Food-related stimuli increase desire to eat in hungry and satiated human subjects

In the present study, the effect of food-related cues on the desire to eat chocolate in hungry and satiated subjects was investigated. Subjects (n=46) were randomly assigned to either a hungry or satiated group and then assigned to a group receiving one of the following stimuli: taste (2 M&Ms), sight (a photograph of M&Ms), cognition (a passage describin M&Ms), or control (no stimulus). In each testing session, subjects rated their desire to eat chocolate before and after the 90-s presentation of the particular stimulus. Each subject was then given a half pound of M&Ms so that actual consumption could also be measured. Results indicated that, following the presentation of the sight and taste stimuli, the subjects’ desire to eat chocolate was significantly increased. Furthermore, no differences in chocolate consumption due to state of hunger or type of food-related stimulus presented were found.     

The discriminative control of free-operant avoidance despite exposure to shock during the stimulus correlated with nonreinforcement

Four rats were trained in darkness on a free-operant avoidance procedure in which shocks occurred randomly, but lever presses could reduce their frequency. Discrimination training followed, during which responses in light continued to reduce shock frequency, but responses in darkness had no effect. During each cycle, the light period was 4 min, while darkness lasted only until a 20-sec interval had elapsed without a response. This no-response requirement was increased to 40 sec for three animals and eventually to 60 sec for two of them. Discriminative control developed, despite a greater shock density in the dark, with response rate and number of responses per shock maintained or increasing during light and decreasing to very low values in darkness. Two animals were later exposed to a procedure in which shock density was unaffected by responding either in light or darkness. A 60-sec no-response requirement was continued in the dark. Discriminative control persisted through 42 sessions for one animal and required 45 sessions to approach extinction for the other animal. The role of the light as a potential conditioned reinforcer of other behavior in the dark was implicated in the development and persistence of discriminative control. These data support shock-frequency reduction as reinforcement for avoidance behavior.     

Preparation of school psychologists for school-based consultation: A training activity and a service to community schools

Presents a set of training experiences to develop school-based consultation skills in preservice school psychologists and discusses problems in implementing this model of service. Based on their experience in training school psychologists at the University of California, Berkeley, the authors report on preparing students to deal with teacher and principal expectations. Also discussed are methods for mobilizing teachers to plan more precisely to meet the needs of individual pupils in the classroom. A distinction is made in the paper between school-based and community-based mental health consultation.     

Book Reviews

C ampbell , J oseph . The mythic image.
S torr , A nthony . The dynamics of creation.
L aing , R. D. The facts of life.
W olff , H. Jesus der Mann—Die Gestalt Jesu in tiefen psychologischer Sicht.
A urigemma , L uigi . Le signe zodiacal du scorpion dans les traditions occidentales de l'antiquité gréco-latine à la renaissance.     

Social skills training with hospitalized adolescents: an evaluative experiment

The effectiveness of social skills training on adolescent males admitted to a psychiatric hospital was evaluated through the use of empirically derived anger scenarios, blind raters, matched experimental and control treatment groups, and a repeated measures analysis. Results indicated that the social skills training effectively improved the dimension of verbal response and eye contact. Facial expression did not show measurable improvement. The use of specific skills components and scoring criteria in the social skills training was emphasized. Overall, support was found for the efficacy of social skills training for hospitalized adolescents.     

Early affective antecedents of adult type A behavior

The early affective, apparently temperamental antecedents of Type A behavior were investigated in a Swedish longitudinal sample (N = 149). Four clusters of Type A items (describing irritability, hurried behavior, work achievement, and competitiveness) were regressed on maternal ratings of the child's poor appetite, sleep disturbances, liveliness, anger, and shyness, collected annually from infancy to adolescence. The child's liveliness, sociability, and poor appetite during infancy and childhood were positively related to the adult Type A irritability and hurried behavior clusters, as were the mother's liveliness, orderliness, and intelligence as rated by psychologists during the child's first 6 years. The two work-involvement clusters were predicted by interactive effects among shyness, poor appetite, and anger during adolescence but were unrelated to mother attributes. Sleep disturbances were only related to competitiveness and only in late adolescence. These findings indicate that the interrelated components of adult Type A behavior have contrasting developmental histories and that temperament-related constructs are important antecedents to the adult syndrome.     

Behavioral effects of microwave reinforcement schedules and variations in microwave intensity on albino rats

The objective of this exploratory investigation was to determine the interactive effects of fixed-ratio scheduling of microwave reinforcement in tandem with changes in microwave intensity. Nine albino rats were conditioned to regulate their thermal environment with microwave radiation while living in a Skinner (operant conditioning) Box in which the ambient temperature was about 27.13 degrees F at the beginning of the session. Each rat obtained a 6-sec. exposure of microwave radiation on a fixed-ratio schedule of MW reinforcement, the values of which varied from FR-1 to FR-30. Intensities of MW radiation were 62.5 W, 125 W, 250 W, and 437.5 W. Sessions lasted for 8 to 9 hr. over an approximate 13-mo. period. The effects of the intensity of microwave reinforcement varied as a function of the ratio value of the schedule used. Continuous reinforcement (FR-1) produced the lowest over-all rates, whereas FR-15, and FR-25 produced the highest over-all rates. Relatively higher thermal-behavior rates occurred under 62.5 W than under any of the other MW intensities for FR-1, FR-15, and FR-25, whereas FR-10 and FR-30 ratios produced intermediate rates of thermal responding which were constant for all values of MW intensity. These data are explained in terms of interactive effects between the "local" satiation or deprivation properties of the MW intensity and the ratio requirements of the schedule of MW reinforcement.     

Book Reviews

F ordham , M ichael . Jungian psychotherapy: a study in analytical psychology.
M oreno , M. Introduzione alla prassi della psicologia analitica
S huttle , P enelope and R edgrove , P eter . The wise wound: menstruation and everywoman
H omans , P eter , Ed. Childhood and selfhood.
I nglis , B rian . Natural and supernatural; a history of the paranormal .
S ontag , S usan . Illness as metaphor .     

Measuring social change preferences in African American adolescents: development of the Measure of Social Change for Adolescents (MOSC-A)

Studies addressing Black adolescents' social change strategies are nonexistent and might be associated with the absence of social change measures for Black adolescents. In an effort to begin addressing this concern, the 30-item Measure of Social Change for Adolescents (MOSC-A) was designed to measure Black adolescents' first- (i.e., within the system) and second- (outside of the system) order social change strategies. Factor analysis of responses that 226 Black adolescents gave to the MOSC-A revealed first- and second-order social change factors. Item response theory analyses revealed that 65% of the items on the former factor adequately discriminate across different trait levels, but those of the latter were less promising. Scaffolded on this study, future research might refine the MOSC-A's psychometric properties and improve its utility.