Behavior analysis and the study of human aging

As the population of older adults continues to rise, psychologists along with other behavioral and social scientists have shown increasing interest in this age group. Although behavior analysts have contributed to research on aging, the focus has been on applications that remedy age-related deficits, rather than a concern with aging as a developmental process. In particular, there has been little interest in the central theoretical questions that have guided gerontologists. How does behavior change with advancing years, and what are the sources of those changes? We consider the possibility that this neglect reflects the long-standing commitment of behavior analysts to variables that can be experimentally manipulated, a requirement that excludes the key variable—age itself. We review the options available to researchers and present strategies that minimize deviations from the traditional features of behavior-analytic designs. Our comments are predicated on the view that aging issues within contemporary society are far too important for behavior analysts to ignore.     

Privacy and the encryption debate

Conclusion Robert Heinlein, author of Stranger in a Strange Land as well as countless other science fiction stories, once claimed that "The sole thing achieved by any privacy law is to make the bugs smaller." Heinlein may be correct, but that travesties will happen does not sanction them—and maybe we will invent bugs to root out and foil other bugs. I have argued for individual privacy rights or rights to control sensitive personal information. The explosion of digital technology has made possible severe violations of individual privacy by corporations, news agencies, and the government. If I am correct about all of this, one commonly used "public interest" argument given for limiting privacy rights has been undermined. It is also far from true to claim that the prevalence of strong encryption technology will lead to disaster. While I do not adhere to the view that "rights hold, though the heavens may fall," in this article I have maintained that the security arguments of law enforcement do not come close to meeting the threshold for violating privacy rights. The heavens are far from falling. He is the author of, "Employee Monitoring and Computer Technology" (forthcoming in Business Ethics Quarterly), "Intangible Property: Privacy, Power, and Information Control," American Philosophical Quarterly 35 (October 1998) and is the editor of Intellectual Property: Moral, Legal, and International Dilemmas (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), in which he contributes "Introduction to Intellectual Property" and "Toward A Lockean Theory of Intellectual Property."     

Eye movements during search and detection in comparative visual search

Motivated by the fact that previous visual memory paradigms have imposed encoding and retrieval constraints, the present article presents two experiments that address how observers allocate eye movements in memory and comparison processes in the absence of constraints. A comparative visual search design (Pomplun, Sichelschmidt, et al., 2001) was utilized in which observers searched for a difference between two images presented side by side. Robust time course effects were obtained, whereby search was characterized by brief fixations and a high proportion of comparative saccades. Then, upon target detection, fixations were extended, more comparative saccades were elicited, and the search focus was narrowed. The saliency and presence of differences did not guide attention, and detection was contingent upon direct fixation of the targets. The results indicate that, when full control is given, observers adopt a strategy that cuts down on memory usage in favor of restricted encoding and active scanning.     

Perceptions of self and of ideal mates: Similarities and differences across the sexes

For 19 mating-relevant traits, single males (N= 53) and single females (N= 86) rated (a) themselves relative to their same-sex peers, (b) their perceptions of the qualities desired by members of the opposite sex in an ideal partner, and (c) the qualities desired in their own ideal romantic partner. Several themes emerged from the data. First, males’ and females’ judgments of what members of the opposite-sex seek were generally accurate. Second, males and females both feel that they fall short of perceived opposite-sex expectations in a few areas. Third, both males and females desire an ideal partner better than themselves, but this is especially true for females. These findings are discussed in terms of evolutionary social psychological principles.     

Differential role of inhibition in habituation of two independent afferent pathways to a common motor output

Many studies of the neural mechanisms of learning have focused on habituation, a simple form of learning in which a response decrements with repeated stimulation. In the siphon-elicited siphon withdrawal reflex (S-SWR) of the marine mollusk Aplysia, the prevailing view is that homosynaptic depression of primary sensory afferents underlies short-term habituation. Here we examined whether this mechanism is also utilized in habituation of the tail-elicited siphon withdrawal reflex (T-SWR), which is triggered by an independent, polysynaptic afferent pathway that converges onto the same siphon motor neurons (MNs). By using semi-intact preparations in which tail and/or siphon input to siphon MNs could be measured, we found that repeated tail stimuli administered in the presence of a reversible conduction block of the nerves downstream of the tail sensory neurons (SNs) completely abolished the induction of habituation. Subsequent retraining revealed no evidence of savings, indicating that the tail SNs and their immediate interneuronal targets are not the locus of plasticity underlying T-SWR habituation. The networks closely associated with the siphon MNs are modulated by cholinergic inhibition. We next examined the effects of network disinhibition on S-SWR and T-SWR habituation using an Ach receptor antagonist d-tubocurarine. We found that the resulting network disinhibition disrupted T-SWR, but not S-SWR, habituation. Indeed, repeated tail stimulation in the presence of d-tubocurarine resulted in an initial enhancement in responding. Lastly, we tested whether habituation of T-SWR generalized to S-SWR and found that it did not. Collectively, these data indicate that (1) unlike S-SWR, habituation of T-SWR does not involve homosynaptic depression of SNs; and (2) the sensitivity of T-SWR habituation to network disinhibition is consistent with an interneuronal plasticity mechanism that is unique to the T-SWR circuit, since it does not alter S-SWR.     

