h-R3 is a well-tolerated drug that may enhance radiocurability of unresectable head and neck neoplasms.

Considerable research has examined the contrasting predictions of the elemental and configural association theories proposed by Rescorla and Wagner (1972) and Pearce (1987), respectively. One simple method to distinguish between these approaches is the summation test, in which the associative strength attributed to a novel compound of two separately trained cues is examined. Under common assumptions, the configural view predicts that the strength of the compound will approximate to the average strength of its components, whereas the elemental approach predicts that the strength of the compound will be greater than the strength of either component. Different studies have produced mixed outcomes. In studies of human causal learning, Collins and Shanks (2006) suggested that the observation of summation is encouraged by training, in which different stimuli are associated with different submaximal outcomes, and by testing, in which the alternative outcomes can be scaled. The reported experiments further pursued this reasoning. In Experiment 1, summation was more substantial when the participants were trained with outcomes identified as submaximal than when trained with simple categorical (presence/absence) outcomes. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that summation can also be obtained with categorical outcomes during training, if the participants are encouraged by instruction or the character of training to rate the separately trained components with submaximal ratings. The results are interpreted in terms of apparent performance constraints in evaluations of the contrasting theoretical predictions concerning summation.

The mere presence of a co-actor can influence an individual’s response behavior. For instance, a social Simon effect has been observed when two individuals perform a Go/No-Go response to one of two stimuli in the presence of each other, but not when they perform the same task alone. Such effects are argued to provide evidence that individuals co-represent the task goals and the to-be-performed actions of a co-actor. Motivated by the complex-systems approach, the present study was designed to investigate an alternative hypothesis — that such joint-action effects are due to a dynamical (time-evolving) interpersonal coupling that operates to perturb the behavior of socially situated actors. To investigate this possibility, participants performed a standard Go/No-Go Simon task in joint and individual conditions. The dynamic structure of recorded reaction times was examined using fractal statistics and instantaneous cross-correlation. Consistent with our hypothesis that participants responding in a shared space would become behaviorally coupled, the analyses revealed that reaction times in the joint condition displayed decreased fractal structure (indicative of interpersonal perturbation processes modulating ongoing participant behavior) compared to the individual condition, and were more correlated across a range of time-scales compared to the reaction times of pseudo-pair controls. Collectively, the findings imply that dynamic processes might underlie social stimulus-response compatibility effects and shape joint cognitive processes in general.