Attraction to a dissimilar stranger as a function of level of effectance arousal

An experiment was carried out to demonstrate that the relationship between attitudes of a stranger and attraction to that stranger can be mediated by effectance arousal and the consequent information search to reduce the arousal. The argument posited was that individuals under high effectance arousal produced by a confusing and ambiguous film would be attracted to dissimilar others as a source of information and uncertainty reduction. Results indicated that high levels of arousal produced greater attraction to a dissimilar stranger than to a similar stranger. This finding was reversed when an explanation was provided along with the confusing film, lending support to the uncertainty reduction position.     

A Secondary Analysis of Integrated Pediatric Chronic Pain Services Related to Cost Savings

Youth with chronic pain have high healthcare utilization and associated costs. Research supports integrated treatment; though, it’s unclear which treatments are used and cost-effective. This study expands on work that found reduced service use and cost savings following participation in an outpatient integrated pediatric pain clinic. We explored which services were commonly used and which individual (psychotherapy, medication management, acupuncture, massage, biofeedback) and/or combinations of services were associated with service use reduction and cost savings. Medication management and psychotherapy were more common than complementary integrative medicine (CIM) services. Massage services were associated with reduced inpatient costs. There were trends of fewer emergency department visits for participants who received CIM services in addition to medication management and psychotherapy, and more visits for those with biofeedback. Findings suggest that a more detailed examination of service utilization is needed to better understand cost outcomes related to the integrated treatment of pediatric chronic pain.

     

What is the value of mentoring in a small business? Using narrative evaluation to find out

The paper examines the case of one small business manager (Alistair) and the value he gave to a mentoring intervention demonstrated by the use of narrative evaluation. Doubts about the efficacy of orthodox approaches to evaluation when applied to management development activities lead to the view that narratives are more appropriate. Narrative evaluation techniques are applied to a story told by Alistair, the Managing Director of a small business in Sheffield, concerning his view of his involvement in a mentoring programme. Alistair's initial reservations about the value of the programme are revealed rhetorically through a range of arguments. After such doubts, through a process of conversation, the story reveals how Alistair is able to find value from mentoring.     

Learning and forgetting in schizophrenia

Recent studies of patients with schizophrenia have consistently demonstrated marked deficits on measures of initial learning. However, contradictory results have been reported concerning retention and forgetting. The present study examined the level of initial and delayed recall of stories and visual figures in a group of 76 patients with schizophrenia and 51 normal controls. Schizophrenia patients demonstrated marked impairments in initial and delayed recall as well as significantly worse percentage retention scores. However, schizophrenia patients and healthy controls individually matched on level of initial recall had nearly identical delayed recall performance. The results suggest a primary deficit in the initial acquisition of information rather than an accelerated rate of forgetting in schizophrenia.     

Factors Related to Inconsistent Career Preferences

A sample of entering college freshmen was divided into 2 groups on the basis of the consistency or inconsistency of their first and second career preferences. The two groups were compared on several family and personal factors in order to identify variables that are related to inconsistencies in career preferences. The groups were observed to be somewhat different in the general level of their academic ability and the degree to which their interests were supported by SVIB results. No significant family differences between the two groups were observed. These findings were tentatively interpreted as implying that the inconsistency of career preference was more likely to be the result of the student's recognition of his limited abilities than the other variables examined in this study.     

The Anatomy of Revolutionists

A questionnaire containing 62 items relating to the New Left and 28 items measuring anomia, authoritarianism, and Machiavellianism was given to 153 entering freshmen at Columbia in the fall of 1968. The five factors emerging from a factor analysis of responses to the items were labeled: New Left Philosophy, Revolutionary Tactics, Machiavellian Tactics, Machiavellian Cynicism, and Traditional Moralism. Students who had been politically active prior to coming to college scored higher than the rest of the group on New Left Philosophy, Revolutionary Tactics, and Machiavellian Cynicism, but scored lower on Machiavellian'Tactics and Traditional Moralism. In the spring of 1969, a revised set of items was given to students in introductory psychology classes at Columbia University and New York University. While the findings from these subjects replicated those found with the Columbia freshmen, they showed subtle differences which led to speculations about the radicalization process. Also discussed are the relationships between the nature of political participation and all of the factors, with special emphasis on the discrepancy between Machiavellian Tactics and Cynicism.     

Intrahippocampal infusions of anisomycin produce amnesia: Contribution of increased release of norepinephrine,dopamine, and acetylcholine

