The Declining course of recognition memory

Recognition memory for words can decline, sometimes precipitously, over the course of the recognition test. Decrements of as much as 75% in d’ have been observed from the first quarter of testing to the last. and decrements of 40%–50% are not uncommon. Proactive mechanisms, imperfectly understood, appear to underlie such declines: Processing early input renders late input less recognizable, and making early recognition judgments renders later judgments more difficult. At the same time, the processing of late-input words fails to inhibit the recognition of the words that preceded them.     

Social workers in schools - the teachers' response

73 teachers who had participated in a school-based social work scheme completed a questionnaire which recorded their attitudes to the programme. All the teachers had been directly involved in consultations about pupil management with six specially trained social workers. The response of the teachers suggest that even with a limited amount of contact, social workers can make a positive contribution to teacher practice. The personal characteristics of the teachers did not appear to affect their responses.     

Law enforcement and crisis intervention services: a critical relationship

Law-enforcement officers tend to look at traditional mental health services as being of little help to them in dealing with persons they encounter experiencing emotional emergencies. They are frequently skeptical that emergency mental health programs offer more than they deliver. Because of their traditional base as the primary, and frequently only, available emergency "field" service in a community, a mental health emergency program must have a cooperative working relationship with law enforcement to serve a community successfully. This paper describes the development and maintenance of such a relationship, designed to increase the police case-finding potential.     

Reversible effects of ambient housing stimulation upon stimulation-seeking in rats

Two types of housing condition, low and high ambient stimulation, were alternated. The effects of this treatment upon rats' subsequent stimulation-seeking behaviour were assessed in a multiple-choice head-input apparatus. The aim of the experiment was to determine whether adult animals would adapt and re-adapt to varying periods of upward and downward shifts in the levels of housing stimulation. A given housing-stimulation had a lawfully cumulative effect which could be completely reversed when housing conditions altered. The most sensitive measures were latency and response rate in the first 5 min of the test. One measure, relative preference for illuminated stimuli over a dark stimulus, gave an indication of the time-lag involved in adaptation to a new housing condition.