Establishing appropriate symptomatic control groups for the eating disorders

Two symptomatic control groups for the eating disorders were defined using high and low scores on the Dietary Restraint and Disinhibition scales of the Three Factor Eating Questionnaire. Clinical subjects diagnosed with anorexia and bulimia nervosa were compared with these symptomatic control groups using measures of body weight, bulimic symptoms, and anorexic symptoms. In comparison to the high-Restraint/low-Disinhibition group, anorexic subjects scored higher on measures of eating disorder symptoms but not on Restraint and Disinhibition. The high-Restraint/high-Disinhibition group differed from bulimia nervosa subjects on measures of eating disorder symptoms but did not differ on Restraint and Disinhibition. The results suggested that a control group defined by high Restraint and low Disinhibition formed an appropriate control group for anorexia nervosa. For bulimia nervosa, the most appropriate control group was defined by high Restraint and high Disinhibition.     

Interaction between penile reflexes and copulation in male rats

Intact, unanesthetized male rats were place in a supine position, with the penile sheath continuously retracted. Three forms of penile reflex were displayed: erections, cups, and flips. The reciprocal relation between copulation and the penile reflexes occurring in supine tests was explored in four experiments. In Experiment 1, sexual exhaustion depressed all penile reflexes, but the reflexes returned to baseline levels within 8 hr, long before copulatory potential. In Experiment 2, reflexes were depressed to exhaustion levels after fewer ejaculations than were required for sexual exhaustion, an indication that reflexes are more readily evoked during copulation than in supine tests. Experiment 3 determined that a rat's penile-reflex potential may be enhanced by placing the rat in a copulation-test cage, by allowing the male a few antecedent intromissions, or by allowing an antecedent ejaculation. The display of penile reflexes within 1 min after ejaculation suggests that the period of reduced sexual arousability following ejaculation is not due to reduced excitability in the spinal mechanisms controlling penile reflexes. In Experiment 4, 1 hr of penile-reflex elicitation had no effect on subsequent copulatory behavior. Thus, sexual stimulation may increase or decrease penile-reflex potential, but a reciprocal influence was not detectable.     

Discrimination of time intervals bounded by tone bursts

Trained listeners had to discriminate, in a four-level 2AFC paradigm, the duration of a time interval bounded by pairs of brief tone bursts. The time intervals ranged from 10 to 100 msec. When the tone-burst markers were similar in their intensity (86 dB SPL) and frequency (1 kHz), the just noticeable time difference was found to be monotonically related to the base interval. On the other hand, when the intensity of the first marker was severely attenuated (by 50 dB) or when a large (2-octave) difference was introduced between the frequencies of the two markers, the time discrimination functions became nonmonotonic. A similar, albeit slight, departure from monotonicity was also achieved by making the second marker much longer than the first (300 msec vs. 10 msec). The nonmonotonicity of these time discrimination functions is compared to the well-documented nonmonotonicity that may be observed for voice onset time (VOT) discrimination functions.     

Soviet Patriarchy: Past and Present

The myth that women had equal rights and were emancipated in the Soviet Union masks the reality that the Soviet state, like all totalitarian states, is a manifestation of patriarchal ideology. The true democratization of Russian society requires the rejection of masculinist ideology and constitutes one of the most important social and cultural challenges.     

Biased perception of overeating in bulimia nervosa and compulsive binge eaters

This study investigated the relationship between caloric intake and perceived overeating in subjects with and without a history of problematic binge eating. Eighty subjects (20 in four groups: bulimia nervosa, compulsive binge eaters, obese, and normal controls) self-monitored eating for 2 weeks. The regression slopes for self-reported overeating as a function of caloric intake were contrasted across the four groups. At higher caloric levels, bulimics and binge eaters reported overeating at a significantly higher rate compared to obese and normal control groups. These data were interpreted as a type of cognitive bias whereby subjects with a history of binge eating distorted their perception of overeating at progressively higher caloric levels. It was proposed that excessive concern about eating and dieting may cause such cognitive biases. A parallel was drawn with body image distortion, which appears to be associated with overconcem with body size and shape.     

When do primes go bad? A corpus of orthographically related primes that inhibit fragment completion

The memory block effect (MBE) occurs when orthographically similar words inhibit retrieval. Previous studies have published 55 different stimuli that produce the MBE in word fragment completion. This small number of stimuli constrains experimental designs, presents serious obstacles for using neuroimaging to elucidate neural substrates of blocking, and raises concern that the MBE is limited to a particular group of words. A pool of 315 stimulus words was tested in a traditional MBE paradigm, and the results demonstrated that the MBE generalizes to other stimuli. This study also expands the number of stimuli that produce the MBE because 185 new stimuli produced blocking effects. As a result, the current list of 240 MBE stimuli can be used for word fragment research including cognitive neuroscience investigations of retrieval inhibition. A table of MBE stimuli is available in an archived appendix that can be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive.     

Stagewise multidimensional visual discrimination by pigeons

We trained six pigeons in a stagewise Multiple Necessary Cues (MNC) go/no‐go task to document the dynamics of discrimination learning involving increasingly complex visual stimuli. The compound stimuli were composed from four dimensions, each of which could assume either of two extreme values or their intermediate value: Shape, Size, Line Orientation, and Brightness. Starting with a stimulus composed entirely from intermediate values, we replaced those values with each of the two extreme dimensional values in four successive stages, thereby increasing the stimulus set from 2 in Stage 1 to 16 in Stage 4. In each stage, only one combination of values signaled food (S⁺), whereas the remaining combinations did not (S^?s). We calculated the rate of pecking during the first 15 s of each stimulus presentation and, in any given stage, training continued until the rate of responding to all of the S^?s was less than 20% of the rate of responding to the S⁺. All pigeons successfully acquired the final discrimination, suggesting that they attended to all of the dimensions relevant for the discrimination. We also replicated the key results of prior MNC studies: (1) the number of extreme dimensional values in each stage was positively related to the amount of training required for pigeons to acquire the discrimination; (2) attentional tradeoffs were most often observed when three or four dimensions were being trained; and (3) throughout training, the number of dimensional values in the S^?s that differed from the S⁺ was positively related to their discriminability from S⁺.     

Exploring and Estimating the Revenues and Profits of Participants in Stolen Data Markets

Researchers have begun to explore the problem of mass data breaches, where consumer information is acquired by cybercriminals and sold in open markets on-line. Although studies document the social processes of the market and relationships between buyers and sellers, few have considered the revenues earned from market transactions. This study explored these issues using a sample of threads from 10 Russian language and 3 English language Web forums used to sell stolen data. Estimates were generated on the total number of transactions completed by participants along with the advertised prices for the two most common forms of personal information sold. The findings demonstrated that buyers may earn a range of revenues from the sale of stolen data, although this figure was smaller than the potential profits earned from fraudulent use and identity crimes by data buyers. The implications of this study for cybercrime research and policy are explored in detail.     

Change in Symptoms and Personal Construct Structure in Anxiety Disorders: A Preliminary Study on the Effects of Constructivist Therapy

In recent years, constructivist psychotherapy has evolved as a plausible treatment for different disorders. The present study aimed to explore the effectiveness of this therapy in terms of symptom improvement and changes in the personal construct system. Forty-seven anxiety clients received brief integrative constructivist therapy. Scores on symptom and personal construct measures decreased after the treatment, but not all of them showed a statistically significant change. The percentage of clients with implicative dilemmas decreased after psychotherapy. The results provide preliminary support for the effectiveness of brief constructivist psychotherapy as a treatment for anxiety disorders in primary care services. Several limitations are acknowledged. Further controlled research is needed.