The relationship between men's endogenous levels of testosterone and their penile responses to erotic stimuli.

The endogenous levels of testosterone of six nonclinical, sexually functional men were compared to the magnitude and speed of development of their objectively measured penile erections to repeated presentations of an erotic film und to their self-reported sexual activity. Plasma testosterone concentrations were significantly correlated with two measures of the magnitude of film-elicited sexual arousal (i.e., both peak and mean erection) and with one measure of the speed of development of sexual arousal (i.e., the latency to 90% of full erection) but not with the other (i.e., the latency to 20% of full erection). There was also a significant inverse relationship between testosterone levels and their reported frequency of orgasm by any means. but the reported time from their last orgasm was not related to testosterone levels.     

An experimental analysis of exposure to “explicit” heterosexual stimuli as an effective variable in changing arousal patterns of homosexuals

The effect of exposure to explicit heterosexual stimuli on heterosexual arousal was experimentally analyzed in four homosexuals in a series of single case experimental designs. Each subject was sequentially exposed to films of female or male sexual content under positive therapeutic instructions. Penile response to female slides in separate measurement sessions increased during exposure to the female film, decreased during exposure to the male film, and increased once again when the female film was reinstated. The increase in penile response to female stimuli was paralleled in many instances by changes in masturbatory fantasy, reports of arousal and heterosexual behavior outside the laboratory. Increasing heterosexual arousal had little effect on homosexual responsivity. Results are discussed in terms of exposure facilitating extinction of avoidance responses toward females and providing new sexual fantasy content.     

Cognitive and physiological indices of sexual arousal in homosexual,bisexual, and heterosexual males

Cognitive and physiological indices of sexual arousal were investigated utilizing groups of homosexual, bisexual, and heterosexual subjects (ten subjects per group) who were presented both homosexual and heterosexual films and slides. The results indicated that both homosexual and heterosexual subjects were able to estimate accurately their degree of erection to the erotic stimuli. Bisexual subjects, however, showed a large discrepancy between the magnitude of actual erection and verbally reported estimates of penile tumescence. In terms of physiological arousal, the erectile responses of the homosexual and bisexual groups were indistinguishable, a finding which questions the existence of male bisexuality as distinct from homosexuality or as a different sexual orientation in males.     

An examination of trait,spontaneous and instructed emotion regulation in dysphoria

Depression is thought to be characterised by impaired emotion regulation, although the mechanisms of that regulation are not yet well understood. The present study examined trait, spontaneous and instructed emotion regulation in dysphoric (n = 66) and non-dysphoric (n = 86) participants. Participants were randomly assigned to use reappraisal while watching a sadness-inducing film clip (instructed emotion regulation condition) or were not given specific viewing instructions (spontaneous emotion regulation condition). Participants also completed trait measures of emotion regulation. Dysphoric individuals reported greater spontaneous use of rumination and suppression than non-dysphoric individuals, and these strategies were associated with greater negative emotional reactivity to the sadness-inducing film clip. Both participant groups were able to effectively use reappraisal when instructed to do so. The clinical implications of these findings and future research directions are discussed.     

Payoff: A neglected factor in reaction time measurement

The aim of this paper is to point out some implications of implicit or explicit payoffs in reaction time experiments. In any psychophysical task the subject is given a set of instructions which define the desired performance, as it were the rules of the game. Instructions may be supplemented by knowledge of results which further define the required performance. When performance admits of being “good” or “bad,” however wide these limits, the instructions may be said to define, explicitly or implicitly, a system of payoffs. In reaction time experiments the subject is instructed, amongst other things, to respond as soon as possible after the stimulus but never before it. These instructions could equally well be represented by a system of payoffs and Figure 1 illustrates the kind of payoff system normally implied in these instructions. If S represents the time at which the physical stimulus occurs the graph shows a fixed penalty for anticipations (response before S), maximum positive score for responses immediately following S declining at an arbitrary rate as a function of elapsed time between S and the response until an unacceptably long time involves a constant maximum penalty. Some experimenters choose to treat very short RT's as anticipations. This is represented by the dashed line in Figure 1, but it should be clear that payoff values are, to a certain extent, arbitrary.     

Assigning trait adjectives in an evaluative context: quicker, more consistent, and less equivocal

The objective was to examine the social conditions under which subjects could attribute trait adjectives to an unknown person, the paradigm of impression-formation at zero acquaintance. The situation on which the subject had to base his judgement was a 90-sec. film clip with sound of an individual reading a weather forecast. Analysis showed traits were attributed more quickly and consistently when instructions stipulated subject should evaluate the social utility of an individual (evaluator-recruiter type instructions) rather than describe personality (psychologist-type instructions). Traits were attributed more rapidly, with more consistency and greater certainty. Interpretation of results, which generally corroborate other research, is that the judgement of another person based on a first impression is an evaluation of the social utility of that person.     

