Alcohol consumption by college women following exposure to unsolvable problems: Learned helplessness or stress induced drinking?

Three experiments were intended to examine the relationship between alcohol, depression and learned helplessness. In Study I, more female undergraduate heavy drinkers than light drinkers were found to have critically elevated scores on a depression index. A sex difference in the relationship between drinking and depression is suggested since male depressives were equally distributed among drinking categories. In Studies II and III, female undergraduates were given unsolvable problems in a learned helplessness paradigm. Relative to controls these subjects reported increased depressive and hostile affect and drank more beer in a taste rating task. However, we failed to find deficits in anagram solution with those subjects given the learned helplessness manipulation. Specific questions are raised regarding the boundary conditions of learned helplessness while implications bearing on stress-related alcohol consumption are discussed.     

Learned helplessness deficits: Uncontrollable outcomes or perceived failure?

An experiment is described showing that learned helplessness deficits are produced by prior exposure to uncontrollable outcomes rather than perceived failure. Although the controllability manipulation did produce differences in perceived success or failure, similar differences were also induced by means of instructional feedback. These latter differences, within the controllable and uncontrollable groups, were not associated with poorer performance by subjects given failure feedback. Moreover, the instructional feedback did not influence subjects' perceptions of controllability or uncontrollability. The results confirm that helplessness deficits cannot be explained as reactions to task failure.This research was supported by Research Grant A28015473 from the Australian Research Grants Scheme.     

Learned helplessness in the gerbil?

Evidence of learned helplessness was demonstrated in Mongolian gerbils. Two consecutive days of jump-up escape were followed 24 hr later by testing in a bar-press escape task. Reliable differences occurred between escapable and inescapable animals and between inescapable and control animals.     

Learned helplessness:从何而学,习得什么?

这篇短文简单介绍了催生Learned helplessness这一概念的最初实验,略谈了作者对此概念的粗浅理解和其他译法,提出习得性自弃供参考。不涉及这一概念及有关理论在解释日常生活中各种现象和抑郁症发病机理方面的意义以及局限。     

Learned helplessness or learned inactivity after inescapable stress? Interpretation depends on coping styles

Researches on uncontrollable events in the post-soviet states are overviewed. In our research, susceptibility to learned helplessness is studied in rats with active (KHA strain) versus passive (KLA strain) coping styles. Inescapable footshocks, butnot escapable footshocks, applied to KHA rats induced escape failures, diminished locomotion and coping, reduced measures of anxiety, and resulted in dexamethasone nonsuppression of the brain-hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis—all characteristic of learned helplessness. In contrast, KLA rats demonstrated the same responses upon exposure to both escapable and inescapable stresses. While learned helplessness occurred in KHA rats, it appears that KLA rats exposed to inescapable stress demonstrated learned inactivity based upon the nondifference between effects of escapable and inescapable shocks. Relationships between coping styles and social ranks are discussed. Our and other’s results with genetically selected strains suggest active coping in dominant and subordinate subjects, and passive coping in subdominant animals confirm the importance of coping style and its relation to health under stress.     

Attenuated hypothesis or attenuated test of hypothesis?

After discussing several of the criticisms made by Professor Jensen, it is concluded that the Spearman hypothesis, as currently worded, has been disconfirmed. The near-zero correlation between blacks and low socio-economic status (SES) whites is not an artifact of the methodology. Neither is it a sampling fluke. The logic of sampling error does not apply to the arbitrary selection of intercorrelated tests from an undefined population. It is important also that low and high SES white differences are highly correlate with general factor loadings in a very heterogeneous selection of tests. Research attention should be turned to the difference in outcome of the race and SES comparisons.     

Politics for Learning or Learning for Politics?

It is argued that political democracyand citizenship should not be taken as primarygoals within university education. Instead theauthor argues for a notion of ``academicdemocracy' with the overall goal or ethos oflearning together. Moreover it is argued that``learning' then should be understood accordingto ``practical traditions of knowledge', whichmeans that truth is not the ultimate goal. Theultimate goal is practices that lead to thegood of men and women.     

Are effect sizes and confidence levels problems for or solutions to the null hypothesis test?

Some have proposed that the null hypothesis significance test, as usually conducted using the t test of the difference between means, is an impediment to progress in psychology. To improve its prospects, using Neyman-Pearson confidence intervals and Cohen's standardized effect sizes, d, is recommended. The purpose of these approaches is to enable us to understand what can appropriately be said about the distances between the means and their reliability. Others have written extensively that these recommended strategies are highly interrelated and use identical information. This essay was written to remind us that the t test, based on the sample--not the true--standard deviation, does not apply solely to distance between means. The t test pertains to a much more ambiguous specification: the difference between samples, including sampling variations of the standard deviation.     

Learning lyrics: To sing or not to sing?

According to common practice and oral tradition, learning verbal materials through song should facilitate word recall. In the present study, we provide evidence against this belief. In Experiment 1, 36 university students, half of them musicians, learned an unfamiliar song in three conditions. In the sung-sung condition, the song to be learned was sung, and the response was sung too. In the sung-spoken condition, the response was spoken. In the divided-spoken condition, the presented lyrics (accompanied by music) and the response were both spoken. Superior word recall in the sung-sung condition was predicted. However, fewer words were recalled when singing than when speaking. Furthermore, the mode of presentation, whether sung or spoken, had no influence on lyric recall, in either short- or long-term recall. In Experiment 2, singing was assessed with and without words. Altogether, the results indicate that the text and the melody of a song have separate representations in memory, making singing a dual task to perform, at least in the first steps of learning. Interestingly, musical training had little impact on performance, suggesting that vocal learning is a basic and widespread skill.     

