Is horror a necessary component of flooding (implosion)?

Experimental results indicate that presentation of horrifying scenes is not necessary to obtain a favorable outcome in the treatment of phobias by flooding. Prolonged exposure to the feared object, even under relatively pleasant conditions is sufficient. Subjects were college students who rated highly fearful of rats. They were randomly assigned to one of three experimental groups and to a no treatment-control group. Treatment groups differed along the dimension of harshness of scene presentation. Control group subjects received no treatment but were assessed repeatedly as were experimental subjects. All experimental subjects showed improvement irrespective of treatment received-after treatment they were all willing to come closer to a live rat and experienced less anxiety at the closest point. However, subjects exposed to horrid scenes were judged by an independent evaluator as less likely to avoid fearful situations. The discussion centers on the discrepancy between rater's evaluation and other measures, implications of the results for treatment, and on the generalizability of findings to a patient population.     

Effects of imaginal exposure to feared disasters in obsessive-compulsive checkers

The combined effects of imaginal exposure to feared catastrophes and in vivo exposure to external stimuli were compared with the effects of in vivo exposure alone in 15 obsessive-compulsives with checking rituals. The first group received 90 min of uninterrupted exposure in imagination, which concentrated mainly on disastrous consequences, followed by 30 min of exposure in vivo to stimuli-situations which triggered rituals. The second group was given 2 hr of exposure in vivo only. Both groups were prevented from performing rituals. Treatment consisted of 10 daily sessions within a 2 week period.Assessments were conducted before and after treatment and at follow-up ranging from 3 months to 2.5 yr with a mean of 11 months. At post-treatment both groups improved considerably and did not differ. But at follow-up those who received imaginal and in vivo exposure maintained their gains, whereas the group who were treated by exposure in vivo alone evidenced partial relapse on four of the six dependent measures. The results tend to indicate that a closer match between a patient's internal fear model and the content of exposure enhances long term treatment efficacy.     

Massed vs. spaced exposure sessions in the treatment of agoraphobia

The differential effects of massed and spaced sessions of exposure in vivo were investigated with 11 agoraphobics in a crossover design. Clients were randomly assigned to one of the following two groups: (a) 10 daily sessions followed by 10 weekly sessions, or (b) 10 once-weekly sessions followed by 10 daily sessions. The results indicated that both massed and spaced sessions of exposure in vivo effected changes in avoidance behavior and subjective anxiety of agoraphobics, massed practice being superior especially with respect to avoidance. It was suggested that the superiority of massed practice is due to the lack of opportunity to engage in avoidance or escape during short inter-session intervals. The relationship between subjective anxiety and avoidance were considered and the differences between clinical and statistical significance were discussed.     

Habituation during exposure treatment: Distraction vs attention-focusing

To investigate the effects of distraction and attention-focusing during in-vivo exposure to feared stimuli, the responses of 16 obsessive-compulsives with washing rituals were studied. A cross-over design was employed in which 6 of the subjects underwent exposure with attention focusing on the first day followed by exposure with distraction on the second day. The remaining subjects received the reverse order. Habituation of both heart rate and subjective anxiety was observed under both conditions, the rate of habituation tending to remain constant throughout the 90-min exposure. Greater between-session habituation and greater synchrony between the psychophysiological and the subjective measures of anxiety was observed when attention-focusing preceded distraction. Since habituation and synchrony have previously been found to be positively related to treatment outcome, the present results suggest that treatment by exposure to feared stimuli may be more effective if attention-focusing is promoted.     

Juror decision making: A case of attitude change mediated by authoritarianism

For a jury to reach a unanimous decision, certain individuals must change their attitudes with regard to the defendant's guilt during deliberations. Because these changers are the key to the group decision-making process, they were carefully scrutinized to ascertain demographic or personality characteristics which might be mediating their behavior. In three experiments, two using college students as subjects and one using Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas jury pool members, it was found that authoritarians changed their attitude with regard to the defendant's guilt more than equalitarians. Further, most of these “changers” were aware they had changed their attitude. There was no generalizable evidence for the proposition that authoritarians are more likely to favor a guilty verdict.     

