Detailed analysis of the male copulatory motor pattern in mammals: hormonal bases

Data obtained, using a polygraphic technique, on the characteristics of the motor and genital copulatory responses of male rabbits, rats, mice, hamsters, and guinea pigs are reviewed. This methodology provided detailed information, not accessible to other analyses, on the frequency and dynamic organization of copulatory pelvic thrusting trains of the species studied. This comparative analysis showed that: (1) The male rat may display two types of ejaculatory responses, differing in the dynamic organization of the pelvic thrusting train, and in the duration of the intravaginal thrusting period preceding ejaculation. (2) In the guinea pigs and small rodents, but not in rabbits, pelvic thrusting at ejaculatory responses persists during intromission, and a period of fast intravaginal thrusting is associated with ejaculation. (3) The motor copulatory pattern of the rabbit, but not of the rat, hamster, or guinea pig, is affected by castration and hormone treatment, suggesting that, in rabbits, androgen acts both on motivation and on the spinal neural systems related to copulation.     

Neuroscience of Pavlovian conditioning: a brief review

Current knowledge on the neuronal substrates of Pavlovian conditioning in animals and man is briefly reviewed. First, work on conditioning in aplysia, that has showed amplified pre-synaptic facilitation as the basic mechanism of associative learning, is summarized. Then, two exemplars of associative learning in vertebrates, fear conditioning in rodents and eyelid conditioning in rabbits, are described and research into its neuronal substrates discussed. Research showing the role of the amygdala in fear conditioning and of the cerebellum in eyelid conditioning is reviewed, both at the circuit and cellular plasticity levels. Special attention is given to the parallelism suggested by this research between the neuronal mechanisms of conditioning and the principles of formal learning theory. Finally, recent evidence showing a similar role of the amygdala and of the cerebellum in human Pavlovian conditioning is discussed.     

Evaluation of violent behaviors in secondary school

School harassment, or bullying, is a term that for being so frequent already forms a part of our vocabulary. In the present work one presents a new instrument of evaluation of the violence that happens in the school centers. The Questionnaire of School Violence (CUVE) has been elaborated and, later, applied to a sample of 1637 teenagers of seven centers of Secondary Obligatory Education (public and compound). The CUVE evaluates in a trustworthy way five dimensions of the school violence: a) physical indirect violence on the part of the student body; b) verbal violence of the student body towards companions; c) physical direct violence between (among) pupils; d) verbal violence of the student body towards the professorship; and e) violence of the professorship towards the student body.     

Interactive patterns detection in family communication with adolescents

Interactive patterns detection in family communication with adolescents. Nondistant communication is a relevant indicator for family functionality valuation. The goal of this study is to analyze this communication in order to identify specific kinds of leadership, interaction patterns and the relation between verbal and nonverbal elements in communication. The observational design exposed is an idiographic one, punctual and multidimensional, which uses field format as observation instrument. Participants were seven standardized families made up of both ancestors and an adolescent son or daughter. According to the family models analyzed, results show a predominantly democratic communication style in adults with recurrent support expressions. The sequential analysis incorporates only categories from the emitter point of view, and detects relevant sequences which show symmetric interaction between all three family members. Verbal and nonverbal channels provide complementary information. Depending on adolescents' gender different patterns in behaviour can be identified as well.     

The differentiation hypothesis and the Flynn effect

Many studies have shown that IQs have been increasing over the last half century. These increases have come to be known as "the Flynn effect". The "Flynn effect" represents a difference on ability-level between groups of the same age but different cohort. The ability-level differentiation hypothesis represents a difference on the relevance of cognitive factors between groups of high and low ability. Hence, it should be possible to imitate the ability-level differentiation effect by comparing groups of the same age but different cohort. The indifferentiation hypothesis represents no differences on the relevance of cognitive abilities in all age groups within the same cohort. The aim of the present study is to test the relationships between these phenomena. For this purpose we analyzed the American standardisation samples of the WISC, WISC-R and WISC-III. Results support the link between the Flynn effect and the differentiation hypothesis. Also, reported evidence replicate previous findings supporting the indifferentiation hypothesis. Implications for the assessment of the intelligence are discussed.     

