Showing papers in "Psychological Review in 1963"

"Cognitive, social, and physiological determinants of emotional state": Erratum

Abstract: The problem of which cues, internal or external, permit a person to label and identify his own emotional state has been with us since the days that James (1890) first tendered his doctrine that \"the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the emotion\" (p. 449). Since we are aware of a variety of feeling and emotion states, it should follow from James' proposition that the various emotions will be accompanied by a variety of differentiable bodily states. Following James' pronouncement, a formidable number of studies were undertaken in search of the physiological differentiators of the emotions. The results, in these early days, were almost uniformly negative. All of the emotional states experi-

Bayesian statistical inference for psychological research.

Abstract: Bayesian statistics, a currently controversial viewpoint concerning statistical inference, is based on a definition of probability as a particular measure of the opinions of ideally consistent people. Statistical inference is modification of these opinions in the light of evidence, and Bayes’ theorem specifies how such modifications should be made. The tools of Bayesian statistics include the theory of specific distributions and the principle of stable estimation, which specifies when actual prior opinions may be satisfactorily approximated by a uniform distribution. A common feature of many classical significance tests is that a sharp null hypothesis is compared with a diffuse alternative hypothesis. Often evidence which, for a Bayesian statistician, strikingly supports the null hypothesis leads to rejection of that hypothesis by standard classical procedures. The likelihood principle emphasized in Bayesian statistics implies, among other things, that the rules governing when data collection stops are irrelevant to data interpretation. It is entirely appropriate to collect data until a point has been proven or disproven, or until the data collector runs out of time, money, or patience.

A threshold theory for simple detection experiments.

Abstract: The two-state "high" threshold model is generalized by assuming that (with low probability) the threshold may be exceeded when there is no stimulus. Existing Yes-No data (that rejected the high threshold theory) are compatible with the resulting isosensitivity (ROC) curves, namely, 2 line segments that intersect at the true threshold probabilities. The corresponding 2-alternative forced-choice curve is a 45° line through this intersection. A simple learning process is suggested to predict S's location along these curves, asymptotic means are derived, and comparisons are made with data. These asymptotic biases are coupled with the von Bdk&y-Stevens neural quantum model to show how the theoretical linear psychometric functions are distorted into nonsymmetric, nonlinear response curves.

The varied effects of punishment on behavior.

Abstract: The punishment procedure is one in which an aversive stimulus is contingent upon the occurrence of a response. Various theories of the mechanism through which punishment exerts its influence on behavior emphasize the unconditioned fear response, the unconditioned skeletal response, the escape response, the similarity between the conditions of punishment and the conditions of training, the correlation of response and punishment, and the possible sources of reinforcement for nonresponse. The major problem of this paper was to determine whether any of the proposed mechanisms, or a combination of them, are sufficient to account for the varied effects of punishment on behavior. A systematic examination of the data led to the conclusions that if an aversive stimulus is contingent upon a response there will be greater suppression (or less facilitation) of the response than if the aversive stimulus is not contingent upon the response, but that the aversive stimulus, itself, may result in response facilitation under some conditions and response suppression in others.