6TH INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SYMPOSIUM OF THE POLISH SOCIETY FOR BEHAVIORAL PSYCHOLOGY

Altruism may be defined as a costly act that benefits another person. The occurrence of altruism presents apparent difficulties for a behavioral account. It seems to be an instance of behavior with no reinforcement. I claim that altruism is no more of a puzzle than is self-control – a presently costly act that benefits the person in the future. Both altruism and self-control may be explained in terms of two Darwinian processes of group selection: biological selection of groups of organisms over generations and behavioral selection of patterns of actions within the lifetime of a single organism. The extent of an individual’s altruism may be measured by social discount functions while the degree of an individual’s self-control may be measured by delay discount functions. Both kinds of discount functions take the same hyperbolic form. However, there are differences between them indicating that altruism and self-control are fundamentally different processes.

The talk will be focused on the problem of intelligence, as viewed from the behavioristic perspective. Critical analysis of the most frequently used definitions of intelligence will be followed by discussion on tenable criteria of intelligent behavior. These criteria refer to such phenomena as coping with novelty and problem solving. They will be discussed both form the interindividual perspective (differences between people) and intraindividual perspective (differences within people). In the last part of the talk, an attempt will be made to apply the criteria of intelligent behavior to the problem of intellectual differences between species.

Brief overview of four types of discounting, including temporal discounting, probabilistic discounting, social discounting and effort discounting, will be presented. Generally speaking, discounting refers to a decrease in the subjective value of a reward as its delay increases, probability of receiving it decreases, size of a group the reward is shared with increases, and an effort required to obtain the reward increases. However, the value of smaller and larger rewards diminishes at a different rate. With increasing delay and effort, smaller rewards lose their value at a higher rate, than larger rewards do (amount effect). With decreasing probability and increasing size of the group the reward has to be shared with, the opposite is true (reversed amount effect). The assumed reason for the change of the direction in the amount effect is an anticipation of possible disappointment and regret, when the chosen uncertain or shared alternative is not actually obtained, and, at the same time, a smaller, sure reward - missed.

Time discounting is a measure of behavioral impulsivity and refers to the tendency for the present value of an outcome to be diminished by a delay to its receipt. While as a rule the present value of a reward diminishes as the delay gets longer, this effect is stronger for impulsive and substance-dependent individuals, and they will more often choose the immediate outcome. Following the reports suggesting both a relation between addiction and obesity, and differences in discounting depending on the type of used outcomes, the current study examined variations in the discounting rate of three different types of outcomes (money, debit card and food) as a function of the participants’ body mass index (BMI). For this purpose 90 participants aged 18 to 26 were tested. Participants were recruited, on the basis of their BMI, into three subgroups: malnourished, normal weight, and overweight and obesity. The analysis showed no differences in the discounting rate in reference to BMI. However, significant differences in the discounting rate between all three outcome types were revealed in the normal weight subgroup. In this case, money was discounted less steeply than the other two outcomes, and food was more steeply discounted than the credit card.

Do people always save the best for later? This is what our intuition would tell us, yet such behavior is not predicted by economic nor psychological models of choice. This presentation will focus on choice between the sequences of rewards in which rewards differ in size. According to the majority of psychological research, people choose sequences of increasing rewards over the sequences of decreasing rewards, but in some cases such behavior is not evident. The focus of the presentation will be placed on the research on temporal discounting of sequences. Traditionally, temporal discounting refers to the fact that the present, subjective value of a reward decreases as the delay until its receipt increases. In order to make this situation closer to the choices which we encounter in real world, the discounting of sequences, not single rewards, is studied. In such situations people choose between patterns of behavior, which makes those situations more ecologically valid than the single reward paradigm.

The subject of the presentation is an introduction to a new research area in studies on discounting: past discounting, and its relations to addictions. In behavioral psychology, it is widely assumed that the rate of temporal discounting is a measure of impulsivity. Many studies have shown that people who score high on standard impulsivity scales (like drug addicts or people with psychiatric disorders) additionally show a higher rate of discounting of future rewards. However, a recent study by Yi, Gatchalian and Bickel (2006) has shown that people also discount rewards received in the past. Moreover, the rate of past discounting is higher in cigarette smokers than in non-smokers (Bickel, Yi, Kowal i Gatchalian, 2008). Such results are consistent with reports indicating that people with addictions have a shorter temporal horizon, which means that they perceive 'future' and 'past' as shorter intervals than non-addicts. Thus, a number of questions arise: is the discounting rate a measure of temporal horizon and not of impulsivity, as has been believed so far? Will ex-addicts discount past rewards in a similar way to non-addicts (like in the case of future discounting, where ex-addicts do not differ from non-addicts)? These questions will be addressed in a series of studies to be conducted in the near future.