Pavlovian processes and response competition as determinants of avoidance response-prevention effects

Two experiments investigated the facilitation of avoidance extinction by exposure to lengthy (5-sec) shock during avoidance response prevention. In Experiment 1, animals exposed to light only or to light-shock pairings during response prevention showed equal facilitation of extinction relative to shock-only animals or to animals receiving no response prevention. Preshock rearing, directly antagonistic to the avoidance response, developed for shocked animals during response prevention and persisted during extinction for light-shock animals. Immediately before extinction, half of each group was permitted a single escape from a light-shock compound by means of the response previously required for avoidance. The only effect was upon the extinction performance of light-shock animals. Rearing was eliminated and extinction responding increased to a level far above that for any of the other animals. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the shock-only treatment affected the extinction performance and rearing of nonescape and escape animals in a manner entirely equivalent to the effects of the light-shock treatment of Experiment 1, provided stimulus conditions (light absent) were the same for all experimental phases. Thus, lengthy shock during avoidance response prevention simultaneously leads to the acquisition of competing behavior and enhances control by a warning signal or contextual stimuli over the avoidance response. Implications for the CS-only response-prevention treatment and the transfer of aversive control are discussed.     

Conditional reasoning following contradictory evidence: A developmental analysis

Recent evidence suggests that young adults do not correctly understand the logical relationship of the conditional (if p the q) as it applies to hypothesis testing, and most training procedures have not been productive. However, the introduction of contradictory evidence following faulty inferences has led to accurate inferences with conditional statements. Third and seventh grade and college studients (9, 13, and 21 years of age, respectively) were tested to assess developmental differences in improvement following contradiction training and to test whether improved performance transfers to other conditional reasoning tasks. Significant improvement in conditional reasoning was found for the young adult group following the introduction of contradictory evidence, and the positive effect of the treatment transferred across tasks. The third grade students showed no effects from the introduction of the contradiction, but the seventh graders were often confused by the introduction of the contradiction. Seventh grade and college student performances were generally worse than that of the third graders for the positive instances (p · q), but while the contradiction training improved college studients' performance it did not affect the seventh graders. The results are discussed in terms of changes in cognitive structures.     

Feedback during exposure to inescapable shocks and subsequent shock-escape performance

In two experiments, we assessed the ability of a feedback stimulus during helplessness training to reduce the performance deficits common to inescapable shock. In each experiment, four groups of rats were exposed to either escapable shock (E), inescapable shock with a feedback stimulus following shock termination (Y-FS), inescapable shock with no feedback stimulus (Y-NFS), or no shock (N). The feedback stimulus eliminated the interference effects of inescapable shock when tested with an FR-3 lever press escape task (Experiment 1) or on an FR-1 task with a 3-s delay between the response and shock termination (Experiment 2). These results suggest that stress-induced biochemical changes may mediate the interference effects seen in inescapably shocked rats.     

Psychophysiological assessment of imagery in obsessive-compulsives: a pilot study

In a within-groups design, four obsessive-compulsive patients imagined four different types of scenes: (1) exposure to feared situations; (2) exposure to feared situations followed by engaging in ritualistic behavior: (3) engaging in ritualistic behavior without provocation; and (4) neutral situations. Each scene type was presented three times with order of presentation randomized. Beat-by-beat heart rate samples were taken during the visualization of each scene and converted to second-by-second heart rate. An examination of second-by-second heart rate for each scene type suggested that scenes involving exposure to feared situations elicited defensive responses (DR), whereas those that did not elicited orienting responses (OR). The implications of these results for compulsive behavior, the fear-reduction model and Sokolov's (1963) OR-DR model, are briefly discussed.     

Visual imagery and dream recall

Research in dream recall frequency has failed to isolate psychological variables which clearly and reliably differentiate frequent dream recallers from infrequent recallers. The present study tested the hypothesis that frequent recallers have a greater capacity for visual imagery than infrequent recallers. Subjects selected on the basis of reported dream recall frequency were administered a Paired-Associate Learning task designed to measure visual imagery, a rating scale of imagery clarity and vividness, and a subjective measure of imagery controllability. The results provide support for the hypothesis and, together with other evidence, suggest that a generalized capacity for visualization may contribute to the quality of the dreaming experience and, consequently, to its recallability.     

