Achievement motivation in relation to achievement-related recall,performance, and urine flow,a marker associated with release of vasopressin

Administration of the pituitary hormone, arginine vasopressin (AVP), enhances memory in animals and humans. Since AVP is the antidiuretic hormone, its release can be inferred from reductions in urine flow. Forty-six male adults recalled the contents of a complex story and then either were exposed to achievement arousal or were not. Significantly more of the subjects in the aroused than the nonaroused condition showed a decrease in urine flow, and the greater the decrease in urine flow among the achievement-aroused subjects, the better the recall of achievement-related story content 24 hours later. Subjects high inn Achievement, in the achievement-oriented condition, showed lower urine output at the outset of the second day and greater improvement in learning to unscramble words. Since lower urine output was also related to improvement in unscrambling words, achievement arousal may have released AVP which in turn may have facilitated achievement-related retention and performance.I am greatly indebted to Sean Connelly for assistance in carrying out this research and to Dr. Franklin Epstein of the Beth Israel Hospital, Boston, for helping me to understand how the kidney functions in producing urine.     

Assessment of HIV counselling and social care services in a London hospital

The use of, and satisfaction with, counselling and social care services was investigated among HIV-infected clients attending HIV specialist climes at Guy's Hospital and Southwark Social Services, London. A survey of 71 clients with HIV infection was carried out using a self-administered questionnaire. The greatest demand was for advice about income support, housing, counselling for the HIV test, counselling for depression or anxiety, psychological support for coping with HIV, help with sleeping problems, mobility allowance, and help with furniture/household appliances. Overall, 57% thought the service was good or excellent; 66% of respondents thought they would use the services in the future. Over nine in ten clients had used the psychosocial support services at some stage since their HIV diagnosis, although only two-thirds anticipated that they would have need of these services in the future. The psychosocial support service will need to remain responsive to the shift in demand for this service, as well as the changing needs of clients who use it.     

Book reviews

Gott ist schön und Er liebt die Schönheit: God is Beautiful and He Loves Beauty. Alma Giese and J. Christoph Bürgel, 1994. Bern, Peter Lang. 474 pp., hb. n.p., ISBN 3–906750–90–6.

The Concept of Islamic International Criminal Law. Farhad Malekian, 1994. London, Graham & Trotman. 213 pp., £55.00, $92, ISBN 1859660851.

Religion in Europe: contemporary perspectives. S. Gill, G. D'Costa, and U. King (Eds), 1994. Kampen, Kok Pharos. 213 pp., pb., Fl 49.90, ISBN 90–390–0508–7.

Religious Freedom and the Position of Islam in Western Europe. W. A. R. Shadid and P. S. van Koningsveld, 1995. Kampen, Kok Pharos. 229 pp., pb., Fl 64.90, ISBN 90–390–0065–4.

Christianity in the Arab World. HRH Crown Prince El Hassan Bin Talal, 1994. Amman, Arabesque. 120pp., hb.

Holymen of the Blue Nile: the making of an Arab‐Islamic community in the Nilotic Sudan 1500–1850. Neil MHugh. Evanston Illinois, Northwestern University Press. 280pp., hb., $54.95, ISBN 0–8101–1069–5.     

Reflections on segregating and assessing areas of competence

Various complexities that arise in the application of legal and/or clinical criteria to the actual assessment of competence/capacity are discussed, and a particular way of understanding the nature of such criteria is recommended.     

Depression and unemployment: Panel findings from the Epidemiologic Catchment Area study

Studies that have found an association between unemployment and psychological depression often fail to establish the direction of causal influence. Analyses of Epidemiologic Catchment Area panel data revealed that of employed respondents not diagnosed with major depression at first interview, those who became unemployed had over twice the risk of increased depressive symptoms and of becoming clinically depressed as those who continued employed. Although the increase in symptoms was statistically significant, the effect on clinical depression was not, possibly because of the low power of the test. The reverse causal path from clinical depression at Time 1 to becoming unemployed by Time 2 was not supported. The unemployment rate in the respondent's community at time of interview was not related directly to psychological depression but appeared associated indirectly with depression via its impact on the risk of becoming unemployed. Implications for policy and further research were discussed. The research described in this paper was supported by Grant #5 RO1 AA08379-02 from the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The authors appreciate the suggestions provided by members of the Consortium for Research Involving Stress Processes sponsored by the W. T. Grant Foundation and by two anonymous journal reviewers.     

CONSTRUCT ACCESSIBILITY AND THE MISATTRIBUTION OF AROUSAL:

Abstract— Schachter and Singer (1962) showed that people search the immediate environment for emotionally relevant cues to label and interpret unexplained physiological arousal We investigated how unobtrusively activated cognitions and physiological arousal interact to produce emotional experience when the immediate environment is devoid of relevant cues Subjects were primed with positive, negative, or neutral concepts They then either exercised or sat still and, either immediately or after a delay, rated their emotional state Consistent with what Schachter and Singer found, subjects in the exercise, delayed-rating condition, who lacked an obvious explanation for their arousal, made the most extreme affective self-ratings, which were consistent with the valence of the primed concepts These subjects apparently interpreted their residual arousal in terms of the primed concepts Subjects in the exercise, immediate-rating condition, who had an explanation for their arousal (i e, the exercise), were not influenced by the primes Subjects in the no-exercise condition showed typical priming effects, with prime-consistent self-ratings that decayed over time Implications for emotion formation, misattnbution of arousal, and cognition are discussed