As gambling becomes more prevalent and more accessible in our society, pathological gambling is growing as a serious problem. Robert Ladouceur, Canadian psychologist, is a developers of an empirically supported cognitive-behavioral therapy program for the treatment of pathological gambling. CBT for problem gambling focuses on changing unhealthy gambling behaviors and thoughts. Behavior therapy places great importance on conditioned responses. It seeks to identify the stimuli and all high-risk situations based on the gambler’s auto-evaluation. It aims to dismantle the addictive behavior (by systematic avoidance of stimuli, places, people, situations and rituals which provoke it). The main steps of behavior therapy are: identification of high-risk situations by the gambler, development of behavioral strategies, and their implementation based on the five steps for problem-solving. In repeated trials, cognitive-behavioral therapy has proven an extremely effective treatment for this problem. The study results revealed the following: 86% of the clients who received the treatment and completed it were no longer considered pathological according to the DSM diagnostic criteria. Moreover, treatment clients reported having a significantly greater perception of control over gambling and a significantly greater perception of self-efficacy over gambling in risky situations compared to untreated gamblers.

The paper includes a review of empirical data concerning the influence of music preceding cognitive tasks and accompanying the execution of cognitive tasks on results achieved in that tasks. In the first part data concerning the influence of background music on memory processes, especially coding and recalling of verbal material, are analyzed. In the second part the so called Mozart effect, i.e. the influence of music on spatio-temporal tasks execution is presented. The third part is focused on the influence of music in some other cognitive tasks, like IQ test results and computer games achievements. The paper ends with a discussion of hypothetical mechanisms responsible for the influence of background music on cognitive processes, including interference, priming , modulation of mood and changes in brain activity.

Episodic memory was initially defined as a memory system that stores information about events and their spatial and temporal contexts. This definition was subsequently refined and elaborated in terms of phenomenal aspects of remembering past happenings, such as reliving an experience (autonoetic consciousness), a sense of subjective time and the experiencing self. In recent years , emphasis has been put on the adaptive function of episodic memory. It has been suggested that it enables the organism to anticipate the future and to be prepared for it. It has long been accepted that episodic memory is unique to humans and animals cannot cognitively time travel. However, more recent research demonstrates that various animal species show behavioral manifestations of different features of episodic memory. A number of experiments indicate a well-developed memory for the “what”, “where”, and “when” of an event in birds, episodic-like memory for the location of a preferred reward in rats, as well as future planning in birds and nonhuman primates. These experiments will be described and their implications discussed. The definition of objective behavioral criteria by which episodic memory can be operationalized experimentally and assessed in both animals and humans will be proposed.

Pavlov’s pioneering studies on classical conditioned reflexes (CR) in dogs brought him to the conclusion, that there exist individual differences (ID) in the speed and efficiency of CRs formation. Such conceptual nervous system (CoNS) properties as strength of excitation, strength of inhibition, balance between them and mobility of the nervous system are responsible for those differences. The Pavlovian CR reflex paradigm as well as strength of excitation regarded by Pavlov as the most essential property of the CoNS constituted one of the bases in developing several trait-oriented personality theories. The CR paradigm popular among Russian researchers studying CoNS properties was also applied by Hans Eysenck’s to explain ID in extraversion and neuroticism, by Kenneth Spence to interpret ID in trait-anxiety, by Jeffrey Gray when he was searching for roots of ID in two basic temperament traits –impulsivity and anxiety, by his followers (e.g. Corr, Pickering) within the Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory, and by Jan Strelau in his studies on CoNS properties in humans. The property strength of excitation interpreted by Gray in terms of arousal theories as arousability (arousal-trait) has gained popularity in most temperament (biological oriented personality) theories to explain ID in traits postulated by these theories.

