Aggression and social experience in domesticated rats.

Small colonies of rats were established, using adult animals that had either received continuous social experience or had been isolated since weaning. Unfamiliar "intruder" rats--with or without postweaning social experience--were exposed individually to the colonies for a 21-hr. period. Behavioral observations and an assessment of the intruder's physical condition indicated that serious fighting, physical injuries, and large weight losses occurred only when an isolation-reared intruder was placed into a colony of socially experienced rats. These results demonstrate that aggression is a joint function of the rearing history of both the colony and the intruder and that social experience plays an important role in the behavioral development of this species.     

Antecedent exercise as a treatment for disruptive behavior: Testing hypothesized mechanisms of action

This study evaluated the effects of antecedent physical exercise (AE) and a mastery task on behaviorally disturbed children's self-concepts and rates of disruptive behaviors. In addition, we evaluated whether changes in self-concept mediated any exercise induced changes in rates of disruptive behavior. Fifty-eight children were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: (a) antecedent exercise (jog/walk), (b) “mastery” task (a successive improvement miniaturebasketball shooting task), and (c) no treatment control group. A week of baseline was followed by 4 weeks of treatment and, finally another week of return to baseline. Results indicated that: (a) AE produced significantly less disruptive behavior than no treatment, (b) the “Mastery” task did not produce significantly less disruptive behavior than no treatment, (c) neither treatment produced increases in self-concept relative to no treatment, and (d) changes in self-concept did not mediate AE induced reductions in disruptive behaviors.     

Generalized Break Equivalence II: Contextual Control Over A Generalized Pattern of Stimulus Relations

The Psychological Record - In an earlier work (Gomez, Barnes-Holmes, & Luciano, 2001), it was found that although generalized break equivalence was achieved for 3 subjects (i.e., responding...     

The role of values with personal examples in altering the functions of pain: comparison between acceptance-based and cognitive-control-based protocols

The purpose of the present study was twofold. First, to compare the effect of establishing a motivational context of values on pain tolerance, believability, and reported pain, with three experimental conditions: pain acceptance (ACT condition), pain control (CONT condition), or no values (untrained condition). Second, the study aimed to isolate the impact of adding the corresponding coping strategies to both the ACT and the CONT conditions. Thirty adults were randomly assigned to one of the three experimental conditions. The participants went through the pain task in two occasions (Test I and Test II). In Test I, the effects of the ACT-values protocol (which established pain as part of valued action), the CONT-values protocol (which established high pain as opposed to valued action), and the no-values protocol, were compared. In Test II, the effect of adding the corresponding coping strategy to each condition (defusion for ACT vs. suppression for CONT) was examined. Test I showed a clear superiority of the ACT-values protocol in increasing tolerance and lowering pain believability. In Test II, the superiority of the ACT protocol was replicated, while the CONT protocol proved useful to reduce reported pain, in accordance with previous studies.     

Sentences with Strong Psychological Impact in Psychotherapy: Research in Progress

After a brief exposition of Elementary Pragmatic Model about changes in dyadic interactions, the validity and clinical usefulness of the model was evaluated with a newly created test, called SISCI-Sentences. This test is composed of 90 Sentences with strong psychological impact. Administration of this test to non-clinical and clinical participants produced statistically significant differences between the choices of participants in the two groups. Implications of these results for the use of these Sentences in the course of psychotherapy are discussed.

Experiential avoidance and aversive visual images: response delays and event-related potentials on a simple matching task

In Experiment 1, participants high (n=15) or low in avoidance (n=14), as measured by the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire, completed a simple matching task that required them to choose whether or not to look at an aversive visual image. Only the high-avoidance participants took longer to emit a correct response that produced an aversive rather than a neutral picture. Additionally, the high-avoiders reported greater levels of anxiety following the experiment even though they rated the aversive images as less unpleasant and less emotionally arousing than their low-avoidant counterparts. In Experiment 2, three groups, representing high-, mid- and low-avoidance (n=6 in each) repeated the matching task with the additional recording of event-related potentials (ERPs). The findings of Experiment 1 were replicated in terms of reaction times and subjective ratings. The ERPs confirmed that the participants attended to the content of the images and differentiated between the aversive and neutral image types. The ERPs also showed significantly greater negativity for electrodes over the left hemisphere relative to the midline for only the high-experiential avoidance (EA) group. Given the left hemisphere dominance for language, the data suggest that the high-EA group engaged in verbal strategies to regulate their emotional responses.     

An overview of paradoxical counseling and its congruence with biblical writings

Paradoxical counseling (PC) became popular in the second part of last century with the advent of systemic and multi-relational therapies. Since then, it has changed into a variety of behavioral techniques still in use today. How consistent or inconsistent is PC will depend a great deal upon each counselor's beliefs, including those who consider themselves pastoral counselors or Christian counselors. The authors suggest, however, that using workbooks written in both linear-straight-forward or circular-paradoxical ways as homework assignments may enlarge the expertise of a variety of counselors in ways perhaps heretofore unfamiliar to them.