Anorexic eating attitudes and behaviors of male and female college students

This study examined gender differences in eating attitudes and behaviors in a sample of 471 undergraduate college students. The prevalence of symptomatology indicative of anorexia was determined using the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26). In addition, the family climate, parent-child dynamics, and self-concept of students with and without maladaptive eating attitudes and behaviors were compared, and the relationship between eating attitudes/behaviors and current psychological distress was examined. Anorexic symptomatology was found for 20% of the females and 10% of the males. In general, students without symptomatic attitudes and behaviors had a more positive self-concept and reported less psychological distress than did those with eating disturbances. The findings suggest that eating problems may be more prevalent among males than previously estimated.     

Stress as a predictor of the quality of parent-infant interactions.

Three predictor variables--vulnerability to stress, expectations for parenting stress, and low power attributions--were assessed for 21 couples during pregnancy. In-home observations of parent-infant interactions occurred 4 months postnatally. Stepwise multiple regression analyses, calculated separately for mothers and fathers, revealed that prenatal stress factors were more successful in predicting father-infant interactions. On the interaction variable basic care, 67% of the variance was explained by fathers' parenting stress expectations, stress vulnerability, and attributions for low power, whereas only 2% of the variance on basic care was explained by maternal scores on the same variables. Results of this study indicated that parent-infant interactions are affected by parental attitudes and personality characteristics. The present research also underscored the continued need to study the differential effects of gender on parent-infant interactions.     

Suggestibility and type of interpersonal relationship: Special implications for the patient-practitioner relationship

Suggestibility was assessed in five conditions by the subject's response to suggestions falsely labeled as matters of fact. These misrepresentations of fact, or virtual suggestions, denoted a variety of hallucinations, an anesthesia, and an amnesia. They were administered as incidental intrusions while the subject was involved in the primary experimental task. In three of these conditions, the subject either observed his own spontaneous visual imagery, observed visual scenes provided by the experimenter, or simply waited with closed eyes for the presentation of the virtual stimuli. These conditions were characterized by a passive-receptive, interpersonal relationship in which the subject remained silent. Suggestibility was expected to be high. In a fourth condition the subjects described spontaneous visual imagery. This was characterized as an active-receptive relationship in which speech was maintained throughout. The suggestibility of the three passive-receptive conditions was comparable, and none of them differed from a baseline condition involving the formal induction of hypnosis. However, the fourth, active-receptive condition was significantly lower, and this difference survived a replication. Of special interest was the induction of an anesthesia in the majority of subjects in the three passive-receptive conditions.     

Effects of varied response modes upon dichotic consonant-vowel identification latency

Reaction times for two right-handed subjects who received 6000 trials of dichotic stop-vowels were obtained under response conditions involving the left hand, right hand, and neck muscles. Results indicated latencies were shorter (150+ msec) when targets were presented to the right rather than the left ear. Large and stable differences in latencies remained invariant with the mode of response. Reaction times did not vary as a function of the target's place or manner of articulation. The relationship between obtained measures of latency and percentage correct ruled out speed-accuracy trade-offs as a source of the obtained differences in latencies.     

Positive conditioned suppression: an explanation in terms of multiple and concurrent schedules

Rats performed under a baseline variable-interval schedule of food presentation. A response-independent food schedule was then superimposed on the baseline schedule for different periods of time across different conditions. The response-independent schedule operated for the whole session in some conditions, intermittently for sixty second periods in some, and intermittently for ten-second periods in others. Under these latter two sets of conditions, the response-independent food schedule was stimulus correlated and alternated with the baseline schedule according to a multiple schedule. Response-independent food presentations always suppressed responding. The degree of suppression tended to increase the longer the period of response-independent food. Control conditions, in which the superimposed schedule was response-dependent, rather than response-independent, did not produce response suppression. The results fit an analysis of positive conditioned suppression phenomena in the context of multiple and concurrent schedule effects.     

Behavioral Approach System (BAS) Sensitivity and Bipolar Spectrum Disorders: A Retrospective and Concurrent Behavioral High-Risk Design

In this article, we tested the vulnerability hypothesis of the behavioral approach system (BAS) hypersensitivity model of bipolar disorders. We examined whether self-reported BAS sensitivity predicts lifetime bipolar spectrum diagnoses as well as symptoms and personality characteristics associated with bipolar disorder using a retrospective and concurrent behavioral high-risk design. Participants with high (HBAS; n=28) or moderate (MBAS; n=24) BAS sensitivity were selected and given a lifetime psychiatric diagnostic interview and self-report measures of proneness to bipolar symptoms, current symptoms, and personality characteristics relevant to bipolarity. HBAS participants were significantly and substantially more likely to have a lifetime bipolar spectrum disorder diagnosis than were MBAS participants, but did not differ from MBAS participants in their likelihood of a unipolar depression diagnosis. Also, the HBAS group exhibited higher impulsivity and proneness to hypomanic symptoms than the MBAS group, and BAS-reward responsiveness predicted hypomanic personality characteristics. Finally, high behavioral inhibition system (BIS) sensitivity was associated with proneness to and current depressive symptoms.