Skinner's formulation of private events is one of the most interesting, though also most controversial excerpts of his radical behaviorism. This opinion concerns the content of radical behaviorist approach, as well as the methodology and methodics that lead to it; it also applies to the functioning and status of radical behaviorism in Skinner's proposition in it's entirety. This latter thread appears to point to a certain interesting possibility of thinking and talking about private events, also out of the field of radical behaviorism. This concerns specifically the possibility of formulating the phenomenon of privacy in terms of a certain explanatory hypothesis, which (according to the rule of thought economy) explains – in favor of a person – the differences between the self control of a person and the external control by society.

The concept of reinforcement is at least incomplete and almost certainly incorrect. An alternative way of organizing our understanding of behavior utilizes three concepts: allocation, induction, and correlation. Allocation means choice: All behavior entails choice and consists of choice. Allocation changes as a result of induction and correlation. The term induction covers phenomena such as adjunctive, interim, and terminal behavior—behavior induced in a situation by occurrence of food or another Phylogenetically Important Event (PIE) in that situation. Induction resembles stimulus control in that no one-to-one relation exists between induced behavior and the inducing event. A PIE thus resembles a discriminative stimulus, except that a PIE depends on phylogeny. Much empirical evidence supports the idea that a PIE induces all PIE-related activities. Empirical evidence also supports the idea that stimuli correlated with PIEs become PIE-related conditional inducing stimuli. Contingencies create correlations between “operant” activity (e.g., lever pressing) and PIEs (e.g., food). Once an activity has become PIE-related, the PIE induces it along with other PIE-related activities. A contingency also constrains possible performances. Allocations that include a lot of operant activity are selected because they have high value (high rate of PIEs) within the constraints of the situation.

Most people may be very prone to accept direct or indirect suggestions and to behave in accordance with them, at least in some situations. This is sometimes difficult to explain, as the suggestions may be far from rationality, and accepting them does not involve conscious cognitive, rational processes. Yet the power of suggestions may be powerful. In this presentation a learning approach in explaining these phenomena is proposed. It is postulated that accepting suggestions may be at least partly result from conditioning and learning. Some examples how conditioning stimulates suggestibility will be presented.

There is no need to convince about the importance of language for human development. Especially important for the modern man is communicative competence, on which depends not only success in school, but also professional achievements. Communicative competence is developing through the life span, but childhood is essential period for its development. Process of its development, its relationships with other competences, and implications for further human development are worthy to be shown. During childhood peers are ideal partners for various forms of activities, including verbal activity. One of the competencies that help to achieve beneficial, from a developmental point of view, social position, is communicative competence. It turns out that the way in which children participate in peer discourse (Black, Hazan, 1989), initiate contact with familiar peers and strangers (Black, Hazan, 1990), join a group (Putallaz, Wassermann 1989), use non-verbal communication means (Boyatzis, Satyaprasad 1994), behave in conversation (Smoot, and Aumiller 1993), provide information and ask questions (Wrona 2001, Smółka 2005), express emotions and read the intentions of others (Mentel 2009), differentiate between children with different social status in group. Achieved during childhood social status in the peer group affects creation of self-image. Cited studies do not lead to cause-effect explanations, but expose to two important matters connected with the development during childhood: the place of child in the group and its communicative competence.

Behavior analysis has reached Poland in early nineties of the last century. The first therapeutic center for autistic children that used behavioral therapy techniques based on applied behavior analysis was founded in Gdańsk in 1992. The following year the research on the process of discounting were started on the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Warsaw, thereby initiating the experimental behavior analysis in our country. The Decade of Behavior, that is coming to an end this year overlaps the time of the most intense development of behavior analysis in Poland. A great deal of things happened in this period of time: organizational units dedicated to development of behavior analysis were founded on two Polish universities; the number of centers using applied behavior analysis has exceeded 20; three societies were founded to associate behavior analysts and people interested in this branch of psychology; 12 conferences and symposiums on behavior analysis took place. Moreover, many important publications on the subject were printed – translations from English as well as original publications of Polish behavior analysts. This paper is meant to describe the beginnings of behavior analysis in Poland and to summarize the current state of it's development in our country. The author will also point out possible directions of further progress of this discipline and analyze factors that can either stimulate or suppress this progress.

