Integrative physiological and behavioral science : the official journal of the Pavlovian Society最新文献

Cognitive determinants of GSR activity during extinction trials were examined following conditioning. Conditioned GSRs extinguished rapidly when subjects were informed the UCS would not again be administered, compared to subjects not given this information. Of greater interest was the finding that (false) high feedback concerning subjects' responsivity to the Cs+ during extinction served to maintain GSR activity at a higher level than subjects receiving (false) low feedback. The relationship was observed within both information conditions. Implications are drawn for both aversive conditioning therapy and systematic desensitization.

A hypothesis is presented regarding the genesis of paranoid delusion that attempts to take into account certain data. The data of interest are (a) the failure to find evidence of cognitive impairment in diagnosed paranoid patients, (b) the evidence of perceptual disorder as a primary and prior condition in the natural history of the clinical development of delusions and the empirical relationship of the perceptual disorder to presence of "thought disorder," (c) the failure to find evidence supporting universal psychodynamic patterns of etiology, (d) appearance of "delusional" phenomena in normal subjects in situations of deviant sensory experience, and (e) the reports of articulate patients writing of their experiences. This hypothesis suggests that there exists a group of patients who suffer from primary perceptual anomalies, fundamentally biological in nature although probably fluctuating with current stresses, and that these anomalies involve vivid and intense sensory input. These experiences demand explanation which the patient develops through the same cognitive mechanisms that are found in normal and scientific theory-building. As the data that are available to the patient are crucially different from those available to an observer, the latter judges the explanation to be bizarre and pathological. Being unable to check the validity of the patient's descriptions of his sensory experience the assumption is made that the patient is having the same experience as the observer but is defective in reality-testing and/or inferential thinking. As the evidence for the presence of perceptual disorder is stronger than the direct evidence for cognitive impairment, the hypothesis outlined here places central importance on the former. In brief, it is suggested that for many paranoid patients the delusion should be seen as the reaction of a normal, "sane" individual to abnormal but genuine perceptual experiences.

A process of self-persuasion has been advanced to account for the effects of information about internal reactions on attitudes toward emotional stimuli. To determine whether the results of this cognitive activity would be resistant to debriefing, Ss were shown slides of female nudes while hearing their alleged heart-rate reactions and were subsequently informed that these reactions were part of a deception manipulation. It was found that, although Ss accepted the debriefing, the false information continued to exert an influence on their attitudes toward the nudes. The attitudes of these Ss toward the nudes were the same as those of Ss who were not debriefed.

Eighty Ss were first tested for base-level response to a pain-producing stimulus and then were re-tested on the same pain stimulus after receiving 1 of 8 experimental treatments. The 8 treatments were arranged in a 2 x 2 x 2 factorial design: presence or absence of hypnotic induction procedure; presence or absence of instructions for anesthesia; and presence or absence of demands for honest reports. Neither the hypnotic-induction procedure nor the demands for honesty affected the Ss'reports of the degree of pain experienced. The anesthesia instructions--"think of the hand as numb and insensitive as if it were a piece of rubber..."--produced an equal degree of pain reduction in hypnotic and non-hypnotic Ss and in Ss who were and those who were not exposed to demands for honesty. The results indicate that (a) Ss' reports of pain are less affected by demands for honesty and are more closely related to their actual experiences than has been previously assumed and (b) instructions which direct Ss to exercise cognitive control over painful sensory input are effective (with or without 'hypnosis') in reducing the experience of pain.

Two determinants of the magnitude of the influence of anticipated choice on the halo effect are investigated: importance of future choice and arousal. Male subjects ranked photographs on positive personality traits. Half of the photographs were of persons about which they anticipated making a choice. In confirmation of the hypotheses, (a) the intercorrelation of the rankings was greater for the choice photographs than for the nonchoice photographs when the subjects anticipated an important choice, but not when they anticipated an unimportant choice; and (b) the intercorrelation was greater for the choice photographs than for the nonchoice photographs when the subjects were aroused by caffeine and uninformed as to the source of their arousal, but not when they were informed as to the source of their arousal or not aroused.

In recent decades, much new evidence relating to the ape forerunners of modern humans has come to hand and diet appears to be an important factor. At some stage, there must have been a transition from a largely vegetarian ape diet to a modern human hunting economy providing significant amounts of meat. On an even longer evolutionary time scale the change was more complex. The mechanisms of evolutionary change are now better understood than they were in Darwin's time, thanks largely to great advances in genetics, both experimental and theoretical. It is virtually certain that diet, as a major component of the human environment, must have exerted evolutionary effects, but researchers still have little good evidence.

This essay examines the fundamental fact of specificity in behaviors both outside and inside the testing room. Two tests of the same construct typically have a moderate to low correlation between them, the level of relationship depending on whether the mode, the situation, the task, and the stimuli for one test are similar to or different from those for the other. The great majority of psychological tests have considerable specificity. Their scores tend to correlate far less than perfectly with other tests of the same variable. Even when an ability is defined within a model such as Guilford's Structure-of-Intellect, each test of that ability will usually have some specific determinants not shared by other tests of that aspect of intelligence. Moreover, such a test is likely to correlate almost as well with tests of other similar abilities as with tests of its particular one.

Within the scientific community there is a growing awareness and acceptance of the notion that people do not exist only in a world of physical forces and events. A person's perception of the world in which they live in a world is also defined by their own perceptions, experiences, and biases. In other words, a person responds and reacts, not only to objective or experimenter-defined stimuli, but also to his or her apperceptions and subjectively defined stimuli.

The principal goal of behavior treatment for retarded clients is that of modifying behavior as it occurs in a given environment in such a manner that it becomes more appropriate to that environment. The therapeutic or change agents can involve a variety of persons other than the counselor, teacher, and client--this may include parents, peers, work supervisors and others who can provide supportive influences. Education and rehabilitation programs should be tailored to the occupational and social environment of the retarded client and designed to teach those behavior patterns that are relevant to that environment. Additionally, the work tasks for which retarded clients are trained should be highly structured and routine. Excessive demand for adaptability or decision making is a major cause of training failure for retarded clients.

Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS) has been defined in a variety of scientific and cultural ways over the years, but there is no consistent or agreed upon definition. For some women, the public legitimization of PMS and its symptoms as a real and natural part of the female body have led to a positive sense of vindication. However, a more negative image of PMS as something that controls women once a month, that makes them "crazy" and subject to their hormones, is much more pervasive in our contemporary Western culture. In this essay, the author explores the various definitions: PMS as a medical condition, as a social scientific and feminist issue, as an explanation for women's behavior and moods in the popular culture, and, finally, as something bought or sold in a market. The author shows how PMS is real because, if for no other reason, various people in different situations choose to define it as such.