Measurement of activity in small animals using a microcomputer-controlled system

A computer-controlled system that detects spontaneous activity (locomotion and rearing) and diurnal activity rhythms in small animals is described. Automatic recording of subtotals during test periods provides data about habituation (nonassociative learning). The system is relatively inexpensive to construct. Fabricated from highly reliable circuit components, it provides replicable measures that enable comparisons between different experimental treatments to be made using parametric statistics.     

Effects of observing competitive and violent versions of a sport

Males were randomly assigned to view either (1) a film clip featuring hockey fights or (2) a film of nonaggressive hockey action or (3) a no-film control condition after having first been angered or treated politely by an experimental confederate. The dependent variable was represented by a measure of aggressive mood and a behavioral measure of retaliatory aggression. Analyses revealed that both angered and nonangered subjects exhibited an increase in aggressive mood following exposure to the fight film. However, the analysis involving retaliatory aggression against the confederate yielded an anger x film interaction. While angered subjects were more aggressive than nonangered, only angered subjects retaliated against the confederate after viewing the fight film. The results were discussed in terms of Berkowitz’s (1974) aggressive cue theory. A version of this paper was presented at the meeting of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport, Edmonton, Canada, November 1987.     

A rapid and sensitive method for measuring the conditional emotional response II: On-the-baseline excitatory conditioning and extinction

The present study outlines a rapid and sensitive on-the-baseline conditional emotional response (CER) procedure. Using rats as the experimental subject, the method detects delay conditioning, incubation, extinction and spontaneous recovery. In addition, the method detects conditional responding using electric shock ranging from 0.23 to 0.50 mA as the unconditional stimulus. Because of its speed and sensitivity, the method shelters the subject from unnecessary long-term deprivation and pain.     

Recurring thoughts on unconscious ego resistances.

Analysis of the unconscious ego resistances is one of those clinical concepts more honored in the breach than in the observance. This same point has been made periodically over the past fifty years. It has not been sufficiently realized that a true psychoanalytic understanding of resistance analysis could only begin with Freud's second theory of anxiety. Freud himself never fully embraced this theory, and clinical contributions since then have varied in their ability to use the techniques inherent in the second theory of anxiety. Recent contributions to the literature have not eliminated the espousal of theories of resistance based on earlier views of anxiety. Reasons cited for this include: the ambiguities in Freud's writing, the direction of the early ego theorists, and proclivities toward deeper interpretations.     

Paranoid character and the intolerance of indifference.

This paper suggests that aspects of paranoid character are structured around fantasies of magical and concrete connectedness to objects; these fantasies serve to avoid the terrors of object inconstancy. The authors describe how these fantasies are expressed in the psychoanalytic situation and explore their relation to common paranoid phenomena. The paranoid person must maintain these fantasies of connectedness at all cost or risk experiencing unbearable indifference between self and object. Paradoxically, the sacrifice of self and object boundaries inherent in these fantasies makes object constancy even more difficult to achieve because of the secondary defensive use of anger mobilized to protect the boundaries of the self.     

Selecting a best multiattribute alternative with partial information about attribute weights

Use of approximate weights would greatly simplify decision analysis under certainty since detailed weight elicitation could be avoided. This paper examines the degree to which rank order information about weights can be used to identify a best alternative, or falling uniqueness prescribes an easily implemented rule for selecting a ‘best’ alternative. The prescribed rule uses as weights the centroid of the feasible region defined by the rank order information. In conjunction with the rule, the value of the rank order information can be determined using an ‘expected gain from weight precision’ (EGWP) measure, analogous to ‘expected value of perfect information’ in decision analysis under uncertainty.     

Risk and behavior: The mediating role of risk appraisal

The main issue of this paper concerns the mediating role of risk appraisal in the relation between past and future behavior. We expected previous risky behavior to heighten risk appraisal, which, in turn, should stimulate preventive behavior. Results ofthree tests of this mediation hypothesis showed that past behavior was strongly related to future behavior; people who behaved hazardously in the past indicated that they tend to do so in the future. Generally, the expected relation between past behavior and risk appraisal was supported. More risky behavior in the past was associated with a heightened risk appraisal. Results also indicate a relation between risk appraisal and future behavior, but in the opposite direction as predicted. Heightened risk appraisal was related to increased levels of risk in future behavior. When predicting future behavior by both risk appraisal and past behavior the effect of risk appraisal on future behavior disappeared, while past behavior remained a strong predictor of future behavior. In a few cases risk appraisal still predicted future behavior when past behavior was controlled for. Unfortunately, these cases showed the opposite relation; i.e., heightened risk appraisal was related to more risky future behavior. Implications of these findings for research on the role of risk appraisal will be discussed.     

Smooth-pursuit eye movement dysfunction and liability for schizophrenia: implications for genetic modeling.

Forty-one nonpsychiatric subjects, 38 probands with schizophrenia, and 99 of their relatives were studied. Oculomotor functioning was bimodally distributed for probands and relatives. Oculomotor dysfunction was not present in all families with a schizophrenic proband. In those families in which it was present, there were significant phenotypic correlations between oculomotor functioning and schizophrenia-related characteristics. The patterns of familial resemblance in the families in whom oculomotor dysfunction was present were consistent with nonadditive genetic variance contributing both to oculomotor dysfunction and to the relationship between oculomotor dysfunction and clinical symptoms. These results suggest that schizophrenia may be etiologically heterogeneous and that oculomotor dysfunction may help to identify nonadditive genetic variance for this disorder.     

Confirming the latent structure and base rate of schizotypy: a taxometric analysis.

Meehl's (1962, 1990) model of schizotypy and the development of schizophrenia implies that the structure of liability for schizophrenia is dichotomous and that a "schizogene" determines membership in a latent class, or taxon (Meehl & Golden, 1982). The authors sought to determine the latent structure and base rate of schizotypy. They applied Meehl's (1973; Meehl & Golden, 1982) MAXCOV-HITMAX taxometric analytic procedures to a subset of items from the Perceptual Aberration Scale (PAS; Chapman, Chapman, & Raulin, 1978), a prominent psychometric index of schizotypy, derived from a randomly ascertained nonclinical university sample (N = 1,093). The results, in accordance with Meehl's conjectures, strongly suggest that schizotypy, as assessed by the PAS, is taxonic at the latent level with a general population taxon base rate of approximately .10.