Evaluative Conditioning (EC) refers to changes in our liking or disliking of a stimulus due to its pairing with other positive or negative stimuli. In addition to stimulus-based mechanisms, recent research has shown that action-based mechanisms can also lead to EC effects. Research, based on action control theories, has shown that pairing a positive or negative action with a neutral stimulus results in EC effects (Stimulus-Response binding). Similarly, research studies using Operant Conditioning (OC) approaches have (...) also observed EC effects. The aim of the present study is to directly compare EC effects elicited by two different response-based approaches – S-R bindings and OC. To this end, participants were randomly assigned to an S-R binding procedure and an OC procedure. EC effects were measured in conditions and compared. Implications for EC theory are discussed. (shrink)

Although eye tracking has been used extensively to assess cognitions for static stimuli, recent research suggests that the link between gaze and cognition may be more tenuous for dynamic stimuli such as videos. Part of the difficulty in convincingly linking gaze with cognition is that in dynamic stimuli, gaze position is strongly influenced by exogenous cues such as object motion. However, tests of the gaze‐cognition link in dynamic stimuli have been done on only a limited range of stimuli often characterized (...) by highly organized motion. Also, analyses of cognitive contrasts between participants have been mostly been limited to categorical contrasts among small numbers of participants that may have limited the power to observe more subtle influences. We, therefore, tested for cognitive influences on gaze for screen‐captured instructional videos, the contents of which participants were tested on. Between‐participant scanpath similarity predicted between‐participant similarity in responses on test questions, but with imperfect consistency across videos. We also observed that basic gaze parameters and measures of attention to centers of interest only inconsistently predicted learning, and that correlations between gaze and centers of interest defined by other‐participant gaze and cursor movement did not predict learning. It, therefore, appears that the search for eye movement indices of cognition during dynamic naturalistic stimuli may be fruitful, but we also agree that the tyranny of dynamic stimuli is real, and that links between eye movements and cognition are highly dependent on task and stimulus properties. (shrink)

Vision is known to improve human postural responses to external perturbations. This study investigates the role of vision for the responses to continuous pseudorandom support surface translations in the body sagittal plane in three visual conditions: with the eyes closed, in stroboscopic illumination and with eyes open in continuous illumination with the room as static visual scene. In the frequency spectrum of the translation stimulus we distinguished on the basis of the response patterns between a low-frequency, mid-frequency, and (...) high-frequency range. With EC, subjects’ mean sway response gain was very low in the LFR. On average it increased with EO/SI and more so with EO/CI. In contrast, the average gain in the MFR decreased from EC to EO/SI and further to EO/CI. In the HFR, all three visual conditions produced, similarly, high gain levels. A single inverted pendulum model controlling center of mass balancing about the ankle joints formally described the EC response as being strongly shaped by a resonance phenomenon arising primarily from the control’s proprioceptive feedback loop. The effect of adding visual information in these simulations lies in a reduction of the resonance, similar as in the experiments. Extending the model to a double inverted pendulum suggested in addition a biomechanical damping effective from trunk sway in the hip joints on the resonance. (shrink)

Background and ObjectiveThere is a paucity of research that has explored “False Alarm” mechanisms. In order to remedy this deficiency in knowledge, the present study used event-related potential technology to reveal the mechanisms underlying False Alarm in response to fear stimuli.MethodsThis study selected snakes as experimental materials and the “oddball paradigm” was used to simulate the conditions of False Alarm. The mechanism underlying False Alarm was revealed by comparing cognitive processing similarities and differences between real snakes and toy snakes.ResultsEvent-related (...) potential findings demonstrated that there was no significant difference between N1 and P2 components induced by real and toy snakes in the early processing stage. Compared with toy snakes, real snakes induced smaller N2 amplitude, larger P3 amplitude, and a shorter P3 latency at the late processing stage. The results of brain topographic mapping analysis showed that the brain regions activated by a real or toy snake were basically the same within the time windows of 110–150 and 220–270 ms, respectively. In the time window of 300–360 and 400–500 ms, the degree of brain regions activation with a real snake was significantly greater than that induced by a toy snake.ConclusionFalse Alarm is caused by the brain’s inability to distinguish, in the early stage of cognitive processing, stimulus objects with similar appearances. When the brain is able to distinguish the differences between different stimulus objects in the late stage of cognitive processing, False Alarm disappears. (shrink)

