How is physiology relevant to behavior analysis?

Physiology is an important biological science; but behavior analysis is not a biological science, and behavior analysts can safely ignore biological processes. However, ignoring products of biological processes might be a serious mistake. The important products include behavior, instinctive drift, behavior potentials, hunger, and many developmental milestones and events. Physiology deals with the sources of such products; behavior analysis can deal with how the products affect behavior, which can be understood without understanding their sources.     

Assessment of pointer dog behavior

Studies of behavioral traits of the “Arkansas Line of nervous pointer dogs” are well documented (Murphreeet al., 1969). Demonstrations of drug effects on these traits, as measured on the standardized behavior test and expressed as “Morbidity Score,” have been disappointing, despite other evidence of effectiveness of drug treatments such as modification of operant performance (Murphreeet al. 1974c). A simple reproducible test with high interrater reliability is presented here. Subjects were nine nervous dogs that received placebo, pimozide, and chlordiazepoxide in a double-blind crossover design. Both drugs significantly attenuated “human avoidance,” a nervous trait. Placebo had no effect. The chlordiazepoxide effect was maximal on the first day of administration, returning to baseline three to four days after the last dose. The pimozide maximal effect was on day 4, with return to baseline six to nine days after the last dose. In addition to the aberrant behavior of the nervous pointer, hyperresponsiveness to dopaminergic stimulation and increased levels of L-DOPA in the cisternal spinal fluid were observed.     

Global Human Identification and Citizenship: A Review of Psychological Studies

We review psychological research on global human identification and citizenship, Thomas Paine’s belief that “The world is my country, and all mankind are my brethren.” In turn, we review the theoretical foundations that guided our work, research with measures that preceded our own, and our own work with our correlated scales. We review its foundations, its effects upon attitudes and behaviors, and how it might be enlarged. Global human identification and citizenship is related negatively to ethnocentrism, authoritarianism, the social dominance orientation, and self‐centeredness, but positively to dispositional empathy and the values of universalism, care, and justice. It is expressed in attitudes and behaviors that support human rights and work to reduce global suffering and inequalities. It is associated with greater global knowledge and with efforts to acquire that knowledge. Childrearing that emphasizes cross‐cultural exposure and awareness of others’ suffering may promote global human identification and citizenship, as does education that encourages global mindedness. Environments that support global human identification also induce it, as does envisioning it as a moral ideal.     

Clinical considerations for the treatment of body dysmorphic disorder with cognitive-behavioral therapy

Although cognitive behavior therapy has been found to be very effective in the treatment of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), there still remain a number of challenges that clinicians face in the treatment of individuals with BDD. In this article, we discuss issues related to comorbid depression, suicidality, substance use disorders, personality disorders as well as the role of early life experiences, delusional intensity of beliefs, and motivation to change. The aim of this review is to provide a treatment aid to clinicians by offering specific recommendations for improved care based on the available literature as well as our clinical experience.     

Age and individual differences in working memory: the size judgment span task

The authors introduced the Size Judgment Span (SJS) task, a working memory measure developed for use with persons of varied educational backgrounds and general intellectual ability. The authors pooled data from 5 published articles where the SJS task and other measures of cognitive performance were administered to create an archival data set with 496 participants. Analyses of these data yielded strong evidence of age and individual ability differences in SJS performance, confirming the sensitivity of this task for empirically distinguishing age and ability groups. The SJS was also significantly correlated with the backward digit span and listening span tasks. Using hierarchical regression analyses, the authors examined the SJS task as a predictor of different forms of episodic memory, including spatial location memory, verbal free recall, and recognition memory. Results confirmed the practical utility and predictive validity of the SJS task. The authors considered implications for current theoretical views of working memory.