Vicarious and operant experiences in the etiology of illness behavior: A replication with healthy individuals

The purpose of the present investigation was to replicate a previous study of diabetic patients on the role of parental modeling in the etiology of illness behavior. A random sample of healthy individuals were assigned to an avoidant model (AM) (i.e. parent reported to have avoided work. chores etc. when ill) or non-avoidant model (NAM) group. Subjects subsequently provided retrospective and current information concerning their illness-behavior experiences. The results indicated that individuals with an AM reported more responsibility avoidance when ill currently and as a child compared to the NAM subjects. Additionally. AM subjects reported receiving more positive reinforcement for current illness compared to NAM subjects. It was concluded that the process by which individuals learn to respond to illness may be similar in healthy and chronically-ill individuals but that positive reinforcement for illness may be more likely to be received by healthy individuals during acute illness than by chronically-ill individuals. The present study provides further preliminary support for the learningtheory model of illness behavior.     

Factor structure of the Menstrual Symptom Questionnaire: relationship to oral contraceptives, neuroticism and life stress

The Menstrual Symptom Questionnaire was administered to initial and cross-validation samples of college-age women. Factor analyses performed on the data from each sample failed to support Dalton's distinction between spasmodic and congestive forms of primary dysmenorrhea. Instead, a more complicated factor structure evolved, closely resembling Webster's findings, with factors representing menstrual pain, pre-menstrual negative affect, pre-menstrual water retention, pre-menstrual pain, menstrual backache and menstrual gastrointestinal symptoms. Oral contraceptive use was negatively related to menstrual pain and backache. Neuroticism scores were positively related to all six factors, and negative life changes to four of these factors, suggesting a role for psychogenic factors in both pre-menstrual and menstrual symptomatology.     

Disrupted retrieval in directed forgetting: a link with posthypnotic amnesia

Certain reliable findings from research on directed forgetting seem difficult to accommodate in terms of the theoretical processes, such as selective rehearsal or storage differentiation, that have been put forward to account for directed-forgetting phenomena. Some kind of "missing mechanism" appears to be involved. In order to circumvent the methodological constraints that have limited the conclusions investigators could draw from past experiments, a new paradigm is introduced herein that includes a mixture of intentional and incidental learning. With this paradigm, a midlist instruction to forget the first half of a list was found to reduce later recall of the items learned incidentally as well as those learned intentionally. This result suggests that a cue to forget can lead to a disruption of retrieval processes as well as to the alteration of encoding processes postulated in prior theories. The results also provide a link between intentional forgetting and the literature on posthypnotic amnesia, in which disrupted retrieval has been implicated. With each of these procedures, the information that can be remembered is typically recalled out of order and often with limited recollection for when the information had been presented. It therefore was concluded here that retrieval inhibition plays a significant role in nonhypnotic as well as in hypnotic instances of directed forgetting. The usefulness of retrieval inhibition as a mechanism for memory updating was also discussed.     

Reconceptualizing of the overjustification effect: A template-matching approach

The paper reviews traditional attributional explanations for the over-justification effect in task motivation, isolates their weaknesses, and proposes an alternative account based on the notion that individuals process task information schematically. It is proposed that task information relating to motivation is interpreted by cognitive schema or “templates,” which identify tasks as being either instrumental or expressive in nature. When the expressive template is evoked, the task is perceived to be playlike and is experienced as inherently motivating. When the instrumental template is evoked, the task is perceived as a means to an end and task motivation results from the perceived value of the task for attaining intrinsic and/or extrinsic rewards. Structural characteristics of these templates are proposed. According to this account, overjustification effects occur when the perceived characteristics of tasks change such that the expressive template is replaced by the instrumental template and expressive motivation is transformed into instrumental motivation.     

Exposure to pornography,permissive and nonpermissive cues,and male aggression toward females

The present study examined the role of permissive and nonpermissive cues in mediating the relationship between exposure to erotica and aggression. Male subjects viewed either neutral slides with a silent female or erotic slides with a female who made permissive, nonpermissive, or no comments about the slides. The males rated the slides and subsequently rated the female confederate. Male subjects were then given an opportunity to administer their choice of several intensities of shock to the female in a competitive reaction-time task. Subjects in the permissive cues condition rated the erotic slides as more arousing, saw the female as more reasonable and accepting, and selected more intense shocks for the female than did subjects in the other conditions. One explanation of these results is that permissive cues in the presence of erotica led the male to believe that other normally inappropriate behaviors would be tolerated.     