The aim of this presentation is to discuss the basic operating principles of the Institute for Child Development (IWRD), which is a replica of the Princeton Child Development Institute (PCDI) located in the USA. PCDI is one of the best centers in the world dedicated to therapy of individuals with autism. Every year, the percentage of students who transfer from PCDI to mainstream facilities ranges from 42% to 67% (McClannahan, Krantz, 2001). For many years, PCDI has been conducting scientific research on the efficacy of various teaching techniques that allow for successful development of deficit behaviors in children with autism. The presentation will outline the main goals of the Institute for Child Development as an educational, training and research facility. The therapy conducted at IWRD is based on the principles of behavior analysis. The speakers will discuss the facility’s organizational structure as well as methods of working with parents who reinforce the results of the therapy received by their children at IWRD by realizing a home program. In addition, the presentation will cover the methods of working with children as well as selected teaching techniques with particular emphasis on those included in the studies conducted by PCDI (activity schedules, scripts, and video modeling). Ways of monitoring the children’s progress and the therapy effectiveness will also be discussed, followed by a discussion of ways of evaluating the operations of the facility as a whole, which is a very efficient tool in ensuring continued growth and maintenance of high quality standards. All PCDI replicas, including IWRD, apply the same evaluation methods that are used at PCDI.

Theory of mind is treated as one of the modules of brain functioning. Its efficiency mainly decides on the development of social relations. People with autism and Asperger Syndrome have deficits in theory of mind. Inability to recognize thoughts, emotions and intentions of others makes behaviors of people surrounding them a mixture of incomprehensible words and gestures that are deprived of context. In this situation, prediction of actions of others is impossible. Lack of awareness that other people have mind, so they think and feel, becomes a barrier in recognizing the feelings and thoughts of other people. One of the important goals of The Center for Children and Adolescents with Autism in Gdansk is the development of theory of mind of children with autism and Asperger Syndrome. We will present the aspects of the theory of mind in the context of working with children with autism spectrum.

According to the popular opinion, behavioral therapy is effective, but difficult. And while the first assertion of that claim – the effectiveness of the therapy – has been widely documented in specialist literature, the difficulties involved in the therapy have garnered decidedly less attention. That is the reason why the presenters will attempt to highlight vital problems related to the applied behavioral analysis. The subject will be presented from the point of view of active practitioners of the therapy, working with students with developmental disorders, and from the point of view of researchers attempting to verify a number of practical issues. The presenters will confront the question posed by the title of the presentation and answer whether applying the therapy involves problems that stem from its demanding methodological requirements, or whether the opposite is true: the problem is in commencing the therapy itself, due to a number of internal and external conditions connected to the therapist and the patient themselves. The presentation will be illustrated with examples of cases where the therapy was faced with serious obstacles, along with proposed solutions for such difficulties.

Ever-growing interest in explaining and controlling the determinants of human behavior causes extensive dissemination of psychological knowledge, which has a big influence on almost all spheres of life. Mass media provide the access to an overwhelming amount of information concerning various procedures, such as homeopathy or acupuncture. But among those procedures the most influential seems to be astrology: a pseudo-theory based on the belief that the positions of celestial bodies and their movements directly influence life on Earth. However, much more dangerous is the fact that, beyond the pages of tabloids, similar ideas are widely portrayed in psychological literature or discussed during courses for psychologists, even those at the universities. Students, especially at the beginning of their university education, are likely to be fascinated by such claims and become convinced of their scientific value. But those claims – although often expressed in scientific language - are not confirmed by scientific studies or are at variance with their results. The aim of the presented paper is to provide an answer to the question whether and how would it be possible to draw a line between science and pseudoscience in the field of psychology, as well as to verify the scientific status of behaviorism, using behavioral therapy as an example. The achievement of this aim would be possible by presenting the definition and indicators of pseudoscience, as well as pointing out the most important differences between scientific and pseudoscientific therapeutic procedures and research problems.

