Individual differences in the verbal coding of familiar visual stimuli

Two experiments were performed both of which involved the same-different comparison of pairs of alphabet letters. "Same" reaction times were obtained for both physical matches (e.g., AA) and name matches (e.g., aA). The results of both experiments supported the hypothesis that individual subjects would differ with respect to whether or not they based their physical matches on a comparison of verbal codes. In Experiment I, subjects differed in the size of their reaction time difference between physical and name matches, and in Experiment II, individuals differed with respect to whether or not the frequency of usage of the letters affected their reaction time for physical matches. In both experiments, the individual differences in verbally coding physical matches were related to Hock's (1973) individual differences distinction between subjects emphasizing analytic processes and subjects emphasizing structural processes.     

Clinical Exchange: The Architectural Failure

The Clinical Exchange invites eminent clinicians of diverse persuasions to share, in ordinary language, their clinical formulations and treatment plans of the same psychotherapy patient—one not selected or nominated by those therapists—and then to discuss points of convergence and contention in their recommendations. This Exchange concerns a Mr. L, a 47-year-old, married man presenting for outpatient individual psychotherapy with chief complaints of depression, anxiety, and a lengthy history of vocational underachievement. Drs. Herbert Fensterheim, Leslie Greenberg, and Leigh McCullough, who anchor their practices in the cognitive-behavioral, experiential, and psychodynamic orientations, respectively, are the featured commentators. Finally, Dr. Jerold Gold, the case contributor and Mr. L's psychotherapist, provides a few closing comments.     

Glucose modulation of memory storage processing

Epinephrine, derived from the adrenal medulla, enhances memory storage for several forms of learning. One physiological action of this hormone is to liberate hepatic glucose stores. This experiment tested the possibility that glucose could itself enhance memory. Rats were water deprived, pretrained to drink, pretrained to drink in the behavioral apparatus, and then trained in a one-trial inhibitory (passive) avoidance task. Immediately after the training footshock, the animals each received an injection of glucose (1.0-500 mg/kg). When tested for retention 24 h later, the animals which received 10 or 100 mg/kg doses of glucose exhibited enhanced retention performance; higher and lower doses had no significant effect on the memory tests. Also, glucose injections (100 mg/kg) delayed by 1 h after training had no effect on the retention tests. These findings suggest that the increase in plasma glucose levels subsequent to epinephrine injection may contribute to the effects of epinephrine on memory. In addition, the results suggest that peripheral glucose levels may exert important influences on memory storage.     

Male teacher effects on young children: A theoretical and empirical consideration

The argument has been frequently made that an increase in the number of male teachers working at the early school levels would reduce the number of school-related problems for boys. This argument is evaluated in the context of two major theories of sex-role development, the social learning and cognitive developmental theories, and the results of an examination of the studies of children's performance and development in relation to teacher's gender. The hypothesis that male teachers reduce boys' problems in school does not receive much support empirically or theoretically.This work was supported by a grant from the Quebec Department of Education to the first author.     

Intact attentional control of working memory encoding in schizophrenia

This study reports evidence that individuals with schizophrenia (SC) demonstrate intact attentional selection for visual working memory (WM) storage. A group of 62 participants with SC and 55 control participants without SC were studied in a series of 5 experiments that examined the ability to use top-down and bottom-up cues to guide WM encoding, as well as the ability to spontaneously select a subset of representations for storage. Participants with SC exhibited a consistent and robust ability to use selective attention in the control of WM in all 5 experiments, demonstrating a remarkable island of preserved functioning given the broad spectrum of impairments of attention and WM that have been widely reported in those with SC. These findings indicate that attention is not globally impaired in SC and make it possible to delineate more precisely the nature of the specific impairment of attention in this disorder.     

Acetylcholine release in the hippocampus and striatum during place and response training

These experiments examined the release of acetylcholine in the hippocampus and striatum when rats were trained, within single sessions, on place or response versions of food-rewarded mazes. Microdialysis samples of extra-cellular fluid were collected from the hippocampus and striatum at 5-min increments before, during, and after training. These samples were later analyzed for ACh content using HPLC methods. In Experiment 1, ACh release in both the hippocampus and striatum increased during training on both the place and response tasks. The magnitude of increase of training-related ACh release in the striatum was greater in rats trained on the response task than in rats trained on the place task, while the magnitude of ACh release in the hippocampus was comparable in the two tasks. Experiment 2 tested the possibility that the hippocampus was engaged and participated in learning the response task, as well as the place task, because of the availability of extra-maze cues. Rats were trained on a response version of a maze under either cue-rich or cue-poor conditions. The findings indicate that ACh release in the hippocampus increased similarly under both cue conditions, but declined during training on the cue-poor condition, when spatial processing by the hippocampus would not be suitable for solving the maze. In addition, high baseline levels of ACh release in the hippocampus predicted rapid learning in the cue-rich condition and slow learning in the cue-poor condition. These findings suggest that ACh release in the hippocampus augments response learning when extra-maze cues can be used to solve the maze but impairs response learning when extra-maze cues are not available for use in solving the maze.