Social Support Mediates Loneliness and Human Herpesvirus Type 6 (HHV-6) Antibody Titers

The current study investigated the impact of a severe environmental stressor and the role that declining social integration played in mediating its effect on loneliness and immune status. Increased loneliness and decreased social support in the months following the stressor (storm) were significantly associated with increased HHV-6 antibody liters, reflecting poorer control over the virus. Poorer social integration mediated the relationship between loneliness and HHV-6, even after controlling for nonspecific polyclonal B-cell activation, disease status (CD3+CD4+ cell counts), living arrangements, acute social losses (bereavement), and potential disruptions in social-support resources. These findings suggest that specific elements of social support may explain the oft-noted negative effects of loneliness on the immune system, and generalized to a medically vulnerable population.     

Choice in a variable environment: every reinforcer counts

Six pigeons were trained in sessions composed of seven components, each arranged with a different concurrent-schedule reinforcer ratio. These components occurred in an irregular order with equal frequency, separated by 10-s blackouts. No signals differentiated the different reinforcer ratios. Conditions lasted 50 sessions, and data were collected from the last 35 sessions. In Part 1, the arranged overall reinforcer rate was 2.22 reinforcers per minute. Over conditions, number of reinforcers per component was varied from 4 to 12. In Part 2, the overall reinforcer rate was six per minute, with both 4 and 12 reinforcers per component. Within components, log response-allocation ratios adjusted rapidly as more reinforcers were delivered in the component, and the slope of the choice relation (sensitivity) leveled off at moderately high levels after only about eight reinforcers. When the carryover from previous components was taken into account, the number of reinforcers in the components appeared to have no systematic effect on the speed at which behavior changed after a component started. Consequently, sensitivity values at each reinforcer delivery were superimposable. However, adjustment to changing reinforcer ratios was faster, and reached greater sensitivity values, when overall reinforcer rate was higher. Within a component, each successive reinforcer from the same alternative ("confirming") had a smaller effect than the one before, but single reinforcers from the other alternative ("disconfirming") always had a large effect. Choice in the prior component carried over into the next component, and its effects could be discerned even after five or six reinforcement and nonreinforcement is suggested.     

Context use by right-hemisphere-damaged individuals under a compressed speech condition

The effect of increased processing demands on context use by RHD individuals was examined using a word-monitoring task. Subjects were required to monitor for a target word in sentences that were either normal, semantically anomalous, or both syntactically and semantically anomalous. Stimuli were presented at two rates of speech--normal and compressed to 70% of normal. Contrary to expectations, the RHD group performed similar to normals in demonstrating an effect of context at both rates of speech. Results are discussed relative to recent studies of normal brain functioning that suggest that the involvement of the LH versus the RH in context use depends upon the type of contextual information being processed.     

Steroidal modulation of scent investigation and marking behaviors in male and female ferrets (Mustela putorius furo)

Gonadectomized male and female ferrets (Mustela putorius furo) given either testosterone propionate (TP) or oil vehicle preferred to investigate the side of a test cage previously soiled by a breeding male or female as opposed to a clean side. Male and female ferrets receiving TP showed more urogenital wiping than oil-treated animals in either side of the test cage. In a 2nd experiment, ferrets treated sequentially with TP, oil, and estradiol benzoate (EB) were given simultaneous access to sides of a test cage previously soiled by either a breeding female or male. Either EB or TP treatment of females and TP treatment of males facilitated the investigation of odors of opposite-sex ferrets. Females given TP and males given either TP or EB showed increased urogenital wiping in both sides of the test cage. Sex steroids modulate scent investigation and marking in adult ferrets in a sexually differentiated fashion.     

Veterinary use of exposure techniques in the treatment of phobic domestic animals

Exposure techniques as a treatment for human phobias are reviewed, as well as exposure's use in the extinction of avoidance behavior in laboratory animal studies. A third arena in which exposure is employed is reconsidered--in the veterinary treatment of phobic domestic animals. Veterinary use of exposure is illustrated, and the advantages and disadvantages of the veterinary study of exposure are discussed.     

In search of the feedback function for variable-interval schedules

Finding a theoretically sound feedback function for variable-interval schedules remains an important unsolved problem. It is important because interval schedules model a significant feature of the world: the dependence of reinforcement on factors beyond the organism's control. The problem remains unsolved because no feedback function yet proposed satisfies all the theoretical and empirical requirements. Previous suggestions that succeed in fitting data fail theoretically because they violate a newly recognized theoretical requirement: The slope of the function must approach or equal 1.0 at the origin. A function is presented that satisfies all requirements but lacks any theoretical justification. This function and two suggested by Prelec and Herrnstein (1978) and Nevin and Baum (1980) are evaluated against several sets of data. All three fitted the data well. The success of the two theoretically incorrect functions raises an empirical puzzle: Low rates of reinforcement are coupled with response rates that seem anomalously high. It remains to be discovered what this reflects about the temporal patterning of operant behavior at low reinforcement rates. A theoretically and empirically correct function derived from basic assumptions about operant behavior also remains to be discovered.     

Waiting for a crowd: the behavioral and perceptual effects of anticipated crowding.

An experiment was conducted in which subjects were convinced that crowding was imminent. It was hypothesized that the arousal of expectations of crowding would cause subjects to behave in ways suggesting that they were preparing for the experience of crowding by taking steps to reduce the impact of crowding before its onset. Similarly, it was predicted that anticipation of crowding would influence subject perceptions of the experimental room, interpersonal affect, and general levels of discomfort. Data collected indicated that these predictions were accurate; subjects anticipating crowding chose more socially isolated seat positions, avoided contact with others, experienced crowding and discomfort, and rated others in the setting as well as the room in ways generally consistent with definitions of crowding.     

The correlation-based law of effect

It is commonly understood that the interactions between an organism and its environment constitute a feedback system. This implies that instrumental behavior should be viewed as a continuous exchange between the organism and the environment. It follows that orderly relations between behavior and environment should emerge at the level of aggregate flow in time, rather than momentary events. These notions require a simple, but fundamental, change in the law of effect: from a law based on contiguity of events to a law based on correlation between events. Much recent research and argument favors such a change. If the correlation-based law of effect is accepted, it favors measures and units of analysis that transcend momentary events, extending through time. One can measure all consequences on a common scale, called value. One can define a unit of analysis called the behavioral situation, which circumscribes a set of values. These concepts allow redefinition of reinforcement and punishment, and clarification of their relation to discriminative stimuli.