Therapist-controlled exposure in vivo versus self-controlled exposure in vivo: A comparison with obsessive-compulsive patients

Fourteen obsessive-compulsive clients were given treatment consisting of ten sessions of gradual exposure in vivo With half the clients, the exposure in vivo was therapist-controlled; with the other half, the exposure in vivo was self-controlled.

The results of the posttest showed that both versions of the treatment resulted in a significant improvement on the in vivo measurement, anxiety and avoidance scales, Leyton Obsessional Inventory, Self-Rating Depression Scale and anxious mood. Neither the posttest nor the follow-ups one month and 3.5 months later indicated a difference between the effects of the two conditions. Self-controlled exposure in vivo proved to be as effective as therapist-controlled exposure in vivo, in spite of the fact that in the latter condition each treatment session lasted twice as long as in the former condition.     

Loss of control by a less valid or by a less salient stimulus compounded with a better predictor of reinforcement

An unsalient stimulus, or one imperfectly correlated with reinforcement, may acquire significant control over responding, provided that it is the only available signal for reinforcement, but may fail to acquire control if it is reinforced only in conjunction with a second, more salient or more valid stimulus. A stimulus imperfectly correlated with reinforcement may also lose control over responding if having initially been reinforced in isolation, it is subsequently reinforced only in conjunction with another, more valid stimulus. If the effects of relative salience are to be explained in exactly the same way as those of relative validity, we should expect a similar loss of control by an unsalient stimulus, A, if, after initial consistently reinforced trials to A alone, subjects subsequently receive reinforcement only in the presence of a compound stimulus, A + B. Two experiments on discrete-trial discrimination learning in pigeons and one on conditioned suppression in rats confirm this expectation. The results have implications for theories of selective association in conditioning and discrimination learning.     

Short-term memory and information processing in pigeons

Six pigeons were trained to asymptotic performance on a variable-delay matching-to-sample task in which the samples were sometimes line or color elements and sometimes line-color compounds. On compound-sample trials, the comparison stimuli were sometimes color elements and sometimes line-tilts. Sample type and delay (0, 1.5, and 4.5 sec) were varied within sessions, and sample duration (.4, 1.0, and 3.0 sec) was varied between sessions. Forgetting curves were steeper for line-tilt than for color. As sample duration increased, matching performance improved more for colors than for line-tilts, especially at delays greater than zero. Performance was better with element samples than with compound samples only on the line-tilt dimension at zero delay. Some predictions of a unitary trace growth and decay theory of pigeon short-term memory were not confirmed. A dual-code hypothesis was proposed to account for the data.     

Overshadowing in operant conditioning as a function of discriminability

Pigeons were trained in an operant, go/no-go, discrimination by successive presentations of discrete, positive and negative trials. In separate groups, the rate of discriminaion learning based on an auditory cue, on visual cues of different discriminability, and on combined auditory and visual cues was determined. The auditory cue was tone/no-tone, the visual cue was a difference in brightness level on the key. Following discrimination training, stimulus control was tested in extinction by presenting tone or notone at each of four key-brightness levels.Learning was more rapid with two cues than with either cue singly, demonstrating summation. The contribution made by the tone cue to the learning of the discrimination decreased with increasing discriminability of the light cue. The control exerted by the tone cue also decreased (i.e., the tone cue was overshadowed) with increasing discriminability of the light cue. In certain cases, the tone cue decreased control by brightness, showing that in two-cue discriminations each cue may reduce the control exerted by the other.     

A comment on Koriat,Averill, and Malmstrom's “individual differences in habituation”

The paper considers the issues, raised by Koriat et al. (1973), of the consistency and reliability of measures of habituation currently used in personality research. It is argued that the problem of reliability is not as serious as Koriat et al. proposed and that specificity of measures of habituation is a theoretical rather than a methodological problem. It is proposed that ambiguity in the literature on the personality correlates of habituation is more likely to be due to the failure to consider the effects of stimulus conditions on habituation than to the problems of reliability and specificity.     

Response elimination: A comparison of four procedures

Four procedures for eliminating an operant response were compared within a multiple schedule. Response reduction was most rapid when reinforcement was provided for a specific alternative response. The decline in responding produced by extinction and differential reinforcement of other behavior was similar. Responding initially increased and then gradually decreased when reinforcers were delivered independently of responding at fixed times. Removal of reinforcement from the alternative-response and DRO procedures did not result in recovery of the target response. However, the shift from response-independent dilivery of reinforcers to extinction caused an initial increase in responding.     

On the universality of language dissolution: The case of a Turkish aphasic

The case of a Turkish aphasic suffering from motor aphasia is described. The transitional phonemic systems which could be observed in this patient in the course of speech rehabilitation are compared to the so-called “phonemic disintegration,” whereas the errors of his graphic performance are compared to the so-called “agrammatism” of Indo-European languages. It is found that there exists a strong parallelism between this agglutinative language and the inflecting Indo-European languages insofar as aphasic language dissolution is concerned.     

Vocational behavior and career development, 1977: A review

This review covers several books and selections from several journals published in 1977 on topics in vocational behavior and career development. Coverage includes theoretical contributions in vocational choice, development and correlates of choice, decision and indecision, assessment of career skills and interests, self-estimates, and sex bias. Material relating to the vocational behavior of adults contains sections on theory, satisfaction, performance, career development, and mid-career change. A final section is devoted to a review of studies of interventions.     

The similarity-attraction relationship: Is there an ideal one?

It is proposed that we are attracted to similar individuals because: (1) such individuals are similar to our ideals and (2) such individuals are similar to ourselves. Previous studies have employed a similarity manipulation which has confounded these two components. When the components are separated, similarity to the ideal was expected to exert a major influence and similarity to the self a minor influence on attraction. A series of experiments orthogonally manipulated similarity to self and similarity to ideal with a new technique involving content-free dimensions. The results indicated a consistent main effect for ideal similarity on liking and no consistent main effect for similarity to the self. Finally, the results also indicated that given any two of the three variables—similarity to self, similarity to ideal, and own self to own ideal discrepancy—subjects seemed able to infer the other or third variable in a fairly logical fashion.     

Learning the functional significance of mnemonic actions: A microgenetic study of strategy acquisition

How children learn to use memory strategies in a microgenetic investigation of learning and metacognition is examined. Seven- and eight-year-olds were given two memory trials with 24 pictures on each of 5 consecutive days. Days 1 and 2 were baseline, practice trials; Day 3 included strategy training; and Days 4 and 5 were unprompted tests of strategy maintenance. All children were taught how to label, rehearse, and group the pictures as well as to self-test their own memories and use blocked recall. Half of the children were shown the actions and told to do them; the other half received elaborated feedback on the usefulness and appropriateness of the techniques for remembering. The elaborated instructional group exhibited significantly greater recall, clustering, strategic study behavior, and metamemory regarding the mnemonic techniques than the other group. Path analysis provided evidence of a causal role of training and metacognitive awareness that mediated the use of sorting and higher recall. The study illustrates how learning the significance and utility of mnemonic techniques can influence children's acquisition of the tactics as self-controlled strategies. In addition, the microgenetic method affords patterns of data across time and experience that permit richer interpretations of strategy learning and memory development.