Impact of Commitment Upon Performance of College Students

The retention, academic achievement, and change in college plans of students committed to a field of study as freshmen are compared with those who were not sure of their interest. A survey form administered to all the freshmen in the class of 1964, College of Agriculture, was readministered to all those still enrolled seven semesters later. The original hypothesis that the committed student was different from the uncommitted tended to be upheld. The committed student who was dedicated to the study of agriculture was more persistent in his interest in his chosen field; fewer committed students changed majors; fewer withdrew from college.     

Occupational Values of High School Students

Responses of high school students as freshmen and later as sophomores in this study support the belief that the characteristics of a vocation that are important to students may be internalized relatively early in life. There were differences between what girls and boys thought was important in an occupation; however, little difference was found between the group means of these students when freshmen and a year later when sophomores. Most students did not change occupational preference between the freshman and sophomore year. Students in the study as freshmen, but transferring out or withdrawing a year later, differed little in occupational values or in occupational choice from the sophomores. These findings agree only in part with work of other researchers in this field.     

Effect of Person

The role of the experimenter in the behavioral study, although recognized by Darwin, Pavlov, psychiatrists and others, has not been adequately evaluated in terms of the quantitative measures of the CR. Our study in this paper concerns especially the cardiac changes induced by “Person” in normal and pathological animals—monkey, dog, cat, opossum, guinea pig and rabbit. Owing to the greater sensitivity of the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, these are more reliable and delicate measures than the usual somatic muscular ones. The Person can be used as an unconditional stimulus on the basis of which conditional reflexes are formed. Person has an especially pronounced effect on neurotic animals—shown often in a more pronounced way in the cardiorespiratory responses than in the more superficial behavioral ones. This Effect of Person may provide insights into the production of neurosis as well as some of the beneficial effects of therapy, e.g., the personal factor of the therapist.     

One-trial cardiac conditioning in dogs

Our interest in cardiovascular conditioning, particularly the fact that conditional tachycardia has been observed in many dogs after only one or two combinations of conditional and unconditional stimuli, led us to investigate conditioning using a single application of an unconditional stimulus. Initially we studied the effect of orienting stimuli (soft tones) on the heart rate in 9 dogs. After 30–100 presentations of the tones alone, each dog received on one occasion a 25-volt shock (sufficient to cause yelping and struggling) to a leg as unconditional stimulus immediately following a tone. Thereafter 30–100 additional tones were presented with no further shock. Little or no heart rate change occurred during the orienting tones (before shock). Three types of cardiac changes occurred during experimental sessions after the shock: 1) Increased heart rate during the tones in 5 dogs; 2) Generalized lowering of heart rate during all experimental sessions after shock in 4 dogs; 3) Electrocardiographic changes during tones in 3 of the dogs also showing the generalized decrease in heart rate. No motor flexion conditional reflexes developed. Tones an octave different in pitch from the one associated with the shock also caused approximately the same heart rate changes, indicating lack of differentiation. This one-trial cardiac conditioning persisted after the single conditioning trial for more than a month in 2 dogs and for at least 3 to 5 sessions in the other dogs.     

The effect of light intensity when onset or termination of illumination is used as reinforcing stimulus

The Psychological Record - Two experiments were performed to examine the reinforcing effects of onset and termination of non-aversive illumination, made conterminous with lever contacting, as a...     

A NEUROBIOLOGICAL NON ALTERNATIVE: REJOINDER TO LEWIS,BAUMEISTER, AND MAILMAN

Certain misrepresentations of our theory of self-stimulatory behavior by Lewis, Baumeister, and Mailman (1987) are corrected and several questions raised by the commentators are answered. Their proposed neurobiological alternative is considered briefly and judged to be insufficiently detailed, inadequate in scope, and therefore premature.