The role of suggestions and personality characteristics in producing illness reports and desires for suing the responsible party

For this project, 92 students entered an abandoned theater room in an old basement of the university where sand was scattered throughout. The purpose of the study was to experimentally demonstrate that psychological suggestions could produce illness reports and to explore who is most likely to say that they would sue for personal damages. The students filled out the Trait-State Anger Scale and two subscales, Anger Temperament and Anger Reaction (C. D. Spielberger, G. A. Jacobs, S. Russell, & R. S. Crance, 1983) as well as the Costello-Comrey Anxiety Scale (G. C. Costello & A. L. Comrey, 1967), the Hardiness Inventory (S. C. Kobasa, 1982), the Pennebaker Inventory of Limbic Languidness (J. W. Pennebaker, 1982), and, embedded in the Hardiness Inventory, measures of current illness as a result of exposure to the basement room. Half the participants were met by a confederate student who claimed to be cleaning up the remains of a production of "Lawrence of Arabia," and the other half were met by a confederate construction worker who claimed that "The stuff will tear up your skin and your lungs." Those in the experimental groups who perceived danger and scored low in the hardiness dimension of challenge were more likely to report symptoms of illness. Willingness to file a law suit was predicted by a model including perceived danger and the personality characteristic of anger reactivity.     

A component analysis of "stereotypy as reinforcement" for alternative behavior

Results from several studies have suggested that the opportunity to engage in stereotypic behavior may function as reinforcement for alternative, more socially desirable behaviors. However, the procedural components of this intervention include several distinct operations whose effects have not been analyzed separately. While measuring the occurrence of stereotypy and an alternative behavior (manipulation of leisure materials), we exposed 3 participants to three or four components of a "stereotypy as reinforcement" contingency: (a) continuous access to materials, (b) prompts to manipulate materials, (c) restricted access to stereotypy (i.e., response blocking), and (d) access to stereotypy contingent on manipulating the materials. Continuous access to materials and prompting (a and b) produced negligible results. Restriction of stereotypy (c) produced a large increase in the alternative behavior of 2 participants, suggesting that response restriction per se may occasion alternative behavior. However, contingent access to stereotypy (d) was necessary to increase the 3rd participant's object manipulation; this finding provided some support for the use of stereotypy as reinforcement for alternative behavior. Finally, when transfer of the effects of intervention was assessed during periods in which active intervention components were withdrawn, the alternative behavior was maintained for 1 participant.     

DRO contingencies: an analysis of variable-momentary schedules.

We conducted several comparative analyses to determine the relative effectiveness of variable-momentary differential-reinforcement-of-other-behavior (VM DRO) schedules. Three individuals who had been diagnosed with mental retardation participated. Results of functional analyses indicated that their self-injurious behavior (SIB) was maintained by social-positive reinforcement. Two individuals participated in a two-stage comparative analysis within multielement and multiple baseline designs. Fixed-interval (FI) and variable-interval (VI) DRO were compared in the first stage; VI DRO and VM DRO were compared in the second. All three schedules effectively reduced the participants' SIB. Treatment for the 3rd individual was conducted in a reversal design to examine the effects of VM DRO when it was implemented in isolation, and results indicated that the procedure was effective in reducing SIB. These findings suggest that VM DRO schedules may represent attractive alternatives to traditional FI schedules because momentary schedules do not require continuous monitoring and may result in higher rates of reinforcement.     

Impaired Memory Retention and Decreased Long-Term Potentiation in Integrin-Associated Protein-Deficient Mice

Previously, we have demonstrated that integrin-associated protein (IAP) mRNA level is approximately fourfold higher in rats showing good retention performance (600 sec) than rats showing poor retention performance (<80 sec) in an inhibitory avoidance learning paradigm. In the present study, we have used the gene-targeted IAP-deficient mice to further investigate the role of IAP involved in memory formation and hippocampal long-term potentiation (LTP) in vivo. Results revealed that there was a significant impairment in memory retention and a significant reduction in the magnitude of LTP in IAP-deficient mice when compared with the wild-type and heterozygote mice, whereas the wild-type and heterozygote animals did not show marked differences on these measures. Furthermore, the impairment in retention performance of IAP-deficient mice was not due to different sensitivities of these animals to the electric shock. When we examined locomotor activity and rotarod treadmill performance, no differences were observed among these three groups of animals either. Western blot analysis confirmed the lack of IAP protein in IAP-deficient mice, whereas IAP expression was similar in both the wild-type and heterozygote controls. These results together demonstrate that IAP plays an important role in the process of memory formation and synaptic plasticity in mice.     

