The Color-Vision Approach to Emotional Space: Cortical Evoked Potential Data

A framework for accounting for emotional phenomena proposed by Sokolov and Boucsein (2000) employs conceptual dimensions that parallel those of hue, brightness, and saturation in color vision. The approach that employs the concepts of emotional quality. intensity, and saturation has been supported by psychophysical emotional scaling data gathered from a few trained observers. We report cortical evoked potential data obtained during the change between different emotions expressed in schematic faces. Twenty-five subjects (13 male, 12 female) were presented with a positive, a negative, and a neutral computer-generated face with random interstimulus intervals in a within-subjects design, together with four meaningful and four meaningless control stimuli made up from the same elements. Frontal, central, parietal, and temporal ERPs were recorded from each hemisphere. Statistically significant outcomes in the P300 and N200 range support the potential fruitfulness of the proposed color-vision-model-based approach to human emotional space.     

Laudato Si’: Integral Ecology and Preferential Option for the Poor

This essay examines Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato si’ from a Latin American perspective and its reception in this part of the world, especially in Brazil. It focuses on two aspects of Laudato si’: its dialogical approach, and the connection it makes between ecological issues and poverty. These two aspects allow us to understand Francis’s proposal of integral ecology and how the preferential option for the poor becomes central to his perspective. In addition, this essay explains how Latin American theology and pastoral experience are present in Pope Francis’s thought.     

Wrapping community-based mental health services around children with a severe behavioral disorder: An evaluation of project wraparound

During the past two decades there has been a significant increase in community-based mental health and educational services for children and youth with serious emotional and behavioral problems and their families. However, in the vast majority of programs there are no reliable longitudinal data on the adjustment of the children that are served. Project Wraparound was a community-based individualized treatment program which served children and youth with severely maladjusted behavior and their families by providing intensive home and school-based services. The purpose of this paper is to provide a longitudinal analysis of client and family adjustment data. Data on client adjustment within the home and characteristics of the home environment were obtained at intervals of 3 months, 6 months, and 1 year. Data on client adjustment in school was obtained at four points over a period of 2 years. The results from 19 cases indicate that substantial change occurred on measures of the home environment and client adjustment in the home with no significant change in adjustment in the school. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

Effects of waiting times within simple problems: an analogy to waiting times in human-computer interaction

The impact of forced intra-task waiting periods was evaluated in a laboratory study designed in analogy to forced waiting periods in human-computer interaction. Each task consisted of two lines of grouped capital letters (so-called Sterzinger lines) that had to be processed individually, separated by the experimental waiting period. The final response to both lines was taken after removal of the second line. The experiment was conducted according to a within-subjects design with the order of the two factors "duration" (2 s vs. 8 s) and "variability of the waiting periods" (constant vs. variable) controlled. The dependent variables were performance indices, heart rate, electrodermal activity, and subjective measures of mood and physical complaints. The results showed effects of the duration of waiting periods for the performance and the physiological variables, and effects of the variability factor for the subjective variables. Shorter waiting periods were associated with higher scores of heart rate and skin resistance responses, variable waiting periods seemed to confuse the subjects more than constant ones. The results are discussed with respect to the effects of the two experimental factors. With respect to dialog structures in human-computer interaction, the results lead to the conclusion that response interference could be avoided by giving the user the possibility to immediately input problem solutions. Partial and preliminary inputs should be permanently kept visible during the whole task cycle by the software.     

Differences in baseline drinking behavior between alcoholics and normal drinkers

Drink preference, sip magnitude, amount of time taken to consume drinks and amount of time between sips were measured for 23 normal drinkers and 26 hospital admitted alcoholics while they consumed up to 16 oz. of 86-proof liquor or its equivalent in an experimental bar-and-lounge environment. The alcoholics as denned in this study ordered more drinks, preferred straight drinks, took larger sips and drank faster, but took a longer time between sips than did the normal drinkers. The utility of baseline drinking measures and the external validity of the results are discussed.     

Self-injurious behavior: shaping "head banging" in monkeys

Head-banging, a common phenomenon among the mentally retarded, was shaped, brought under stimulus control, extinguished, and re-established in two monkeys through reinforcement and discrimination procedures of operant conditioning. The behavior was stable and led to lacerations, a condition that qualifies head-banging as self-injurious. The principles of the analysis of behavior used here may well be of value in the etiology and treatment of some human head-banging.     

The effect of temporal distribution in relation to constant frequency of stimuli on habituation of the orienting reaction

The lack of empirical evidence for faster habituation with the regular presentation of stimuli suggests that it is not the constancy of presentation of stimuli, but rather the rate of stimulation--defined as the reciprocal of the harmonic mean of the interstimulus intervals--that determines the speed of habituation. Using alternation of 10-70 and 30-50 sec and a constant sequence of 40 sec, three different rates of stimulation were realized. The hypothesis of faster habituation of skin conductance reactions with higher rates of stimulation was not confirmed. However, a consistent pattern of skin conductance reactions, with an increase in reaction after long intervals and a decrease after short intervals, was found, especially in the group with alternating intervals of 10 and 70 sec. The analysis of an additional group with a random sequence of intervals showed that the response pattern did not result simply from the expired time since last stimulus, i.e., a simple mechanical effect. The possibility of anticipating the stimuli and differing information content of the stimuli are discussed as possible determining factors.     

Water deprivation associated with operant conditioning inhibits hypertensive disease in young spontaneously hypertensive rats

The development of high blood pressure in young spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) is inhibited by operant conditioning motivated by chronic water deprivation. The present study showed that the inhibition of hypertension was not due to the operant conditioning,per se, but was a result of chronic water deprivation (23.5 hr schedule) imposed on the rats from five through 12 weeks of age. Blood pressures were measured directly using a carotid artery cannula and light enflurane anesthesia. The behaviorally conditioned SHR and the water-deprived SHR controls had equal blood pressures and were significantly less hypertensive than untreated or enriched environment SHR groups. The antihypertensive action of water deprivation was not detected by weekly indirect blood pressure measurements made in the awake state. Nonetheless, the chronicity of the deprivation-induced inhibition of hypertension was confirmed by a lesser degree of left ventricular hypertrophy in the deprived SHR relative to the nondeprived SHR. Our behavioral results again demonstrated hyperreactivity in the SHR relative to the Wistar Kyoto (WKY). This behavioral hyperreactivity in the SHR may explain the exaggerated increase in drinking in the deprived SHR groups when returned toad lib conditions. The data of this study and our previous work suggest that arousal differences between SHR and WKY strains are more reliably differentiated by fixed interval schedules of reinforcement than by a fixed ratio schedule. Hyperarousal may precede hypertension in the SHR, but it is undetermined whether hypertension can be found in the absence of hyperarousal in these rats.     

A factor analytic and reliability study of the Devereux Child Behavior Rating Scale

The factor structure of the Devereux Child Behavior (DCB) Rating Scale was found to be different in the present study from those reported by the authors of the scale. Five of the 17 DCB factors were too unreliable to include in the present factor analysis. The findings of the present study were strikingly similar with other factor analytic studies of behavior rating scales in that only three main factors were found: Conduct Disorder, Personality Disorder, and Inadequacy-Immaturity.