Brain transections selectively alter ingestion and behavioral activation in neonatal rats

Food-deprived neonatal rats actively ingest milk that is infused into their mouths through intraoral cannulas. This ingestion is accompanied by behavioral activation. The involvement of various brain regions in ingestion and activation was examined by making transections along the neuraxis from the olfactory bulbs to the anterior pons in 2-day-old rats. Following a 24-hr deprivation period, a series of oral milk infusions was given, and milk intake and activity were measured. Intake was severely reduced only in animals with diencephalic transections. Cuts in front of or behind the diencephalon resulted in normal or slightly decreased intake. In contrast, activity tended to decline as the level of the transection became more caudal. Thus ingestion and its accompanying behavioral activation could be separated neuroanatomically. These results suggest that two brain mechanisms are involved in the ingestive response of the infant rat, one in the diencephalon and another caudal to the mesencephalon. However, behavioral activation appears less discretely organized, involving most of the neuraxis.     

EVALUATION OF BIOFEEDBACK IN THE TREATMENT OF BORDERLINE ESSENTIAL HYPERTENSION1

Direct biofeedback of blood pressure was compared with frontal EMG biofeedback and with self-instructed relaxation for the treatment of essential hypertension in a controlled group outcome study. Patients were followed up for four months after the end of treatment. Generalization of treatment effects was assessed through pre- and posttreatment measurements of blood pressure under clinical conditions in a physician's office. There were no significant reductions in diastolic blood pressure. The systolic blood pressure (SBP) of the patients receiving blood pressure biofeedback decreased 8.1 mm mercury (p = 0.07) and the SBP of the patients in the relaxation condition decreased 9.5 mm mercury (p = 0.05). In the generalization measures, there were significant reductions in SBP for the relaxation group. The results are discussed in terms of the general lack of replicability within the area of biofeedback treatment of hypertension.     

Employer Preferences for the Form and Substance of Employment Application Cover Letters

This study investigates the effect some principal characteristics of employment application cover letters have on personnel officers. A sample of personnel executives from 100 major companies was queried as to their perception of the desirability of 12 common cover letter characteristics. The results indicate that the personnel officers do not consistently perceive letters in the manner suggested by the existing literature. Some characteristics are shown to elicit negative responses from personnel officers, and thus should be avoided by job applicants. Several characteristics are strongly preferred by the sample surveyed. The model for an employment cover letter derived from this study should enhance the applicant's chances for a favorable response, or at least prevent letter forms which might detract therefrom.     

A Study of the Relationship Between Family Interaction and Individual Symptomology Over Time

The study was designed to answer two questions: (a) Can a relationship over time between family interaction and individual symptomatology be demonstrated? (b) Can it be shown that changes in interaction have more influence on changes in the symptom than vice versa. Five interaction dimensions were taped in weekly, three-quarter hour sessions over 20 weeks in five families, each consisting of a mother-father-child triad who met certain criteria and had an encopretic child. The interaction dimension scores were abstracted weekly from these sessions by content analyses relying on various scales. The derived ratio scores were then related to the number of days the child soiled himself in the week preceding and following the interaction measurement. The relationship was assessed by Pearson correlation coefficients and step-wise multiple regression analyses adjusted to account for the possible inflationary effects of taking measures from the same subjects more than once. The results of the analyses answered both questions posed by the study in the affirmative, thus supporting the rationale underlying family therapy.     

Dissonance theory revised again: Comment on the paper by Fazio,Zanna, and Cooper

Fazio, Zanna, and Cooper (Dissonance and self-perception: An integrative view on each theory's proper domain of application. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1977, 13, 464–479) specified mutually exclusive domains of application for dissonance and self-perception theory and used a misattribution-of-arousal procedure to distinguish between dissonance reduction and self-perception processes. Because their proposed limitations of the domains of the two theories and their use of the misattribution procedure are not directly derivable from earlier statements of either theory, it may be best to regard their analysis as a new theory, rather than as a conciliation of the parent theories. New analyses based on the Fazio et al. results indicate that their data provide an insufficient basis for preferring their theory to earlier versions of dissonance and self-perception theories. Dissonance and self-perception: An integrative view of each theory's proper domain of application. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1977, 13, 464–479.     