Lateral asymmetries in electrodermal responses to nonattended stimuli: a response to Dawson and Schell

Recently, Dawson and Schell (1982) provided convincing evidence that words presented to the nonattended ear during a dichotic-listening task undergo automatic semantic analysis in the absence of intention or awareness. Because of its methodological rigor, this finding is important in the context of the long-standing controversy surrounding the preattentive processing phenomenon. However, we challenge the authors' suggestion of a right-hemisphere locus for this phenomenon. We offer a methodological basis for the findings and propose a countersuggestion of a left hemisphere, or at least bilateral, processing locus.     

Children's strategies for controlling affective responses to aversive social experience

It was hypothesized that one mechanism of self-control that children develop is the strategic capacity to select the experiences they encounter. This hypothesis led to the prediction that children would deal with certain aversive social experiences by seeking out or taking advantage of opportunities for nurturant experiences. Young children were exposed to an aversive social experience in which they received less nurturance than a peer, a positive experience in which they received more nurturance, or a neutral experience in which nurturance was equal. Subsequently, an opportunity was provided for children to control the length of time they watched a highly nurturant television program. As predicted, boys experiencing an aversive social encounter increased the length of time they exposed themselves to the nurturant television show, and their level of reduced positive affect was related to how long they watched the nurturant content, further supporting the interpretation that they did so in response to their own affective state. Girls did not adopt the strategy of self-exposure to nurturant television but did appear to engage in self-distraction during the aversive social experience. Despite the apparent use of control strategies, there was no indication that these strategies were effective for the amelioration of reduced positive affect resulting from the aversive social experience. Discussion focuses on the sex differences observed in the adoption of strategic behavior and factors contributing to the ineffectiveness of the control strategies. A general model is proposed for personal and environmental factors requisite for the selection, employment, and effectiveness of strategies to control experiences and their affective consequences.     

The complexity continuum in the radex and hierarchical models of intelligence

The hierarchical and radex models of ability organization are shown to be parallel. Both models suggest a complexity continuum along which cognitive performance tasks can be arrayed. In our revised radex model, the complexity continuum from the center to the periphery is shown to correspond to the general-to-specific dimension in factor analyses, or to test correlations with the general factor; complexity is redefined as apparent processing complexity. Examination of the theoretical and empirical bases for this continuum indicates its central importance for theories of intelligence.     

Inhibitory avoidance deficit following short-term adrenalectomy in the rat: the role of adrenal catecholamines

Impaired retention of an inhibitory avoidance response was observed in rats subjected to adrenalectomy (ADX) up to 120 hr before the single learning trial. Corticosterone substitution failed to normalize this behavioral deficit. Rats ADX 240 hr prior to the learning trial showed a normalized behavior. Adrenomedullectomy (ADXM) 48 or 240 hr before learning caused a similar impairment as in short-term ADX rats. The 240-hr ADX rats subjected to corticosterone substitution showed the same behavioral deficit as short-term ADX rats or ADXM ones. Immediate postlearning subcutaneous injection of adrenaline in a dose range of 0.005-5.0 micrograms/kg or of noradrenaline (0.005-0.5 microgram/kg) to 48-hr ADX rats resulted in a dose-related improvement of later retention behavior. Higher doses of catecholamines were less or ineffective. Postlearning treatment of 48-hr ADXM rats with adrenaline (0.5-500 micrograms/kg) caused a similar pattern of behavioral changes. It is concluded that adrenal catecholamines play an important role in the modulation of consolidation of memory. In addition, the high circulating ACTH levels that follow long-term ADX may correct for the behaviorial deficit induced by the absence of adrenomedullary catecholamines.     

Homelessness in the United States. An ecological perspective.

This article presents an ecological perspective on homelessness that emphasizes the context in which homeless people live and the complex interactions between personal, social, economic, and service system resources that affect their well-being. The ecological perspective encourages researchers and program developers to assess the problems of homelessness at multiple levels of analysis, to view homelessness as a result of contextual factors that interact with individual and family vulnerabilities, and to assess carefully the social contexts in which researchers and program developers operate. Four ecological principles are described as a heuristic for research, intervention, and policy development. The implications of an ecological perspective for psychologists who wish to get involved in dealing with homelessness are discussed.