Stress Management and the Motives of Restorative Events at the United States Coast Guard Academy

The United States Coast Guard Academy seeks to develop leaders of character to become officers and manage its numerous missions. During training, cadets receive multiple stressors from their academic, military, and athletic responsibilities, not to mention the social stressors of friends and family. To become leaders of character, cadets need to effectively manage these stressors. This study reviewed cadets' motives leading to effective and noneffective stress management techniques they employed. During the winter of 2008, cadets described their stressors and stress reduction techniques (restorative events) and evaluated their efficacy based on the factors of attention restoration theory (ART). Discriminant analysis identified several motives associated with restorative events; however, many of the common events employed by cadets did not include components of ART, indicating that these events may not be effectively mitigating stress. A follow-up logistic regression indicated that stress reduction was based on restorative events performed to escape routine and role overloads, provide achievement, teach or share skills, and enjoy nature. Events affording low restoration involved motives of physical rest, learning, and physical fitness. Recommendations to improve cadets' stress management are discussed.     

Balanced incomplete blocks to control individual differences

Balanced incomplete block designs are used when there are reasons that preclude the use of repeated measurements designs, particularly when there are at least two factors, each with several levels. However, these designs are usually not used when interaction effects are of interest, because they involve the confounding of the interactions with subject or group differences. This paper describes special computational procedures that can be employed to obtain partial, but unconfounded, information about interaction effects.     

Pavlovian conditional stimuli cannot always be defined solely in physical terms

Twenty-four university students received differential Pavlovian conditioning with two colored stimuli separately accompanied by shock, and two other colored stimuli separately presented without shock. The reinforced and nonreinforced pairs of stimuli both contained complementary elements. After differentiation between the reinforced and nonreinforced elements was established, the complementary pairs were each additively mixed, (i.e., presented at the same time and in the same locus), producing two identical white compounds (established by pilot study). The subjects’ skin-conductance responses to the two compounds showed that their different conditioning histories did not result in different responses. Rather, a simple declining function was obtained, resembling habituation or extinction. It was concluded that the definition of the conditional stimulus as a physical event is inappropriate in studies in which physically different stimuli may result in identical internal processes (or phenomenologic experiences)—for example, in additive color mixture.     

Paired comparison scaling of reaction potential from simultaneous measurements of GSR and looking time

Thurstone’s method of scaling from paired comparison data was employed to obtain estimates of reaction potential on eight successive presentations of randomly generated polygons. One set of scale values was based upon the magnitude of the GSR made by each of 40 Ss to the onset of each stimulus. Another set of scale values was based upon the Ss looking times, when the S was instructed to press a switch to terminate the stimulus after he finished looking at it. Following termination of each stimulus, a 20-sec period of no stimulation intervened prior to the next stimulus. The GSR reduced in size from trial to trial, describing a typical habituation curve, while looking time increased from trial to trial. Across trials the two sets of scale values were significantly negatively correlated (r=?0.91). The failure to find habituation of looking time was explained on the assumption that the 20-sec period between stimuli was noxious to the Ss, which resulted in longer and longer looking times across trials. These results were interpreted as indicating that habituation of the GSR is not merely a matter of reduced attention in the cognitive sense. In addition, it was pointed out that the use of orienting reflex concepts in dealing with attentional and other cognitive phenomena may be unjustified.     

Extinction instead of incubation following classical aversive conditioning in dogs

Two dogs received a single paired classical conditioning trial, with tone CS and 12 mA shock US. Both dogs then showed a conditioned blood pressure increase in response to the nonreinforced CS, which extinguished with additional nonreinforced presentations. The CR showed spontaneous recovery four days later, but reextinguished with additional nonreinforced presentations. The results were interpreted as not supporting Eysenck’s theory of “incubation” following one-trial aversive conditioning. Partial support for this study was provided by Grant 28462 from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.