AN EXPERIMENTAL COMPARISON OF THREE DIFFERENT SCHEDULES OF REINFORCEMENT OF DRUG ABSTINENCE USING CIGARETTE SMOKING AS AN EXEMPLAR

The efficacy of three different schedules of reinforcement for promoting and sustaining drug abstinence was compared in this study. Cigarette smoking was studied as an exemplar of stimulant drug self-administration. Sixty cigarette smokers were assigned to one of three groups (progressive rate of reinforcement, fixed rate of reinforcement, and yoked control). Participants in all three groups were asked to refrain from smoking for 1 week. Participants in the progressive and fixed groups achieved greater mean levels of abstinence than those in the control group. Participants in the progressive group were significantly less likely to resume smoking when they became abstinent than participants in the other groups.     

Boundary regulation in family and personal systems: Perceptions of late adolescents

Examination of boundary regulation can provide family therapists with a framework to describe both the functioning of family systems and personal systems (i.e., the intrapsychic functioning of individual family members). In the present study, late adolescents' perceptions of boundary regulation within their family systems (i.e., ratings of family health, communication, leadership, expressiveness, cohesion, and family conflict) were related to regulation of their personal boundaries (i.e., self-reported personal competence, distress, and patterns of defense mechanism use). In addition, personal system variables reliably discriminated between adolescents who described their families as psychologically healthy versus psychologically unhealthy.     

Laboratory functions for the Tecmar Lab Tender and IBM PC

A set of assembly language functions has been written to interface laboratory software for the IBM PC to the Tecmar, Inc., Lab Tender circuit board. These functions provide convenient access to the Lab Tender’s parallel ports, timers, A/D converters, and D/A converters from laboratory control programs written in the C language.     

Differentiation of brain damage among low IQ subjects with three projective techniques.

Using a battery of three projective techniques (Rorschach, Hand Test, Bender-Gestalt) only slight discrimination was found between low IQ subjects classified according to the presence or absence of brain trauma (exogenous vs endogenous), while substantial discrimination was obtained between the same subjects categorized in terms of "lower" (60-74) and "higher" (75-89) FS WAIS IQ. All four groups used in this study had been first equated on sex and age. Results were interpreted as supporting the position that some sort of brain impairment underlies most or all retardation. Question was raised concerning the efficacy of projective techniques for diagnosing organicity in subjects of average or better intelligence.     

Help Seeking: Effects of Visibility of Task Performance and Seeking Help

This study manipulated independently whether help seeking and task performance were public or private, since in public settings persons may lose esteem by seeking help or by demonstrating unsuccessful performance. Subjects were given false feedback that they were doing poorly on a task involving judging levels of neuroticism in others, and were given all opportunity to seek help by consulting a set of guidelines. The main result was an interaction with help seeking most likely when task performance was public and help seeking was private.     

Vocational role choice in second- and sixth-grade children

In a replication of two investigations reported by Looft (1971a, 1971b), 40 second- and sixth-grade male and female students were interviewed concerning their desired and expected vocational aspirations. In contrast to Looft's findings, no significant sex differences were found for either grade level in (a) the number of different (nonoverlapping) vocations nominated or (b) the number of subjects changing initial vocational role choices. When the issue of traditionality of vocational choice (i.e., vocations socially identified with the sex of the subject) was examined, it was found that half of the sixth-grade females interviewed nominated nontraditional vocations (e.g., basketball player, police officer). It was observed further that males in both the second- and sixth-grade samples overwhelmingly nominated traditional vocations. Contrary to Looft's interpretation, the findings suggest that although goals associated with the women's liberation movement (e.g., changes in sex-role expectations) are not demonstrated clearly in the vocational aspirations or expectations of young children, they may be reflected in the aspirations of adolescent females.     

Beauty Is Only "Name" Deep: The Effect of First-Name On Ratings of Physical Attraction

College students ( n = 197) voted to select a beauty queen from among six photographs equivalent in physical attractiveness, as determined by rankings of 35 students from a separate university. Half the photographs bore a desirable first-name and half were assigned an undesirable first-name. As predicted, firstname had a significant effect on physical attraction: Girls with desirable firstnames received 158 votes to 39 for those with undesirable names. These data were discussed in terms of an additive, rather than an interactive, effect, due to the nature of the task. The strength of these findings was related to the study's ecological validity.