspect of perceived causality is generalized across contexts. Two experiments tested these predictions. In one experiment, the task required a judgment regarding the existence of a simple causal relation; in the other, the task required a judgment regarding the existence of an interaction between a candidate cause and unobserved background causes. The task materials did not mention assessments of causal strength. Results indicate that causal power (Cartwright, 1989; Cheng, 1997) is the mental construct that people carry from one context to another.