In fear differential conditioning, stimuli that resemble the conditioned stimulus (CS+) are more likely to trigger fear responses. Excessive fear responses on stimuli not like CS + are often associated with anxiety. However, the threat judgments process and how this process manifests itself differently in subgroups with different generalisation rule applications, is unclear. This study examines whether anxiety biases the threat decision process in fear generalisation paradigm and whether subgroups characterised by different generalisation gradients was interpreted differently by drift-diffusion (...) model. We gathered behavioural data through a binary fear generalisation judgment task and clustered participants based on their responses. Reaction time distributions and individual scale scores were analyzed using the hierarchical drift-diffusion model. The model results suggested that similarity and state anxiety facilitated evidence-gathering processes that favoured “threat” judgments, but at the same time, state anxiety weakened the effect of stimulus similarity as evidence. Further cluster analyses revealed that this effect of anxiety on threat judgments only held true for specific subgroups of participants. This pioneering computational modelling effort in fear generalisation underscores the significant role of strategy preference and its complex interaction with anxiety in shaping stimulus processing. (shrink)

Research on musical chills has linked the response to multiple musical features; however, there exists no study that has attempted to manipulate musical stimuli to enable causal inferences, meaning current understanding is based mainly on correlational evidence. In the current study, participants who regularly experience chills ( N = 24) listened to an original and manipulated version of three pieces reported to elicit chills in a previous survey. Predefined chills sections were removed to create manipulated conditions. The effects of (...) these manipulations on the chills response were assessed through continuous self-reports, and skin conductance measurements. Results show that chills were significantly less frequent following stimulus manipulation across all three pieces. Continuous measurements of chills intensity were significantly higher in the chills sections compared with control sections in the pieces; similar patterns were found for phasic skin conductance, although some differences emerged. Continuous measurements also correlated with psychoacoustic features such as loudness, brightness and roughness in two of the three pieces. Findings are discussed in terms of understanding structural and acoustic features and chills experiences within their local music contexts, the necessity of experimental approaches to musical chills, and the possibility of different features activating different underlying mechanisms. (shrink)

Prior studies have observed selective neural responses in the adult human auditory cortex to music and speech that cannot be explained by the differing lower-level acoustic properties of these stimuli. Does infant cortex exhibit similarly selective responses to music and speech shortly after birth? To answer this question, we attempted to collect functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from 45 sleeping infants (2.0- to 11.9-weeks-old) while they listened to monophonic instrumental lullabies and infant-directed speech produced by a mother. To match (...) acoustic variation between music and speech sounds we (1) recorded music from instruments that had a similar spectral range as female infant-directed speech, (2) used a novel excitation-matching algorithm to match the cochleagrams of music and speech stimuli, and (3) synthesized “model-matched” stimuli that were matched in spectrotemporal modulation statistics to (yet perceptually distinct from) music or speech. Of the 36 infants we collected usable data from, 19 had significant activations to sounds overall compared to scanner noise. From these infants, we observed a set of voxels in non-primary auditory cortex (NPAC) but not in Heschl’s Gyrus that responded significantly more to music than to each of the other three stimulus types (but not significantly more strongly than to the background scanner noise). In contrast, our planned analyses did not reveal voxels in NPAC that responded more to speech than to model-matched speech, although other unplanned analyses did. These preliminary findings suggest that music selectivity arises within the first month of life. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to take preliminary steps to unify psychoacoustic techniques with reaction-time methodologies to address the perceptual mechanisms responsible for the detection of one vs. multiple sounds. We measured auditory redundancy gains for auditory detection of pure tones widely spaced in frequency using the tools of Systems Factorial Technology to evince the system architecture and workload capacity in two different scenarios. We adopted an experimental design in which the presence or absence of a target at each (...) of two frequencies was combined factorially with two stimulus levels. Replicating previous work, results did not allow an assessment of system architecture due to a failure to observe factor influence at the level of distribution ordering for dual-target stimuli for both SOFT and LOUD scenarios. All subjects demonstrated very modest redundancy gains for the dual-target compared to the single-target stimuli, and results were similar for both LOUD and SOFT. We propose that these results can be predicted by a mental architecture that falls into the class of integrated subadditive parallel systems, using a well-supported assumption that reaction time is driven by loudness. We demonstrate that modeled loudness of the experimental sounds is highly correlated with mean reaction time, and we provide a proof-of-concept model based on Steven’s Power law that predicts both a failure of distributional ordering for dual-target stimuli and very modest redundancy gains. (shrink)

