The effects of overcorrection: a case study

The effects of overcorrection on multiple problems were studied in a single case. Whilst the techniques proved effective, they were extremely time-consuming and during treatment periods there were large increases in collateral behavior. Clinical implications of these findings are discussed.     

The correlates of traditional religious beliefs in Britain

This study provides an across time analysis of traditional religious beliefs and examines the socio-structural and religious correlates of such beliefs in Britain. It examines belief in God, life after death, hell, heaven, sin, as well as the notion of a personal God. It undertakes multivariate analysis of a recurrent social survey conducted over several decades. The main findings are that there is no uniform decline in traditional beliefs, with the picture one of change and continuity. Women, religious adherents and those showing greater religious commitment are more likely to hold traditional beliefs. There is a mixed picture for age effects while higher socio-economic status tends to lead to a lower likelihood of holding religious beliefs, as hypothesised by ‘deprivation theory’.     

Issues in Pastoral Care and Counseling for the Fourth Quarter of Life

Issues and risks for pastoral care and counseling from the perspective of old age (here, ages 75 to 100) include identification of old age as a problem and its association with death in a death-denying culture. Two elements are fundamental: existential experiential deficits between the old and their younger caregivers (e.g., age cohort experiences, health status, gender, culture, privilege, etc.); and boundary issues that push the old, and pastoral care, to the edge of experience, where choices must be made between creativity and negativity (e.g., moving to dependent living, disability, etc.). Loss of doing (versus being) as a viable option is a major edge experience. The resulting sense of emptiness carries with it the potential for a sacramental awareness in which absence of doing becomes an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.     

The life events scale for students: Validation for use with British samples

The life events scale for students is a checklist measure of life events intended for use with undergraduate populations. The report describes the validation of the scale for use with British undergraduates. Ratings for the events on the scale were obtained from a sample of 191 undergraduates. A second analysis using a sample of 40 undergraduates showed that scores on the scale were predictive of elevated levels of psychopathology. Furthermore, this relationship was largely independent of negative affectivity or repression-sensitization. The Life Events Scale for Students provides a suitable measure for use in stress research using undergraduate populations.     

The role of information in the emission of observing responses: a test of two hypotheses

Pigeons were trained on a trial procedure in a Skinner box. Each trial began with a fixed-interval schedule. Responding on this schedule produced a stimulus and a delayed trial outcome. The stimulus signalled whether the forthcoming outcome was reinforcement or nonreinforcement. Thus, the response was an observing response. When reinforcement was the outcome on 20% of the trials, response rates in the fixed interval were higher than when reinforcement was the outcome on 80% of the trials. This result is consistent with the hypothesis that observing responses are reinforced by the information associated with the stimulus signalling reinforcement. The result seems inconsistent with the hypothesis that observing responses are also reinforced by the information associated with the stimulus signalling nonreinforcement.     

Adolescent verbal behavior

This investigation assessed the relationship of race and delinquent status with the noncontent verbal behavior of adolescent males. A standardized videotape interview was used to ensure consistent stimulus presentation. Sixteen white and sixteen black delinquents were compared with equal numbers of nondelinquents on the noncontent verbal measures of total time (performance time), units (frequency), and latency. It was predicted that nondelinquents would be more verbal than delinquents and whites would be more verbal than blacks. No racial differences were found. Delinquents, however, were found to talk significantly less than nondelinquents and to have significantly longer verbal latencies. Discussion of these results centered on the verbal demand characteristics of certain settings, such as classrooms and court hearings.     

Auditory spatial responses of young guinea pigs (Cavia porcellus) during and after ear blocking

Newborn guinea pigs were tested to determine their ability to approach an auditory stimulus early in development. Observations of the behavior of 1-4-day-old animals in a circular eight-choice maze revealed a pronounced tendency to orient toward and approach a tape-recorded signal of guinea pig vocalizations. The occurrence of approach responses was reduced to chance in animals tested with one ear occluded by wax ear plugs which attenuated but did not totally eliminate sound. The effect of monaural ear blocks was more severe than binaural blocks, which reflects the importance of binaural cues in the maintenance of approach responses to sound. In a second study, the ability of older animals, 11-31 days of age, was examined. Directional approach responses to sound were also evident at this age, and ear plugs disrupted performance only under monaural conditions. Furthermore, in animals raised from birth with monaural ear blocks but tested without ear plugs, there was a subsequent disruption of performance for at least 21 days. These results indicate the importance of binaural cues in the development of early auditory spatial responses and suggest the need for appropriate binaural experience for subsequent localization of sounds.     

Weekly churchgoing amongst Roman Catholics in Britain: long-term trends and contemporary analysis

Declining communal religious practice in the form of regular churchgoing is a key area in the measurement and study of religious change and secularisation. The general trends in attendance in Britain have been well-researched. However, there has been less consideration of change and continuity in religious practice within different religious traditions. This article provides a detailed assessment of the trends in weekly churchgoing amongst Roman Catholics and then examines the socio-demographic factors associated with regular churchgoing. In long-term perspective, there has been a clear decline in weekly churchgoing amongst Catholics, corroborated by data across several recurrent social surveys. In terms of contemporary churchgoing, weekly attenders are more likely to be older, have higher socio-economic status and have children in the household. But, contrary to the well-established association between women and religiosity, there were no significant differences in weekly attendance between men and women, nor on the basis of ethnic background.     

Spontaneously hypertensive, Wistar Kyoto and Sprague-Dawley rats differ in their use of place and response strategies in the water radial arm maze

This study further characterises the use of mnemonic systems in the spontaneously hypertensive rat (SHR), which is frequently used as a rodent model of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The objective of this study was to assess the preference of male SHR, Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) and Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats for a place or response strategy when trained on an ambiguous T-maze task, and also to examine whether all strains acquired information about both strategies during ambiguous training, regardless of their preferred strategy. In the first experiment, SHR and WKY showed a preference for a response strategy on the ambiguous T-maze task; in contrast, SD displayed a preference for a place strategy. In the second experiment, all strains demonstrated that they learned information about both the response and place strategies during ambiguous training. However, on a conditioned place preference test SHR did not display as strong a preference for the place arm as WKY and SD. This finding supports previous research in a conditioned cue preference test, in which SHR did not display a preference for the cue associated with the platform. These observations that the strains differ with respect to behavioural strategy in a learning task suggest that they differ in the underlying neural circuitry that serves goal-directed behaviour, and are consistent with SHR having deficits associated with the nucleus accumbens.