Stimulus sequence and the exponent of the power function for loudness

In two experiments, 15 and 13 subjects estimated the loudness of 12 sound-pressure levels (38-104 dB; 6-dB intervals) of a 1000-Hz tone by the method of magnitude estimation with a modulus assigned to the first stimulus presented. The tone duration was 1 sec. and the interstimulus interval was 6 sec. The presentation order was systematically ascending-descending in one experiment and balanced-irregular in the other. The results indicate that (1) loudness is a power function of sound pressure with an exponent of 0.60 for the systematic order and 0.29 for the irregular order. (2) For both the irregular and systematic orders, a large step-size (12 or 18 dB) between the stimulus on Trial n and on Trial n-1 (or n-3) results in a slight assimilation effect. This also occurs for the small step-size (6 dB) in the irregular order. (3) The size of momentary exponents (based on two points, Trials n and n-1 or n-3) depends on the sound pressures of successive stimuli, whether the steps are positive or negative, and whether the stimuli have been presented in systematic or irregular order. For positive steps, the momentary exponent is lower for a soft tone (Trial n) than for a loud tone, whereas for negative steps the momentary exponent is lower for a loud tone than for a soft tone. These effects ar more pronounced when these stimuli are presented in an irregular order. A relative judgment model is offered for magnitude estimation. It assumes that subjects judge the loudness of a stimulus in terms of three reference markers: the minimum and maximum sound pressures as well as the sound pressure of the previous stimulus.     

Early food refusal: Infant and family characteristics

This study compared infants who developed food refusal during the first year of life with a healthy control group concerning feeding, growth pattern, family situation, and infant behavioral characteristics. Infants with food refusal had a lower relative weight at inclusion in the study and at follow-up at the age of 2 years. Food refusal was also associated with weaning problems, parental reports of lower food consumption, a higher incidence of breast-feeding, a higher frequency of meals, psychosocial problems in the family, less positive perceptions of parenting, infant difficultness, and problematic behaviors. The findings have implications for identification and understanding of factors related to early food refusal.     

The Attachment and Clinical Issues Questionnaire (ACIQ): Scale Development

In line with dynamic systems and dialectical theories of development, it was theorized that a psychopathology such as an addiction could have several causes (equifinality) and that more specific diagnoses and treatments of the most salient clinical issues for individuals coming from different developmental paths could increase the success rates of most therapies. Further, the issues from a developmental dynamic systems perspective should include not only individual clinical issues, but also relational, familial, peer, and organizational functioning. The Attachment and Clinical Issues Questionnaire (ACIQ) was developed as a research and clinical instrument relevant to these concerns. The 29 scales were based on naturalistic observations of patients in treatment and 12-step groups, attachment theory, and the clinical literature dealing with the addictions. The attachment scales were taken from classic attachment theory but, in line with more recent formulations, included relations to mother, father, and partner. Study 1 found the ACIQ to have good coefficient alphas (.79), and factor analyses revealed that the eight factors loaded on different attachment figures and sets of clinical issues rather than attachment styles per se. Study 2 found test–retest reliability to be, on average, .79. The results were in line with the developmental hypothesis that partner and father attachments are different than attachments to mother, and that family and peer relations as well as clinical issues need to be considered separately.     

Comparing measures of attachment: "To whom one turns in times of stress", parental warmth, and partner satisfaction

The Attachment and Clinical Issues Questionnaire (ACIQ; M. A. Lindberg & S. W. Thomas, 2011), was developed over an 18-year period containing 29 scales. The purpose of the present study was to test (a) the validity of the attachment scales in terms of how they predict to whom one turns in times of stress and for affective sharing, and (b) how the attachment scales compared with the Experiences in Close Relationship Questionnaire (ECR) in terms of concurrent, convergent, and discriminant evidence. The relevant secure scales of the ACIQ predicted to whom one turned in study 1, and study 2 demonstrated good convergent evidence with the ECR, but superior concurrent evidence in predicting partner satisfaction, and superior discriminant evidence in differentially correlating with mother and father warmth. Thus, the ACIQ passed essential validity and psychometric tests and was a more robust measure than the ECR with these defining characteristics of attachment.