Sexual responding of “nonrapists” to aggressive sexual themes: Normative data

The present study presents data relevant to the sexual responding to aggressive cues of a large sample of nonrapist males recruited from the community. Two hundred three subjects received physiological assessment of sexual arousal to heterosexual and rape stimuli. Results indicated that under instructions not to interfere with sexual responding, approximately 80% of the nonrapists would be correctly classified, which was significantly different from chance. However, under instructions to suppress arousal, classification was no better than chance. The rape index was not related to age, socioeconomic status, sexual experience, or amount of arousal shown in the laboratory. However, there was a small but significant relationship to IQ. Overall, the data suggest that for instructions not to interfere with responding, the error rate seen in this larger-scale sample was equivalent to that in previous studies using smaller normative samples and that classification in general is not biased by the subject characteristics measured in this study.Portions of this project were supported by USPHS Grant MH-34030-02 from the Center for the Studies of Crime and Delinquency and by Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation Research Contract ID-0783 to the Department of Psychiatry.     

The impact of confederate responsivity on social skills assessment

The current investigation examined the degree to which judges' ratings of skill, anxiety, and attractiveness are influenced by the responsivity of the confederate. High-, medium-, and low-skilled subject-pool groupings, as well as self-referred clinical groups, were exposed to either a moderately or a minimally responsive confederate. Results indicated that subjects were rated as more skillful when interacting with a moderately responsive confederate than when interacting with a minimally responsive confederate. Further, there was a groups × condition interaction for anxiety ratings such that both the high- and the medium-skilled groups appeared more anxious under the minimal condition, whereas the low-skilled and self-referred groups did not. Self-referred subjects received significantly lower attractiveness ratings than did the high- or medium-skilled groups. Implications of these results and future directions for research are discussed.This research is based on a M.S. thesis carried out by the first author under direction of the second author.     

The pain behavior scale: Modification and validation for outpatient use

The present study investigated the validity of an inpatient pain behavior rating scale modified for outpatient use. A series of 43 consecutive outpatients referred for evaluation of chronic pain was examined using the Pain Behavior Scale (PBS) and other psychometric instruments. Analyses revealed significantly higher Pain Behavior Scale scores for low back and multiple pain-site groups. The results also indicated a high degree of internal consistency of the scale. A multiple regression analysis, predicting observed pain behavior from reported pain behavior, indicated that decreased activity accounted for 32% of the variance in the PBS score. A similar regression for pain experience found that the pain level and the sensory scale score on the McGill Pain Questionnaire accounted for 39% of the PBS variance. Psychological characteristics including disease conviction, self-control, depression, and anxiety explained 45% of the variability in the PBS score. Thus, the scale is related to pain intensity, interference with activities, and a variety of psychological characteristics. The scale provides a measure of observable pain behavior that is also relatively independent of these clinical data sources. The Pain Behavior Scale as modified for outpatient use provides a brief index of pain behavior with potential use in the comprehensive evaluation of the pain patient.     

Circadian factors during sustained performance: Background and methodology

Cornell University Medical College, Westchester Division, The New York Hospital, White Plains, New York It is well established that there is a complex timekeeping mechanism in the human brain. This mechanism is associated with a variety of physiological and psychological rhythms having a period of about a day, and thus referred to as circadian rhythms. The circadian system has recently been modeled in terms of two underlying oscillators, one much more resistant to changes in routine than the other. These oscillators are considered to be endogenous, that is, internal to the organism, and not reliant for their existence upon changes in the person’s environment or general behavior. They thus continue to run even when the sleep/wake cycle is suspended, as in sustained operations. Thus, by their very nature, sustained operations require the individual to override the inputs that are coming from his or her circadian system (especially the indication that sleep is required). The aim of this paper is to provide a background to the area of circadian rhythms research, including a section on the methodology, so that the impact of the circadian system on sustained operations can be better understood.     

Effects of implementing (APA) ethical principles in collecting classroom data

The study examined the effects of providing six levels of research information to 270 classroom subjects on the data obtained from three different cognitive tasks. The effects of the three tasks on the subjects' academic self-concepts were also investigated. No significant differences were found among the six levels of information for each of the three tasks. On the logical task a significant linear relationship was found supporting previous research which indicates that the more information that is given to research subjects, the more negative the results. There were no significant differences on self-concept scores across the three tasks used. Overall, the implementation of ethical principles had little effect on data collected in classroom settings, indicating support for implementation. This data did indicate, however, that providing more information than required under the ethical principles can result in data bias on a specific task.     

Depth of processing: When the principle of congruity fails

Two factors, level of processing (Craik & Lockhart, 1972) and congruity (Schulman, 1974), known to have large effects on the recall of experimenter-provided responses to questions, were examined in a series of five incidental learning experiments using subject-generated responses. The data show that manipulation of level of processing has the same effect on recall of subjectgenerated responses as it does on experimenter-provided responses. However, the effect of congruity is reversed for subject-generated responses. The data suggest that the difficulty of generating unrelated responses (“incongruous“ items) may account, at least in part, for the failure of the “principle of congruity“ with subject-generated responses.