A cost-effectiveness evaluation of parent training

Outcomes from a parenting program that was modified to reduce costs and a wait-list control condition were compared. Costs were reduced by over 50%. Sixty-six parents participated. Treatment parents reported significantly greater improvements in child behavior problems, parent attitudes, and satisfaction with family relationships when compared to untreated controls. These effects were maintained at three months follow-up. Outcomes for 35 of the children in the sample who had clinically significant behavior problems before treatment were also examined separately. The difference between clinical recovery rates, i.e., movement from the clinical to normal range during treatment, for control and treatment children was not statistically significant. Limitations of the current study and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Learning of a hippocampal-dependent conditioning task changes the binding properties of AMPA receptors in rabbit hippocampus.

The N-methyl-D-asparate (NMDA) and alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazole propionate (AMPA) subtypes of glutamate receptors have been shown to play critical roles in various forms of synaptic plasticity (i.e., learning and memory, long-term potentiation). We previously demonstrated that the binding of [3H]AMPA to the AMPA subtype of glutamate receptors was selectively increased in hippocampus following classical conditioning of the rabbit nictitating membrane response in a delay paradigm. We report here that the same effect was observed in a variant of this learning paradigm that requires the participation of the hippocampus, i.e., trace conditioning of the rabbit nictitating membrane. The binding of [3H]TCP (N-[1-(2-thienyl)cyclo-hexyl]-3,4-piperidine) to the NMDA receptor remained unchanged in all the experimental groups tested. Paired presentations of conditioned and unconditioned stimuli resulted in an increased binding of [3H]AMPA, an agonist of the AMPA receptors, in several hippocampal subfields while the binding of an antagonist, [3H]CNQX (6-nitro-7-cyanoquinoxaline-2,3-dione), was decreased. The results suggest that the learning-induced changes in binding of the ligands to the AMPA receptor reflect changes in affinity of the receptor rather than in the number of sites. These results support the hypothesis that changes in hippocampal glutamate receptors are a corollary of synaptic plasticity in certain forms of learning.     

The Conflicted Individual: Personality-Based and Domain Specific Antecedents of Ambivalent Social Attitudes

Historically, attitude theory and research has assumed that attitudes are largely unconflicted and unidimensional summary statements of feelings and beliefs. More recent work has reexamined this assumption (Thompson, Zanna, & Griffin, in press). The present article details two studies that continue to investigate this notion, examining antecedent variables assumed important in the genesis of attitudinal ambivalence. The first study focuses upon personality-based factors such as individuals' Need for Cognition (NFC) and Personal Fear of Invalidity (PFI) (a heightened concern with error). The pattern of results was consistent with our predictions: High NFC was associated with less ambivalence and high PFI was associated with greater ambivalence. The second study investigated a domain-specific antecedent. It was predicted that higher involvement would reduce the level of ambivalence experienced. Further, involvement was expected to moderate the effect of the personality-based antecedents. Again, results confirmed our hypotheses. High     

Sociocultural Influences on African-American Racial Identification

This paper examines the relative impact of two sources of sociocultural influence on racial identification. Using interviews with 225 African-American adults (Thompson Sanders, 1994), the relative influence of within-group vs. intergroup interaction variables was assessed. The data were collected using a structured interview protocol and a 30-item racial identification questionnaire. Information on the level and quality of intragroup interaction, experiences with race relations, political activism, age, gender, income, education, and orientation on four parameters of racial identification—psychological, physical, cultural, and sociopolitical—was collected. The results suggest that within-group contact variables have a strong association with the psychological and physical parameters of racial identification. The extent and quality of intergroup interaction with non-African Americans were associated with the sociopolitical parameter. Cultural racial identification was largely determined by demographic variables. These data suggest a model of racial identification based on a complex set of within-group, intergroup, and demographic variables.     

Reconstructive memory in the dating of personal and public news events

Two experiments investigated memory for the dates of events selected and recorded by subjects in diaries. In Experiment 1, personal events and public news events were compared, with retention time varying from 1 week up to 9 months. It was found that the day of the week was more accurately identified for personal events than for news events, that day-of-the-week (DOW) accuracy did not decrease with increasing retention time, and that memory of the personal context of both event types was more important for DOW accuracy than was memory of the core of the events. These results support our view that memory of the day of the week is mainly reconstructed by reference to a temporal week schema based on personal experiences, and that the relation of news events to the week schema is mediated by memory of personal context. The distribution of DOW errors was modeled as the outcome of a process of guessing constrained by subdivisions of the week schema, without assuming any special temporal memory trace. In Experiment 2, the model was shown to fit independently collected data from a different subject pool and country equally well.     

A one-trial non-shock passive avoidance task for rats

Apparatus and procedure are described for providing a one-trial nonshock passive-avoidance task.     

Stimulus complexity,free looking time,and inspective exploration

Fourteen Ss rated 59 objects on a seven point complexity scale. From these ratings 10 objects were chosen at the high, middle, and low levels of complexity, and 35 mm slides were made of these 30 objects. Fifteen Ss manipulated and inspected each of the objects for as long as they wished and a second group of 15 Ss viewed slides of the objects for as long as they wished. Analysis of the time scores from these two groups revealed that both inspective manipulation time and free looking time increased as a function of stimulus complexity. Inspective manipulation time was greater than free looking time except at the low complexity level.     

Escape from SD associated with fixed-ratio reinforcement

Throughout ascending and descending fixed-ratio (FR) sequences, rats were allowed to terminate the FR stimulus control by pressing a time-out (TO) lever. To minimize chance or accidental responses on this second lever, three presses were required to produce the 30-sec S^Δ period. As FR performance became more “strained,” there was an increased predisposition to escape from the time-in stimulus complex. The generality of this finding was extended by obtaining recoverability (independent of the direction of stimulus change) of the FR-TO function in the descending series. Typically, escapes were produced only during the post-reinforcement pause; however, under a mixed FR FR schedule, their occurrence shifted to a point within the inter-reinforcement interval corresponding to the unreinforced completion of the lower ratio component. It appears that the point where the rat can discriminate the size of the ratio requirement will be the place where TOs are imposed. This inference was supported by a substantial increase in TO frequency accompanying a shift from CRF to extinction on the FR lever. Finally, the escape lever was placed on a progressively increasing FR schedule and later extinguished to demonstrate that the TO condition was in fact reinforcing.