Changes in smoking behavior after a myocardial infarction

Among 383 participants in a longitudinal study of myocardial infarction (MI) patients, 230 smoked at the time of the MI. Posthospital smoking status was based on self-report for the day of follow-up, whereas information about length of continuous cessation was not available. Six months after the heart attack, 40.6% of the smokers had resumed smoking, whereas 49.4% smoked at a 3- to 5-year (M = 43-month) follow-up. Resumption of smoking within 6 months after the heart attack was associated with an increase in anxiety and depression during the first weeks after discharge, less cardiac health knowledge, and a less severe MI. In patients who relapsed at a later point, resumption of smoking was associated with a subsequent decline in general cardiac health knowledge, as well as in correct understanding of smoking at a risk factor. Long-term changes in smoking status were also related to previous heart disease, premorbid work instability, age, and severity of the MI. The results indicate that antismoking counseling of MI patients should not be limited to the health risks associated with smoking and that training in coping with negative affects without smoking may be valuable in promoting smoking cessation.     

The fans’ beliefs

O’Brien maintains that the behavior of football fans should be analyzed not merely in terms of individual behavior but also in terms of group dynamics. He found in the Milltown Supporters Club several such groups.     

A model of transitive choice

We report a formal model of transitive inference based on protocols from experiments on squirrel monkeys solving the 5-term series problem (McGonigle & Chalmers, 1977, 1992). These studies generate databases featuring transitive choice, task transfer (where at first a significant decrement is observed, and later substantial improvement without explicit training), and, finally, a Symbolic Distance Effect (SDE) based on decision-time data. Using a rule-based (production) system, we first established rule stacks at the group, then at the individual level, on the basis of triadic transfer performance first recorded in the McGonigle and Chalmers (1977) study. The models for each subject then accommodated data from the more intensive, later study with the same subjects (McGonigle & Chalmers, 1992). We found the initial model capable of dealing with all choice and reaction-time phenomena reported thus far, with only small changes in a rule search procedure. In common with an independent assay by McGonigle and Chalmers (1992), our model-based reassessment of decision times indicates that a major source of reaction time variation is item prominence in the rule stack rather than interitem (ordinal) distance per se.     

Seeing and hearing and space and space and time

A previous experiment had shown spatial location to be judged in terms of the framework provided by the modality in which stimuli were presented. In the present study, digits were either auditorally or visually presented, and in either form the three digits appeared successivly to the left, in the center, and to the right of the S. The digit which occurred temporally in the middle of the sequence was never central from the spatial viewpoint. The S was asked to indicate which digit was the middle one. Ss were blind, deaf, or normal. The deaf and two control groups saw visual displays, and the blind and their controls heard auditory displays. The former groups predominantly chose the spatially middle digit and the latter groups the temporally middle. It was concluded that modality of presentation was the trigger which switched in the coding dimension of time or space.