The pupils of the eyes reflexively constrict in light and dilate in dark to optimize retinal illumination. Non-visual cognitive factors, like attention, arousal, decision-making, etc., also influence pupillary light response. During passive viewing, the eccentricity of a stimulus modulates the pupillary aperture size driven by spatially weighted corneal flux density, which is the product of luminance and the area of the stimulus. Whether the scope of attention also influences PLR remains unclear. In this study, we contrasted the (...) pupil dynamics between diffused and focused attentional conditions during decision-making, while the global CFD remained the same in the two conditions. A population of 20 healthy humans participated in a pair of forced choice tasks. They distributed attention to the peripheral decision cue in one task, and concentrated at the center in the other to select the target from four alternatives for gaze orientation. The location of this cue did not influence participants’ reaction time. However, the magnitude of constriction was significantly less in the task that warranted attention to be deployed at the center than on the periphery. We observed similar pupil dynamics when participants either elicited or canceled a saccadic eye movement, which ruled out pre-saccadic obligatory attentional orientation contributing to PLR. We further addressed how the location of attentional deployment might have influenced PLR. We simulated a biomechanical model of PLR with visual stimulation of different strengths as inputs corresponding to the two attentional conditions. In this homeomorphic model, the computational characteristic of each element was derived from the physiological and/or mechanical properties of the corresponding biological element. The simulation of this model successfully mimicked the observed data. In contrast to common belief that the global ambient luminosity drives pupillary response, the results of our study suggest that the effective CFD determined via the luminance multiplied by the size of the stimulus at the location of deployed attention in the visual space is critical for the magnitude of pupillary constriction. (shrink)

A symbol is defined as a species of sign. The concept of a sign coincides with Skinner's (1938) concept of a discriminative stimulus. Symbols differ from other signs in five respects: (1) They are stimuli which the organism can both respond to and produce, either as a self-directed stimulus (as in thinking) or as a stimulus for another individual with a predictably similar response from the recipient in each case. (2) they act as discriminative stimuli for (...) the same kind of object for all members of the verbal community within which they function as a symbols; (3) they acquire their properties by virtue of arbitrary social convention rather than any natural and intrinsic connection between the sign and what it is a sign of; (4) competent members of the verbal community can both produce the appropriate symbol in response to a naturally occurring sign of the presence of the object or a sample of the kind of object which the symbol stands for and select the appropriate object when presented with the symbol; (5) they form stimulus equivalence classes of the kind demonstrated in the matching-to-sample task (Sidman, 1971; Sidman and Tailby, 1982) both with other symbols having the same meaning and, more important, with the naturally-occurring non-symbolic signs of the presence of the object or kind of object which the symbol stands for. (shrink)

We have shown that FEF lesion-induced extinction could be compensated for by changing the relative temporal onsets of two targets presented on either side of the midline. Monkeys were trained to make saccades to either of two identical visual stimuli presented with various stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA). In intact animals the targets were chosen with equal probability when they appeared simultaneously. After unilateral FEF lesions an SOA of 67–116 msec had to be introduced, with the contralesional target appearing first, (...) to obtain equal probability choice. With a smaller target separation, averaging saccades occurred with highest frequency at similar SOAs. Our findings suggest that neglect may be attributable to more time being required in the damaged hemisphere for converting sensory information into motor responses. (shrink)

