Conditional Discrimination Research Articles

FORMING OF CLASSES OF EQUIVALENCE THROUGH A ONE-PHASE TRAINING PROCEDURE

This main objective of this study was to increase the number of procedures that allow the formation of classes of equivalence. The possible influence of three factors during training was analysed: 1) discrimination type (conditional discrimination with pairing vs. chained conditional discrimination); 2) the type of stimulus used (image or word); and 3) participants’ level of studies (primary, middle school or university studies or higher). At the same time, their influence –or lack of same– on the derivation of relations was tested. A multivariate factorial design was used. We concluded that participants’ educational level plays a key role in the speed at which training is acquired, and that it also influences the derivation of relations. The study also found that “chained conditional discrimination” facilitates deriving relations more than “conditional discrimination with pairing”, although it seems that the structure of the procedure used for training does not significantly affect the derivation of relationships. These results encourage designing research that focuses on the pre-requisite abilities that promote the derivation of relations in order to obtain an effective teaching method for complex abilities in humans.

A Pilot Study of a Parent Emotion Socialization Intervention: Impact on Parent Behavior, Child Self-Regulation, and Adjustment.

Adequate emotion regulation in children is crucial for healthy development and is influenced by parent emotion socialization. The current pilot study aimed to test, for the first time in a Scandinavian population, whether an emotion-focused intervention, Tuning in to Kids (TIK), had positive effects on parent emotion-related socialization behaviors (ERSBs), and children's self-regulation, anxiety, and externalizing behavior problems. We conducted a controlled trial of the 6-week evidence-based TIK parenting program with 20 parents of preschool children aged 5–6 years and 19 wait-list controls. Assessments at baseline and 6 months after the intervention included parent-report questionnaires on parent ERSBs and child adjustment, as well as aspects of children's self-regulation assessed with two behavioral tasks, the Emotional Go/No-Go task (EGNG) and the AX-Continuous Performance Task (AX-CPT). Results showed a significant increase in reported parent emotion coaching behavior and an uncorrected significant decrease in parents' report of child externalizing problems in intervention participants compared to controls. The behavioral data showed an uncorrected significant improvement in child emotion discrimination in the control condition compared to the intervention condition, while measures of children's executive control improved from baseline to follow-up for both conditions but were not significantly different between conditions. These findings suggest that this emotion-focused parenting intervention contributed to improvement in parents' emotion coaching and their appraisal of child externalizing problems, while children's self-regulation showed mainly normative developmental improvements. Further research with a larger sample will be the next step to determine if these pilot findings are seen in an adequately powered study.

A novel exome probe set captures phototransduction genes across birds (Aves) enabling efficient analysis of vision evolution.

The diversity of avian visual phenotypes provides a framework for studying mechanisms of trait diversification generally, and the evolution of vertebrate vision, specifically. Previous research has focused on opsins, but to fully understand visual adaptation, we must study the complete phototransduction cascade (PTC). Here, we developed a probe set that captures exonic regions of 46 genes representing the PTC and other light responses. For a subset of species, we directly compared gene capture between our probe set and low-coverage whole genome sequencing (WGS), and we discuss considerations for choosing between these methods. Finally, we developed a unique strategy to avoid chimeric assembly by using "decoy" reference sequences. We successfully captured an average of 64% of our targeted exome in 46 species across 14 orders using the probe set and had similar recovery using the WGS data. Compared to WGS or transcriptomes, our probe set: (1) reduces sequencing requirements by efficiently capturing vision genes, (2) employs a simpler bioinformatic pipeline by limiting required assembly and negating annotation, and (3) eliminates the need for fresh tissues, enabling researchers to leverage existing museum collections. We then utilized our vision exome data to identify positively selected genes in two evolutionary scenarios-evolution of night vision in nocturnal birds and evolution of high-speed vision specific to manakins (Pipridae). We found parallel positive selection of SLC24A1 in both scenarios, implicating the alteration of rod response kinetics, which could improve color discrimination in dim light conditions and/or facilitate higher temporal resolution.

