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Selected Works

1978

Articles 1 - 5 of 5

Full-Text Articles in Psychology

An Agentive Model Of Person-Environment Relations, Nicholas Patricios Oct 1978

An Agentive Model Of Person-Environment Relations, Nicholas Patricios

Nicholas Patricios

Three fundamentally different positions regarding the conceptualization of person‐environment relations are briefly discussed. An argument is made for the transactional‐constructivist position which regards the nature of what we take to be the environment as that which is only apprehended through the minds and actions of persons. The transformational process of this view of person‐environment relations, that of environmental knowing‐action, is elaborated upon in some detail. The transactional‐constructivist position, however, is transformed into an agentive one by adopting from the three basic images of persons that have been identified that of a person as agent. Consequently in the agentive process of …

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Passive Avoidance In Goldfish: Lack Of Evidence For Stimulus Specificity, Dominic Zerbolio, L L. Wickstra Jun 1978

Passive Avoidance In Goldfish: Lack Of Evidence For Stimulus Specificity, Dominic Zerbolio, L L. Wickstra

UMSL Emeritus

Goldfish, acquiring a passive avoidance response, showed substantially fewer responses in trial intervals than did their yoked controls. A passive procedure, where US reinforcement occurred immediately upon response, produced superior avoidance acquisition to a punishment procedure, where, if response occurred at any time during the trial interval, US reinforcement was administered at the end of the interval. This finding is consistent with the traditional delay of reinforcement gradient. Although goldfish acquired the passive avoidance response, it appeared to be situationally generalized and not stimulus specific, as indicated by a lack of differences between animals trained with a CS and those …

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Goldfish Avoidance Acquisition: Is The Process Classical, Instrumental, Or A Phototaxis?, Dominic Zerbolio, L L. Wickstra Apr 1978

Goldfish Avoidance Acquisition: Is The Process Classical, Instrumental, Or A Phototaxis?, Dominic Zerbolio, L L. Wickstra

UMSL Emeritus

Various active-avoidance procedures and controls were run using goldfish in a shuttlebox where the CS, when used, was a sudden onset of illumination. In terms of increasing “avoid- ance” performance over days of training, CS-only, response-contingent US-only, and time- lapse groups showed significant “learning,” whereas explicitly unpaired CS and US pseudo- conditioning controls and US only (where US omission is not response contingent) did not show performance increases. The use of the pseudoconditioning procedure as a learning control for this animal seems questionable. Additionally, both classically and instrumentally trained groups showed high and comparable acquisition rates, confirming earlier findings. A …

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Does Elimination Of A Negative Phototaxis Eliminate Car Acquisition In Goldfish?, Dominic Zerbolio, L L. Wickstra Apr 1978

Does Elimination Of A Negative Phototaxis Eliminate Car Acquisition In Goldfish?, Dominic Zerbolio, L L. Wickstra

UMSL Emeritus

Eleven groups run under classical, instrumental, pseudoconditioning, CS-only, US-only, and time-lapse procedures, with the ITI illuminated and a color change CS, showed that true classically trained animals do not increase CAR performance with training, whereas instru- mentally trained goldfish do. This is consistent with a phototaxic interpretation suggested in earlier work. Additionally, the finding that CS-only and time-lapse controls show high “acquisi- tion” rates, whereas pseudoconditioning controls do not, not only questions the use of the pseudoconditioning procedure as the sole learning control in this situation, but also questions a learning interpretation itself. Conclusions of what and how, or even …

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Ethological Considerations In The Experimental Study Of Lizard Behavior, Neil Greenberg Jan 1978

Ethological Considerations In The Experimental Study Of Lizard Behavior, Neil Greenberg

Neil Greenberg

The importance of an ethological approach to the experimental study of an unfamiliar species is described and several of its problems discussed. The selection of units of behavior is a crucial first step in the development of a behavior inventory. The correlation of a behavioral unit with a particular context is necessary to ascribe function to that to that unit and to develop an ethogram. Methods of studying lizards under controlled conditions are described and discussed. Constraints on behavior that must be considered in an experimental study include the microclimate and its thermal qualities, food and water, shelter utilization, and …

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