Source variability and recall of auditory material 1

Recall of auditory narrative material was measured under three conditions of presentation. These were a single source condition with material from one speaker, a four source fixed sequence condition with material from four speakers in a fixed sequence of 3-sec. lengths, and a four source random condition with material from four speakers in a random sequence of 3-sec. lengths. Recall was better for the single source condition than for the four source conditions. No significant difference was found between the fixed and random sequential presentations. Results are discussed in terms of the attentional behaviors involved in the tasks.     

STUDIES IN THE PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF A NEW DRUG (DIETHYLPROPION): Subjective effects in the natural environment

Two doses diethylpropion, one dose pipradrol, one dose amobarbital and placebo were administered to 116 subjects, who rated their state on twenty variables. The variables were intercorrelated under pipradrol and pentymal. The correlation matrices were subjected to factor analysis. Four factors were found in both studies: Happiness, Alertness, Relaxation, and Flight of thoughts. There is some agreement between the two factor analyses. There were few significant effects of the drugs on factor scores, but the structure is quite unambiguous: pipradrol and diethylpropion are stimulating, and amobarbital tranquilizing.     

Facets of support related to well-being: quantitative social isolation and perceived family support in a sample of elderly women

The purpose of this study was to examine the independent and interactive relationships of measures of network embeddedness and perceived social support with mental and physical health measures from responses of a sample of 271 community-dwelling elderly women. Quantitative social isolation was measured as the co-occurrence of low network embeddedness with family and with friends. There was a threshold effect such that quantitatively isolated participants had poorer psychological well-being and functional health than did nonisolated participants. This effect was independent of perceived support levels. The pattern was different for perceived social support. Elderly women with low perceived family support had poorer psychological well-being regardless of perceived support from friends or network embeddedness. Implications are discussed for several unanswered questions in the social support literature, including possible interventions for the quantitatively isolated and for those with low levels of perceived support.     

Information processing,neuropsychological function,and the inherited predisposition to alcoholism

Sons of male alcoholics are at particularly heightened risk for the development of alcoholism. This heightened risk frequently appears in association with increased incidence of conduct disorder or hyperactivity, with deficits in abstract thinking and poor school performance, with abnormalities in cued psychophysiological response, and with increased sensitivity to the putatively stress-response-dampening effects of alcohol intoxication. This risk and its associated features are discussed within the context of a neuropsychological theory, predicated on the notions (1) that deficits in cognitive functions theoretically dependent upon the intact functioning of the prefrontal cortex could underlie manifestation of the idiosyncracies commonly attributed to sons of male alcoholics, and (2) that acute alcohol intoxication could relieve the subjective discomfort associated with the consequences of such deficits.     

BIOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

Abstract. The sciences may be conceptualized as a hierarchy ranked by level of organization (e.g., many-body physics ranks above particle physics). Each science serves as an antidiscipline for the science above it; that is, between each pair, tense but creative interplay is inevitable. Biology has advanced through such tension between its subdisciplines and now can serve as an antidiscipline for the social sciences—for anthropology, for example, by examining the connection between cultural and biological evolution; for psychology, by addressing the nature of learning and the structure of the unconscious; for economics, by examining economically irrational behavior and by comparing economic activity in humans and other species. Sociology, concerned mainly with advanced literate societies, is relatively remote from the genetic basis of human social behavior. However, moving between biological and social levels of organization generates richness and points to new and unexpected principles.     

Near-death experiences and the measurement of blood gases

Although cerebral anoxia is not thought to be responsible for triggering near-death experiences (NDEs), the issue is not so clear in the case of hypercapnia. Detection of normal blood gases in Michael Sabom's (1982) case study seems to be the major reply to suggestions that hypercapnia may have a causal role in NDEs. We argue, however, that routine arterial measures of blood gases are not a reliable indicator of cerebral levels.