Effective use of the blank comparison procedure in simple discrimination by infant capuchin monkeys: A methodological note.

In studies of simple and conditional discrimination, procedures are needed to measure those aspects of stimuli that control behavior. The blank comparison procedure is one such procedure. It was designed explicitly for assessing S+ and S- functions when discriminative stimuli are presented simultaneously. In this procedure, a neutral stimulus serves sometimes as S+ and sometimes as S-. Its discriminative function is defined in relation to other stimuli in the display. The present study aimed to prepare 2 infant female capuchin monkeys for the effective use of the blank comparison procedure in a simple discrimination task. First, simple discrimination training was applied up to a stable accuracy criterion of ≥90%. This training was followed by the replacement of S+ and then of S- stimuli with new stimuli. Ultimately, trials with the blank comparison were introduced. Following this sequence, both monkeys immediately displayed highly accurate blank-comparison performances without the need for stimulus control shaping or other preparatory discrimination training. Thus, this procedure sequence may be an efficient, effective method for establishing blank-comparison baselines for experimental analyses of S+/S- discriminative functions and perhaps for other applications in teaching simple and conditional discrimination performances to this species and others.

Flexible conditional discrimination learning: Pigeons can learn to select the correct comparison stimulus, reject the incorrect comparison, or both.

In a simultaneous discrimination, pigeons are presumed to learn to about the correct stimulus, but they may also learn to avoid the incorrect stimulus. Similarly, in a conditional discrimination, they are presumed to learn about the relation between the sample stimulus and the correct comparison stimulus but not about the incorrect comparison stimulus. In the present research, we encouraged pigeons to learn about the incorrect comparison stimulus by increasing, over trials, the number of correct comparison stimuli with one sample, to compare with increasing the number of incorrect comparison stimuli over trials with the other sample. In Experiment 1, using colors and shapes, we found no difference in acquisition between the 2 sample types. However, when we replaced either the correct or incorrect comparison from training with a novel stimulus, the pigeons showed that they had learned to avoid the incorrect comparison when there were multiple correct comparisons and to select the single correct comparison when there were multiple incorrect comparisons. In Experiment 2, using national flags as stimuli, when tested with a novel flag stimulus, once again, the pigeons learned about the single correct comparison but not about the multiple incorrect comparisons. However, with the other sample, they appeared to learn about both the multiple correct comparisons and about the single incorrect comparison. This research indicates that pigeons can show considerable flexibility in what they learn in a conditional discrimination. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Optogenetic suppression of the medial septum impairs working memory maintenance.

Spatial working memory (SWM) is the ability to encode, maintain, and retrieve spatial information over a temporal gap, and relies on a network of structures including the medial septum (MS), which provides critical input to the hippocampus. Although the role of the MS in SWM is well-established, up until recently, we have been unable to use temporally precise circuit manipulation techniques to examine the specific role of the MS in SWM, particularly to distinguish between encoding, maintenance, and retrieval. Here, we test the hypothesis that the MS supports the maintenance of spatial information over a temporal gap using precisely timed optogenetic suppression delivered during specific portions of three different tasks, two of which rely on SWM and one that does not. In experiment 1, we found that MS optogenetic suppression impaired choice accuracy of a SWM dependent conditional discrimination task. Moreover, this deficit was only observed when MS suppression was delivered during the cue-sampling, but not the cue-retrieval, portion of the trial. There was also no deficit when MS neurons were optogenetically suppressed as rats performed a SWM-independent variant of the task. In experiment 2, we tested whether MS suppression affected choice accuracy on a delayed nonmatch to position (DNMP) task when suppression was limited to the sample, delay, and choice phases of the task. We found that MS suppression delivery during the delay phase of the DNMP task, but not during the sample or choice phases, impaired choice accuracy. Our results collectively suggest that the MS plays an important role in SWM by maintaining task-relevant information over a temporal delay.