Imaging,empathy, and causal attribution

Three studies were conducted to test whether imagery accounts for the effects of empathy on attributions, that is, whether attributers construct and scan a mental image of social scenarios the same way that actual participants scan a real environment. According to this interpretation, attributers “see” the world as the participant does and make vicarious attributions. An alternative interpretation holds that subjects base vicarious attributions on recreating the motivations and affect of the actor, so that imaging is irrelevant to empathy and attributions. In the first study, subjects who imagined a story from the perspective of a particular character later showed differential recall of story details as a function of role, but not differential attributions. In Experiment 2, role-taking subjects showed clear effects of imaged perspective on recall for story details, but no effects on attributions of causality for an accident. Further, recall and attribution were uncorrelated. In the last study, empathy and imagery role-taking instructions produced independent effects: imagers showed pronounced perspective-relevant recall and empathizers did not. Neither showed unambiguous vicarious attributions. Recall and attribution were again uncorrelated. These studies suggest that the imagery explanation of empathy effects is untenable, and imply that the recall of perspective-relevant details is unlikely to mediate attributions of causality in imaginary scenarios.     

Directional errors of movement and their correction in a discrete tracking task

Many studies have shown that subjects can correct their own errors of movement more quickly than they can react to external stimuli. In the control of movements, three general categories of feedback have been defined as follows: (a) knowledge of results, primarily visually mediated, (b) proprioceptive or kinesthetic, such as from muscle spindles and joint receptors, and (c) corollary discharge or efference copy within the central nervous system. Experiments were conducted on eight normal human subjects to study the effects of these feedbacks on simple RT, choice RT, and error correction time. The movement used was plantarflexion and dorsiflexion of the ankle joint. The feedback loops were modified (a) by inverting the visual display to alter the subject's perception of results and (b) by applying a 100-Hz vibration simultaneously to both flexor and extensor muscles of the ankle joint. Central processing was altered by giving the subjects moderated doses of alcohol (blood-alcohol concentration levels of up to.10%). Vibration and alcohol increased both simple and choice RT but not the error correction time. These data reinforce the concept that there is a central pathway which can mediate error correcting responses.     

Acknowledgment of handicap as a tactic in social interaction

Nonhandicapped people often report discomfort and uncertainty when interacting with handicapped individuals. The three studies reported here investigated a possible tactic that handicapped people could use to reduce a fellow interactant's discomfort and uncertainty. Nonhandicapped subjects watched two videotapes of handicapped individuals being interviewed. Each subject then chose the handicapped person with whom he would prefer to work on a cooperative task. Results of all three studies supported the hypothesis that a handicapped person acknowledging his handicap will be preferred to a handicapped person who does not acknowledge his handicap. In Study 1, subjects significantly preferred a handicapped person who acknowledged his handicap to a handicapped person who did not disclose anything personal. In Study 2, subjects significantly preferred an acknowledging person over one who made a personal disclosure other than about his handicap. In Study 3, subjects preferred the individual acknowledging a handicap over one who disclosed something else personal even when the acknowledging individual was clearly nervous about doing so. These results suggest that acknowledging the handicap may be a promising tactic.     

A validation study of the Draw-A-Person as a measure of racial identity acceptance

The present study is a replication of Schofield's findings (1978) in the use of the Draw-A-Person as a measure of racial identity acceptance. Unlike Schofield's study, the present investigation involved an adolescent sample of blacks and whites, and race of figure drawn was determined by judges' consensus rather than an objective scoring system. The findings generally supported those of Schofield and the racial identity and preference literature as a whole in revealing blacks to be less accepting of their racial identity than whites.     

Schedule-induced locomotor activity in humans.

In two experiments, humans received tokens either on a fixed-interval schedule for plunger pulling or various response-nondependent fixed-time schedules ranging from 16 to 140 seconds. Locomotor activity such as walking, shifting weight, or pacing was recorded in quarters of the interreinforcement interval to examine the induced characteristics of that behavior in humans. While performance was variable, several characteristics were present that have counterparts in experiments with nonhumans during periodic schedules of food reinforcement: (a) first quarter rates, and sometimes overall rates, of locomotor activity were greater during intervals that terminated in a visual stimulus and token delivery than those without: (b) overall rates of locomotor activity were greater during fixed-time 16-second schedules than during fixed-time 80- or 140-second schedules; (c) rates of locomotor activity decreased during the interreinforcement intervals; (d) locomotor activity was induced by response-dependent and response-nondependent token delivery. These results showed that the rate and temporal pattern of locomotor activity can be schedule-induced in humans.