Further observations on overt “mediating” behavior and the discrimination of time

When the lever-pressing behavior of five rats was maintained by a DRL schedule (reinforcement was scheduled only when a specified waiting time between successive responses was exceeded), collateral behavior developed that apparently served a mediating function. In two cases this behavior did not arise until the experimental environment included pieces of wood that the rats started to nibble. When collateral behavior first appeared, it was always accompanied by an increase in responses spaced far enough apart to earn reinforcement. If collateral behavior was prevented, the number of reinforced responses always decreased. Extinction of lever pressing extinguished the collateral behavior. Adding a limited-hold contingency to the schedule did not extinguish collateral behavior. It appears that the rat can better space its responses appropriately when concurrently performing some overt collateral activity. The amount of this activity apparently comes to serve as a discriminative stimulus. To assume the existence of internal events that serve as discriminative stimuli in temporal discriminations is, at least under some circumstances, unnecessary.     

Rousseau's Political Defense of the Sex-roled Family

We argue that Rousseau's defense of the sex-roled family is not based on biological determinism or simple misogyny. Rather, his advocacy of sexual differentiation is based on his understanding of its ability to bring individuals outside of themselves into interdependent communities, and thus to counter natural independence, self'absorption and asociality, as well as social competitiveness and egoism. This political defense of the sex-roled family needs more critique by feminists.     

Strategic and automatic priming of semantic memory in alcoholic Korsakoff patients

To examine whether the organization of semantic memory is intact in alcoholic Korsakoff patients, three semantic memory tasks which do not require active search for stored information were administered to a group of Korsakoff patients and alcoholic controls. The first two tasks used a perceptual identification paradigm in which patients had to identify briefly presented targets preceded by associatively (experiment 1) or categorically (experiment 2) related primes. On both tasks, Korsakoff patients demonstrated intact priming effects. Because priming in these tasks was thought to reflect the operation of strategic processes, experiment 3 was designed to assess automatic spreading activation using a lexical decision task. Here as well, Korsakoff patients demonstrated intact priming. Taken together, these results support the view that the organization of semantic memory in Korsakoff patients has not been disrupted by their brain injury. The implications of these findings for understanding Korsakoff patients' impaired performance on semantic search tasks are discussed.     

Effect of sex education on the sexual and contraceptive practices of female teenagers in Mexico City

After reviewing the literature on the relationship between sex education and sexual and contraceptive behavior, the National Research Council (1987) recently concluded that the existing evaluation of the effects of sex education on sexual and contraceptive practice is helpful but not sufficient. 1 possible explanation for the different results obtained are the diverse sociodemographic characteristics of the sample(s) of teens under consideration. Another aspect which might account for the differences seen in the literature focuses on the areas covered in the course. In Mexico, no studies have been undertaken which deal with the relationship between sex education and sexual and contraceptive behaviors. A study carried out with 392 adolescent females ages 16-17 of lower and middle lower socioeconomic status showed that merely attending a sex education course did not affect the initiation or continuation of sexual activity, contraceptive behavior, or even the perception of accessibility to contraception. Providing information on sexuality, partner relationships, and where contraception can be obtained does not appear to have any effect on sexual activity. Receiving information on pregnancy prevention and obtaining contraceptives was found to be related to contraceptive use. Although less dramatic, information about partner relationships and sexuality produced increases in contraceptive use.