The effect of incongruent instructions and consequences on imitation in retarded children

Three retarded boys served as subjects in a 13-phase experiment. In eight of these phases, the instructions administered by the experimenter before demonstrating a behavior and the consequences for imitative behavior were incongruent (the consequences were not those indicated by the instructions). Consequences rather than instructions controlled imitative behavior when (a) subjects were instructed not to imitate but received reinforcers if they imitated; (b) subjects were instructed to imitate but were differentially reinforced for other behavior; (c) subjects were instructed to imitate but were verbally reprimanded for imitation. Although subjects were highly imitative at the beginning of the study, when there was no reinforcement for imitation subjects gradually stopped imitating when instructed not to imitate. Instructions seemed to control imitative behavior when there was no reinforcement for imitation and subjects were instructed to imitate. These results indicated a need for further investigation of antecedent and consequent variables in imitation experiments and pointed out that certain techniques may be more efficient than others in eliminating well-established responses.     

"Just stop thinking about it": effects of emotional disengagement on children's memory for educational material

Children regulate negative emotions in a variety of ways. Emotion education programs typically discourage emotional disengagement and encourage emotional engagement or "working through" negative emotions. The authors examined the effects of emotional disengagement and engagement on children's memory for educational material. Children averaging 7 or 10 years of age (N=200) watched either a sad or an emotionally neutral film and were then instructed to emotionally disengage, instructed to engage in problem solving concerning their emotion, or received no emotion regulation instructions. All children then watched and were asked to recall the details of an emotionally neutral educational film. Children instructed to disengage remembered the educational film better than children instructed to work through their feelings or children who received no emotion regulation instructions. Although past research has indicated that specific forms of emotional disengagement can impair memory for emotionally relevant events, the current findings suggest that disengagement is a useful short-term strategy for regulating mild negative emotion in educational settings.     

The effect of instructions on the apparent reversal of rotary motion in depth

This study concerns experimental investigation of the effect of instructions on the apparent reversal of rotary motion in depth. It was found that subjects instructed to report apparent reversals of an elliptical shape signalled more reversals than subjects who were instructed to report the non-occurrence of reversals. This difference increased over four trials. When the stimulus object was a trapezium window instructions to report reversals led to a higher rate of reversals than did instructions to report non-occurrence, but this difference did not increase significantly over trials.     

Penile responses of rats (Rattus norvegicus) in extended ex copula tests

Prolonged tests of rats' penile responses outside the context of copulation (ex copula) were undertaken to facilitate analysis of these penile components of copulatory behavior. Penile erections and flips were evoked for 1 hr following penile sheath retraction (SR), and rats were retested for 30 min after a rest interval of 5 min to 4 hr. The number of penile responses declined sharply over the course of the hour. Following a 5-min rest, there was little likelihood of additional responses. Within 2 hr some measures of penile response potential approached their original high asymptotes; other measures were still depressed after 4-hr rest. In control tests, the penile sheath was unretracted (SU) during the first 60 min, and hence few or no penile responses occurred. This condition caused no reduction in the number of erections and flips in the subsequent 30-min SR test; hence the reduction in response potential during and after SR tests was due to the responses displayed, not to the conditions of restraint. Ejaculation occurred frequently in the SU condition but rarely in SR tests, results suggesting that sheath retraction may normally inhibit ejaculation in ex copula tests, and perhaps during copulation as well.     

Spatial direction and grammatical form of instructions affect the solution of spatial problems

One hundred and forty-eight undergraduate women were orally instructed to repeatedly and quickly draw circles in spatial relation to squares printed on sheets of paper. On each trial, the instructions required the circle to be drawn either above, below, to the right of, or to the left of the square. The instructions were expressed so that the circle was either the logical subject (e.g., "circle above square") or the logical object (e.g., "square below circle") of the statement. Each subject received all experimental conditions for a total of 24 separate drawings per subject. Analysis of variance of the total number of errors disclosed significant effects of all experimental variables. Performance was significantly more accurate when the circle was the logical subject, when the orientations were "above" and "right of" rather than "below" and "left of" and for the vertical dimension. The results are discussed in terms of current theories on "asymmetries" in information processing.     

Personality and socialization correlates of vicarious emotional responding

The relations of personality and family characteristics to adults' negative vicarious emotional responses to sympathy and distress films were examined. Ss reported more sympathy and less personal distress and exhibited less skin conductance as well as heart rate deceleration when viewing a sympathy-evoking film. Dispositional emotional intensity and fantasy empathy were associated with greater self-reported emotional responding and higher skin conductance. Dispositional perspective taking and personal distress were positively and negatively correlated, respectively, with reported vicarious responding to the sympathy film when Ss were administered instructions to imagine the emotions of those in the films. Family cohesiveness was associated with reported sympathy and sadness in reaction to the sympathy film, whereas the expression of negative subordinate and positive emotional states in the home of origin was associated with women's reported responsivity.     