Intra-amygdala injections of anisomycin produce large increases in the release of norepinephrine (NE), dopamine (DA), and serotonin in the amygdala. Pretreatment with intra-amygdala injections of the β-adrenergic receptor antagonist propranolol attenuates anisomycin-induced amnesia without reversing the inhibition of protein synthesis, and injections of NE alone produce amnesia. These findings suggest that abnormal neurotransmitter responses may be the basis for amnesia produced by inhibition of protein synthesis. The present experiment extends these findings to the hippocampus and adds acetylcholine (ACh) to the list of neurotransmitters affected by anisomycin. Using in vivo microdialysis at the site of injection, release of NE, DA, and ACh was measured before and after injections of anisomycin into the hippocampus. Anisomycin impaired inhibitory avoidance memory when rats were tested 48 h after training and also produced substantial increases in local release of NE, DA, and ACh. In an additional experiment, pretreatment with intrahippocampal injections of propranolol prior to anisomycin and training significantly attenuated anisomycin-induced amnesia. The disruption of neurotransmitter release patterns at the site of injection appears to contribute significantly to the mechanisms underlying amnesia produced by protein synthesis inhibitors, calling into question the dominant interpretation that the amnesia reflects loss of training-initiated protein synthesis necessary for memory formation. Instead, the findings suggest that proteins needed for memory formation are available prior to an experience, and that post-translational modifications of these proteins may be sufficient to enable the formation of new memories.A dominant view of the molecular basis for memory is that the formation of long-term memory for an experience depends on de novo protein synthesis initiated by that experience (Davis and Squire 1984; Frey and Morris 1998; Kandel 2001; Dudai 2002; Nader 2003; Alberini 2008). This view is supported by numerous studies showing that drugs that interfere with protein synthesis by inhibiting translational processes near the time of training produce later amnesia.Despite the centrality of experience-induced protein synthesis in contemporary models of memory formation, the necessity of protein synthesis for memory consolidation and long-term potentiation (LTP) stabilization has been questioned since the beginning of experiments of this type (e.g., Flexner and Goodman 1975; Barraco and Stettner 1976; Flood et al. 1978; Martinez et al. 1981), and continues to be questioned in several recent reviews (Routtenberg and Rekart 2005; Gold 2006, 2008; Radulovic and Tronson 2008; Routtenberg 2008; Rudy 2008). There are many instances of intact memories formed in the presence of extensive inhibition of protein synthesis, and a wide range of behavioral and pharmacological manipulations can rescue memory impaired by protein synthesis inhibitors. For example, amnesia is attenuated in a graded manner by increasing the training trials and foot shock intensity in avoidance tasks (Flood et al. 1975, 1978). Moreover, a wide range of stimulants, such as amphetamine, strychnine, corticosteroids, and caffeine, block amnesia induced by anisomycin (Flood et al. 1978). Like memory, LTP is sometimes insensitive to protein synthesis inhibitors. Simultaneous inhibition of both protein synthesis and degradation does not interfere with induction and maintenance of LTP (Fonseca et al. 2006a). Also, the specific schedule and frequency of test pulses after induction of LTP determine the vulnerability of LTP to anisomycin-induced impairment; anisomycin treatment does not impair LTP unless test pulses at a rate of 1/10 sec were administered during the anisomycin exposure (Fonseca et al. 2006b).Findings that memory and LTP can survive the inhibition of protein synthesis challenge the necessity of specific training- or stimulation-initiated protein synthesis for memory formation and synaptic plasticity. Several actions of protein synthesis inhibitors offer alternative accounts for amnesia produced by these drugs. These include cell sickness (Rudy et al. 2006; Rudy 2008), activation of protein kinases and superinduction of immediate early genes (Radulovic and Tronson 2008), abnormal neural electrical activity (Agnihotri et al. 2004; Xu et al. 2005), and intrusion of neural “noise” that masks the primary changes representing memory formation (Gold 2006). Neural responses to inhibition of protein synthesis such as these may impair memory either secondary to or independent of interference with protein synthesis.Another example of the mechanisms by which inhibition of protein synthesis might impair memory is by altering neurotransmitter functions. This possibility was suggested in early studies (e.g., Flexner and Goodman 1975; Quartermain et al. 1977) and has recently been supported by studies of neurotransmitter release at the site of intra-amygdala injections of anisomycin (Canal et al. 2007). In addition to impairing later memory after inhibitory avoidance training, pretraining injections of anisomycin into the amygdala produced rapid and dramatic increases in release of norepinephrine (NE), dopamine (DA), and serotonin (5-HT) at the sites of injection. The release of NE and DA then plummeted below baselines from 2 to 6 h after anisomycin injections, recovering within 48 h after anisomycin injection. The possibility that these neurochemical changes contribute to anisomycin-induced amnesia was supported by studies showing attenuation of amnesia in rats pretreated with intra-amygdala injections of the β-adrenergic receptor antagonist propranolol, apparently acting to blunt the effects of the large increases in release of NE after anisomycin injection. In addition, amnesia was produced by injections of high doses of norepinephrine into the amygdala.In addition to amnesias produced by anisomycin injections into the amygdala, as above, anisomycin also impairs memory when administered to other memory systems, including the hippocampus, where anisomycin impairs inhibitory avoidance memory (Quevedo et al. 1999; Debiec et al. 2002; Milekic et al. 2006). The present study extends the prior findings (Canal et al. 2007) in several respects. Experiments presented here determine whether anisomycin injections into the hippocampus result in changes in release of the catecholamines, NE and DA, at the site of injection, as seen previously in the amygdala. Additionally, the present experiments determine whether intrahippocampal injections of anisomycin result in increased release of acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter not examined in the previous study. To examine parallels with earlier amygdala findings, a further experiment determines whether intrahippocampal pretreatment with propranolol is effective in attenuating anisomycin-induced amnesia.