Social effectiveness therapy for children: five years later

Social Effectiveness Therapy for Children (SET-C) is a comprehensive behavioral treatment combining social skills training, peer generalization experiences, and individualized in vivo exposure for the treatment of social phobia in youth. SET-C results in positive treatment outcome and its effects are maintained at least 3 years later. In this investigation, maintenance of treatment gains 3, 4, and 5 years later was examined using a multidimensional assessment strategy consisting of self-report, parental report, clinician ratings, and direct behavioral assessment. Furthermore, the overall functioning of adolescents treated with SET-C 5 years earlier was compared with that of a group of adolescents who never suffered from psychological disorders. All posttreatment gains were maintained 5 years later, and the general functioning of SET-C treatment responders was not significantly different from those who never had a disorder. The data indicate that SET-C results in long-term positive effects for youth suffering from social phobia.     

Alcohol self-administration by rats in the presence of a tangible object

The authors used the sucrose-substitution procedure to train operant self-administration of a 10% alcohol solution in 8 Long-Evans rats. After they established stable responding, they began a 10-session baseline. A 10-session experimental phase followed the baseline phase. During the experimental phase, the authors placed a large glass marble in the center of the experimental chambers before self-administration sessions. The presence of the marble decreased the rats' responding and alcohol intake significantly. The authors discussed the results in terms of distraction and the effects of concurrently available reinforcers on alcohol self-administration.     

Effects of varying stimulus size on object recognition in pigeons

The authors investigated the pigeon's ability to generalize object discrimination performance to smaller and larger versions of trained objects. In Experiment 1, they taught pigeons with line drawings of multipart objects and later tested the birds with both larger and smaller drawings. The pigeons exhibited significant generalization to new sizes, although they did show systematic performance decrements as the new size deviated from the original. In Experiment 2, the authors tested both linear and exponential size changes of computer-rendered basic shapes to determine which size transformation produced equivalent performance for size increases and decreases. Performance was more consistent with logarithmic than with linear scaling of size. This finding was supported in Experiment 3. Overall, the experiments suggest that the pigeon encodes size as a feature of objects and that the representation of size is most likely logarithmic.     

Detection of back random responding: effectiveness of MMPI-2 and Personality Assessment Inventory validity indices

Two experiments examined the detection and effects of back random responding (BRR) on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory--2 (MMPI-2) and the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI). Experiment 1 revealed that MMPI-2 Clinical and Content scales were relatively resistant to the effects of BRR. Fb--F > or = 20T was the most effective index for identifying invalid protocols. Experiment 2 revealed greater susceptibility of the PAI interpretive scales to the effects of BRR and less successful detection of BRR. The most effective PAI validity index was the combined indicator, ICN > or = 73T or INF > or = 75T. Clinical and empirical implications of these findings are discussed, and tentative modifications to the MMPI-2 interpretative guidelines are provided.     

Executive and visuospatial sketchpad resources in euthymic bipolar disorder: Implications for visuospatial working memory architecture

Visuospatial working memory theory is used to interpret the cognitive impairment in euthymic bipolar disorder. Such patients show deficits in the Corsi Blocks Test (CBT) and executive control. To understand these deficits, 20 euthymic bipolar patients and controls were administered the CBT, Visual Patterns Test (VPT), and a new visual memory task designed to make minimal demands on executive resources. Initial analyses validated the visual memory task and implicated executive involvement in the CBT and VPT. Subsequent analyses on a number of tests confirmed CBT and executive deficits while performance was normal on the VPT and visual memory test. ANCOVA indicated that impaired executive function underpinned patients' CBT performance. Implications for the interface between executive and slave systems of working memory are discussed.     

Stress effects in the hippocampus: synaptic plasticity and memory

It is now well-documented that exposures to uncontrollable (inescapable and unpredictable) stress in adulthood can have profound effects on brain and behavior. Converging lines of evidence from human and animal studies indicate that stress interferes with subsequent performances on a variety of hippocampal-dependent memory tasks. Animal studies further revealed that stress impedes ensuing induction of long-term potentiation (LTP) in the hippocampus. Because the hippocampus is important for key aspects of memory formation and because LTP has qualities congruent to an information storage mechanism, it is hypothesized that stress-induced modifications in hippocampal plasticity contribute to memory impairments associated with stress. Recent studies provide evidence that the amygdala, a structure important in stress- and emotion-related behaviors, plays a necessary role in the emergence of stress-associated changes in hippocampal LTP and memory. Early life stress also alters hippocampal plasticity and memory in a manner largely consistent with effects of adult stress exposure. This review focuses on endocrine-system-level mechanisms of stress effects in the hippocampus, and how stress, by altering the property of hippocampal plasticity, can subsequently influence hippocampal memory.     

Likelihood judgment based on previously observed outcomes: the alternative-outcomes effect in a learning paradigm

Previous research has demonstrated that intuitive perceptions of certainty regarding a focal outcome are sensitive to variations in how evidence supporting nonfocal alternatives is distributed, even when such variations have no bearing on objective probability. We investigated this alternative-outcomes effect in a learning paradigm in which participants made likelihood judgments on the basis of their memory for past observations of relevant outcomes. In Experiment 1, a manipulation of evidence (observed frequencies) across alternative outcomes influenced not only intuitive certainty estimates about a focal outcome but also numeric subjective probabilities. Experiment 2 ruled out the possibility that these effects were attributable to the influence of information loss on frequency estimations. The findings were consistent with the heuristic comparison account, which suggests that the judged likelihood of a focal outcome will be disproportionately influenced by the strength (frequency) of the strongest alternative outcome.