The effects of atropine on viscerovisceral reactions and the electrocardiogram of the cat

In 12 chronic cats the effects of mechanical stimulation (distention) of the gallbladder on heart rate, respiratory movements and bioelectrical activity of the cerebral cortex were studied under normal conditions and after intraperitoneal administration of atropine. In the control group without atropine a decrease or an increase of heart rate and of respiratory movements occurred, depending on stimulation intensity. These changes were independent of an activated or inactivated EKG. Behavioral arousal was not seen in every cat. After administration of atropine in doses from 0.2 to 2.0 mg per kg body weight, the changes in heart rate, respiration and EKG were suppressed or completely disappeared.     

The influence of various types of control on psychophysiological stress reactions

The influence of personal control on reactions to shock was found to differ not only as a function of the type of control, but also as a function of the combination of control conditions. For example, behavioral control in the presence of information (cognitive control) reduced stress, whereas behavioral control in the absence of information augmented stress. These results are discussed with regard to the appropriateness of two different models, a “substitutive” versus an “interactive” model, for understanding the effects of personal control.     

The influence of an audience upon the reactions to filmed violence

In order to examine audience effects when viewing firmed violence, 5 to 6 year old pre-school boys who had been rated as submissive by their teachers watched an aggressive or a neutral movie either alone, accompanied by another submissive classmate, or a dominant one. Subsequent aggression against a frustrating, unknown and unseen boy was delivered via a modified Buss machine, especially adapted for children. Subjects accompanied by a dominant peer were more aggressive than the others but did not react differentially to the movies. Subjects tested alone were more aggressive after the violent film than after the neutral one and the opposite pattern occurred for the boys accompanied by a submissive classmate. These findings stress the importance of the social context when viewing filmed violence. It is suggested that the quality of the audience can have different directional (e.g. fear and aggression) as well as energizing properties. Links with the literature on social facilitation and audience effects are underlined.     

The influence of seriousness and contagiousness of disease on emotional reactions to ill persons

Abstract

Extends research on illness cognition by arguing that two major dimensions of illness cognition - seriousness and contagiousness of disease - are responsible for different emotional responses to ill persons, and that the activation of these dimensions is dependent on type of contact with these persons. Using a vignet methodology, nursing students (N = 333) were asked to imagine having different types of contact with patients with diseases differing in seriousness and contagiousness. When participants imagined personal contact with the patient, their anxiety responses and self-efficacy expectations were primarily determined by seriousness of disease. In contrast, when they anticipated close physical contact with the patient, subjects' anxiety reactions and self-efficacy expectations were primarily influenced by contagiousness of disease. Seriousness of disease appeared to be a major determinant of feelings of pity, poweriessness, sadness, and motivation to psychologically support the patient. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

The influence of selection test type on applicant reactions to employment testing

The impact of employment selection devices on the reactions of simulated applicants was investigated. In Study 1, 141 subjects were “failed” on either a biographical inventory, a cognitive ability test, a trainability test or a work sample test. Subjects rejected on the basis of biographical inventory scores perceived the test as less difficult, coped more adaptively, and had better moods than subjects tested with the other instruments. The biographical inventory was also seen as more fakable, but less amenable to improvement through feedback or training than the other devices. We hypothesized that differences among tests in cognitive demand is a primary cause of differences in applicant reaction. In Study 2 (N=151) the comparison of the effects of two biographical inventories to two cognitive ability tests supported our hypothesis, and replicated the findings of Study 1 across failure and success conditions.     

The influence of individual characteristics and severity of harassing behavior on reactions to sexual harassment

Differences in reactions to 18 scenarios depicting potentially sexually harassing situations were studied as a function of harassment severity and individual level factors. The scenarios illustrate a continuum of behavior, with some situations depicting overt sexual harassment and others portraying more innocuous behaviors. The individuals' reactions were strongly influenced by the perceived severity of the incidents. Reactions were influenced to a lesser extent by the individual level factors of gender, attitudes toward women, religiosity, and locus of control. Among these factors, gender had the strongest effect on reaction types. Findings indicate that harassment severity and individual level factors may combine to influence reactions to sexual harassment.The authors would like to thank Barbara Gutek and Gary Powell for their comments on an early draft of this paper.     

The influence of perceived responsibility and personality characteristics on the emotional and behavioral reactions to people with AIDS.

The present study examined the effect of a target's personality and responsibility for a misdeed on a perceiver's emotions and behavior by determining the variables' impact on the perceiver's emotional reactions and willingness to help the target. A total of 134 Germans and 171 Americans were given information about the level of responsibility (low, medium, or high) for a person's infection with HIV, 2 variations of information about the target's personality (positive vs. negative), and the transmission mode of the virus (needle vs. unsafe sex). Although B. Weiner's (1995) model of responsibility partially explained the findings, the results showed that the target's personality also contributed to the perceiver's emotional and behavioral reactions.     

The influence of diversity context on white men's and racial minorities' reactions to disproportionate group harm

The author examined the influence of organizational diversity management on White men's and racial minorities' perceptions of fairness when members of their identity group were disproportionately harmed in a layoff. Using a scenario design, the author studied the reactions of 284 White male and racial minority layoff survivors under 2 different diversity contexts. White men saw the layoff as less fair to their group when other White men were laid off disproportionately in an active-diversity context versus an inactive-diversity context. Racial minorities' perceptions of fairness when other minorities were laid off disproportionately were not influenced by the diversity context, but they perceived the layoff as more fair to their group in an active-diversity context when White men were laid off disproportionately. The findings suggest that during layoffs or other significant organizational changes where job insecurity is heightened, different identity groups might perceive diversity management differently.     

