‘Publish and Flourish’ instead of ‘Publish or Perish’: A Motivation Model for Top-quality Publications

Although the ‘publish-or-perish’ principle has spread globally, many authors believe that it is a negative reinforcer (motivator) and harmful. With this paper, we have tried to help overcome the growing pressure of negative reinforcers on researchers. The paper aimed to propose a model for factors influencing researchers to publish in WoS/Scopus journals, based mainly on positive reinforcement and a combination of concepts including theories of control, management, stakeholders, and psychology. The model was intended for Bulgarian universities. It covered 17 motivational drivers and 29 potential features of internal university stakeholders directly involved in the topic. Factor ranking was not incorporated in the model. The research methodology covered the methods of expert evaluation, analysis/synthesis, induction/deduction, and the toolkit consisted of a comprehensive survey and Kendall’s rank concordance coefficient. The model was implemented at a Bulgarian state university. The empirical study was conducted among 120 researchers. It resulted in factor rankings by university internal stakeholders. The highest-ranked motivational driver was reputation, and the lowest-ranked was the publish-or-perish pressure reducing. The highest-ranked potential features were university prestige and potential and support for promotion. We believe that this model contributes to the theory of behaviour control. The model will also improve university research management by enriching its tools.

Rat Ultrasonic Vocalizations as Social Reinforcers—Implications for a Multilevel Model of the Cognitive Representation of Action and Rats’ Social World

Rats are social animals. For example, rats exhibit mutual-reward preferences, preferring choice alternatives that yield a reward to themselves as well as to a conspecific, over alternatives that yield a reward only to themselves. We have recently hypothesized that such mutual-reward preferences might be the result of reinforcing properties of ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) emitted by the conspecifics. USVs in rats serve as situation-dependent socio-affective signals with important communicative functions. To test this possibility, here, we trained rats to enter one of two compartments in a T-maze setting. Entering either compartment yielded identical food rewards as well as playback of pre-recorded USVs either in the 50-kHz range, which we expected to be appetitive or therefore a potential positive reinforcer, or in the 22-kHz range predicted to be aversive and therefore a potential negative reinforcer. In three separate experimental conditions, rats chose between compartments yielding either 50-kHz USVs versus a non-ultrasonic control stimulus (condition 1), 22-kHz USVs versus a non-ultrasonic control stimulus (condition 2), or 50-kHz versus 22-kHz USVs (condition 3). Results show that rats exhibit a transient preference for the 50-kHz USV playback over non-ultrasonic control stimuli, as well as an initial avoidance of 22-kHz USV relative to non-ultrasonic control stimuli on trend-level. As rats progressed within session through trials, and across sessions, these preferences diminished, in line with previous findings. These results support our hypothesis that USVs have transiently motivating reinforcing properties, putatively acquired through association processes, but also highlight that these motivating properties are context-dependent and modulatory, and might not act as primary reinforcers when presented in isolation. We conclude this article with a second part on a multilevel cognitive theory of rats’ action and action learning. The “cascade” approach assumes that rats’ cognitive representations of action may be multilevel. A basic physical level of action may be invested with higher levels of action that integrate emotional, motivational, and social significance. Learning in an experiment consists in the cognitive formation of multilevel action representations. Social action and interaction in particular are proposed to be cognitively modeled as multilevel. Our results have implications for understanding the structure of social cognition, and social learning, in animals and humans.

O Jato de Ar Quente Como um Estímulo Aversivo em Contingências de Fuga em Ratos

To increase the number of aversive stimuli that are available for laboratory research, the hot air blast (HAB) was tested as a negative reinforcer in two escape contingencies. Sixteen naïve rats were exposed to 30 or 60 HAB presentations. For half of the subjects, the escape response was jumping in a shuttle box; for the others, the HAB was interrupted after a nose poke response. The results showed that seven of eight subjects (87.5%) in each group learned the required escape response. These data confirm the negative reinforcing function of the HAB, which may be an alternative aversive stimulus to be adopted in research with nonhumans subjects.Keywords: escape; negative reinforcement; hot air blast; aversive control.

Harm to others acts as a cingulate dependent negative reinforcer in rat

SummaryEmpathy, the ability to share another individual’s emotional state and/or experience, has been suggested to be a source of prosocial motivation by making actions that harm others aversive. The neural underpinnings and evolution of such harm aversion remain poorly understood. Here, we characterize an animal model of harm aversion in which a rat can choose between two levers providing equal amounts of food, but one additionally delivering a footshock to a neighboring rat. We find that independently of sex and familiarity, rats reduce their usage of the preferred lever when it causes harm to a conspecific, displaying an individually varying degree of harm aversion. Prior experience with pain increases this effect. In additional experiments, we show that rats reduce the usage of the harm-inducing lever when it delivers twice, but not thrice the number of pellets than the non-preferred lever, setting boundaries on the magnitude of harm aversion. Finally, we show that pharmacological deactivation of the anterior cingulate cortex, a region we have shown to be essential for emotional contagion, reduces harm aversion, while leaving behavioral flexibility unaffected. This model of harm aversion might help shed light onto the neural basis of psychiatric disorders characterized by reduced harm aversion, including psychopathy and conduct disorders with reduced empathy, and provide an assay for the development of pharmacological treatments of such disorders.

Drunk decisions: Alcohol shifts choice from habitual towards goal-directed control in adolescent intermediate-risk drinkers

Background: Studies in humans and animals suggest a shift from goal-directed to habitual decision-making in addiction. We therefore tested whether acute alcohol administration reduces goal-directed and promotes habitual decision-making, and whether these effects are moderated by self-reported drinking problems. Methods: Fifty-three socially drinking males completed the two-step task in a randomised crossover design while receiving an intravenous infusion of ethanol (blood alcohol level=80 mg%), or placebo. To minimise potential bias by long-standing heavy drinking and subsequent neuropsychological impairment, we tested 18- to 19-year-old adolescents. Results: Alcohol administration consistently reduced habitual, model-free decisions, while its effects on goal-directed, model-based behaviour varied as a function of drinking problems measured with the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test. While adolescents with low risk for drinking problems (scoring <8) exhibited an alcohol-induced numerical reduction in goal-directed choices, intermediate-risk drinkers showed a shift away from habitual towards goal-directed decision-making, such that alcohol possibly even improved their performance. Conclusions: We assume that alcohol disrupted basic cognitive functions underlying habitual and goal-directed decisions in low-risk drinkers, thereby enhancing hasty choices. Further, we speculate that intermediate-risk drinkers benefited from alcohol as a negative reinforcer that reduced unpleasant emotional states, possibly displaying a novel risk factor for drinking in adolescence.

Nadsat: The oscillation between reader immersion and repulsion

This article explores the oscillation between immersion and repulsion amongst readers of A clockwork orange by Anthony Burgess. I argue that nadsat, as an invented language, introduces the state of ‘reader immersion’ resulting in ‘flow’ by means of a ‘ludic reading’ motivational structure. Reader curiosity acts as a ‘positive reinforcer’ through the sense of accomplishment felt by mastering nadsat. Reader repulsion occurs once nadsat is understood. Repulsion is induced as a result of the brutality the nadsat narrative communicates. However, repulsion does not necessarily cause the reader to stop reading, but rather acts as a sensationally derived motivation to continue reading. This type of motivation is identified as a ‘negative reinforcer’. Both motivational structures (positive and negative reinforcers) develop the oscillation between reader immersion and repulsion as part of the reading experience A clockwork orange offers. The aim of this article is to discuss the oscillation between immersion and repulsion experienced by readers of A clockwork orange according to the theoretical frameworks indicated above.