Expression of Fos and Jun Proteins Following Passive Avoidance Training in the Day-Old Chick

It has been shown previously that the immediate-early genes, c-fos and c-jun mRNA are induced in the 1-day-old chick forebrain after one-trial passive avoidance training in which chicks learn to avoid pecking at a bitter-tasting bead. Here, we have studied the expression of their proteins using antibodies to Fos and Jun. Western blotting disclosed two immunoreactive bands for the anti-Fos antibody (47 and 54 kD) and two immunoreactive bands for the anti-Jun antibody (39 and 54 kD). Two hours post-training there was an increase in the number of Fos-positive stained nuclei in right intermediate medial hyperstriatum ventrale (IMHV) (P<0.01), left IMHV (P<0.05), right lobus parolfactorius (LPO) (P<0.025) and left LPO (P<0.05) of birds trained on the bitter bead compared with controls that had pecked a water-coated bead. Staining for Jun protein was significantly greater in the right LPO of trained chicks (P<0.01). Other forebrain regions showed no increase over quiet control levels. The findings are discussed in the context of the cascade of events involved in passive avoidance memory consolidation in the day-old chick.     

A methodology to facilitate occupational task grouping: Meeting the demands of training analysis and planning

Methods for grouping occupational tasks are required to support a broad range of personnel actions and organizational planning activities. Having subject matter experts sort tasks into groups is the only methodology generally recognized for these purposes. For many applications, however, and training in particular, analyses that cover large areas of an organization may be required. For such uses, manual sorting is costly and may be infeasible. A new method, based on statistical clustering using task coperformance, is described. Results indicate that this method can replicate much of the structure of the experts’ groups and so can be used to facilitate task grouping. Implications of this new approach are discussed.     

Pascal external functions for Strawberry Tree’s “Analog Connection Workbench” on the Macintosh

Strawberry Tree Incorporated is one of several manufacturers of input-output boards for the Macintosh computer. The Analog Connection Workbench program (Strawberry Tree Inc.) provides an icon-based programming system for these input-output boards that has most of the functions that are necessary to implement behavioral experiments. However, experimental psychologists may frequently encounter needs that the Workbench program cannot easily meet. Because the Workbench is programmed in C, whereas many psychologists are more expert in programming in Pascal, we describe, in tutorial fashion, how the user may define new external functions in Pascal on the Macintosh and integrate these functions into the icon-based Workbench programming system.     

Delay of stimulus presentation after the saccade in visual search

Delay of stimulus onset after each saccade in visual search decreased oculomotor and manual reaction times, with a greater effect occurring for the oculomotor response. The saccadic oculomotor reaction might have been facilitated in three ways: by the facilitation of reaction with a foreperiod warning stimulus, by the attenuation of saccadic suppression effects due to the stimulus onset delay, or by the use of a strategy of preprogramming fixation durations. The results support a model of visual search using preprogrammed control of visual fixation durations.     

Being Polite and Keeping MUM: How Bad News is Communicated in Organizational Hierarchies1

There are many ways to communicate bad news. The MUM effect (Tesser & Rosen, 1975), which is keeping mum and not transmitting the bad news at all, is only one of many possible approaches. Using P. Brown and Levinson's (1987) politeness theory, an experimental study was conducted to address not whether bad news is being transmitted, but how bad news is being transmitted. The results show that most communicators tend to use politeness strategies when communicating bad news. Moreover, using politeness strategies to couch the message did not attenuate the informative value of the message. Focused contrasts revealed two strong interactions between gender and communication direction on strategy use. First, power differences more strongly predicted strategy use for men, whereas distance differences more strongly predicted strategy use for women. Second, men used most politeness strategies when the combined effect of power and distance was the highest (as the politeness theory would predict), but the trend was reversed for women. This finding suggests that politeness theory may not be an accurate model for describing female communicators.     

Response bias associated with asking former study participants to assist in new research

To limit research costs, former parent-participants from a completed pediatric neurology study were asked to assist with new research on behavioral contributors to childhood injury. An evaluation of the response bias associated with this recontact effort showed that 224 parents who completed the survey did not differ from the 51 who failed to complete it in race, age, education, or income. Nonresponders were significantly less likely to be married than responders.     

Dynamic algebras: Examples,constructions, applications

Dynamic algebras combine the classes of Boolean (B 0) and regular (R ; *) algebras into a single finitely axiomatized variety (B R ) resembling an R-module with scalar multiplication . The basic result is that * is reflexive transitive closure, contrary to the intuition that this concept should require quantifiers for its definition. Using this result we give several examples of dynamic algebras arising naturally in connection with additive functions, binary relations, state trajectories, languages, and flowcharts. The main result is that free dynamic algebras are residually finite (i.e. factor as a subdirect product of finite dynamic algebras), important because finite separable dynamic algebras are isomorphic to Kripke structures. Applications include a new completeness proof for the Segerberg axiomatization of prepositional dynamic logic, and yet another notion of regular algebra.Dept. of Computer Science, Stanford, CA 94305 This research was supported by the National Science Foundation under NSF grant no. MCS78-04338. Preparation of the present version was supported by the National Science Foundation under NSF grant number CCR-8814921.This paper originally appeared as Technical Memo #138, Laboratory for Computer Science, MIT, July 1979, and was subsequently revised, shortened, retitled, and published as [Pra80b]. After more than a decade of armtwisting I. Németi and H. Andréka finally persuaded the author to publish TM#138 itself on the ground that it contained a substantial body of interesting material that for the sake of brevity had been deleted from the STOC-80 version. The principal changes here to TM#138 are the addition of footnotes and the sections at the end on retrospective citations and reflections.     

Recognizing familiar and unfamiliar faces

These experiments addressed why, in episodic-memory tests, familiar faces are recognized better than unfamiliar faces. Memory for faces of well-known public figures and unfamiliar persons was tested, not only with old/new recognition tests, in which initially viewed faces were discriminated from dis tractors, but also with tests of memory for specific information. These included: detail recall, in which a masked feature had to be described; orientation recognition, in which discrimination between originally seen faces and mirror-image reversals was required; and recognition and recall of labels for the public figures. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that memory for orientation and featural details was not robustly related either to facial familiarity or to old/new recognition rates. Experiment 3 showed that memory for labels was not the exclusive determinant of the famous-face advantage in recognition, since famous faces were highly recognizable even they were not labelable or when labels were forgotten. These results suggest that the familiarity effect, and face recognition in general, may reflect a nonverbal memory representation that is relatively abstract.     

An Attributional Analysis of Social Accounts: Implications of Playing the Blame Game1

These studies proposed that effective social accounts should contain external, unstable, specific, and uncontrollable attributions. In Study I, managers provided accounts for a negative event. The accounts contained highly unstable and specific attributions but, contrary to original predictions, they also contained highly internal and controllable attributions. In Study 2, managers rated the effectiveness of the account. Account effectiveness was positively related to unstable attributions, but was negatively related to external and uncontrollable attributions. These relationships were stronger (more negative) for accounts communicated downward than upward. These results indicate that blaming others or deflecting personal responsibility for negative events may be ineffective, especially when one is in a high‐status role.