The Role of Atomic Repertoires in Complex Behavior

Evolution and reinforcement shape adaptive forms and adaptive behavior through many cycles of blind variation and selection, and therein lie their parsimony and power. Human behavior is distinctive in that this shaping process is commonly "short circuited": Critical variations are induced in a single trial. The processes by which this economy is accomplished have a common feature: They all exploit one or more atomic repertoires, elementary units of behavior each under control of a distinctive stimulus. By appropriate arrangements of these discriminative stimuli, an indefinite number of permutations of atomic units can be evoked. When such a permutation satisfies a second contingency, it can come under control of the relevant context, and the explicit arrangement of discriminative stimuli will no longer be required. Consequently, innovations in adaptive behavior can spread rapidly through the population. A consideration of atomic repertoires informs our interpretation of generalized operants and other phenomena that are otherwise difficult to explain. Observational learning is discussed as a case in point.     

Establishment and replication of emotion regulation profiles: implications for psychological health

Background and Objectives: A promising method of capturing the complex nature of emotion regulation is to assess composite profiles of regulation (i.e., default pattern of regulation across multiple strategies). However, it remains unclear whether regulatory profiles demonstrate consistency across samples and in relation to mental health. Design: Two studies are presented here. Both utilized a cross-sectional design, and the second study presents a replication of the first. Method: Both studies utilized self-report data from independent undergraduate samples to perform latent profile analyses of emotion regulation use. Results: Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated evidence for four replicable regulatory profiles: Adaptive, Accepting (with or without Suppression), Non-accepting, and Maladaptive. Profiles were also related to symptoms of depression and anxiety, such that those consistently relying on adaptive strategies reported lower symptoms than those relying more heavily on maladaptive strategies. Conclusions: These findings clarify previous work which tied regulatory profiles to psychological health by extending a person-centered approach to understanding the ways in which individuals regulate their emotions.     

A clarification of continuous repertoire development

The key-peck response of five pigeons was reinforced on a schedule whenever the interval between pecks at two response keys was between 1.0 and 2.33 seconds in the presence of a 2,500-Hertz tone or between 4.66 and 6.0 seconds in the presence of a 1250-Hertz tone. There was no tendency for responses of intermediate duration to occur when test tones of intermediate frequency were presented. This result clarifies a previous finding using a similar procedure but with a visual intensity stimulus dimension.     

The effects of response cost and response restriction on a multiple-response repertoire with humans

In two experiments a multiple-response repertoire of four free-operant responses was developed with university students as subjects using monetary gain as reinforcement. Following baseline, one of the responses was reduced either by making monetary loss contingent upon it (response cost) or by removing it from the repertoire (response restriction). In Experiment 1 a multielement baseline design was employed in which baseline and restriction or response-cost contingencies alternated semirandomly every 3 minutes. In Experiment 2 a reversal design was employed (i.e., baseline, restriction or response cost, then baseline), and each response required a different amount of effort. Both experiments had the following results: (a) The target response decreased substantially; (b) most nontarget responses increased, and the rest remained near their baseline levels; and (c) no support was found for Dunham's hierarchical, most frequent follower, or greatest temporal similarity rules. For several subjects, the least probable responses during baseline increased most, and the most probable responses increased least. Furthermore, in Experiment 2, responses with the lowest frequency of reinforcement increased most (for all 7 subjects), and those with the greatest frequency of reinforcement increased least (for 5 subjects).     

Social Scientists in Times of Crisis: The Structural Transformations Within the Disciplinary Organization and Thematic Repertoire of the Social Sciences

This is a contribution to thesociology and social epistemology of knowledgeproduction in Russian social sciences today. Inthe initial section, the epistemic status andsocial function of Soviet social scientificdiscourse are characterized in terms of textualforms and their modes of (re-)production. Theremaining sections detail the course of therestructuration of social scientific discoursesince the fall of the Soviet Union and draw onextant empirical sources, in particular studiesof bibliographical rubrics, thematicrepertoires, and current textual formsthroughout the public sphere and the academicestablishment in Russia. An underlying concernis the shifting status of the intellectual inthe wider socio-cultural context as reflectedin language usage and its textualembodiments.     

Globalisation,the practice of devotional songs and poems and the linguistic repertoires of young British Muslims

This article provides empirical data from transnational religious contexts which highlight the complexity, fluidity and indexicality of language and religious practices in globalising settings. Through an examination of the role of devotional song and poetry in the Islamic world, and in particular, among young multilingual and multivarietal British Muslims, an attempt is made to show how globalising processes of the present age contribute to, on the one hand, novel forms of language resources and innovative religious practices and, on the other, coexisting traditional approaches to faith and language practices. It also shows how young people deploy their linguistic repertoires and language resources in order to re-construct their religious and linguistic identities. A conclusion is presented that such practices, whilst drawing on old and traditional roots, become transformed when enacted in these newer settings, both linguistically and religiously.     