Egg Freshness Evaluation Using Transmission and Reflection of NIR Spectroscopy Coupled Multivariate Analysis.

This work presents a novel work for the detection of the freshness of eggs stored at room temperature and refrigerated conditions by the near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy and multivariate models. The NIR spectroscopy of diffuse transmission and reflection modes was used to compare the quantitative and qualitative investigation of egg freshness. It was found that diffuse transmission is more conducive to the judgment of egg freshness. The linear discriminant analysis model (LDA) for pattern recognition based on the diffuse transmission measurement was employed to analyze egg freshness during storage. NIR diffuse transmission spectroscopy showed great potential for egg storage time discrimination in normal atmospheric conditions. The LDA model discrimination rated up to 91.4% in the prediction set, while only 25.6% of samples were correctly discriminated among eggs in refrigerated storage conditions. Furthermore, NIR spectra, combined with the synergy interval partial least squares (Si-PLS) model, showed excellent ability in egg physical index prediction under normal atmospheric conditions. The root means square error of prediction (RMSEP) values of Haugh unit, yolk index, and weight loss from predictive Si-PLS models were 4.25, 0.031, and 0.005432, respectively.

Research on numerical solution of one-sided monotonic function dichotomy

Aiming at the numerical solution problem of given interval dichotomy, the concept of one-sided monotonic function is proposed, and the unique existence of the solution is proved when the two ends of the function take different signs. Therefore, this significantly relaxes the discrimination conditions and effectively expands the numerical solution range of the dichotomy method. On this basis, it is proved that the one-sided monotonic function is a monotonic function in a relatively small interval containing the zero point. The introduction of the concept of one-sided monotonic function provides a theoretical basis for further expanding the application range of the dichotomy numerical solution, and has certain theoretical and practical significance for dealing with scientific and engineering problems as well as related numerical calculation problems.

Training sequence effects on emergent conditional discriminations: Replication and extension to selection-based training.

We examined the replicability and generality of a previously reported training sequence effect on emergent conditional discriminations in the intraverbal naming task. In Experiment 1, a tact-intraverbal (TI) group learned first to vocally label 6 visual patterns and then to intraverbally relate pairs of verbal labels, whereas an intraverbal-tact (IT) group received the same training in the opposite sequence. Emergent conditional discriminations among pattern stimuli were assessed in match-to-sample (MTS) format. Experiment 2 was identical, except vocal tact and intraverbal training were replaced with selection-based training in which the verbal labels were text stimuli. Compared to the IT sequence, the TI sequence resulted in greater mean accuracy at test (Experiment 1), higher yields (Experiment 2), and shorter reaction times (Experiment 2). Experiment 2 data suggested the TI group's performance might be less dependent on intact intraverbal relations relative to the IT group, but related to participants' reports of visualization during intraverbal training. The results suggest the sequence effect is replicable and occurs in experimental preparations commonly used to study derived stimulus relations. They also provide novel support for the hypothesis that participant behavior during training alters sources of stimulus control available at test.

Emergent categorization in the recognition of black and white paintings through conditional discrimination

BackgroundThe emergent categorization involving paintings by renowned painters and their corresponding names was demonstrated by previous studies. However, the results of these studies suggest that the colors of the pictures may have played a preponderant role, obscuring other aspects of the stimuli that could be more directly related to the style of each painter. To verify this possibility, the present study used the same methodology of Ferreira et al. to investigate the establishment of emergent conditional relations between categories composed of black and white paintings and the names of their authors.MethodThe procedure consisted of the training of relations between each of the ten paintings and an abstract picture, for each of the three painters Botticelli, Monet, and Picasso. Relations between each of the three abstract figures and the printed name of one of the painters were verified in sequence. Finally, tests of relations between five trained and five untrained paintings of each artist and the printed names were conducted.ResultsThe participants’ performance suggests that the outcome was properly controlled by aspects pertinent to the paintings that belonged to each painter’s category.ConclusionsThe results reinforced the data obtained previously with colored pictures, suggesting that the process of emergent categorization involving artificial categories of paintings is robust. It also indicates possibilities for future investigations, for example, using stimuli of other artistic productions, such as sculpture and music.

