Learned helplessness in the rat: time course, immunization, and reversibility.

Rats, like dogs, fail to escape following exposure to inescapable shock. This failure to escape does not dissipate in time; rats fail to escape 5 min, 1 hr., 4 hr., 24 hr., and 1 wk. after receiving inescapable shock. Rats that first learned to jump up to escape were not retarded later at bar pressing to escape following inescapable shock. Failure to escape can be broken up by forcibly exposing the rat to an escape contingency. Therefore, the effects of inescapable shock in the rat parallel learned helplessness effects in the dog.     

Oculomotor adaptation to prisms is not simply a muscle potentiation effect

An experiment is reported in which subjects pointed to a visual target before and after exposure to prisms. The exposure condition required the subject to look at his feet through leftward deviating prisms while holding his eyes to the right. Aftereffects on pointing were significantly to the right. This result is opposite to that predicted by the muscle potentiation hypothesis put forward by Ebenholtz and Wolfson (1975), but consistent with recalibration of the visual direction system caused by spatial discordance.     

Persuading people to stop smoking

Forty smokers attending a chest clinic were given a questionnaire designed to measure motivation to stop smoking. The effects of three variables on their smoking level were investigated: (1) advice from the chest physician to stop smoking; (2) subjection to a further ‘motivating’ interview by a psychologist: (3) the wearing of a white coat by the psychologist during his interview. The questionnaire proved a useful predictor of smoking reduction over a 3-month follow-up period. Advice from the chest physician had a significant effect in getting people to reduce smoking over 3 months but the extra ‘motivating’ interview was ineffective. Patients responded to the white coat by reducing their smoking level significantly, irrespective of whether the psychologist wearing the white coat was advising them to reduce smoking or not. These results suggest that the advice-giving role of the doctor could be used more effectively than it currently is in preventive medicine, and that the psychologist has an important role to play in measuring the successful parameters of such advice and hence improving its quality.     

Misconceptions about the Fishbein model: Reflections on a study by Songer-Nocks

Songer-Nocks has questioned the generality and sufficiency of Fishbein's model of intentions. It is shown that her conclusions reflect a basic misunderstanding of the model and its implications. Several misconceptions are identified and an attempt is made to clarify some of the theoretical and methodological issues involved.     

Misconceptions revisited: A final comment

Although Songer-Nock's reanalysis of her data is consistent with our earlie comments, her reply indicates that some of her misconceptions persist.     

Semantic category effects in visual word search

The initial question was whether subjects could categorize a word semantically before they precisely identified the word itself. This failed to occur. When searching a visual display for a single target word, subjects searched at the same rate whether the distractors were in the same or in a different semantic category. However, when the size of the target set was increased to three, then six, items, subjects increasingly used category information to speed their search rate when targets and distractors belonged to different categories. Subjects appeared to perform the task by comparing the category of each display word to the category of the target set.