The issue of novelty seeking vs novelty avoidance is a subject of never ending debates within behavioral science. Organisms need information about their own organism's state, and about the surrounding in order to survive and reproduce. Even the simple organisms, such as protozoans utilize instantly available information that is provided by oncoming stimulation. The very first form of stimulus seeking - testing movements - develops in Platyhelminthes. The further evolution of stimulus seeking behavior is discussed in terms of the theory of integrative levels. The new qualities emerging at the developing levels of integration change both mechanisms of behavior, and it's form. The major steps of information seeking behavior evolution are: orienting reflex, locomotor exploration, investigatory responses, perceptual exploration, manipulatory responses, play, and cognitive curiosity. The primacy of stimulus and information seeking in animal and human behavior regulation is postulated.

Feedback can enhance motor learning and performance in sport activity as well as in physical therapy (Van Vliet, Wulf, 2006; Rice et all., 2008; Coker, Fischman, 2009). During training, the performer uses feedback to detect errors in performance by comparison of their movement to the expected goal, which allows them to improve their next attempt. Feedback can be classified as either ‘intrinsic’ or ‘extrinsic’ (Shea, Wulf, 1999). Intrinsic feedback refers to a person’s own sensory-perceptual information that is available as a result of movement being performed. Extrinsic (or ‘augmented’) feedback usually comes from an outside source (i.e. coach, physiotherapist, teacher). It is provided in addition to intrinsic feedback and has been categorized as either ‘knowledge of results’ (KR) or ‘knowledge of performance’ (KP) (Anderson, Magill, Seklye, 2001). Feedback serves at least three important functions in motor learning and performance: motivation, reinforcement or punishment, and error correction information (Coker, Fischman, 2009). Although there are indications that practice and feedback are the two most important determinants of motor learning and performance, there are still many areas which have not been examined and need extensive research.

Applied behavior analysis is a theoretical and practical mainstream in the clinical area, particularly in the treatment of people with autism. The nature of this neurological disease suggests the use (which is very rare in Poland) of behavioral analysis in other areas of neurological diseases that affect people with reduced learning abilities or difficulties in social skills. In neurology wards, there are many patients with particularly serious neuropsychological syndromes. People with aphasias do not cope with verbal skills. Patients with side neglect have dysfunctional attention associated with visual and spatial disabilities. People with the frontal lobe syndrome, showing the above-mentioned symptoms or not, additionally lose their social skills because of the difficult behaviors. In the first issue of Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (1968), authors Donald Baer, Montrose Wolf and Todd Risley used seven dimensions of applied behavior analysis. The terms: ‘applied’, ‘behavioral’, ‘analytic’, ‘technological’, ‘conceptually systematic’, ‘effective’, ‘allowing the generalization of results’ can be easily applied to the neuropsychological rehabilitation of an adult human. The behaviorist conceptions of reinforcement, processes of discrimination and generalization, or classical conditioning can suggest to potential therapists and caregivers some possible ways of influencing changed and disease-limited behaviors of people whose development proceeded in a regular manner.

The aim of the paper is to present how knowledge about behavior can be used in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) domain, particularly in designing web pages. “Persuasive Design”, or “Design with Intent”, concerns inducing desirable behaviors and preventing errors by design. Application of suitable web design solutions can influence, shape and change people's behavior effectively, for instance causing them to take particular actions, such as buying a product or registering at a web site. I will present 3 strategies of influencing user's behavior: (1) constraints - limiting possible behaviors and excluding unwanted behaviors ; (2) facilitation of behavior implementation (ease of translation of the user's intentions into behaviors and habits); (3) motivating - building a commitment and shaping habits.

Despite the fact that workaholism has been cited as one of the largest mental health problems of the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries (it is estimated that about 26% of workers suffer from this disease; Howerton, 2004), the subject itself has been downplayed in the professional literature, presumably because of the difficulty in defining the term “workaholism”. Moreover, although the term itself was used for the first time over forty years ago (Oates, 1968), there is still no consensus among scientists on how to treat this disorder. The main purpose of this theoretical paper is to present the causes of work addiction (special emphasis will be placed on the behavioral mechanisms of workaholism). In the literature, there are at least three conceptions that show how the subject “learns” becoming a workaholic (Hazen & Shaver, 1990; Matthews & Halbrook, 1990; Robinson, 1998). The second purpose is to present the REBT (rational emotive behavior therapy; Ellis, 1955) as an optimal treatment of workaholism (Burwell & Chen, 2002).