Habituation is defined as a decline in responding to a repeated stimulus. After more than eighty years of research, there is an enduring consensus among researchers on the existence of 9-10 behavioral regularities or parameters of habituation. There is no similar agreement, however, on the best approach to explain these facts. In this paper, we demonstrate that the Sometimes Opponent Processes (SOP) model of stimulus processing accurately describes all of these regularities. This model was proposed by Allan Wagner (...) as a quantitative elaboration of Priming Theory, which states that the processing of a stimulus, and therefore its capacity to provoke its response, depends inversely on the degree to which the stimulus is pre-represented in short-term memory. Using computer simulations, we show that all the facts involving within-session effects or short-term habituation might be the result of priming from recent presentations of the stimulus (self-generated priming). The characteristics involving between-sessions effects or long-term habituation would result from the retrieval of the representation of the stimulus from memory by the associated context (associatively-generated priming). (shrink)

Among the studies on the perception of gaze vs. non-gaze stimuli, some have shown that the two types of stimuli trigger different patterns of attentional effects, while others have reported no such differences. In three experiments, we investigated the role of stimulus perceivability in spatial interference effects when the targets were gaze vs. non-gaze stimuli. We used a spatial Stroop task that required participants to make a speeded response to the direction indicated by the targets located on the (...) left or right side of fixation. In different experiments, the targets consisted of eyes, symbols, and/or arrows. The results showed that the magnitude of the spatial congruency effect differed between the types of targets when stimulus perceivability was not controlled. However, when the perceivability of the task relevant parts was comparable between the different types of targets, similar congruency effects were found regardless of target type. These results underscore the importance of controlling for stimulus perceivability, which is closely linked to the attentional zoom required to perform a task, when making inferences about the attentional mechanisms in the processing of gaze vs. non-gaze stimuli. (shrink)

The neural representation of a repeated stimulus is the standard against which a deviant stimulus is measured in the brain, giving rise to the well-known mismatch response. It has been suggested that individuals with dyslexia have poor implicit memory for recently repeated stimuli, such as the train of standards in an oddball paradigm. Here, we examined how the neural representation of a standard emerges over repetitions, asking whether there is less sensitivity to repetition and/or less accrual of (...) “standardness” over successive repetitions in dyslexia. We recorded magnetoencephalography as adults with and without dyslexia were passively exposed to speech syllables in a roving-oddball design. We performed time-resolved multivariate decoding of the MEG sensor data to identify the neural signature of standard vs. deviant trials, independent of stimulus differences. This “multivariate mismatch” was equally robust and had a similar time course in the two groups. In both groups, standards generated by as few as two repetitions were distinct from deviants, indicating normal sensitivity to repetition in dyslexia. However, only in the control group did standards become increasingly different from deviants with repetition. These results suggest that many of the mechanisms that give rise to neural adaptation as well as mismatch responses are intact in dyslexia, with the possible exception of a putatively predictive mechanism that successively integrates recent sensory information into feedforward processing. (shrink)

We examine two different descriptions of the behavioral functions of the hippocampal system. One emphasizes spatially organized behaviors, especially those using cognitive maps. The other emphasizes memory, particularly working memory, a short-term memory that requires iexible stimulus-response associations and is highly susceptible to interference. The predictive value of the spatial and memory descriptions were evaluated by testing rats with damage to the hippocampal system in a series of experiments, independently manipulating the spatial and memory characteristics of a behavioral (...) task. No dissociations were found when the spatial characteristics of the stimuli to be remembered were changed; lesions produced a similar deficit in both spatial and nonspatial test procedures, indicating that the hippocampus was similarly involved regardless of the spatial nature of the task. In contrast, a marked dissociation was found when the memory requirements were altered. Rats with lesions were able to perform accurately in tasks that could be solved exclusively on the basis of reference memory. They performed at chance levels and showed no signs of recovery even with extensive postoperative training in tasks that required working memory. In one experiment all the characteristics of the reference memory and working memory procedures were identical except the type of memory required. Consequently, the behavioral dissociation cannot be explained by differences in attention, motivation, response inhibition, or the type of stimuli to be remembered. As a result of these experiments we propose that the hippocampus is selectively involved in behaviors that require working memory, irrespective of the type of material that is to be processed by that memory. (shrink)