Specific language impairment: a deficit in grammar or processing?

Specific Language Impairment (SLI) is observed in children who fail to acquire age-appropriate language skills but otherwise appear to be developing normally. There are two main hypotheses about the nature of these impairments. One assumes that they reflect impairments in the child's innate knowledge of grammar. The other is that they derive from information-processing deficits that interfere with several aspects of language learning. There is considerable evidence that SLI is associated with impaired speech processing; however, the link between this deficit and the kinds of grammatical impairments observed in these children has been unclear. We suggest that the link is provided by phonology, a speech-based code that plays important roles in learning linguistic generalizations and in working memory.     

Developmental dyslexia and specific language impairment: same or different?

Developmental dyslexia and specific language impairment (SLI) were for many years treated as distinct disorders but are now often regarded as different manifestations of the same underlying problem, differing only in severity or developmental stage. The merging of these categories has been motivated by the reconceptualization of dyslexia as a language disorder in which phonological processing is deficient. The authors argue that this focus underestimates the independent influence of semantic and syntactic deficits, which are widespread in SLI and which affect reading comprehension and impair attainment of fluent reading in adolescence. The authors suggest that 2 dimensions of impairment are needed to conceptualize the relationship between these disorders and to capture phenotypic features that are important for identifying neurobiologically and etiologically coherent subgroups.     

Anxiety and error monitoring: Increased error sensitivity or altered expectations?

This study tested the prediction that the error-related negativity (ERN), a physiological measure of error monitoring, would be enhanced in anxious individuals, particularly in conditions with threatening cues. Participants made gender judgments about faces whose expressions were either happy, angry, or neutral. Replicating prior studies, midline scalp negativities were greater following errors than following correct responses. In addition, state anxiety interacted with facial expression to predict ERN amplitudes. Counter to predictions, participants high in state anxiety displayed smaller ERNs for angry-face blocks and larger ERNs for happy-face blocks, compared to less anxious participants. These results are inconsistent with the simple notion that anxiety enhances error sensitivity globally. Rather, we interpret the findings within an expectancy violation framework, in which anxious participants have altered expectations for success and failure in the context of happy and angry facial cues, with greater ERN amplitudes when expectations are violated.     

Learned Helplessness or Learned Inactivity after Inescapable Stress? Interpretation Depends on Coping Styles

Researches on uncontrollable events in the post-soviet states are overviewed. In our research, susceptibility to learned helplessness is studied in rats with active (KHA strain) versus passive (KLA strain) coping styles. Inescapable footshocks, but not escapable footshocks, applied to KHA rats induced escape failures, diminished locomotion and coping, reduced measures of anxiety, and resulted in dexamethasone nonsuppression of the brain-hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis--all characteristic of learned helplessness. In contrast, KLA rats demonstrated the same responses upon exposure to both escapable and inescapable stresses. While learned helplessness occurred in KHA rats, it appears that KLA rats exposed to inescapable stress demonstrated learned inactivity based upon the nondifference between effects of escapable and inescapable shocks. Relationships between coping styles and social ranks are discussed. Our and other's results with genetically selected strains suggest active coping in dominant and subordinate subjects, and passive coping in subdominant animals confirm the importance of coping style and its relation to health under stress.     

Affective-Evaluative Learning in Humans: A Form of Associative Learning or Only an Artifact?

The status of evaluative conditioning (EC) as a distinct form of associative learning was called in question by Field and Davey (1997, 1998, 1999), who argued that in the typical visual EC paradigm, nonassociative visual concept learning is responsible for the evaluative changes observed. Especially, the use of only within-subject control conditions instead of independent control groups was criticized. The present three experiments show (a) that EC effects can be demonstrated within another sensory modality than visual perception and (b) that EC effects are demonstrable in a between-subject design (including a successful replication attempt). A further result was that these EC effects do not require participants' conscious awareness. The data provide no support for an artifactual account of EC but suggest an interpretation of EC as a form of associative learning.     

Child conduct problems: Disorders in conduct or social continuity?

This paper outlines data and speculations relevant to a social continuity hypothesis regarding the development of children's conduct problems. According to the hypothesis, conduct problems arise from an absence of continuity in the child's relationship with parents. This absence constitutes an unpredictable and aversive context for the child, and because the youngster's disruptive conduct can generate short term continuity, that behavior is likely to be reinforced. A review of research concerning this hypothesis is presented and the conclusions focus on evidence of continuity in cooperative parent-child exchanges and discontinuity in non-compliant exchanges. The grounding of this hypothesis within social learning and theory is outlined and its heuristic value for future research and clinical interventions is presented.     

Memory abilities in Williams syndrome: Dissociation or developmental delay hypothesis?

Williams syndrome (WS) is a neurodevelopmental genetic disorder often described as being characterized by a dissociative cognitive architecture, in which profound impairments of visuo-spatial cognition contrast with relative preservation of linguistic, face recognition and auditory short-memory abilities. This asymmetric and dissociative cognition has been also proposed to characterize WS memory ability, with sparing of auditory short-term memory and impairment of spatial and long-term memory abilities. In this study, we explored the possibility of a double memory dissociation in WS (short- versus long-term memory; verbal versus visual memory). Thus, verbal memory abilities were assessed using California Verbal Learning Test and Digit Span and Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure and Corsi Blocks was used to assess visual-spatial memory abilities. Overall, WS subjects were found to present a generalized significant impairment in verbal and visuo-spatial components either in short- or long-term memory. In sum, data from this study brings support for a developmental delay hypothesis, rather than a double dissociation within memory systems in WS.