Relationship between dietary restraint, energy intake, physical activity, and body weight: a prospective analysis.

Dietary, activity, and body weight differences in high- and low-restrained eaters and the independent impact of dietary restraint on body weight change were evaluated in 287 adults (141 men, 146 women) followed over a 1-year period. Analyses of measures of energy intake, physical activity, and dietary restraint indicated that high-restrained eaters did not differ in physical activity compared to low-restrained eaters at baseline but were ingesting significantly fewer kcal/lb and a higher percentage of the diet from fat. Body mass was significantly greater in both high-restrained men and high-restrained women than in their low-restrained counterparts. Regression modeling procedures revealed that weight and body mass at baseline were related to weight gain in men. In contrast, weight gain in women was predicted by baseline weight and higher restraint scores. These results indicate that dietary restraint is associated with weight gain in women but not in men.     

Relationship between attack and feeding in the insect predatory behavior of grasshopper mice

In grasshopper mice, the consequences of feeding and state of hunger affect the predatory attack to a limited extent. The purpose of this study was: (1) to establish other ways that attack and feeding were connected besides the two effects already mentioned; and (2) to determine if caching of dead prey could account for the limited connection between attack and feeding. Experiment 1 showed that attack and feeding were connected as part of a reaction chain. Experiment 2 showed that both shared a common maturational process despite the fact that each response achieved an improved efficiency in a different way. Experiment 3 showed that caching prey was not correlated with the killing of a prey and thus could not account for the limited connection between attack and feeding. It is proposed that a highly canalized attack response specifically buffered against the effects of feeding and hunger plays an important role in the mouse's carnivorous life style.     

E-mail, decisional styles, and rest breaks.

E-mail is a common but problematic work application. A scale was created to measure tendencies to use e-mail to take breaks (e-breaking); and self-esteem and decisional style (vigilance, procrastination, buck-passing, hypervigilance) were used to predict the self-reported and actual e-mail behaviors of 133 participants (students and marketing employees). Individuals who were low in defensive avoidance (buck-passing) engaged in more e-mailing per week, both in time spent on e-mail and message volume. E-breakers were more likely to engage in behavioral procrastination and spent more time on personal e-mail.     

Relationship between sexual activity and intraspecific fighting in male mice

Significantly more male mice having cohabited and mated with intact females subsequently displayed intraspecific fighting behavior after castration than males having cohabited with noncycling (ovariectomized) females. Also, intact males that failed to achieve a criterion for aggression during three screening tests subsequently showed a marked increase in fighting after having had copulatory experience relative to males that lived with ovariectomized females. Lastly, spontaneously aggressive males copulated more frequently than nonfighters.     

Relationship between age, socioeconomic status, and field independence.

The hypothesis was supported that socioeconomic variables confound the relationship between age (20 and 60 yr.) and field independence measured on the rod-and frame task for 54 adult women (nurses).     

Effect of ventromedial hypothalamic procaine injections on feeding, lever pressing, and other behavior in rats.

Rats were given bilateral injections of 1-2 mul procaine HCl solution (50 mug/mul) in the region of the ventromedial hypothalamus. Normal-sized meals occurred reliably with a latency of 16-120 sec, indicating that this region has the function of inhibiting onset of eating, not just the function of stopping a meal. Food-rewarded fixed-ratio-of-one (FR 1; continuous reinforcement) lever pressing was elicited by 2-mul but not by 1-mul procaine. The FR 64 pressing appeared to be disrupted during a period of increased activity following procaine injection, although visual observations indicated that the pressing which did occur was normal in topography and was significantly associated in temporal sequence with approaches of the food magazine.     

Relationship between emotions and some aspects of respiratory activity: morphology of the chest, cyclic activity, and acid-base balance

The relationship between the style of affective-emotional management measured on the Gottschalk test and respiratory activity of 19 undergraduate students in psychology was examined. The biological measurements were tonic-static attitudes of the chest (morphology), amplitude and duration of the phases of the respiratory activity, and acid-base balance. Statistically significant correlations were observed between affectivity (hostility and anxiety) and some biological scores. A psychophysiological model integrating biological and psychological levels was discussed.     

The relationship between feeding rate and patch choice.

Rats in a laboratory foraging simulation searched for sequential opportunities to feed in two patches that differed in the rate at which food pellets were delivered (controlled by fixed-interval schedules) and in the size of the pellets. The profitability of feeding in each patch was calculated in terms of time (grams per minute) and in terms of effort (grams per bar press). These values were the result of the imposed fixed interval, the size of the pellets, and the rate at which the rats pressed the bar in each condition. The rats ate more food and larger meals, but not more frequent meals, at the patch offering the higher rate of food consumption, calculated as grams per minute. The relative intake at any patch was a function of the relative rate of intake during meals at that patch compared to the other patch. Rats respond to explicit manipulations of feeding time in the same manner as they respond to manipulations of feeding effort.     

Search,rest, and grace in Pascal

For Pascal, how are human beings related, or how do they relate themselves, to the summum bonum in this life? In what sense do they share in it, and how do they come to share in it? These are questions that emerge in many ways in Pascal’s writing, significantly in his concept of repos. To answer these questions, especially by elucidating what repos is for human beings in this life, I would like to begin with Graeme Hunter’s “Motion and Rest in the Pensées”. Hunter’s account of Pascal is important because his purpose is to specifically address how certain aspects of modernity affect how Pascal understood repos. Hunter is certainly correct when he argues that for Pascal, repos is an orderly, directed seeking of truth—what Hunter designates as “search.” However, Hunter’s account of Pascal’s repos falls short of completion, because he neglects a crucial part of Pascal’s articulation of repos: his emphasis on the role of God’s grace in searching. By neglecting Pascal’s emphasis on grace, Hunter inadvertently depicts Pascal as reducing repos to motion, rather than envisioning them together in dialectical unity. I argue that for Pascal, it is correct to say that someone who is anxiously searching has indeed “already found,” but this cannot be solely due to human efforts: rather, it because the whole enterprise is entirely infused by grace.