An automated swim alley for small animals: I. Instrumentation

A swim alley for testing the long-term performance capacity of rats is described. Rats swim back and forth in an alley, in temperature-controlled water, between platforms that are alternately and automatically raised and lowered. At the end of each traverse, an animal is allowed to rest on a raised platform for a period of time before the platform is lowered, which initiates the next traverse. Continuous measurement is made of speed of movement between platforms.     

Social facilitation in a coaction setting: An examination of the effects over learning trials

Zajonc's proposal that the presence of others facilitates emission of dominant responses was examined in a coaction setting with human maze learning. On a maze where dominant responses were likely to be correct, coacting subjects made fewer errors than those working alone. On a maze where dominant responses were likely to be incorrect, subjects performing alone made fewer errors than those coacting. Investigation of task performance at different stages in learning showed that a change in the rate of learning corresponded to a change in the dominant response from incorrect to correct. It was concluded that the presence of others has a facilitative effect on the dominant response, hindering learning when the dominant response is incorrect and helping learning when the dominant response is correct. Coaction effects were extremely pronounced in females but almost nonexistent in males.     

Relateline: An evaluation of a telephone helpline counselling service for marital problems

A year's entries in the log-book of a Relate (Marriage Guidance) Helpline telephone service were examined and analysed. The data recorded there enabled the researchers to collect and evaluate information about the callers, their problems and the responses made by the counsellors. The aims of the service were to offer a prompt response to people whose relationships were in difficulty and were unable to wait for a face-to-face appointment, and to relieve the pressure on the normal counselling service. An assessment of the value of the telephone service is made in the light of these aims. Some of the results are presented and discussed.     

Responses to Marriage Counselling

The experiences of clients who received marital counselling from trained volunteer marriage guidance counsellors were investigated. Fifty-one clients from 42 marriages were interviewed and questioned about why they chose the agency, what expectations they held, what happened during counselling, how they felt about the counsellor, and what if anything was achieved through counselling. They were also asked how they had fared since. Rating scales were used after the interview to evaluate satisfaction with counselling, benefit from counselling, aspects of the counselling relationship, etc. The clients were also asked to do a card-sort of statements about counselling to determine what aspects had been valuable and disappointing. Some of the preliminary results of the study are presented and discussed.     

An introduction to structured programming

Structured programming (SP) is a technique devised to improve the reliability and clarity of programs. In SP, control of program flow is restricted to three structures, sequence, IF THEN ELSE, and DO WHILE, or to a structure derivable from a combination of the basic three. Thus, a structured program does not need to use GO TOs or branches (unless it is written in a language that does not have statement forms corresponding to the SP structures, in which case, GO TOs may be used to simulate the structures). The result is a program built of modules that are highly independent of each other. In turn, this allows a programmer to be more confident that the code contains fewer logic errors and will be easier to debug and change in the future. However, SP may be less efficient than an unstructured counterpart. Another disadvantage is the relative difficulty of using SP with a language that doesn’t support it, although this situation is changing as languages are updated (e.g., FORTRAN 77).