Cognitive control of sequential knowledge in 2-year-olds: evidence from an incidental sequence-learning and -generation task

Under incidental instructions, thirty-eight 2-year-olds were trained on a six-element deterministic sequence of spatial locations. Following training, subjects were informed of the presence of a sequence and asked to either reproduce or suppress the learned material. Children's production of the trained sequence was modulated by these instructions. When asked to suppress the trained sequence, the children were able to increase generation of paths that were not from the training sequence. Their performance was thus dependent on active suppression of knowledge, rather than on a random generation strategy. This degree of control in 2-year-olds stands in stark contrast to 3-year-olds' failure to control explicitly instructed rule-based knowledge (as measured by the dimensional-change card-sort task). We suggest that the incidental nature of a learning episode enables the acquisition of a more procedural form of knowledge with which this age group has more experience prior to the onset of fluent language.     

The role of overt rehearsal in enhanced conscious memory for emotional events

This study tested the hypothesis that overt rehearsal is sufficient to explain enhanced memory associated with emotion by experimentally manipulating rehearsal of emotional material. Participants viewed two sets of film clips, one set of emotional films and one set of relatively neutral films. One set of films was viewed in each of two sessions, with approximately 1 week between the sessions. Participants were given a free recall test of all of films viewed approximately 1 week after the second session. Rehearsal was manipulated by instructing one group of participants not to discuss the films with anyone (no talk group) and instructing a second group to discuss both sets of films with at least three people (forced talk group). A third group consisted of participants instructed not to discuss the films with anyone, but who did not comply with these instructions (talkers group). All groups recalled significantly more of the emotional films than the neutral films. Furthermore, the relative number of emotional and neutral films recalled did not differ significantly among the three groups. The results indicate that overt rehearsal is insufficient to explain the enhancing effects of emotion on memory.     

Where is the facilitation of media violence: The effects of nonexposure and placement of anger arousal

The present study examined the conditions under which media violence would “facilitate” aggression in angered individuals. It was noted that previous research has lacked support for facilitation due to improper control groups. It was predicted, based upon evidence that aggressive and neutral films are capable of both arousing a subject and shifting his attention away from previous anger instigation (attentional shift), that only under a condition where an aggressive film is viewed prior to anger arousal will increased aggression occur if compared to a no-film control. It was found that when subjects were angered prior to film exposure, netural films reduced aggression, with aggressive films not differing from a no-film control. Under subsequent anger arousal, however, there was a facilitation for aggressive film exposure. The implication of this, and other recent media violence studies, for past and future research in the area of media violence and aggression is discussed.     

Detection of errors in statistical problem solving

Ten subjects were asked to think aloud while solving two statistical problems. The subjects were instructed after each substep of his/her problem solving, to check in various ways the solution of the previous substep. The subjects detected 25 out of a total of 56 errors when they solved the problems. About half of the detected errors were computational errors. Nine errors were eliminated in response to the checking instructions. The think aloud data indicated that subjects' most common way of detecting their own errors was by noting that computations resulted in extreme values. Subjects also detected errors by (a) "spontaneous discovery"; (b) discontent with other aspects of a solution than the numerical value of the answer; (c) repeating a solution. The last mentioned type of error detection only occurred when subjects responded to the checking instructions. Finally it was found that subjects had a strong tendency to respond to the checking instructions either in a routinized or in a non-elaborated way. It was discussed how the formulation of checking instructions can be improved in order to avoid this effect.     

Automatic motor activation by mere instruction

Previous behavioral studies have shown that instructions about stimulus–response (S-R) mappings can influence task performance even when these instructions are irrelevant for the current task. In the present study, we tested whether automatic effects of S–R instructions occur because the instructed stimuli automatically activate their corresponding responses. We registered the lateralized readiness potentials (LRPs) that were evoked by the instructed stimuli while participants were performing a task for which those mappings were irrelevant. Instructed S–R mappings clearly affected task performance in electrophysiological and behavioral measures. The LRP was found to deflect in the direction of the response tendency that corresponded with the instructed S–R mapping. Early activation of the instructed response was observed but occurred predominantly on slow trials. In contrast, response conflict evoked by instructed S–R mappings did not modulate the N2 amplitude. The results strongly suggest that, like experienced S–R mappings, instructed S–R mappings can lead to automatic response activation, but possibly via a different route.     

The influence of instructions on the adjustment of scales

In each of three experiments, one group of subjects first judged the eight largest and another group first judged the eight smallest of a graded series of 16 squares according to size. After four blocks of trials, both groups were shifted to the total series. The subjects changed their scales only slightly when no specific instructions were given at the point of shift (Experiment 1). They were able to maintain their old scales or construct new ones, if instructed to do so (Experiment 2). They were also able to do both things in parallel (Experiment 3). An additional finding was that responses to the "old" stimuli (those being part of the training series) were slower than responses to the "new" ones (those introduced after the shift), independently by of instructions. Furthermore, responses to the old stimuli were faster when these had to be rated on the new scale, and responses to the new stimuli were faster when these had to be rated on the old scale. The findings are interpreted as supporting a conditioning theory of judgment.