Social preference in rats

Rats were given repeated choices between social and nonsocial outcomes, and between familiar and unfamiliar social outcomes. Lever presses on either of 2 levers in the middle chamber of a 3-chamber apparatus opened a door adjacent to the lever, permitting 45-s access to social interaction with the rat in the chosen side chamber. In Experiment 1, rats preferred (a) social over nonsocial options, choosing their cagemate rat over an empty chamber, and (b) an unfamiliar over a familiar rat, choosing a non-cagemate over their cagemate. These findings were replicated in Experiment 2 with 2 different non-cagemate rats. Rats preferred both non-cagemate rats to a similar degree when pitted against their cagemate, but were indifferent when the 2 non-cagemates were pitted against each other. Similar preference for social over nonsocial and non-cagemate over cagemate was seen in Experiment 3, with new non-cagemate rats introduced after every third session. Response rates (for both cagemate and non-cagemate rats) were elevated under conditions of nonsocial (isolated) housing compared to conditions of social (paired) housing, demonstrating a social deprivation effect. Together, the experiments contribute to an experimental analysis of social preference within a social reinforcement framework, drawing on methods with proven efficacy in the analysis of reinforcement more generally.     

Tool acceptance and acceptability: insights from a real tool use activity

Cognitive Processing - The issue of tool adoption has been the subject of many investigations, which focus either on acceptability (evaluating intention to use, a priori) or acceptance (evaluating...     

Gerontological Counseling Trends in Adultspan Journal: 1999–2019

Using quantitative content analysis, we categorized 76 out of 154 articles (49.35%) published in Adultspan Journal from 1999 to 2019 as focused on gerontological counseling. This study explored publication trends for these articles and compared results with a larger study (Fullen et al., 2019) on publication trends for gerontological counseling across all counseling‐related journals.     

Reducing risky behavior with habit reversal: A review of behavioral strategies to reduce habitual hand-to-head behavior

Habit reversal training (HRT) has been a mainstay of behavior analysts' repertoire for nearly the last 50 years. HRT has been effective in treating a host of repetitive behavior problems. In the face of the current coronavirus pandemic, HRT has practical public health importance as a possible intervention for reducing hand-to-head behaviors that increase the risk of viral infection. The current paper provides a brief review of HRT for hand-to-head habits that is designed for a broad audience and concludes with practical suggestions, based on HRT, for reducing face-touching behaviors.     

Gender and infant psychiatry

The practice of infant psychiatry raises theoretical and clinical issues for the feminist psychotherapist. The psychological and social development of infants, the mother-child relationship, and the role of fathers are all areas of shared concern for infant psychiatry and a feminist project. This paper argues that attention to gender as a fundamental category of analysis is crucial in order to understand the context of infant development, to develop a realistic theory of mothering that avoids both mother blaming and the idealization of mothers, and to illuminate the political content of our approaches to therapeutic intervention and research.     

Targets' Awareness of Expectations and Behavioral Confirmation in Ongoing Interactions

Participants engaged in a getting-acquainted interaction over an intercom after one participant (the perceiver) was provided with a positive (extraverted) or relatively negative (introverted) expectation about the other participant (the target). After completing evaluations of each other and the interaction, participants interacted for a second time. Prior to this second interaction, however, targets were made aware of the perceivers' initial expectation, told that it had been confirmed by their own behavior, and given a randomly assigned attribution (either dispositional or situational) about the perceived cause of their confirmatory behavior. Results demonstrated that targets made aware of dispositionally attributed and relatively negative expectations were more likely to increase in expectation-disconfirming behavior, compared to targets made aware of situationally attributed and relatively negative expectations, who were themselves more likely to continue to confirm the expectations. Implications for the study of behavioral confirmation of expectations and other interpersonal processes are discussed.     

Effects of caffeine on performance of low intensity tasks

31 college age men and women who consume less than three caffeinated beverages per week agreed to participate as subjects in research on the effects of acute caffeine intake on low intensity task performance. All subjects performed two randomly administered test conditions: (1) caffeine (5 mg/kg) and (2) placebo on separate visits following an initial 1-hr. orientation visit. Subjects were administered the beverage 30 min. prior to performing 12 separate tests assessing basic mathematics, simple response, logical reasoning, hand-eye coordination, and spatial and assembly skills. The Spielberger State Anxiety test was administered immediately after consuming the test beverage and once again at posttest. Analysis showed that caffeine did not significantly affect performance on all tests with the exception of the peripheral awareness (hand-eye coordination) test on which performance was higher after ingesting caffeine. The placebo treatment produced no effect on state anxiety, which contrasted with a significant rise in anxiety after caffeine consumption. State anxiety values were significantly greater after caffeine treatment relative to the placebo at pretest, and this difference persisted at posttest. These results demonstrated that the dose of caffeine increased scores on state anxiety for individuals who consumed less than three caffeinated beverages weekly but had very little effect on performance of low intensity tasks, except for a hand-eye coordination test involving peripheral awareness. Perhaps longer continuous performance of more demanding tasks would be more sensitive.