Some effects of methylphenidate on stimulus control of ratio avoidance behavior in the rat

After exposure to an avoidance schedule which included a warning signal, a rat was placed on a multiple schedule in which the first component was the same as before, i.e., a single response reset the response-shock interval, delaying shock, and the second component differed only in that four bar-presses were required to postpone shock. A fixed ratio requirement of four responses (FR 4) generated behavior resembling a fixed ratio requirement of one response (FR 1) since responding was controlled by the warning signal but more shocks were received. At a dosage of 2 mg/kg, methylphenidate given intraperitoneally decreased shock frequency during FR 4 periods while FR 1 behavior was not affected; at 4 mg/kg, stimulus control of avoidance responding was impaired during both components. Results at 4 mg/kg were partially confirmed by two animals exposed to an FR 4 avoidance schedule which included a warning signal but with different parameters. Response distributions showed that methylphenidate increased response rates in the absence of the warning signal, i.e., stimulus control of ratio-avoidance behavior was impaired although the increased response rates reduced shock frequency. One hour later responses again occurred more frequently during the signal than in its absence but shocks were less frequent than during control (non-drug) periods.     

Changes in religious attitudes and behaviors of Euro-Turk students with theology education

This paper studied a new dimension of international students, who are citizens of another country but came back to Turkey for religious education where their parents or grandparents are citizens. Did a five-year religious education process based on the main sources of Islam lead to a change in these students' religious attitudes and behaviors, and if yes to what extent did these changes occur? A panel survey is conducted on these students in pre-education and post-education periods to answer this question. Without ignoring the effect of the social environment outside of education on religious attitudes, we found that students exhibit a more tolerant, nonstrict attitude toward both their coreligionists and those who have negative attitudes toward their religion. Additionally, in parallel with the deepening of religious knowledge, a questioning and critical perspective was formed with a decrease in superstitions. We found that the attitude change in female students was generally higher than that of male students.     

Religious Organizations and Government: An Ecclesial Lutheran “Take”

Sharp debates exist today about the appropriate relationship between religious organizations and government, with views ranging from Christian nationalism to strict secularists. This essay explores a mediating position expressed in the conceptual phrase that religious bodies should “work with civil authorities in areas of mutual endeavor, maintaining institutional separation and functional interaction.” The essay uses historical and ecclesial sources to describe the struggles and underpinnings that lead to this position and then unpacks its meaning and import. While originating from within the conceptual and ecclesial American Lutheran tradition, the essay points to this approach as a public proposal for sound relationship between religious communities and political authority in the United States.     

The Institute of Medicine's report on non-heart-beating organ transplantation

In December 1997, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released a report on medical and ethical issues in the procurement of non-heart-beating organ donors. This report had been requested in May 1997 by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). We will here describe the genesis of the IOM report, the medical and moral concerns that led the DHHS to sponsor it, the process of producing it, and its conclusions. The analyses, findings, and recommendations of the report are also reviewed, in particular the central issues that led to suggestions for policy changes.     

Improving Juror Comprehension of Judicial Instructions on the Entrapment Defense1

When the defense of entrapment is raised, the legal and psychological question is not whether the defendant committed some illegal act, but rather why the defendant behaved as he or she did and whether government agents' actions provoked the defendant to commit the same crime. The subjective test of entrapment focuses on the predisposition of the defendant to commit a particular crime, while the objective test focuses on situational forces. In Study 1, type of entrapment defense (subjective, objective) and the defendant's prior record (no prior record, prior record) were experimentally manipulated. As expected, superior comprehension of the judge's instructions was found for jurors who heard subjective test instructions. Study 2 was designed to improve the comprehension and judgments of jurors who received 1 of 3 versions of the objective test. Juror comprehension of key legal concepts and subsequent judgments improved if jurors heard one of the rewritten versions of the objective test.     

Conflict-Resolution Training and Middle School Students' Integrative Negotiation Behavior

This study examined the impact of conflict-resolution training on students' use of distributive and integrative negotiating procedures. In a midwestern, suburban middle school, 176 students (grades 6 through 9) participated in the study. Students were placed in a negotiation situation involving the buying and selling of commodities in which they could adopt a distributive (maximize own outcomes) or an integrative (maximize joint outcomes) negotiation approach. There were no significant differences between males and females or among students in the 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th grades. The results of this study indicated that conflict-resolution and peer-mediation training resulted in the middle school students increasing their use of integrative negotiations and the positiveness of students' attitudes toward conflict.     

The representation of color and form in long-term memory

Color and form are elementary stimulus encoding dimensions that have effects on the representation of visual stimuli at early processing stages. Little is known, however, about their effects on visual long-term memory. In three experiments we investigated whether color is part of the memory representation, whether color and form are bound in the memory representation, and the effect of color context on memory performance. Experimental results suggest that color is part of the memory representation and that color and form can be represented separately in memory and accessed independently. We suggest that the binding of color and form is a deliberate strategic act that requires focal attention, not a natural consequence of processing visual stimuli. We compare our results with the predictions of two computational memory models regarding feature binding. The effect of color context was not straightforward; however, results are consistent with the encoding specificity principle.     

Effects of gender and situation on the perception of sexual harassment

This study addressed three sources of variability in the perception of sexual harassment: the gender of the observer, the gender combination of the harasser and victim, and the role relationship between the harasser and victim. College students (N = 197), approximately 80% of whom were Caucasian, single, and in their early 20s, were randomly divided into two groups. In one group, the harasser was a man and the victim was a woman. In the other group, the harasser was a woman and the victim was a man. Participants rated the degree to which they thought sexual harassment occurred in 20 hypothetical interactions in each of three situations using a 7-point sexual harassment scale. Men and women rated the situations alike as long as the harasser was a man and the victim was a woman. When the perpetrator was a woman and the victim was a man, men gave significantly lower ratings than women. In contrast, women's ratings were the same regardless of the gender of the harasser. Harassment ratings also varied as a function of the power differential between the harasser and victim. The more egalitarian the relationship, the less likely participants were to perceive the behavior as sexually harassing.