Effects of food priming on instrumental acquisition and performance

Four experiments investigated the effects of a priming food reinforcement, given 0 or 75 sec pretrial, on runway performance of rats. The studies differed in the use of between-versus-within-subject designs, and by using food or water as the goal reinforcer. In Experiment 1, using food as the goal reward, subjects primed with food 0 sec pretrial conditioned slower than subjects primed 75 sec pretrial. In Experiment 2, using water as the goal reward, subjects primed with food 0 sec pretrial conditioned faster. These differences were evident on both prefed trials and on nonprefed test trials. Experiments 3 and 4 showed an opposite pattern of results when within-subject comparisons of 0- and 75-sec pretrial intervals were used: Food priming immediately pretrial facilitated food-rewarded running but inhibited water-rewarded running. The results suggest prefeeding has differential effects on acquisition and performance of instrumental behavior, and also depending upon the similarity of the priming and goal reinforcers.     

Three methods of developing MMPI taxonomies of sexual offenders

In a sample of 261 state hospital sexual offenders, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) profiles did not differ for offenders with adult victims versus offenders with child victims when offender age was controlled. MMPI 2-point analyses for the whole sample revealed five common codes that were independent of victim maturity. The sample was randomly divided in half and subjected to a cluster-analytic procedure which revealed two MMPI clusters. The first cluster was unelevated, with Scale 4 as its high point. The second cluster had multiple elevations, with Scales 8, 4, 2, and 7 as the highest scales. These clusters were replicated in a cluster analysis of the second half of the sample. However, when the sample was recombined, the two clusters were not externally validated basis on demographic and criminological variables. The results suggest that common psychological variables among sexual offenders may have more discriminative value than victim maturity in developing sexual offender taxonomies.     

Polysemy and the acquisition of the cognitive internal state lexicon

Previous research (Hall, Scholnick, & Hughes, 1987) suggested that cognitive word meanings denote six increasingly abstract and complex cognitive processes. In this paper, we further investigated two interrelated aspects of this framework. A set of 36 conversations with children aged 4:5 to 5 provided the data. In Study 1, issues related to the optimal ordering of levels were examined by comparing the original sequence with a restructured model. In Study 2, the hypothesis that, in addition toknow, other polysemous cognitive internal state words would be hierarchically organized was tested. The findings lent support to the restructured model, but rejected the hypothesis that polysemous words within the domain were characterized by equivalent,hhierarchically organized levels. We conclude by proposing that cognitive internal state words were related by complementarity of levels rather than equivalence.The research on which this paper is based was supported by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York to William S. Hall. Data analysis was supported by the Computer Science Center at the University of Maryland, College Park.     

Use of the family adaptability and cohesion evaluation scales in child clinical research

Although the FACES has become a widely used instrument for assessing children's family relations, the possible linearity vs. curvilinearity of its cohesion and adaptability scales has been treated inconsistently by investigators. This study evaluated whether samples of adolescent repeat offenders, young adult prisoners, and adolescent nonoffenders were discriminated better by a linear or curvilinear treatment of the FACES scores. Between-groups comparisons showed that significant effects were observed for each of the three curvilinear measures (cohesion-curvilinear, adaptability-curvilinear, distance-from-center) and only one of the two linear measures (cohesionlinear). These findings support the superiority of a curvilinear treatment of the FACES. In light of these findings, it is suggested that investigators who use FACES evaluate the linearity of the scales and determine whether a linear or curvilinear treatment of the data produces more meaningful results.