Self-report and physiologic responding during in vivo flooding

Self-report and physiologic measures of arousal were obtained during in vivo flooding sessions. Minimal correspondence was found between these two assessment modalities. The significance of these findings for treatment is discussed.     

A mutual inductance shocker

A simple dc shock-generating device is described. The principle of operation relies upon the mutual inductance effect between the primary and secondary coils of a transformer.     

An investigation of the arousal model of interpersonal intimacy

In a study designed to test Patterson's arousal model of nonverbal intimacy, the heartrate, gaze, smiles, body orientation, and body lean of each of 40 female subjects who interacted with an accomplice were measured. Within a factorial design, subjects were induced to view more or less favorably the accomplice, who subsequently increased or maintained the same level of nonverbal immediacy as she did in an earlier session. It was hypothesized that (1) an increase in the accomplice's immediacy would effect an increase in subjects' arousal (heartrate) which, in turn, (2) would lead to either reciprocal or compensatory nonverbal adjustments by subjects, depending on whether they viewed the accomplice more or less favorably, respectively. The results supported the first but not the second hypothesis. However, interpretation of the results suggests, nevertheless, that they may be consistent with the arousal model.     

Common items and reliability in personality measurement

Most psychological tests and inventories, particularly in personality and attitude measurement, contain common items, that is, various subscales of the test or inventory may share one or more items in common. Surprisingly, the role of common items in such a fundamental personality test attribute as reliability is not known. The present report specifically considered common-item contributions to test internal consistency reliability using extant data from the California Psychological Inventory. No negative contribution of item overlap was found. To the contrary, it was concluded that the use of common items is an economical technique for increasing the total number of items in the scales, thus increasing scale internal reliabilities without increasing the overall number of items in the inventory.     

Regional cerebral blood flow response to recognition memory versus semantic classification tasks

Two randomly assigned groups, N = 7 each, of neurologically normal patients were composed. One group, RM, had regional cerebral blood flow measurements during a recognition memory probe test; the other group, SC, had rCBF measurements during a semantic classification task, using the same stimulus and response features as the RM task. Thus, the groups differed only in the cognitive instruction they were executing. The RM group showed a significantly lower change from resting baseline to activation, in mean left hemisphere initial slope index, than did the SC group. The RM group, but not the SC group, showed a significant inverse correlation between occipital flow and accuracy of memory performance as indicated by d′. Correlations between age and hemispheric initial slope index, and between homologous left and right hemisphere sites, were also described. The results are considered to support an anatomical basis for the distinction between episodic and semantic memory and to suggest that occipital flow may diminish with accurate memory performance because of an upstream demand of blood in the medial temporal lobes.     

An information processing system for the psychiatric emergency room

An information processing system for a psychiatric emergency room is described. Several studies are presented that show the utility of the system. In the first study, variables involved in diagnosis are explicated. The second study attempts to determine the characteristics that distinguish recidivists from nonrecidivists at an emergency room. The third study attempts to find patient variables related to success in short-term treatment programs. The final study is aimed at discovering whether there are psychopathological effects related to the use of inhalants. Together, these studies show the potential of a mental health information system for learning more about the nature of mental disorders and their treatment.     

The roles of self-esteem and self-consciousness in the Wortman-Brehm model of reactance and learned helplessness

The present experiments were designed to study the conditions under which failure would enhance or inhibit subsequent task performance. Based on the theory of Wortman and Brehm (1975), it was expected that small amounts of failure would produce reactance (manifested by improved performance at a subsequent task), whereas large amounts would lead to learned helplessness (i.e., impaired later performance). It was further expected that individual differences in self-esteem and private self-consciousness would serve as moderator variables for the above effects. In Experiment 1, subjects were exposed to either a small amount of failure or no failure before working on an anagrams task. As predicted, subjects high in self-consciousness, who have shown greater reactance arousal in attitude change studies, performed better on the anagrams task than subjects low in self-consciousness in the small-failure condition, but not in the no-failure condition. Further analyses revealed that this Self-Consciousness X Small Failure interaction was attributable to the performance data of the low, but not the high self-esteem subjects. Experiment 2 was designed to replicate and extend these results. Subjects were pretreated with either a small amount of failure, an extended amount of failure, or no failure before working on the anagrams task. A significant Self-Esteem X Helplessness Training interaction emerged. Relative to the no-failure condition, in which the two self-esteem groups did not differ, low self-esteem participants (low SEs) performed marginally better than did high self-esteem individuals (high SEs) in the small-failure condition but significantly worse than high SEs in the extended-failure condition. The effect of private self-consciousness was considerably weaker in this study, possibly because the sample included few low SEs (who are especially influenced by self-focused attention) who were also relatively low in self-consciousness. Questionnaire data from Experiment 2 were consistent with the notion that enhanced performance reflected reactance, whereas impaired performance signified helplessness.     

Sensory and non-sensory factors and the concept of externality in obese subjects

9 obese and 9 normal subjects performed a psychophysical task in which food- or non-food-related stimuli were briefly flashed tachistoscopically at a speed and intensity near the visual threshold. A signal was presented on one-half the trials and noise only on the other one-half of the trials. Using signal detection theory methodology, separate measures of sensory sensitivity (d') and response bias (beta) were calculated. No differences were noted between obese and normal subjects on measures of sensory sensitivity but significant differences on response bias. Obese subjects had consistently lower response criteria than normal ones. Analysis for subjects categorized by whether they were restrained or unrestrained eaters gave findings identical to those for obese and normal. The importance of using a methodology that separates sensory and non-sensory factors in research on obesity is discussed.