Effects of a meaningful, a discriminative, and a meaningless stimulus on equivalence class formation

Thirty college students attempted to form three 3-node 5-member equivalence classes under the simultaneous protocol. After concurrent training of AB, BC, CD, and DE relations, all probes used to assess the emergence of symmetrical, transitive, and equivalence relations were presented for two test blocks. When the A-E stimuli were all abstract shapes, none of 10 participants formed classes. When the A, B, D, and E stimuli were abstract shapes and the C stimuli were meaningful pictures, 8 of 10 participants formed classes. This high yield may reflect the expansion of existing classes that consist of the associates of the meaningful stimuli, rather than the formation of the ABCDE classes, per se. When the A-E stimuli were abstract shapes and the C stimuli became S(D)s prior to class formation, 5 out of 10 participants formed classes. Thus, the discriminative functions served by the meaningful stimuli can account for some of the enhancement of class formation produced by the inclusion of a meaningful stimulus as a class member. A sorting task, which provided a secondary measure of class formation, indicated the formation of all three classes when the emergent relations probes indicated the same outcome. In contrast, the sorting test indicated "partial" class formation when the emergent relations test indicated no class formation. Finally, the effects of nodal distance on the relatedness of stimuli in the equivalence classes were not influenced by the functions served by the C stimuli in the equivalence classes.     

Acquired physical disability: Personal meanings in a rural South African setting

This study explored personal meanings attached to acquired physical disabilities in a rural South African community. Informants were seven adults with disability (females?=?4; age range?=?18 to 55 years). They responded to semi-structured face-to-face interviews on the meanings they attached to their physical disabilities acquired during adulthood. Four themes emerged from the thematic analysis: new life style, activity limitations, participation restrictions, and cultural marginalisation. The meanings and accompanying lifestyle changes have implications for personal functioning and social well-being.     

On the origins of emergent differential sample behavior

Two experiments evaluated the source(s) of emergent differential sample behavior in pigeons. Initially, pigeons learned two-sample, two-alternative symbolic matching in which different patterns of sample responding were required to produce the comparisons. Afterwards, two other samples nominally identical to the comparisons were added to the matching task. On new-sample trials, completion of either sample-response requirement produced comparison alternatives which were either the same as or different from the alternatives on the familiar-sample trials. Differential responding to the new samples developed only when the comparisons were the same as the familiar samples. The results are consistent with acquired sample equivalence and adventitious reinforcement accounts of emergent sample behavior and are inconsistent with bidirectional transfer (symmetry) between the response patterns explicitly required to the originally trained (familiar) samples and the subsequently reinforced comparisons.     

USING DIFFERENTIAL REINFORCEMENT TO DECREASE ACADEMIC RESPONSE LATENCIES OF AN ADOLESCENT WITH ACQUIRED BRAIN INJURY

The present study investigated the effects of contingency‐specifying rules and a token economy to decrease the latency to comply with academic instructions by a 16‐year‐old girl with acquired brain injury. Results showed that treatment was successful in reducing academic response latencies. These results replicate previous research in which differential reinforcement was used to decrease slow responding to academic tasks.     

“Patching up Virtue”

Herdt's Putting On Virtue has two chief aims. The first is to champion the virtue tradition against Christian moral quietism and modern deontological ethics. The second is to facilitate reconciliation between Augustinian and Emersonian virtue. To accomplish these tasks Herdt constructs a counter‐narrative to Schneewind's Invention of Autonomy, in which Luther's resignation and Kant's innovation are tragic consequences of “hyper‐Augustinianism”—a competitive conception of divine and human agency, which leads to excessive suspicion of acquired virtue. This review argues that Putting On Virtue succeeds in its first aim but leaves its second intriguingly uncompleted. Despite this deficiency, however, this essay also argues that Putting On Virtue makes plausible Herdt's audacious suggestion that Augustinian and Emersonian perfectionism may be reconciled by bringing acquired and infused virtue under a single term.     

组织间信任研究述评

随着组织联盟与合作的增多,组织间信任问题日益得到研究者关注。文章尝试从动、静态的角度对组织间信任的前因变量和结果变量进行梳理：单方组织层面的人口学特征及获得性特征,以及涉及双方互动层面的过去经历、目前状态及未来期望等因素会影响组织间信任的建立,降低双方合作的风险;而已经形成的组织间信任又会起到促进新知识的应用,提高联盟绩效及合作满意度的作用。今后的研究应关注组织信任的多层次分析、重视研究对象领域和地域的多样化以及互动（配对）和纵向数据的收集等。     

The development of emergent differential sample behavior in pigeons

Three experiments attempted to replicate Manabe, Kawashima, and Staddon's (1995) finding of emergent differential sample behavior in budgerigars that has been interpreted as evidence of functional equivalence class formation. In Experiments 1 and 2, pigeons initially learned two-sample/ two-alternative matching to sample in which comparison presentation was contingent on pecking one sample on a differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate (DRL) schedule and the other on a fixed-ratio (FR) schedule. Later, two new samples were added to the task. Comparison presentation on these trials occurred after the first sample peck following a predetermined interval (Experiment 1) or after completion of either the DRL or FR requirement, whichever occurred first (Experiment 2). Experiment 1 found no evidence for emergent spaced versus rapid responding to the new samples as they established conditional control over the familiar choices. By contrast, differential responding did emerge for some pigeons in Experiment 2, with responding to each new sample coinciding with the pattern explicitly conditioned to the original sample occasioning the same comparison choice. This emergent effect, however, disappeared for most pigeons with continued training. Experiment 3 systematically replicated Experiment 2 using differential peck location as the sample behavior. Differential location pecking emerged to the new samples for most pigeons and remained intact throughout training. Our findings demonstrate a viable pigeon analogue to the budgerigar emergent calling paradigm and are discussed in terms of equivalence- and non-equivalence-based processes.     

艾滋病科研设计的伦理思考

艾滋病严重地影响着人类的健康及生活质量,艾滋病相关因素的研究迫在眉睫,其科研中包含着一系列的伦理问题,如艾滋病患者的依从性问题,艾滋病患者进行试验研究的双盲、随机、对照等原则问题及艾滋病患者科研相关质量问题.要深刻地理解和认识这些伦理问题,在艾滋病科研设计中注意理解和尊重受试者,制定出有效而合乎伦理的科研政策,加强交流,从而得到艾滋病患者和家属以及社会的认同,以有利于在不同范围内进行科研合作.