Individual differences in imagery vividness and voluntary heart rate control

Dispositional differences in imagery vividness may account partially for the large individual differences in learning heart rate control. Based upon scores on the Betts QMI Vividness of Imagery Scale, 10 subjects were defined as a high imagery group and 10 subjects were defined as a low imagery group. All subjects were instructed to try to alter their heart rate as indicated by appropriately labeled lights. Six increasing, six decreasing and six rest, 45-sec trials were presented. During the trials, visual heart rate feedback was provided by a digital voltmeter. The dependent measure was computed by subtracting the mean of the last 5 beats of a 15-sec intertrial interval from the mean rate per trial. Results indicated that subjects were able to significantly raise and lower heart rate relative to rest trials. Furthermore, high imagery subjects demonstrated significantly larger changes than low imagery subjects on increase trials but not on decrease trials. Subjects in both groups typically reported using more specific images for increasing heart rate than for decreasing heart rate. These data suggest that dispositional differences in imagery vividness may have contributed to the differential performance of the two groups during the increase task.     

The sources of developmental differences in children's incidental processing during discrimination trials

Crane and Ross reported that second graders learned more than sixth graders about attributes made relevant after solution of a discrimination task. Here two experiments are reported that enlighten the sources of this developmental difference. Both make use of an experimental technique whereby children verbalize their hypotheses during solution of a discrimination problem. The results indicate that ten-year-olds do not learn about incidental attributes that they tested while irrelevant in the pre-solution period, but that five-year-olds and seven-year-olds do. Children of all three ages process incidental information about attributes that they did not sample pre-solution. With some qualification, the incidentally processed information is retained throughout a five-minute delay interval. The results bear on developmental trends in the distribution of attention and on theoretical accounts of incidental learning in discrimination tasks.     

A Fishbein-Ajzen model of intention to work following childbirth

This research identifies factors which influence college women's intention to work during the first 3 years following childbirth. It uses a model, derived from M. Fishbein and I. Ajzen (1975, Belief, attitude, intention, and behavior, Reading, MA, Addison-Wesley) as modified by P. M. Bentler and G. Speckart (1979, Psychological Review, 86, 452–464), which proposes that intentions are a function of own work experience, vicarious experience with a working mother, subjective normative pressure, and attitudes. Data collected via a mailed questionnaire from 202 white women and analyzed using maximum likelihood estimation of structural equation parameters supported the fit of the model. Attitudes had the strongest influence on intentions.     

Barrier effects in the cognitive maps of children and adults

To study spatial representation, Kosslyn, Pick, and Fariello (Child Development, 1974, 45, 707–716) asked preschoolers and adults to learn toy locations in a room divided into quadrants. When asked to rank order the closeness of toys, preschoolers exaggerated distances between objects separated by opaque or transparent barriers; adults distorted across opaque barriers only. The findings were interpreted as showing that children's spatial representations may rely more than adults' on functional distance and/or that children may have more difficulty than adults keeping many objects in mind simultaneously (integrative processing capacity). The Kosslyn et al. procedure was repeated here with first graders and adults, using either rank ordering techniques or direct distance estimations. Interactions of age and barrier appeared for the rank ordering measure only. Children showed a greater tendency than adults to group their rankings by quadrant. With the distance estimation measure, adults were quantitatively more accurate than children, at least among males; barrier effects interacted with sex and distance, but not age. These findings suggest the importance of integrative processing capacity, and that different dependent measures may tap different processes.     

Temporal properties of responding during stimuli that precede response-independent food

Pigeons' keypecks were reinforced with grain on the average of once per minute by schedules that maintained low response rates and by schedules that maintained high response rates. During these schedules, a fixed-duration conditioned stimulus (CS) ranging from 7.5 to 120 sec in duration across conditions terminated with response-independent food. Response rates during the CS were inversely related to CS duration. The rates and the temporal patterns of responding during the shortest CS were similar whether the ongoing schedule maintained high response rates or low response rates. As CS duration increased, the rate and pattern of responding during the CS converged on the rate and pattern of responding maintained by the baseline schedule. These data indicate that changes in responding during stimuli that signal response-independent reinforcement are not homogeneous throughout the CS; that response measures, such as “suppression ratios”, which presume homogeneity may mislead us; and that conditioned suppression and conditioned enhancement may be better talked about in terms of species-specific approach and avoidance than in terms of emotional states.