Choice and delay of reinforcement

Pigeons were trained to peck either of two response keys for food reinforcement on equated aperiodic schedules. The distribution of responding at the two keys was studied as reinforcement was delayed for various durations. The relative frequency of responding at each key was shown to match the relative immediacy of reinforcement, immediacy defined as the reciprocal of the delay of reinforcement.     

Effects of effort on response rate

Pigeons were trained to peck for food reinforcement, and the minimum effective force for a peck was varied. In a single-key situation, the response rate was unaffected up to a certain force value, beyond which increments caused a proportional decrement in response rate. Transient enhancement and suppression effects were observed following a change in the force requirement. A change from a high force requirement to a low force requirement resulted in a temporary enhancement of response rate above the stable performance level, whereas a change from a low to a high requirement produced a temporary suppression of the rate below the stable rate. In a two-key situation, the response rate on a key with a given force remained unaffected by the force requirement on the other key. When the rate of response was plotted against the required force, the resultant function was remarkably similar to that obtained from the single-key experiment. When the rates of reinforcement on the two keys differed, the decrement in response rate produced by an increase in the force requirement was proportionally greater on the key with the lower rate of reinforcement.     

Menarche: A crossroads that previews developmental change

In recent years the developmental implications of menarche have garnered particular attention. Investigators have determined that this developmental event tends to affect three significant domains of the adolescent girl's function: psychological status, relationships with peers, and role in the family. This paper explores these issues and introduces a new technique, referred to as previewing, that may help the teenage girl acclimate to the status of sexual maturity. Derived from the early life interactions of caregiver and infant, previewing promotes representational skills and enhances self-esteem as the adolescent confronts developmental challenges.     

The self-narrative and acute psychosis

The aim of this study was to apply the narrative approach in analyzing family therapy meetings in cases of acute psychosis. The self-narrative is essential in acute psychosis since it is either collapsed or not coherent enough. The results indicate that it is important to create concrete practices that produce stories concerning the patient in relation to others. The self-narrative must be re-authored by the patient even though it is socially constructed. This is achieved by creating multiple perspectives of self-narratives in so-called therapy meetings with the patient, family members, and staff members representing different professionals.     

Involving the family in the evaluation and treatment of the child patient: A psychodynamic approach

The purpose of this article is to provide psychotherapists with a tool for family evaluation using the basic principles of psychodynamic work; and to introduce a transitional format for therapists who have practiced family evaluations in their training institutions and now need to adapt this model to the private practitioner's office. A case example illustrates: (1) Use of the therapist's unconscious for diagnosis of the child and its family, (2) joining the family's intersubjective space, and (3) use of play and therapist's neutrality as ways that the psychodynamically oriented clinician involves the family in the evaluation and treatment of the child.     

Gender,psychological well-being and somatic cardiovascular risk factors

The purpose of this study is to determine associations between cardiovascular risk factors and subjective experience of psychological general well-being with special reference to gender-related differences. One hundred fifty white-collar workers in a car manufacturing plant in Sweden participated in a health care screening program. Subjective experience of psychological well-being was significantly correlated with cardiovascular risk factors among both men and women. There were, however, marked differences between the genders. For men, the following specific psychological variables were significantly correlated with cardiovascular risk factors: estimation of general health, anxiety, self-control and vitality. For women, more complex significant relationships between the two sets of variables were found. Moreover, the direction of the correlations differed between the genders. For example, men with cardiovascular risk factors, such as increased blood pressure, blood lipids and body mass index, reported significantly morepositive estimation of their general health. For women the relation was the opposite with a significantly positive correlation (p-0.004) between experience of good health and a low risk factor profile indicating the concordance between physiological and psychological parameters. Possible reasons for these sex differences are discussed.     

Compassion: An east‐west comparison

Compassion is an emotion that occupies a central position in Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy while it is often a neglected subject in contemporary western philosophy. This essay is a comparison between an Eastern view of compassion based upon Mahāyāna Buddhist perspectives and a western view of the same emotion. Certain principles found in Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy such as the Bodhisattva Ideal, and suffering (dukkha) to name two, are explored for the information they contain about compassion. An essay by Lawrence Blum is taken as representative of a Western view (but not exclusively) and it is analyzed for its shortcomings in light of the Buddhist view. The conclusion briefly describes the value of understanding an eastern view on compassion as a means of filling the void one finds in western medical ethics discourse which focuses so heavily, and redundantly, upon issues such as patient autonomy and paternalism.     

Requiem for “schizophrenia”

In this article a brief overview of the treatment of chronic psychosis for the last two centuries is covered, with particular emphasis on many scientifically demonstrated causes of chronic organic psychosis and their medically successful treatment, including recent neurotransmitter manipulations. With respect for the important contributions of Bleuler, the term “schizophrenic” is considered as an unscientific and unprovable nosological construct, which has hampered the successful resolution of chronic psychosis and has outlived its usefulness in the lexicon of modern psychiatry.