The Metabolic Signature of In Vitro Produced Bovine Embryos Helps Predict Pregnancy and Birth after Embryo Transfer.

In vitro produced (IVP) embryos show large metabolic variability induced by breed, culture conditions, embryonic stage and sex and gamete donors. We hypothesized that the birth potential could be accurately predicted by UHPLC-MS/MS in culture medium (CM) with the discrimination of factors inducing metabolic variation. Day-6 embryos were developed in single CM (modified synthetic oviduct fluid) for 24 h and transferred to recipients as fresh (28 ETs) or frozen/thawed (58 ETs) Day-7 blastocysts. Variability was induced with seven bulls, slaughterhouse oocyte donors, culture conditions (serum + Bovine Serum Albumin [BSA] or BSA alone) prior to single culture embryonic stage records (Day-6: morula, early blastocyst, blastocyst; Day-7: expanding blastocyst; fully expanded blastocysts) and cryopreservation. Retained metabolite signals (6111) were analyzed as a function of pregnancy at Day-40, Day-62 and birth in a combinatorial block study with all fixed factors. We identified 34 accumulated metabolites through 511 blocks, 198 for birth, 166 for Day-62 and 147 for Day-40. The relative abundance of metabolites was higher within blocks from non-pregnant (460) than from pregnant (51) embryos. Taxonomy classified lipids (12 fatty acids and derivatives; 224 blocks), amino acids (12) and derivatives (3) (186 blocks), benzenoids (4; 58 blocks), tri-carboxylic acids (2; 41 blocks) and 5-Hydroxy-l-tryptophan (2 blocks). Some metabolites were effective as single biomarkers in 95 blocks (Receiver Operating Characteristic – Area Under the Curve [ROC-AUC]: 0.700–1.000). In contrast, more accurate predictions within the largest data sets were obtained with combinations of 2, 3 and 4 single metabolites in 206 blocks (ROC-AUC = 0.800–1.000). Pregnancy-prone embryos consumed more amino acids and citric acid, and depleted less lipids and cis-aconitic acid. Big metabolic differences between embryos support efficient pregnancy and birth prediction when analyzed in discriminant conditions.

Dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) are susceptible to the Kanizsa\u2019s triangle illusion

The ability to complete partially missing contours is widespread across the animal kingdom, but whether this extends to dogs is still unknown. To address this gap in knowledge, we assessed dogs’ susceptibility to one of the most common contour illusions, the Kanizsa’s triangle. Six dogs were trained to discriminate a triangle from other geometrical figures using a two-alternative conditioned discrimination task. Once the learning criterion was reached, dogs were presented with the Kanizsa’s triangle and a control stimulus, where inducers were rotated around their centre, so as to disrupt what would be perceived as a triangle by a human observer. As a group, dogs chose the illusory triangle significantly more often than control stimuli. At the individual level, susceptibility to the illusion was shown by five out of six dogs. This is the first study where dogs as a group show susceptibility to a visual illusion in the same manner as humans. Moreover, the analyses revealed a negative effect of age on susceptibility, an effect that was also found in humans. Altogether, this suggests that the underling perceptual mechanisms are similar between dogs and humans, and in sharp contrast with other categories of visual illusions to which the susceptibility of dogs has been previously assessed.

