Tracking of the expected time to reinforcement in temporal conditioning procedures

In one experiment, the rate and pattern of responding (head entry into the food cup) under different distributions of intervals between food deliveries were examined. Separate groups of rats received fixed-time (45, 90, 180, or 360 sec), random-time (45, 90, 180, or 360 sec), or tandem fixed-time (45 or 90 sec) random-time (45 or 90 sec) schedules of reinforcement. Schedule type affected the pattern of responding as a function of time, whereas mean interval duration affected the mean rate of responding. Responses occurred in bouts with characteristics that were invariant across conditions. Packet theory, which assumes that the momentary probability of bout occurrence is negatively related to the conditional expected time remaining until the next reinforcer, accurately predicted global and local measures of responding. The success of the model advances the prediction of multiple measures of responding across different types of time-based schedules.     

The Nature of the Arguments for Creationism,Intelligent Design,and Evolution

Seventy-two Internet documents promoting creationism, intelligent design (I.D.), or evolution were selected for analysis. The primary goal of each of the 72 documents was to present arguments for creationism, I.D., or evolution. We first identified all arguments in these documents. Each argument was then coded in terms of both argument type (appeal to authority, appeal to empirical evidence, appeal to reason, etc.) and argument topic (age of earth, mechanism of descent with modification, etc.). We then provided a quantitative summary of each argument type and topic for each of the three positions. Three clear patterns were revealed by the data. First, websites promoting evolution were characterized by a narrow focus on appeals to empirical evidence, whereas websites promoting creationism and I.D. were quite heterogeneous in regards to argument type. Second, websites promoting evolution relied primarily on a small number of empirical examples (e.g., fossils, biogeography, homology, etc.), while websites promoting creationism and I.D. used a far greater range of arguments. Finally, websites promoting evolution were narrowly focused on the topic of descent with modification. In contrast, websites promoting creationism tackled a broad range of topics, while websites promoting I.D. were narrowly focused on the issue of the existence of God. The current study provides a quantitative summary of a systematic content analysis of argument type and topic across a large number of frequently accessed websites dealing with origins. The analysis we have used may prove fruitful in identifying and understanding argumentation trends in scientific writing and pseudo-scientific writing.     

The Picture of Madness–Visual Narratives of Female Mental Illness in Contemporary Children’s Literature

This article analyses a selection of contemporary children’s visual texts (for economy and specificity ‘contemporary’ is taken to mean the current century), covering a cross-section of age demographics to better understand how the texts depict female characters suffering with mental illness. It examines these primary texts not only to see how such characters are represented but also to see whether they either bolster or challenge the idea of the female being viewed as the male's ‘Other’. A brief historical and cultural contextualisation of the relationship between mentally ill females and the male-centric profession of modern psychiatry is followed by a close analysis of four primary texts, analysing visual narratives of mentally ill female characters in two picture books, an illustrated book and a graphic novel, noting how contemporary visual depictions contrast with early ideas and images supporting the nineteenth-century feminisation of madness. The conclusion is that, from the limited selection of texts analysed, contemporary children’s visual texts represent a clear contrast to the historical image of the frail and winsome madwoman. The findings are that they do not uphold the image of the female madwoman as Other.     

Lexical Principles May Underlie the Learning of Verbs

To examine whether children (mean age 34 months) can fast map and extend novel action labels to actions for which they do not already have names, the comprehension of familiar and novel verbs was tested using colored drawings of Sesame Street characters performing both familiar and unfamiliar actions. Children were asked to point to the character "verbing," from among sets of 4 drawings. With familiar words and actions, children made correct choices 97% of the time. With novel action words, children performed at levels mostly significantly above chance, selecting a previously unlabeled action or another token of a just-names action. In a second, control experiment children were asked to select an action from among the same sets of 4 drawings, but they were not given a novel action name. Here children mainly demonstrated performance at levels not significantly different from chance, showing that the results from the main experiment were attributable to the presence of a word in the request. Results of these studies are interpreted as support for the availability of principles to ease verb acquisition.