The Effects of Flavor-Aversion Learning on Instrumental Performance

Two experiments investigated the role of lithium-mediated environmental conditioning on instrumental performance. Experiment 1 demonstrated that a novel taste consumed in one arm of a T maze prior to lithium-induced toxicosis reduced performance in this environment whereas similar aversions conditioned in the home cage failed to alter maze performance. Experiment 2 showed that maze performance in a straight alleyway was decremented during extinction only in a group that actually traversed the alley prior to drinking saccharin and receiving lithium injections. This demonstrated that the instrumental decrement observed in Experiment 1 was due not only to the presence of an unpalatable flavor in the goalbox during the test.

     

Book Reviews

The Psychological Record -     

Galef’s Transfer-of-Information Effect Occurs in a Free-Foraging Situation

Galef and his colleagues have repeatedly shown that one rat may transfer information regarding the type of food it has consumed to other conspecifics. Such experiments typically have been conducted in wire-mesh cages or a wooden maze. The present experiments sought to extend this paradigm to the open-field foraging situation having six food patches to choose from. Following interaction with a demonstrator that had consumed either a cocoa or a cinnamon diet, single observers (Experiment 1) were tested in the foraging situation. Food-consumption scores indicated that observers consumed significantly more of their specific demonstrator’s diet than a second diet that was available also. Experiment 2 involved the simultaneous testing of two observers in the foraging laboratory. In Experiment 3 two observers were once again tested, but each had been provided a different food-type message prior to foraging. Positive results, mirroring those of Experiment 1, were obtained in both Experiments 2 and 3. The results of these three experiments underscore the robustness of this phenomenon and its generalizability to other testing conditions.

     

Intellectual functioning and aggression

In a 22-year study, data were collected on aggressiveness and intellectual functioning in more than 600 subjects, their parents, and their children. Both aggression and intellectual functioning are reasonably stable in a subject's lifetime and perpetuate themselves across generations and within marriage pairs. Aggression in childhood was shown to interfere with the development of intellectual functioning and to be predictive of poorer intellectual achievement as an adult. Early IQ was related to early subject aggression but did not predict changes in aggression after age 8. On the other hand, differences between early IQ and intellectual achievement in middle adulthood were predictable from early aggressive behavior. A dual-process model was offered to explain the relation between intellectual functioning and aggressive behavior. We hypothesized that low intelligence makes the learning of aggressive responses more likely at an early age, and this aggressive behavior makes continued intellectual development more difficult.     

Linking person and context in the daily stress process

In this study we combined daily diary data with interview data to investigate individual differences in the impact of stressful daily events on mood. Using a sample of 96 women in an urban community, we examined perceived neighborhood quality and major life events as possibly potentiating the effects of stressful daily events, and we viewed social supports as potentially buffering this daily process. Results confirmed that the presence of chronic ecologic stress (neighborhood perceptions) exacerbated the immediate effects of stressful daily events on mood and also increased the likelihood of enduring effects of daily stressors on next day's mood. Contrary to expectations, previous exposure to major life events decreased the impact of stressful daily events. The availability of social supports, although not buffering the impact of stressful daily events on mood, did mitigate the enduring effects of these events on next day's mood. This study also presents a method for analyzing daily time-series data, while correcting for potential problems of autocorrelated error terms. As such, this study represents a significant advance over previous analytic approaches to time-series data in the study of the stress process.