Validity and reliability of the panic attack symptoms and cognitions questionnaires

The present article reports on the development and validation of two self-report instruments designed to assess the symptoms and cognitions associated with panic attacks. The Panic Attack Symptoms Questionnaire (PASQ) as well as the Panic Attack Cognitions Questionnaire (PACQ) successfully differentiated a group of anxiety-disordered individuals with panic attacks from a group of anxiety-disordered individuals without panic attacks. Reliability estimates based on Cronbach's alpha were adequate, and two discriminant functions designed to determine whether each of these questionnaires contributed uniquely to the separation of individuals with and without panic attacks beyond that provided by standard measures of anxiety and depression supported the validity of these questionnaires. The PASQ and PACQ appear to be useful vehicles for assessing the presence and severity of panic attacks.     

Functional equivalence classes in rats: Repeated olfactory discrimination reversals and delayed stimulus probes

The simultaneous matching-to-sample procedures that are widely used to study stimulus equivalence in human participants have generally been unsuccessful in animals. However, functional equivalence classes have been demonstrated in pigeons and sea lions using a concurrent repeated reversal discrimination procedure. In this procedure, responding to one set of stimuli is reinforced but responding to a different set is not and the set associated with reinforcement is changed with multiple reversals during the experiment. The experiments reported here were designed to assess whether functional equivalence classes could be demonstrated in rats using similar techniques. Rats were initially trained with two sets of olfactory stimuli (six odors/set). Following many reversals, probe reversal sessions were conducted in which rats were exposed to a subset of the members of each set and, later in the session, the withheld stimuli were introduced. Responding to these delayed probe trials in accord with the reversed contingencies constituted transfer of function. There was some evidence of transfer in Experiment 1, but the effects were relatively weak and variable. Experiment 2 introduced procedural changes and found strong evidence of transfer of function consistent with the formation of functional equivalence classes. These procedures offer a promising strategy to study symbolic behavior in rodents.     

Retroactive interference from translation equivalents: Implications for first language forgetting

First language vocabulary is vulnerable to forgetting after massive exposure to a second language. Two possible factors responsible for the forgetting are degree of semantic overlap between concepts in the two languages and amount of second language exposure. In a laboratory simulation of the language forgetting situation, participants received 10 exposures to a list of words in a foreign language, followed by 2, 5, 10, or 15 exposures to a list in a second foreign language. The second list consisted of either translation equivalents or new concepts. Participants were then tested for retention of the first list. More retroactive interference was found for translation equivalents than for new concepts and for higher degrees of exposure to the second list. When retention of the first list was broken down in terms of gains and losses, effects of both similarity of the second list to the first and amount of exposure to the second list were found only for losses--a fact that points to lack of discriminability as one of the underlying causes of forgetting. Overall, the experimental paradigm proved useful for exploring and developing theories about the causes of first language forgetting.     

Bodies at Menarche: Stories of Shame, Concealment, and Sexual Maturation

This study examines the embodied nature of menarche through a focus on themes of shame, concealment, and sexual maturation. Using a narrative analysis, it examines menarche stories of 155 undergraduates in the Pacific Northwest, USA, aged 21 years and younger, who started their periods between 1999 and 2003 and who grew up in a culture with changing attitudes and practices about women and the body. Unlike findings from past studies and those with older participants, women reported more positive experiences of menarche. While these data provide evidence for changing attitudes and practices associated with menarche, they may also reflect cultural changes that increasingly commodify the female body and encourage girls to identify the maturing female body as an asset.     

Children discard a resource to avoid inequity

Elucidating how inequity aversion (a tendency to dislike and correct unequal outcomes) functions as one develops is important to understanding more complex fairness considerations in adulthood. Although previous research has demonstrated that adults and children reduce inequity, it is unclear if people are actually responding negatively to inequity or if people dislike others getting more than them (motivated by social comparison) and like to share maximal resources, especially with those who have few resources (motivated by social welfare preferences). In order to evaluate if children are truly averse to inequity, we had 3- to 8-year-old children distribute resources to 3rd parties and found that 6- to 8-year-old children would rather throw a resource in the trash than distribute unequally, suggesting that concerns with equity can trump concerns with maximal sharing. We also demonstrated that children's reactions were not based on wanting to avoid upsetting the recipients or based on a preference for visual symmetry and that children will even throw away a resource that could have gone to themselves in order to avoid inequity. These results demonstrate the existence of inequity aversion in children, provide a new method for studying inequity aversion specifically, and suggest the need for new models to explain why inequity aversion may have evolved.     

Differential Susceptibility Effects: The Interaction of Negative Emotionality and Sibling Relationship Quality on Childhood Internalizing Problems and Social Skills

Whereas socialization influences in early childhood have been linked to children's emerging internalizing problems and prosocial behavior, relatively few studies have examined how NE might moderate such associations in both advantageous and maladaptive ways. Furthermore, more research is needed to evaluate the impact of sibling relationships as an influential socialization influence on these child outcomes. In the current study we examined how NE might differentially moderate the associations between quality of relationships with siblings and both internalizing problems and social skills at school entry. NE moderated the effects of positive and destructive sibling relationship quality on child internalizing problems. Specifically, for boys high on NE, more positive sibling relationship quality predicted fewer internalizing problems, but more destructive sibling conflict predicted more internalizing problems. NE also moderated the effects of destructive sibling conflict on child social skills. For boys high on NE, destructive sibling conflict predicted fewer social skills. Boys high on NE appear to show greater susceptibility to the effects of sibling socialization on child outcomes, relative to boys low on NE. The implications of these interactions are discussed with respect to differential susceptibility theory.     

The Isolation of Motivational, Motoric, and Schedule Effects on Operant Performance: A Modeling Approach

Dissociating motoric and motivational effects of pharmacological manipulations on operant behavior is a substantial challenge. To address this problem, we applied a response‐bout analysis to data from rats trained to lever press for sucrose on variable‐interval (VI) schedules of reinforcement. Motoric, motivational, and schedule factors (effort requirement, deprivation level, and schedule requirements, respectively) were manipulated. Bout analysis found that interresponse times (IRTs) were described by a mixture of two exponential distributions, one characterizing IRTs within response bouts, another characterizing intervals between bouts. Increasing effort requirement lengthened the shortest IRT (the refractory period between responses). Adding a ratio requirement increased the length and density of response bouts. Both manipulations also decreased the bout‐initiation rate. In contrast, food deprivation only increased the bout‐initiation rate. Changes in the distribution of IRTs over time showed that responses during extinction were also emitted in bouts, and that the decrease in response rate was primarily due to progressively longer intervals between bouts. Taken together, these results suggest that changes in the refractory period indicate motoric effects, whereas selective alterations in bout initiation rate indicate incentive‐motivational effects. These findings support the use of response‐bout analyses to identify the influence of pharmacological manipulations on processes underlying operant performance.