Validation of the Holtzman anxiety scale by vasomotor biofeedback

The Holtzman Inkblot Technique (HIT) and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory were administered to 81 undergraduates who later received biofeedback training for increases in index finger skin temperature. The Holtzman anxiety measure correlated significantly with voluntary temperature increase and the High Anxiety Group, identified by the HIT, was able to achieve significant increases in digital temperature. No significant relationships were found between State-Trait Anxiety measures and either Holtzman anxiety scores or vasomotor control, nor were there significant increases in temperature among State-Trait anxiety groups. The results supported the validity of the HIT as a measure of anxiety, but failed to characterize this anxiety as either state or trait in nature.     

Identification reaction time as a function of target and field object orientation

Four experiments were conducted investigating the effects of (a) target versus field object orientation, (b) target upside up versus target upside down and (c) inverting versus noninverting lenses on object identification reaction time. Inverting versus noninverting lenses had no significant effect. Target versus field orientation was significant when objects commonly found on a desk were used. Target upside up versus upside down was not significant. With letters as target and field objects, orientation was not significant. When the target letters were simply inverted (rotated 180 degrees on the horizontal axis), however, forming nonfamiliar patterns, the target upside up versus upside down was significant, with the upside down condition resulting in a longer mean reaction time. The complexity and similarity of target and field objects is offered as an explanation of the results.     

Uncertainty and the orientation reaction

In Experiment I, blurred pictures evoked longer desynchronization than clear pictures but not more intense GSRs. Experiment 2 confirmed that the EEG effect depended on subjective uncertainty by showing that it did not occur when a blurred picture was immediately preceded by a clear version of the same picture.     

Death anxiety and a Taoist orientation in two cultures

A negative association between having a Taoist orientation to life and death anxiety was found for a sample of 99 American students but not in a sample of 100 Turkish students.     

Punishment in the goldfish as a function of electrode orientation

For each response to a nipple from which they were trained to take liquid food, goldfish were punished with a brief ac shock administered through a pair of stainless steel electrodes placed either to the right and left of the animal, over and under it, or in front and back of it. As anticipated, on the assumption that the aversiveness of shock is a function of the potential difference across the animal's body, the right-left orientation of the electrodes was found to produce the least suppression of feeding and the front-back orientation the most.     

Dysfunction as a factual component of disorder

The harmful dysfunction (HD) analysis holds that disorder, mental or physical, requires harm, a value criterion, and dysfunction, a factual criterion referring to failure of a mechanism to perform a naturally selected function. Houts' arguments that the HD analysis does not offer an adequate factual account of dysfunction are examined and shown to be invalid. For example, his claim that the HD analysis confuses function with purpose, a value concept, ignores the analysis'account of function in terms of the value-free notion of effect-explanation; and his argument that functions imply norms (e.g., what mechanisms are 'supposed to' do) falsely assumes that such norms are evaluative. The HD analysis of function is analogous in logical structure to the functional analyst's factual behavioral notion of function. Houts' value account of disorder is inconsistent with people's classificatory judgments, as his own examples demonstrate.     

The Mosher Forced Choice Guilt Scale as a measure of anxiety.

Women divided into two levels of sex-guilt were administered the Word Association Test under three different conditions. In the first a confederate modeled sexual responses, in the second a confederate modeled nonsexual responses, and in the third condition no confederate was present. The results indicated that both low- and high-guilt women made significantly more sexual responses when exposed to the sexual model than in the nonsexual or no-model conditions. The results were interpreted as supporting an avoidant-anxiety conceptualization of guilt as opposed to Mosher's preservation of self-esteem view.