In the present study, we have demonstrated hysteresis phenomena in the excitability of single, enzymatically dissociated guinea pig ventricular myocytes. Membrane potentials were recorded with patch pipettes in the whole-cell current clamp configuration. Repetitive stimulation with depolarizing current pulses of constant cycle length and duration but varying strength led to predictable excitation (1:l) and non-excitation (1:0) patterns depending on current strength. In addition, transition between patterns depended on the direction of current intensity change and stable hysteresis loops were obtained in (...) stimulus:response pattern vs. current intensity plots in 14 cells. Increase of pulse duration and decrease of stimulation rate contributed to a reduction in hysteresis loop areas. Changes in amplitude and shape of the subthreshold responses during the transitions from one stable pattern to the other, suggested that activity led to an increase in membrane resistance, particularly in the voltage domain between resting potential, and threshold. Therefore, we modelled the dynamic behaviour of the single cells as a function of diastolic membrane resistance, using previously published analytical solutions. Numerical iteration of the analytical model equations closely reproduced the experimental hysteresis loops in both qualitative and quantitative ways. In particular, the effect of stimulation frequency on the model was similar to the experimental findings. The overall study suggests that the excitability pattern of guinea pig ventricular myocytes accounts for hysteresis and bistabilities when current intensity is allowed to fluctuate around threshold levels. (shrink)

The claims of the epistemological 'anarchists' have their roots in the orthodox tradition as well as in the Popperian. In particular they follow from the work of Quine. Meaning variance and incommensurability follow directly from the holistic conception of meaning in his 'network' view. Quine's efforts to evade this conclusion fail. His attempt to develop a theory-neutral notion of observation sentence is shown (1) to be inconsistent with his previous claims since it involves the tacit acceptance of the 'dogma of (...) reductionism', (2) to involve the acceptance of a questionable 'third dogma', i.e. the stimulus-response theory of behaviorist psychology, and (3) ultimately to miss the point of the anarchists. In Quinian terms, in order for observation sentences to perform the function of intertheoretical 'arbiters', what is needed is 'similarity of assent', which is not a meaningful notion on an internetwork basis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.4 (2004) 71-80 [Access article in PDF] The Arts and the Creation of Mind: Eisner's Contributions to the Arts in Education Arthur Efland Professor Emeritus, Department of Art Education The Ohio State University In the last four years at least three books in arts education have dealt with the subject of cognition in relation to the arts. I refer to Charles Dorn's Mind in (...) Art, my book Art and Cognition, and Elliot Eisner's The Arts and the Creation of Mind, with the publication of the latter providing the occasion for this article.1 Each of these texts makes its case for the arts in education on somewhat similar grounds. All three share the view that the creation and understanding of works of art, though endowed with feeling and emotion, are nevertheless cognitive endeavors. But why have so many books appeared on the topic of cognition at this time? To answer this question it becomes necessary to describe the changes in our understanding of cognition and the problems these have created for the arts in education.Once cognition was the term used to designate propositional thinking with verbal and numerical symbols, whereas the current sense of the term embraces all forms of thought including mental images obtained through perception. In short it includes all forms of sentience by which the human organism comes to know itself and its environment. This change was to have a major impact upon curriculum reform initiatives in all studies but it was to have a revolutionary impact upon education in the arts for reasons explained later in this essay. However, an adequate story of cognition in the arts cannot be told without a discussion of Eisner's contributions to this discourse. The Waning of Behaviorism For the first half of the twentieth century the psychology that dominated educational practice was behaviorism. Its proponents included psychologists like Edward L. Thorndike, James B. Watson, and B.F. Skinner.2 Each strove to create a science of psychology that would match the rigor of physics or chemistry, where causes in relation to effects would be carefully observed and measured, making the explanation, prediction, and control of phenomena possible, especially those behaviors that fall under the control of the classroom teacher. The formation of connections called stimulus-response (S-R) bonds had become the molar unit to explain learning, much [End Page 71] like the way that differences in the structure of the atom was used to explain the behavior of the chemical elements of the Periodic Table. This bond between environmental stimuli and the organism's response was seen as the elementary unit of behavior while the IQ had become its measure. Invisible notions like mind and imagination were banished to metaphysical philosophy, outside the legitimate bounds of science.Though behaviorists never denied the existence of higher order thinking that is, abstract, sense-free thinking as found in pure mathematics, they were unable to explain how these human capacities emerge through the accumulation of such rudimentary stimulus-response events. Nevertheless, they recognized that humans do have a capacity for thinking that relies heavily upon symbols like words, numbers and the like. Moreover, certain subjects that require reason and logic, like math and theoretical physics, would be inconceivable without such symbols and the rules by which these are manipulated. By contrast it was assumed that the arts, which relied on sensory images, either did not employ this type of propositional thought, or did so to a far lesser degree. Thus the arts could be dispatched to the noncognitive or affective domains with little or no reduction in the learner's cognitive capacities. Indeed, these noncognitive realms, which gave play to feelings and emotions, were often seen as inimical to the acquisition of rational powers of thought. Intellectual power as it was then understood, required that feelings and emotions be brought under the control of reason.As long as behaviorism served as the dominant paradigm, the school curriculum could be divided into two or three broad divisions... (shrink)