Adolescents’ reactions to the world trade center destruction: A study of political trauma in metropolitan New York

This study examined the emotional response of 110 adolescents living in the New York metropolitan area one month and five months after the destruction of the World Trade Center (WTC) by terrorists. The purpose of the study was to assess emerging hypotheses in political psychology that suggest that there are differential emotional responses to a national trauma that recede in predictable directions. The results followed predictions and indicate that adolescents experienced a higher level of emotions related to the Crisis and Bereavement dimension than affect associated with Vulnerability and that the emotional response decreased during the four-month follow-up period. There was no effect on emotional response from the biological sex or political orientation of the respondents, which is inconsistent with other studies in the literature. The absence of a political orientation effect is explained in terms of the lack of a domestic ideological difference in response to the terrorist attack.     

Informed consent and the use of placebo in poland: Ethical and legal aspects

The concept of informed consent was one of the most fruitful ideas that deeply changed the relationships between physicians and their patients from paternalism to respect for the personal autonomy of subjects needing professional medical care. The great progress in medicine, also involving the pharmaceutical industry, has created an increasing need to perform different clinical and experimental trials. The evolution of clinical research in the last decades has influenced strongly the design of these studies. One of the most important changes in this field has been the use of placebo groups in double-blind controlled studies. The controversies have involved not only the use of placebo when standard or proven treatment was available, but also some specific problems concerning the procedure of obtaining informed consent in such trials. This paper briefly presents the evolution of informed consent in Poland as well as different ethical and legal problems concerning informed consent and the use of placebo controls in clinical trials. An earlier version of this paper was presented at an international conference, “Placebo: Its Action and Place in Health Research Today,” held in Warsaw, Poland on 12–13 April, 2003.     

Functional connectivity during working memory maintenance

Neurophysiological experiments with monkeys have demonstrated that working memory (WM) is associated with persistent neural activity in multiple brain regions, such as the prefrontal cortex (PFC), the parietal cortex, and posterior unimodal association areas. WM maintenance is believed to require the coordination of these brain regions, which do not function in isolation but, rather, interact to maintain visual percepts that are no longer present in the environment. However, single-unit physiology studies and traditional univariate analyses of functional brain imaging data cannot evaluate interactions between distant brain regions, and so evidence of regional integration during WM maintenance is largely indirect. In this study, we utilized a recently developed multivariate analysis method that allows us to explore functional connectivity between brain regions during the distinct stages of a delayed face recognition task. To characterize the neural network mediating the on-line maintenance of faces, the fusiform face area (FFA) was defined as a seed and was then used to generate whole-brain correlation maps. A random effects analysis of the correlation data revealed a network of brain regions exhibiting significant correlations with the FFA seed during the WM delay period. This maintenance network included the dorsolateral and ventrolateral PFC, the premotor cortex, the intraparietal sulcus, the caudate nucleus, the thalamus, the hippocampus, and occipitotemporal regions. These findings support the notion that the coordinated functional interaction between nodes of a widely distributed network underlies the active maintenance of a perceptual representation.     

The planning and execution of sequential eye movements: saccades do not show the one target advantage

The present experiment examined the one-target advantage (OTA) with regard to saccadic eye movements. The OTA, previously found with manual pointing responses, refers to the finding that movements are executed faster when the limb is allowed to stop on the target compared to the situation where it has to proceed and hit a second target. Using an adapted limb movement OTA task, saccades of 5 degrees and 15 degrees were made to (a) a single target (one-target), (b) one target and immediately to another target without a change in direction (two-target-extension), and (c) one target and immediately back to the start location (two-target-reversal). Unlike manual movements, the movement times for the initial saccade in the two-target-extension condition were not prolonged compared to either of the other two conditions. Moreover, this pattern of results was found for both the shorter and longer amplitude saccades. The results indicate that the OTA does not occur in the oculomotor system and therefore is not a general motor control phenomenon.     

Responsivity to two odorants, androstenone and amyl acetate, and the affective impact of odors on interpersonal relationships

Substantial variation exists in the importance of olfaction in influencing individuals' preferences, yet the sources of this variation remain elusive. The authors explored responsivity to 2 odorants as 1 potential source. Participants (N = 258) completed the Affective Impact of Odor Scale and were assessed for responsivity to the putative human pheromone androstenone and amyl acetate. Results showed a significant relationship between odorant responsivity and self-reports of the influence of odors. People able to smell androstenone more commonly reported odors as having a negative effect on interpersonal relationships than did people anosmic to androstenone, whereas responsivity to amyl acetate was associated with positive effects of odors on relationships. Responsivity to certain odorants may be an important factor affecting human social interactions.