The influence of misattributions on reactions to inequity: Towards a further understanding of Inequity

An experiment was conducted to investigate the importance of inequity distress. In a 2 x 2 factorial design subjects were paid either in a high or low disadvantageous inequitable manner compared to a male confederate. One half of the subjects were led to believe that fictitious infrasonic sound would have arousing side effects, one half expected no side effects whatsoever. According to the hypotheses, (1) subjects in the misattribution condition restored equity less than subjects in the no side effects control group, (2) strongly inequitable treated subjects restored equity more than mildly inequitable treated ones, (3) the misattribution manipulation only had a significant effect on strongly inequitable treated subjects. Thus, the results show that distress is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the restoration of equity. Consequences of the results for future research are discussed.     

The overshadowing and blocking of punishment

Two experiments were undertaken to test the assumption that the outcome of an instrumental contingency depends on the acquisition of signalling properties by the response in the same sense that the acquisition of signalling properties by a stimulus is viewed as determining the outcome of a Pavlovian contingency. The presence coincident with a punished response of a stimulus either previously or preferentially correlated with shock was found to reduce the extent to which punishment suppressed the rate of responding. It was argued that these results, interpreted as indicating the blocking and overshadowing of the response-shock association, were consistent with the assumption tested.     

The influence of Japanese mothers' styles of emotional expression on thirteen-month-old infants' reactions to a stranger

The present study investigated the hypothesized influence of mothers' styles of emotional expression on infants' responses to the stranger in Episode 3, the Ainsworth Strange Situation. One hundred and thirty-five mothers volunteered for this experiment with their 13-month-olds. The mothers' answers on an expression style questionnaire (EESQ) were factor analysed. According to their mothers' factor scores, infants were divided into four groups, those having (a) expressive type mothers (N = 40), (b) suppressive type mothers (N = 39), (c) positive expressive type mothers (N = 31), and (d) negative expressive type mothers (N = 25). The infants' behaviours were analysed in 5-sec intervals. The infants having expressive type mothers showed a strong interest in the stranger and interacted with her willingly. The infants having suppressive type mothers exhibited less smiling and much freezing behaviour. The infants having positive expressive type mothers reacted with more smiling, much bodily contact behaviour with the mother and less crying. The infants having negative expressive type mothers showed more often crying and frequent head orientation towards the stranger.     

The effect of change in US quality on the blocking effect

If one CS is paired with a US and then that CS together with a “redundant” stimulus is paired with the US, conditioning of that “redundant” stimulus is attenuated or blocked. The present experiment explores the effect upon this blocking of changing the quality of the US coincident with the introduction of the redundant stimulus. Changing US quality disrupted blocking only when the US potency was also increased. Quality changes in which the redundant stimulus was correlated with a lower potency US only increased blocking. These results are taken as supporting the conditioning model of Rescorla and Wagner but inconsistent with a casual informational model of conditioning.     

The visual system of the cat

So much of our current knowledge about the neurophysiology of vision has come from studying the visual system of the cat. Using microelectrode techniques, neurophysiologists have examined in great detail the spatial properties of receptive fields of neurons at various levels of the feline nervous system, and headway is now being made in discovering the patterns of neural connections which give rise to the remarkable degree of stimulus selectivity characteristic of these neurons. This paper reviews the major findings concerning the visual system of the normal adult cat, from optics to visual cortex, and summarizes the physiological consequences of early visual deprivation on the visual nervous system of the cat. The review concludes with remarks about the validity of generalizing from cat neurophysiology to human vision.     

The blocking of reinforcement control

Two experiments were conducted to extend the blocking effect to the reinforcement of a response. A delayed reinforcement contingency was presented to subjects with or without a previously pretrained response available during the delay interval. The interpolated response had no scheduled effect on delivery of the reinforcer, but its availability reduced strengthening of the initial response, which completely extinguished for some subjects. The results were interpreted as support for blocking as a fundamental principle of behavior, and as evidence against the principle of reinforcement being stated solely in terms of temporal proximity between response and reinforcer.     

The way of the agent

The conditional,if an agent did something, then the agent could have done otherwise, is analyzed usingstit theory, which is a logic of seeing to it that based on agents making choices in the context of branching time. The truth of the conditional is found to be a subtle matter that depends on how it is interpreted (e.g., on what otherwise refers to, and on the difference between could and might) and also on whether or not there are busy choosers that can make infinitely many choices in a finite span of time.     

The strength of the orienting response during blocking

In two experiments rats initially received appetitive Pavlovian conditioning with an auditory conditioned stimulus (CS). Subsequently this stimulus was presented in compound with a novel light and paired with the same appetitive reinforcer. In keeping with the outcome of many such experiments on blocking, there was very little evidence of appetitive conditioning during subsequent independent presentations of the light. Of main concern in the present experiments, however, was the influence of this training on the strength of the orienting response directed towards the light. When the light was first presented it elicited a strong orienting response. The strength of this response declined rapidly when the light was presented in compound with the previously trained auditory CS but more slowly when it was paired with the reinforcer either by itself or in conjunction with an initially neutral auditory stimulus. It is suggested that the extent to which the events following the light are accurately predicted determines the strength of orientation towards this stimulus.