Anterograde and retrograde enhancement of 24-h memory by glucose in elderly humans.

The present experiment examined anterograde and retrograde enhancement of memory storage by glucose in elderly humans. Glucose (50 g) or saccharin was administered shortly before or immediately after acquisition of a narrative prose passage. Recall was tested 24 h later. Glucose administration before or after presentation of the material to be learned significantly improved recall 24 h later compared to performance in the saccharin condition. These findings suggest that glucose retroactively enhances memory storage processing in elderly humans and that the enhancement of memory outlasts the transient elevations in blood glucose levels after glucose ingestion.     

The effects of recoding and presentation format on recency and suffix effects

The primary linguistic theory of Shand and Klima (1981) hypothesizes that stimuli that cannot be directly processed without recoding are not in the primary linguistic mode of the subject and thus should lead to lesser recency and associated suffix effects. In three experiments, different normal hearing subjects learned to pair American Sign Language (ASL) stimuli, visual "quasivocables" (QVs), word-like letter strings, and auditory QVs with common English words. In the first experiment, the subjects were given sequences of ASL or QV stimuli and required to recall the associated words in strict serial order. In two other experiments involving auditory and visual presentation, respectively, subjects who had never been given paired associate training were required to recall the English words that had previously been associated with the ASL and QV stimuli, in a standard suffix paradigm. The results showed recency and suffix effects to be present only with auditorily presented QVs and words. Contrary to the predictions of the primary linguistic hypothesis, greater recency and larger suffix effects were present with the auditory QVs than with the auditory words, although the QVs were not primary linguistic and the task involved forced recoding. Previous results showing recency with ASL stimuli in normal subjects were not replicated. It is concluded that recency and suffix effects are not related either to the primary linguistic mode of the subject or to stimulus recoding, as we and Shand and Klima have defined them.     

EFFECTS OF SPACED RESPONDING DRL ON THE STEREOTYPED BEHAVIOR OF PROFOUNDLY RETARDED PERSONS

Stereotypic responding and social behaviors of three profoundly retarded children were measured before and during application of a DRL contingency for stereotypic responding. A variant of the standard DRL procedure, spaced responding DRL, was used, in which reinforcement is delivered following a response if that response has been separated from the previous response by at least a fixed minimum time interval. Three children were treated by using a reversal design. Results showed that: (a) during baseline sessions, the children engaged in high rates of stereotypic responding and very low rates of appropriate social behavior; and (b) during DRL sessions, appropriate behavior increased markedly as stereotypic responding was reduced. The data suggest that spaced responding DRL may be effective in increasing appropriate social behavior as well as in reducing stereotypic responding.     

Effects of visual and tactual stimulus presentation on learning two-choice patterned and semirandom sequences.

Three experiments compared the effects of visual and tactual stimulus presentation in two-choice sequential learning situations requiring a predictive response. In Experiments 1 and 2, subjects received a five- or six-unit repeating pattern; in Experiment 3, they received a semirandom sequence. Tactual as compared to visual stimulus presentation resulted in less trials to criterion in predicting a repearing pattern and in earlier frequency matching in predicting a semirandom sequence. These results suggest an unusual tactual adeptness in binary serial learning. Additionally, a new method of analyzing conditional responding in th brobability learning paradigm is described and applied to the data in Experiment 3.     

Projective drawings and children who stutter

Five young stutterers (aged 5–10 yr) and a matched group of five nonstuttering children completed five projective drawings and a scale for assessing communication attitudes of children at the beginning and at the end of a 3-mo treatment period. While the attitude scale failed to indicate differences between stuttering and nonstuttering children, performances on selected drawings did distinguish between experimental and control subjects. In addition, significant changes were observed in selected drawings over the treatment period for the young stutterers.     

Response effects of equated values of event frequency, repetition, and alternation in one-and two-cue probability learning

An experiment using 50 college students equated cue values of frequency, repetition, and alternation in one- and two-cue partially random sequences in order to determine whether the cues were responded to independently or in combination and to test earlier results concerning cue saliency. Using improved methods of data analysis, previous findings that repetition is more salient than frequency and frequency more salient than alternation were replicated. In spite of the saliency differences, the design employed demonstrated that both cues in two-cue sequences were responded to and that responses to one-cue appeared to be independent of responses to the other.     

Lateral cerebral differences in the deaf in response to linguistic and nonlinguistic stimuli

Groups of deaf subjects, exposed to tachistoscopic bilateral presentation of English words and American Sign Language (ASL) signs, showed weaker right visual half-field (VHF) superiority for words than hearing comparison groups with both a free-recall and matching response. Deaf subjects showed better, though nonsignificant, recognition of left VHF signs with bilateral presentation of signs but shifted to superior right VHF response to signs when word-sign combinations were presented. Cognitive strategies and hemispheric specialization for ASL are discussed as possible factors affecting half-field asymmetry.     

Christian marriage: Growth through intimacy

Currently attention tends to focus on the disintegration of marriage as a social and religious institution. This negative momentum notwithstanding, healthy marriages do exist and possess great potential for supporting the personal growth of wives and husbands alike. Both behavioral science, particularly humanistic psychology, and theology can significantly affect this developmental process. Even under the fragmenting pressures of contemporary society committed love remains a possibility. The collaborative impact of science and religion may help render such marital intimacy a more frequent actuality.Dr. Manning has degrees from the University of Louvain (M.A., S.T.B.) and from the Accademia Alfonsiana in Rome (S.T.D.), and has taught in the Department of Theology at the University of Louvain and in the Human Relations Program of the University of Oklahoma. Reprint requests should be addressed to 10090 Springwood Dr., St. Louis, Mo. 63124.