Postnatal development of heart rate patterns elicited by an aversive CS and US in cats

Heart rate and motor responses were recorded in cats of different ages during classical conditioning. A deceleratory-acceleratory heart rate pattern observed during the CS-US interval in one and four-week-old kittens is an alpha conditioned response, a potentiated original response to the CS. At eight weeks of age two new distinct patterns of pure acceleration or pure deceleration are acquired during conditioning and in the absence of motor learning. At 12 weeks of age and in adult subjects, heart rate patterns during the CS-US interval become more complex and conditioned motor responses can be observed. A covariance of HR acceleration and motor responses during the CS-US interval is absent in eight-week-old subjects, but quite high in 12-week-old subjects and adult cats. The data are interpreted as suggesting separate elicitatory mechanisms of HR and motor responses which may show synchrony later in ontogeny.     

The effect of organizational identification on employee affective and performance responses

Organizational identification (OI), defined as the importance of the organization in the person's self-concept, was argued to influence employee affective responses (job satisfaction and alienation) and performance responses (task involvement, investment of effort, and performance effectiveness). More specifically, it was hypothesized that there is 1. a positive relationship abetween OI and satisfaction with five job dimensions-work, supervision, pay, promotion and co-workers; 2. a negative relationship between OI and alienation; and 3. a positive relationship between OI and three task-related variables-task involvement, investment of effort, and performance effectiveness. A survey study was conducted on 215 service deliverers to the elderly in a large midwest city. The results were mostly consistent with the hypotheses.The data for this study was collected under the auspices of theBenjamin Rose Institute, Cleveland, Ohio.     

TEACHER POPULARITY AND CONTRAST EFFECTS IN A CLASSROOM TOKEN ECONOMY

There is a common fear that the use of a token economy in one classroom might harm pupil performance in situations where the contingencies are not in effect. This study investigated potential contrast effects on measures of children's productivity and attitudes toward teachers. Six children with reading deficits participated. A multiple baseline design was used to assess the effects of a token economy which was systematically introduced across three teachers. Dependent measures included two rating forms of teacher popularity and work rate on a programmed reading series. The results indicated that the token system was effective in increasing the children's productivity and that no consistent behavioral contrast effects occurred. Furthermore, children's attitudes toward teachers did not appear to be influenced by the token economy until only one teacher was not delivering tokens. At this point, her popularity declined until she also delivered tokens. The token economy manipulation appeared to have a specific, desirable effect on the targeted behavior (i.e., work rate) and had minimal negative or positive “side effects” on teacher popularity.     

Curvature is a basic feature for visual search tasks.

A curved target can be found efficiently among straight distractors in a visual search task. This could reflect the status of curvature as a basic feature for visual search. Alternatively, curvature could be detected as a locus of high variation in orientation. In a series of experiments it is shown that efficient search for curvature is possible even if local variation in orientation is eliminated as a cue. This suggests that curvature is part of the set of basic features for visual search and that this set is derived relatively late in the course of visual processing.     

Visual search in scenes involves selective and nonselective pathways

How does one find objects in scenes? For decades, visual search models have been built on experiments in which observers search for targets, presented among distractor items, isolated and randomly arranged on blank backgrounds. Are these models relevant to search in continuous scenes? This article argues that the mechanisms that govern artificial, laboratory search tasks do play a role in visual search in scenes. However, scene-based information is used to guide search in ways that had no place in earlier models. Search in scenes might be best explained by a dual-path model: a 'selective' path in which candidate objects must be individually selected for recognition and a 'nonselective' path in which information can be extracted from global and/or statistical information.     

Assessment and Treatment of Compulsive Sex/Love Behavior

Sex-love compulsivity or addiction involves most of the same issues as other addictive or compulsive behavior. Reasons for the increase in attention to this problem are suggested, and assessment criteria and procedures, guidelines for treatment, and case examples are provided.     

Single and multiple suicide attempts and associated health risk factors in New Hampshire adolescents

In this study we examined self-reported suicide attempts and their relationship to other health risk factors in a community sample of 16,644 adolescents. Fifteen percent endorsed suicide attempts (10% single; 5% multiple attempts) We hypothesized that multiple attempters would show higher prevalence of comorbid health risks than single or non-attempters. The three groups showed significant differences in ten health risk domains, on factors such as depressed mood, sexual assault, weight problems, and drug and alcohol use (ORs: 3.26-13.57). Repeated suicide attempts appear to be related to increased vulnerability and likelihood of harm in multiple domains of health risk.     

Searching night and day: a dissociation of effects of circadian phase and time awake on visual selective attention and vigilance

How does sleepiness affect selective attention? We studied the effect of circadian phase and time awake on visual search. The generalized-cognitive-slowing hypothesis predicts that search rate will be slower, feature guidance less effective, and response time (RT) lengthened when observers are sleepy. Observers performed spatial-configuration (finding a 5 among 2s) and conjunction (finding red vertical among red horizontal and green vertical) search tasks during 38 hr of wakefulness under constant conditions. Adverse circadian phases and elapsed time awake did lead to increased RT (corrected for errors). However, contrary to the hypothesis, search rates (indexed by RT x Set Size slopes) were constant across the protocol. This was true for conjunction as well as for spatial-configuration search, indicating that feature guidance was also insensitive to sleepiness. The locus of sleepiness effects on search is probably downstream from the bottleneck of attentional selection. Observers did trade accuracy for speed when sleepy. This implicates decision-stage impairments.