Generalization of serial learning in the pigeon

Sequence learning in pigeons was studied in asimultaneous chaining paradigm: all stimuli and the opportunity to respond to each stimulus were available simultaneously. In contrast to the traditionalsuccessive chaining paradigm, a simultaneous chaining paradigm provides no differential feedback following each response (except the last). Subjects were first trained to perform on sequences of two (AB), then three (ABC), and then four colors (ABCD). Performance greatly exceeded that predicted by models of random choice. Generalization to novel arrays of three and four colors was complete. After training with a four-color sequence, the subjects were tested with subsequences consisting of all possible combinations of two and three of the four training colors (e.g., BD, AD, BC, ACD, BCD, etc.). The successful completion of these subsequences showed that the organization of the original sequence did not entail overt pecks to successive elements of that sequence. That subjects can respond accurately on nonadjacent subsets is not readily explained by a chaining theory, or by any theory that assumes that responding to element n provides a cue for responding to element n+1.     

Cross-cultural differences in maternal perceptions of cries of low- and high-risk infants

The tape-recorded cries of low- and high-risk newborn infants were rated by 150 inner-city Anglo-American, Black-American, and Cuban-American mothers during the hospital lying-in period following childbirth. Half of each cultural group was primiparous and half was multiparous. The mothers rated the cries along 4 perceptual and 6 caregiving response scale items. Reliable differences were found between low- and high-risk infant cries on all perceptual responses with the effects of culture and parental experience affecting the degree of differences. Generally, Anglo-American mothers found the cries more distressing, urgent, arousing, and sick sounding than Black-American mothers, while Cuban-American mothers showed similarities to both Black- and Anglo-American mothers depending on the scale items. The ratings on the caregiving response scale items paralleled cultural differences found on the perception scale items and previous reports of the mother-infant interaction patterns of other Anglo-, Black-, and Cuban-American samples. The results are discussed as being important in developing nonethnocentric views of the functional significance of the behaviors of the infant at risk, yet as providing evidence of the cross-cultural significance of the cry sound of the infant at risk.     

A SURVEY OF TYPICAL CHURCH BIBLE CLASSES FOR BOYS AND MEN

Emerging social media that build on digital technologies are reshaping how we interact with each other. Religious education and identity formation within these new cultural flows demands recognition of the shifts in authority, authenticity, and agency that are taking place, as well as the challenges posed by “context collapse.” Digital storytelling is one mechanism by which religious educators can help people to apprentice into practices shaped by a commitment to human freedom and relationality, rather than to public performances of hatred.     

Generic tendencies in majority and non‐majority supreme court opinions: The case of justice Douglas

Using a sample of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas' Supreme Court opinons as the data base, this study investigated the question of whether majority or non‐majority status constitutes a variable sufficiently strong to predict the rhetorical quality of the opinion. The three traditional schools of legal philosophy, Natural Law, Legal Positivism, and Legal Realism, provided the basis of three hypothetical rhetorical genres which were found to be present in statistically similar frequencies in all opinion types. These findings (1) call into question the conventional wisdom that majority and dissenting opinions represent different rhetorical sub‐species, and (2) suggest that a more fruitful avenue of analysis looks to the generic architechtonics of Supreme Court opinions rather than to the relatively more superficial dimension of stylistics.     

A rejoinder to Sarangapani and Winch

A statistical relationship between student affect and student achievement is routinely observed—students who like a particular subject also tend to do well in that subject. Theory suggests that the underlying causality is a mutual influence relationship in which affect influences, and is influenced by, achievement. Published analyses, however, usually assume a unidirectional influence—affect influences achievement. To the extent that the latter assumption is an over‐simplification, as theory suggests it is, then current understandings of the importance of affect for achievement are probably in error to some degree. The analyses reported here take a position consistent with theory to model the underlying causality of the relationship between affect and achievement as bidirectional. To this end, the present analyses formulate a non‐recursive structural equation model which specifies affect and achievement as influences on each other. This model is estimated separately for each of 23 nations, 19 of which are members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). All 23 nations participated in the OECD‐sponsored Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a programme whose focus is national achievement levels in populations of 15‐year‐olds. The results of these analyses lend support to the proposition that affect and performance exist in a mutual influence relationship, though the nature of this relationship varies between countries.