Discrimination between replay attacks and sensor faults for cyber-physical systems via event-triggered communication

In this paper, a threat discrimination methodology is proposed for cyber-physical systems with event-triggered data communication, aiming to identify sensor bias faults from two possible types of threats: replay attacks and sensor bias faults. Event-triggered adaptive estimation and backward-in-time signal processing are the main techniques used. Specifically, distinct incremental systems of the event-triggered cyber-physical system resulting from the considered threat types are established for each threat type, and the difference between their inputs are found and utilized to discriminate the threats. An event-triggered adaptive estimator is then designed by using the event-triggered sampled data based on the system in the attack case, allowing to reconstruct the unknown increments in both the threat cases. The backward-in-time model of the incremental system in the replay attack case is proposed as the signal processor to process the reconstructions of the increments. Such a model can utilize the aforementioned input difference between the incremental systems such that its output has distinct quantitative properties in the attack case and in the fault case. The fault discrimination condition is rigorously investigated and characterizes quantitatively the class of distinguishable sensor bias faults. Finally, a numerical simulation is presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.

Study on Development Law of Mining-Induced Slope Fracture in Gully Mining Area

The development law of mining cracks in shallow coal seams under gully topography was used as the research base to analyze the development characteristics of mining cracks in the 5-2 coal mining face of Anshan Coal Mine, and the weak strength was established. The basic top force model under the action of the overburden is the “nonuniformly distributed load beam” structure model. Through similar simulation research and theoretical calculation analysis, the fracture development law of the working face passing through the valley is studied. Based on the mechanical analysis of the beam structure with nonuniform load, the discriminant conditions of the stability of the bearing structure of the bedrock are derived, the calculation formulas of the parameters such as the pressure, shear force, and the ultimate span of the basic roof at both ends are determined, the influence law of the thickness and slope change of the weak strength overburden on the mining crack spacing is revealed, and the influence of the slope of the weak strength overburden on the weighting step distance on the beam with nonuniform load is obtained. The phenomenon is that the burial depth has a great influence on the step distance of weighting. The practice shows that the distance between the mining-induced fractures determined by the nonuniformly distributed load beam model and the periodic weighting step, the height of fracture development, and the buried depth are approximately the same; the mining-induced fractures in the overburden develop and evolve periodically with the failure and instability of the bedrock. The research results will clarify the development mechanism of surface cracks in the gully mining area, which is of great significance to reduce terrain disasters.

Research on Traffic Condition Discriminant Technology of Urban Intersections Under Intelligent Lighting System Based on Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation

Firstly, the basic traffic data collection methods based on intelligent lighting system are introduced, including RTMS data collection and video data collection. Then, based on the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation, a traffic condition discrimination model of urban intersections under the intelligent lighting system is established. The average speed, stop delay and queue length detected by the intelligent lamp post collection equipment are selected as evaluation factors, and the traffic status of signalized intersections is defined as smooth traffic, normal congestion and severe congestion. The research results have realized the fine discrimination of urban intersection traffic operating condition under the intelligent lighting system.

Model predictive current control with adaptive-adjusting timescales for PMSMs

A model predictive current control (MPCC) with adaptive-adjusting method of timescales for permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSMs) is proposed in this paper to improve the dynamic response and prediction accuracy in transient-state, while lessening the computational burden and improving the control performance in steady-state. The timescale characteristics of different parts of MPCC, such as signal sampling, prediction calculation, control output, model error correction, are analyzed, and the algorithm architecture of MPCC with multi-timescale is proposed. The difference between reference and actual speed, and the change rate of actual speed are utilized to discriminate the transient state of speed change and load change, respectively. Adaptive-adjusting method of control period and prediction stepsize are illustrated in detail after operation condition discrimination. Experimental results of a PMSM are presented to validate the effectiveness of proposed MPCC. In addition, comparative evaluation of single-step MPCC with fixed timescale and proposed MPCC is conducted, which demonstrates the superiority of proposed control strategy.