EQUIVALENCE CLASS FORMATION IN A TRACE STIMULUS PAIRING TWO‐RESPONSE FORMAT: EFFECTS OF RESPONSE LABELS AND PRIOR PROGRAMMED TRANSITIVITY INDUCTION

Three experiments identified factors that did and did not enhance the formation of two‐node four‐member equivalence classes when training and testing were conducted with trials presented in a trace stimulus pairing two‐response (SP2R) format. All trials contained two separately presented stimuli. Half of the trials, called within‐class trials, contained stimuli from the same class while the other half, called cross class trials, contained stimuli from different classes. On within class trials, making a YES response was correct and making a NO response was wrong. On cross class trials, making a NO response was correct and making a YES response was wrong. In Experiment 1, similar intermediate percentages of participants (about 50%) formed classes, regardless of whether the responses were labeled YES and NO or SAME and DIFF. Response labeling thus did not influence class formation. Regardless of response labels, failures of class formation were primarily due to failure of class‐indicative responding produced by within‐class transitivity probes. In Experiment 2, only 50% of participants formed classes without prior training, as in Experiment 1, but 100% of participants formed equivalence classes after the establishment of a generalized transitivity repertoire by use of a programmed transitivity induction protocol. Experiment 3 examined two components of the programmed transitivity induction protocol and found that the exclusion of AC trials had no effect on the percentage of participants who formed equivalence classes, while presenting the stimulus sets in randomized order interfered with equivalence class formation. A further analysis found that a number of stimulus control topographies differentiated between individuals who did and did not form equivalence classes. In general, then, these experiments demonstrate that equivalence classes can be formed reliably when training and testing are conducted in an SP2R format, supporting the view that equivalence class formation can account for the development of conceptual categories in natural settings.     

‘Hijab envy’: the visible angst of immigrant Christians in a pluralist Canada

This article explores the predilection of Christians of immigrant background to perceive themselves as a disadvantaged group in the new reality of Canada’s growing religious diversity. The present inquiry challenges loss as the definitive emotional register for Christian engagement with Canada’s new religious minorities, demonstrating that religious minorities have elicited begrudging admiration and envy from their Christian counterparts. This inquiry insists that contemporary Canada, not ‘Christian Canada’, is the most important frame for understanding the perceptions and predilections of the Christians in this study. It argues that pluralist ideals, the policy instruments, and social practices that carry these ideals and the cultural forums that display and debate these ideals shape not only the ‘attitudes’ of young Christians, but also the regimes of visibility in which and from which they operate. While scholars impute an increasing visibility to religion, this article demonstrates that the array of affects between viewer and viewed are highly variable and context specific.     

Rat defensive behavior: burying noxious food.

In Experiment 1, rats living in chambers containing bedding material were injected with a toxicosis-producing dose of lithium chloride shortly after their initial taste of sweetened condensed milk. They consumed no additional milk and used the bedding to bury the spout through which the milk had been delivered, although they did not bury a concurrently available water spout. In another control condition, rats did not bury a spout containing a novel solution (saccharin) not paired with toxicosis. In Experiment 2, rats did not bury a milk spout until milk consumption was followed by toxicosis. In Experiment 3, rats buried a spout containing Tabasco pepper sauce but not a concurrently available water spout. Thus, burying the food source appears to be an integral component of the rat's defensive reaction to noxious food.     

Do equilibrium constraints modulate postural reaction when viewing imbalance?

Action observation and action execution are tightly coupled on a neurophysiological and a behavioral level, such that visually perceiving an action can contaminate simultaneous and subsequent action execution. More specifically, observing a model in postural disequilibrium was shown to induce an increase in observers' body sway. Here we reciprocally questioned the role of observers' motor system in the contagion process by comparing participants' body sway when watching displays of antero-posterior vs. lateral imbalance. Indeed, during upright standing, biomechanical constraints differ along the antero-posterior (A-P) and medio-lateral (M-L) axes; hence an impact of observers' postural constraints on the contagion response would result in different reactions to both types of stimuli. In response to the displays, we recorded greater area of center of pressure (CoP) displacement when watching forward/backward compared to left/right imbalance. In addition, after normalizing A-P and M-L CoP displacements by a control condition (fixation cross), A-P CoP path length when viewing forward imbalance tended to be higher than M-L CoP path length when viewing imbalance to the left or right. These results indicate that postural contagion is promoted when the display is compatible with observers' motor stabilization strategy which is mainly oriented along the A-P axis. In terms of clinical application, this study brings new indications for adaptation of observational training devices in rehabilitation programs.