Perceptions of Liver Transplant Candidates with or Without an Alcohol Use History

Cirrhosis secondary to alcohol use is a primary cause of liver disease and a medical condition for which liver transplantation is a viable treatment option. However, there remains considerable debate within both the lay and the medical communities regarding the distribution of a scarce medical resource to adults with alcoholism. This study examined college students' perceptions toward an adult, presented in a written vignette, for whom liver transplantation was medically indicated. The influence of gender (female and male) and alcohol use history (no alcohol history, alcoholism history with long-term abstinence, alcoholism history with current use) on these ratings was examined. Subjects rated the adult presented with no alcohol history more positively than they did the adults presented with a history of alcoholism. Also, the adult with no alcohol history was more likely to be offered transplantation and was given higher priority ratings for transplantation by subjects. While subjects' own alcohol use history and organ donor registration status were not associated with ratings, having a family member with an alcohol problem and personally knowing a transplant recipient were related to more favorable ratings toward the adult presented in the vignette. Implications of these findings as well as limitations of the study are discussed.     

Persistence of acquired behavioral control in the context of imprinting

Newly hatched Khaki Campbell ducklings (Anas platyrhynchos domesticus) were exposed to a moving object that immediately suppressed distress vocalizations occurring in a novel environment. The static visual and auditory features of this object acquired the ability to suppress distress vocalizations after eight 20-min sessions of exposure to the object in motion. The acquired suppressive properties of these features were found to persist throughout thirty 20-min sessions given over 10 days. During these sessions, the ducklings were continually exposed to the static features in the absence of visual movement. In a second experiment, the ability of these features in the absence of visual movement. In a second experiment, the ability of these features to serve as reinforcement for a pecking response was shown to persist for up to 56 hr. In one duckling, presentations of the static visual features did not maintain pecking behavior. However, it was shown that pecking responses could be re-instated in this duckling by introducing novel stimuli to the environment.     

Semantic memory for metaphor: The conceptual base hypothesis

The idea that people can encode and use an extremely abstract and general form of a complex linguistic (proverb) input-a conceptual base-was examined in two experiments. In Experiment I, each proverb was accompanied by either a conceptually related (good, mediocre, or poor) or an unrelated interpretation. The related interpretations were more effective recall prompts than were the unrelated interpretations, but only for high-imagery proverbs. In Experiment II, subjects wrote interpretations of the proverbs and then received either the proverb subject-noun or a brief story as a prompt. As was the case for the interpretations in Experiment I, the stories did not share any major vocabulary or propositional structure with their proverb source. Nonetheless, the stories were as effective as the nouns. Also, quality of proverb interpretation and of recall performance were positively related, with the correlations involving low-imagery proverbs, and stories, tending to be higher. Both experiments provided support for the conceptual-base notion, and underlined the importance of interpretive context, but more definitive evidence is needed.     

Stroop interference in naming and verifying spatial locations

Two experiments are reported that were designed to assess effects of semantic similarity on naming and verification of spatial locations. In Experiment I, the wordsabove, below, left, andright occurred as distractors when Ss named the location of the word relative to a dot, or the location of a dot relative to the word. In Experiment II. the same dot-word displays were used, but Ss reported whether or not the word correctly specified its own location relative to the dot or the location of the dot relative to itself. The naming task showed some within-dimension facilitation and interference effects, most notably when Ss named the location occupied by the distractor word. The verification tasks showed quite substantial retardation of “no” responses when the word and location represented different values on either the horizontal or the vertical dimension.     

Partial differential feedback: An on-line training configuration for the optimization of multidimensional cue learning

The present paper describes a PDP-9 computer configuration arranged for experimental research into the acquisition of judgmental skill, but designed to overcome certain deficiences noted in stimulus-response-outcome (SRO) paradigms. The configuration departs radically from traditional approaches in that (a) the stimulus is placed under S control; (b) the requirement for a “response” is eliminated; (c) outcome feedback is a continuously changing function of the multiattribute stimulus settings under the control of S; and (d) the configuration makes possible the rapid learning of an essential feature of such learning tasks, namely the partial derivatives of the criterion or outcome variable with respect to each of the stimulus attributes.     

Collateral behavior of the pigeon during conditioned suppression of key pecking

Ethological recording procedures measured collateral behavior in pigeons whose key-pecking performance was suppressed during a tone that ended with unavoidable electric shock. Independent recordings of gross behavior were made by two observers throughout 60-sec intervals immediately before, during, and after tone presentation. Results indicated significant reductions in the frequency of collateral movements and an increase in the time between successive movements during tone presentations. These effects were observed in all subjects, despite differences in the sequential patterns of behavior. Only partial recovery of the behavior evidenced before tone presentation was found during a 60-sec interval following shock. It was concluded that conditioned suppression procedures caused the bird to “freeze” during tone presentation and in this fashion produced a general inhibitory effect on ongoing overt activity, including key pecking.