Multi-SpectroGAN: High-Diversity and High-Fidelity Spectrogram Generation with Adversarial Style Combination for Speech Synthesis

While generative adversarial networks (GANs) based neural text-to-speech (TTS) systems have shown significant improvement in neural speech synthesis, there is no TTS system to learn to synthesize speech from text sequences with only adversarial feedback. Because adversarial feedback alone is not sufficient to train the generator, current models still require the reconstruction loss compared with the ground-truth and the generated mel-spectrogram directly. In this paper, we present Multi-SpectroGAN (MSG), which can train the multi-speaker model with only the adversarial feedback by conditioning a self-supervised hidden representation of the generator to a conditional discriminator. This leads to better guidance for generator training. Moreover, we also propose adversarial style combination (ASC) for better generalization in the unseen speaking style and transcript, which can learn latent representations of the combined style embedding from multiple mel-spectrograms. Trained with ASC and feature matching, the MSG synthesizes a high-diversity mel-spectrogram by controlling and mixing the individual speaking styles (e.g., duration, pitch, and energy). The result shows that the MSG synthesizes a high-fidelity mel-spectrogram, which has almost the same naturalness MOS score as the ground-truth mel-spectrogram.

Teaching receptive money identification skills using matrix training: A preliminary investigation

AbstractWe taught receptive money identification skills to preschool‐age children. A 4 × 4 dollar‐coin matrix was assembled to create 16 dollar‐coin combinations. We used a penny, nickel, dime, quarter, and a 1‐, 5‐, 10‐, and 20‐dollar bill. We explicitly taught six dollar‐coin auditory conditional discriminations via a six‐phase training protocol. We then assessed the remaining 10 untrained combinations for emergent responding, four of which were assessed for responding by exclusion. One participant demonstrated emergent responding for all 10 untaught combinations, and another demonstrated emergent responding for six combinations. The findings, limitations, and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Fear conditioning and stimulus generalization in association with age in children and adolescents

The aim of the study was to investigate age-related differences in fear learning and generalization in healthy children and adolescents (n = 133), aged 8–17 years, using an aversive discriminative fear conditioning and generalization paradigm adapted from Lau et al. (2008). In the current task, participants underwent 24 trials of discriminative conditioning of two female faces with neutral facial expressions, with (CS+) or without (CS−) a 95-dB loud female scream, presented simultaneously with a fearful facial expression (US). The discriminative conditioning was followed by 72 generalization trials (12 CS+, 12 GS1, 12 GS2, 12 GS3, 12 GS4, and 12 CS−): four generalization stimuli depicting gradual morphs from CS+ to CS− in 20%-steps were created for the generalization phases. We hypothesized that generalization in children and adolescents is negatively correlated with age. The subjective ratings of valence, arousal, and US expectancy (the probability of an aversive noise following each stimulus), as well as skin conductance responses (SCRs) were measured. Repeated-measures ANOVAs on ratings and SCR amplitudes were calculated with the within-subject factors stimulus type (CS+, CS−, GS1-4) and phase (Pre-Acquisition, Acquisition 1, Acquisition 2, Generalization 1, Generalization 2). To analyze the modulatory role of age, we additionally calculated ANCOVAs considering age as covariate. Results indicated that (1) subjective and physiological responses were generally lower with increasing age irrespective to the stimulus quality, and (2) stimulus discrimination improved with increasing age paralleled by reduced overgeneralization in older individuals. Longitudinal follow-up studies are required to analyze fear generalization with regard to brain maturational aspects and clarify whether overgeneralization of conditioned fear promotes the development of anxiety disorders or vice versa.

Sequential experimental designs for discrimination among adsorption equilibrium models

Sequential experimental designs for model discrimination were used for the selection of the most appropriate adsorption isotherm for describing the adsorption of tartrazine onto magnesium oxide and of methyl orange onto activated carbon. Typical adsorption equilibrium models were considered. For the adsorption of tartrazine, it was observed that the sequential approach permitted the re-evaluation of the considered models, as new information was acquired, allowing the inclusion of models not considered initially. For the adsorption of methyl orange, it was observed that model discrimination was achieved only after five additional experiments. These results showed that the use of sequential experimental designs allowed the effective selection of experimental conditions for model discrimination, which might not be possible without the optimization of the design criterion. In both cases, the BET isotherm was the selected model, indicating that adsorption of both adsorbates onto different solids occurs with multilayer formation.