Research has shown repeatedly that attention influences implicit learning effects. In a similar vein, interoceptive awareness might be involved in unaware fear conditioning: The fact that the CS is repeatedly presented in the context of aversive bodily experiences might facilitate the development of conditioned responding. We investigated the role of interoceptive attention in a subliminal conditioning paradigm. Conditioning was embedded in a spatial cueing task with subliminally presented cues that were followed by a masking stimulus. Response times to (...) the targets that were either validly or invalidly predicted by the cues served as index of conditioning. Interoceptive attention was manipulated between-subjects. Half the participants completed a heartbeat detection task before conditioning. This task tunes attention to one’s own bodily signals. We found that conditioned responding was facilitated in this latter group of participants. These results are in line with the hypothesis that a rise interoceptive attention enhances unaware conditioned responding. (shrink)

When are sentences A and B the same belief? Following Quine, observation sentences A and B are the same belief when they share the same stimulus–meaning, similar patterns of assent and dissent by subjects when the sentences are queried in the presence of the same non–linguistic stimuli. As for non–observation sentences we note a suggestion of Karl Schick: apply linguistic stimuli in the form of utterances of the language, and map the connections between sentences in the language in terms (...) of linguistic conditioned–responses to utterances. The mapping will yield a network of relations between non–observation sentences themselves, and between the latter and observation sentences at the ‘periphery’. Thus, each sentence receives its place in the overall criss–crossing of relations in the network of the language. Out of a commitment to the ‘autonomy of meaning’, we can say that when A and B are non–observational, they are the same belief when they occupy similar places in the network of sentences in a given language, or corresponding places in corresponding networks of two languages. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Defending a Phenomenological–Behavioral Perspective: Culture, Behavior, and ExperienceMarino Pérez-Álvarez (bio), José M. García-Montes (bio), Adolfo J. Cangas (bio), and Louis A. Sass (bio)KeywordsBehavior, contextual phenomenology, culture, experienceWe should like to express our sincere thanks to all the authors for their commentaries on our articles. Given the restrictions of space (a limitation they too had to contend with), we can only respond to a few aspects of their interesting remarks. (...) We shall reply of course on the basis of our own approach—an approach that sets out to integrate culture, behavior, and experience, and that might be termed contextual phenomenology, phenomenological behaviorism, or perhaps most accurately (albeit more awkwardly), the phenomenological–behavioral perspective.In her commentary, Ibáñez-Guerra (2008), referring to the target articles “Phenomenology and behaviorism” (Pérez-Álvarez, Sass, and Cangas 2008) and “The role of superstition in psychopathology” (García-Montes et al. 2008), wonders whether our maintaining of the spirit of Skinner, as well as our recourse to phenomenology, might not themselves represent forms of superstitious behavior. She points out that it is not always a good idea to put new wine in old barrels. For her, the new wine and new barrels would be represented by social constructivism, of which she is reminded by some aspects of our work. But in making her own case, Ibáñez-Guerra (2008) reveals certain common prejudices concerning behaviorism, prejudices that have apparently persisted even after reading our article. Thus, for example, she does not see operant behavior as incorporating intentionality (what, in the target article, is presented in terms of final causality), because she assumes that intentionality would necessarily imply a mentalist and dualist notion involving a supposed internal mental entity that causes behavior. Skinner (1974) himself noted and rejected this very assumption in a passage that clearly distinguishes his own approach from what he calls a “stimulus-response formula”: “Possibly no charge,” he wrote,is more often leveled against behaviorism or a science of behavior than that it cannot deal with purpose or intention. A stimulus-response formula has no answer, but operant behavior is the very field of purpose and [End Page 281] intention. By its nature it is directed toward the future: a person acts in order that something will happen, and the order is temporal.(pp. 55–6)The place Skinner gives to intentionality and purpose is elaborated in our target article.Furthermore, Ibáñez-Guerra (2008) assumes that, on methodological grounds, Skinner rejects all that is not observable, or at least that cannot be operationalized. This, however, is simply incorrect, at least as regards Skinner’s radical behaviorism. As the reader may recall, radical (as opposed to methodological) behaviorism is neither operationalist nor does it reject private or subjective events because of their unobservability. Indeed, Skinner specifically acknowledges that such events are in fact observable—at least for one person: the subject him- or herself. The question for Skinner is to understand how the part of the world that is only observable and experiential for oneself is constructed or formed. In the end, it turns out that radical behaviorism is more radical, in the Aristotelian ontological sense (see Pérez-Alvarez, Sass, and García-Montes 2008), than post-modern constructionism. Indeed, as we remarked, radical behaviorism can still surprise us today. Similarly, phenomenology is starting to be missed in the clinical context (Andreasen 2007). We believe that radical behaviorism and phenomenology, mutually readjusted, are in fact excellent wines for the times we live in—if only we knew how to appreciate them.In their commentary on “Phenomenology and behaviorism: A mutual readjustment,” Fletcher and Hayes (2008) argue that the philosophy and theory of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)/Relational Frame Theory (RFT) already contain the salutary aspects of phenomenology that we highlight in our target article. Their insistence on reducing the affinities we find between phenomenology and behaviorism to ACT/RFT consists, in our view, in a scientific–technical argument that is more scientistic than strictly philosophical in nature. Their insistence on the scientific–technical argument itself implies an unclarified philosophical assumption. On what grounds do experimental data constitute the last word? Has... (shrink)

