Place, U. T. (1971c). The use of operant responding as a measure of mood fluctuation in periodic psychosis [Unpublished paper with an author's note added in 1999].
[Abstract]Ryle (1949) has suggested that to be in a happy mood or frame of mind is to have (a) an increased capacity for enjoyment and (b) a reduced sensitivity to distress. It is a natural corollary of this view that to be in an unhappy or miserable mood or frame of mind is to have (a) a reduced capacity for enjoyment and (b) an enhanced sensitivity to distress. Assuming that an individual's capacity for enjoyment can be measured by the rate of operant responding under conditions of positive reinforcement and his or her sensitivity to distress by the rate of responding under conditions of negative reinforcement, it should follow, on Ryle's theory, that in elation the rate of response under conditions of positive reinforcement will be high with a correspondingly low rate of response when reinforcement is negative. In depression, on the other hand, a low rate of response is predicted for the positive reinforcement condition with a high rate of response for the negative reinforcement condition. In this study, the rate of operant responding under conditions of positive reinforcement is compared with that under conditions of negative reinforcement in two manic depressive patients with regular and predictable mood cycles. Longitudinal studies extended over several months confirm a number of the predictions drawn from Ryle's theory and throw some new and unexpected light on the nature of pathological mood states.
[References]  [Talks]  [1 referring publications by Place]  
Download: 1971c The Use of Operant Responding as a Measure of Mood Fluctuation in Periodic Psychosis.pdf

Place, U. T., & Wheeler Vega, J. A. (1999). An anticipation of reversal theory within a conceptual-analytic and behaviorist perspective [Conference presentation, presented by the second author at the 9^th International Conference on Reversal Theory, June 28 - July 2]. University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
[Abstract]Michael Apter denies that behaviorism can provide an adequate account of human action, referring to it in one place as "a kind of methodological vandalism" (Apter, 1989, p. 2). It is the purpose of this paper to show how the first author came, as a behaviorist and analytic philosopher, to a position that anticipates reversal theory to a surprising extent. The basis of this position is an analysis of polar statements concerning 'wanting': 'X wants O', and 'X does not want O'. These sentences imply a number of corollaries. For example, if 'X wants O', then: 'X will be pleased if O appears', 'X will be worried if it looks as if O will not appear', and 'X will be angry or miserable if O fails to appear'. Contrasting entailments follow ‘X does not want O'. These implications display the relationship between the motivational concepts of 'wanting' and 'not wanting', and emotion concepts such as being pleased, worried, angry, miserable, &c. This set of reciprocally related entailments provide, it will be argued, the conceptual foundation of reversal theory. This analysis led the first author to develop a behavioral theory of emotion, in which the various emotions can be located on two dimensions (after Myers, 1923): 'pleasant/unpleasant', and 'high-arousal/low-arousal'. Emotions are distinguished by reference to a third variable: a characteristic 'impulse' appropriate to the type of contingency in which the emotion in question is evoked. The notions of 'wanting' and 'not wanting' are defined, in the language of operant psychology, as differences in the reinforcing effect of actual and potential stimuli with respect to actual and potential operant responses by the organism. Some illustrative clinical and experimental applications of the theory by the first author, in the 1960's, are outlined.
[References]  [Talks]  [1 referring publications by Place]  
Download: Place & Wheeler Vega (1999) An Anticipation of Reversal Theory within a Conceptual Analytic and Behaviorist Perspective.pdf