Alcoholic drinking: suppression by a brief time-out procedure

Volunteer chronic alcoholics were given daily access to substantial quantities of alcohol within a residential research setting. Drinking was suppressed to an average of approximately one-half of Baseline levels when 10 or 15 min of physical and social isolation was required as an immediate consequence to receiving each one-ounce drink of 95-proof ethanol. This time-out procedure suppressed the drinking of nine out of ten subjects. Drinking returned to high levels when brief contingent time-out was discontinued. The relevance of such reversible controlling relationships to the treatment of alcoholism is discussed.     

A rapid method of eliminating stuttering by a regulated breathing approach

The Habit Reversal Procedure for eliminating nervous habits was applied to the problem of stuttering. In the new procedure the speaker interrupted his speech at moments of actual or anticipated stuttering and at natural pause points, and resumed speaking immediately after breathing deeply during the pause. In addition to this regularized pausing and breathing, the program included other factors such as formulation of one's thoughts prior to speaking, identification of stutter-prone situations, identification of mannerisms associated with stuttering, speaking for short durations when tense or nervous, daily breathing exercises, relaxation procedures for anxiety, immediate display of improved speaking, and enlisting family support for progress. Fourteen stutterers were given training in the program during a single counseling session of about two hours duration. The next day, the average number of stuttering episodes decreased by 94 per cent, by 97 per cent at the end of one month, and by 99 per cent during the extended follow-up. Each of the clients was improved by at least 93 per cent. The new procedure appears to be more rapid and effective than alternative procedures.     

A comparison of attentional and control shift models of the performance of concurrent tasks

A concurrent verbal task was superimposed upon the performance of a practiced bimanual motor skill by right-handed Ss. Addition of the verbal task did not increase the total number of errors; however, a significant interaction between hands and conditions was observed. The right hand made significantly more errors under the verbal condition, while the left hand made non-significantly fewer errors under that condition. These findings were interpreted as supporting an attentional model rather than a model which proposes that addition of the verbal task causes control of the right hand to shift to the non-verbal right hemisphere.     

Women's reactions to discrimination from members of the same or opposite sex

The effects upon women's self-evaluations of experiencing varying severity of failure in interpersonal competition against male vs. female opponents were explored. The results supported the hypothesis that self-esteem in women is more vulnerable to interpersonal rejection from men as opposed to other women. Specifically, subjects reported lower self-esteem when severe failure was due to the actions of alleged, male opponents rather than female ones. Also, severe failure elicited less favorable self-evaluations than mild failure only when the female subjects confronted male opponents. Finally, contrary to a defensive self-presentation hypothesis, subjects did not respond to discrimination from men by presenting themselves as being discrepant from the stereotype of women. Instead, subjects who interpreted their failure as reflecting prejudice on the part of men evaluated themselves more favorably on positive traits underlying the female stereotype.     

The effect of continuous, intermittent, and "placebo" reinforcement on the effectiveness of the conditioning treatment for enuresis nocturna

It has been suggested that intermittent reinforcement may be of value in reducing the rate of relapse in bedwetting conditioning therapy. An experiment was conducted with 30 enuretic boys to examine acquisition and extinction parameters of continuous (100%), intermittent (70% variable ratio), and “placebo” (0%) reinforcement schedules. Reinforced trials were administered as in the typical Mowrer conditioning procedure. Non-reinforced trials were achieved by means of a time delay with the subsequent alarm being activated in the parent's room rather than in the child's room. These procedures required the development of a new conditioning device which could be programmed to automatically administer the desired schedule of reinforcement. The results of the field investigation revealed that continuous reinforcement (CR) and intermittent reinforcement (IR) groups attained acquisition in approximately the same number of trials and with essentially the same success rate. Relapse rate was significantly greater in the CR group than in the IR group. The placebo group showed no improvement over the 6 weeks of treatment. The results of this study may be interpreted as supporting the tenet that relapse can be viewed and treated as an extinction of the acquired response.     

Instigation of assertive behavior through videotape-mediated assertive models and directed practice

Twenty-eight undergraduate college women received an assertive training procedure in which they observed videotape-mediated assertive models and practiced nine types of assertive responses over a seven-week period. They reported significantly (p< 0.01) more assertive behavior and were rated as significantly (p< 0.01) more assertive than subjects receiving a placebo treatment and subjects receiving no treatment. There were also trends (p's = 0.17, 0.19, 0.29) for Ss receiving assertive training to report lower fear of social conflicts than subjects under the two control conditions.     

Electrical aversion therapy with alcoholics: An analogue study

Chronic alcoholic patients matched on age, education and length of problem drinking were assigned to one of three treatment conditions, with 10 subjects in each group: (1) Electrical Aversion Conditioning (high shock paired with alcohol sips); (2) Control Conditioning (very low shock paired with alcohol sips); and (3) Group Therapy (confrontation psychotherapy). Groups 2 and 3 were included to control for possible ‘attention-placebo’ and expectancy factors involved in the conditioning procedures. Subjects in each group were given instructions designed to produce high expectancy for therapeutic success. Pre-post measures of alcohol consumption and attitudes toward alcohol were obtained using an analogue ‘taste test’ assessment procedure. No statistically significant differences in reduced alcohol consumption or attitudes toward alcohol were found among the groups. Trends in the data support the contention that effects of electrical aversion may be more related to such factors as therapeutic instructions, expectancy, specificity of the procedure or experimental demand characteristics than to conditioning factors.     

Selective imitation of the passive construction through modeling

Six 4- to 5-yr-old subjects were exposed to five sessions in which an adult model used passive sentences to describe a set of modeling stimuli. Probe stimuli, which the subjects were asked to describe without benefit of modeling and without selective reinforcement were interspersed among modeling stimuli. A matched group of control subjects received probletrials but no modeling trials. Both groups of subjects were subsequently tested on their ability to comprehend active and passive sentence forms. Every subject in the experimental group produced passive sentences on probe trials even though there was considerable variability in the number of passives produced. No control subject produced passives. The modeling procedure increased the comprehension scores of the experimental group above those of the control group though the scores of both groups were above chance. The results were contrasted with earlier studies in which modeling was ineffective in producing passive usage and in which comprehension of the passive was not demonstrated by even older children.