This article examines what I take to be some of the wrong turns and false dilemmas that analytic philosophy has run into since Quine's well-known attack on the two 'last dogmas' of old-style Logical Empiricism. In particular it traces the consequences of Quine's argument for a thoroughly naturalized epistemology, one that would view philosophy of science as 'all the philosophy we need', and that defines 'philosophy of science' in narrowly physicalist terms. I contend that this amounts to a third residual (...) dogma of empiricism and that its effect has been chiefly to restrict the range of post-Quinean debate by setting an agenda which preemptively excludes all interest in the wider (i.e., critical and normative) dimensions of philosophic enquiry. Its influence can be seen in various responses to Quine, among them those of Donald Davidson and Richard Rorty, both of whom adopt a similar, reductively physicalist approach to issues of meaning, knowledge and truth. Where Davidson takes issue with other Quinean doctrines such as framework-relativism and radical meaning-variance, Rorty pushes those doctrines right through to a wholesale relativist (or 'textualist') position according to which interpretation is completely unconstrained by the mere fact of a causal 'correspondence' between beliefs and reality. What they both share — and what thus lays Davidson open to a revisionist reading in Rorty's favoured style — is this Quine-derived notion that beliefs can be explained in terms of a reflex stimulus-response psychology that finds no room for normative issues of epistemological warrant or justification. For it will then seem plausible for Rorty to claim that any 'beliefs' acquired by such a rudimentary mechanism are compatible with pretty much any higher-level theory or description that one cares to place upon them. My article goes on to criticize Rorty's most extreme statement of the case — in his essay 'Texts and Lumps' — and (more constructively) to suggest some ways forward from this post-empiricist predicament. (shrink)

Yarkoni correctly recognizes that one reason for psychology's generalizability crisis is the failure to account for variance within experiments. We argue that this problem, and the generalizability crisis broadly, is a necessary consequence of the stimulus-response paradigm widely used in psychology research. We point to another methodology, perturbation experiments, as a remedy that is not vulnerable to the same problems.