Unconscious symmetrical inferences: A role of consciousness in event integration

Explicit and implicit learning have been attributed to different learning processes that create different types of knowledge structures. Consistent with that claim, our study provides evidence that people integrate stimulus events differently when consciously aware versus unaware of the relationship between the events. In a first, acquisition phase participants sorted words into two categories (A and B), which were fully predicted by task-irrelevant primes-the labels of two other, semantically unrelated categories (C and D). In a second, test phase participants performed a lexical decision task, in which all word stimuli stemmed from the previous prime categories (C and D) and the (now nonpredictive) primes were the labels of the previous target categories (A and B). Reliable priming effects in the second phase demonstrated that bidirectional associations between the respective categories had been formed in the acquisition phase (A<-->C and B<-->D), but these effects were found only in participants that were unaware of the relationship between the categories! We suggest that unconscious, implicit learning of event relationships results in the rather unsophisticated integration (i.e., bidirectional association) of the underlying event representations, whereas explicit learning takes the meaning of the order of the events into account, and thus creates unidirectional associations.     

Comparing speed estimations from a moving vehicle in different traffic scenarios: absence versus presence of traffic flow

The aim of this research was to study the performance in a speed estimation task of a passenger travelling in a real car in different scenarios: a closed track used in previous experimental studies was compared with interurban traffic environment involving a secondary road and a highway. At the same time, the effect of sex and driving experience on speed estimation was analyzed. Thirty-six participants (18 male and 18 female, half of each group being drivers and half non-drivers) estimated the speed of the car in which they travelled as passengers. The actual speed values varied in the range of 40-100 km/h for the secondary road, 70-120 km/h for the highway condition, and 40-120 km/h for the track. The results obtained for the track in previous studies (Recarte and Nunes, 1996; Recarte, Conchillo, and Nunes, 2004, 2005) were replicated in the same condition and were also verified for the secondary road scenario. However, a different pattern of errors was found for the highway. From the viewpoint of psychophysics, the participants were more accurate on the without-traffic track than in real traffic conditions, considered as a whole. The differences found between road and highway are discussed. No effect was found for between- subject variables, sex, and driving experience.     

Hidden patterns of play interaction in soccer using SOF-CODER

Traditional methods for quantifying sport performances are limited in their capacity to describe the complex interactions of events that occur within a performance over time. The following article outlines a new approach to the study of actions between players in team sports&#x2014;mainly, soccer. Since the observational design is nomothetic, point, and multidimensional, an observational and data-collecting instrument has been developed. The instrument is mixed and combines a field format with a category system for game events, as well as an ad hoc instrument that considers the game actions of one or both teams, each recorded according to the same criteria. The article also outlines a new approach to the analysis of time-based event records&#x2014;in this case, sports performance&#x2014;known as T-pattern detection. The relevant elements of the T-pattern detection process are explained, and exemplar data from analyses of soccer matches are presented to highlight the potential of this form of data analysis. The results suggest that it is possible to identify new kinds of profiles for both individuals and teams on the basis of observational criteria and a further analysis of temporal behavioral patterns detected within the performances.     

Differential age effects on attention-based inhibition: inhibitory tagging and inhibition of return

The purpose of this study was to determine whether 2 forms of attentional inhibition, inhibition of return (IOR) and inhibitory tagging, are differentially affected by the aging process. The authors tested 24 younger adults (mean age = 22 years) and 24 older adults (mean age = 69 years) on a combined IOR and Stroop task (Vivas & Fuentes, 2001). As predicted, younger adults' performance was consistent with inhibitory tagging of objects at inhibited locations. Although older adults demonstrated intact IOR, there was no evidence of inhibitory tagging. The results suggest that age deficits in inhibition are selective.     

Using a combined blocking procedure to teach color discrimination to a child with autism

A combined blocking procedure was used to teach a child with autism to select two colors on request. First, two color cards were placed at fixed locations on a table and the experimenter repeatedly requested the child to touch one of the colors. After 10 consecutive correct selections, the child was asked to touch the other color. Blocks of trials with each color were systematically thinned until requests were presented randomly with few errors. Subsequently, the location of the selection cards was systematically alternated until the child was able to touch the correct card when both requests and card positions were presented in random fashion.