Work site group meetings and the effectiveness of a televised smoking cessation intervention

At the work site, smoking accounts for increased health care expenses and worker absenteeism due to smoking-related illness and reduced productivity and lost wages. Developing comprehensive and accessible smoking cessation programs at the work site is an important objective for health care professionals. In this study, employees of 43 corporations participated in a televised smoking cessation program accompanied by self-help manuals. The media component involved presenting a smoking cessation program on a network television affiliate station during the 4:30 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. news for 20 days. Employees at half the corporations also had access to semiweekly self-help group meetings. Adding self-help support groups to a program involving self-help manuals and the media reports was found to significantly increase abstinence and its maintenance over time. The implications of using the media, self-help groups, and work site locations in large-scale community-based interventions are discussed.     

Towards an empirical calculus of reinforcement value

Only one of two keys reinforces the subject with food. This key can assume one of two colors, each associated with a different fixed-ratio schedule for obtaining reinforcement. The function of the second key is to permit the animal to switch from the long schedule to the short schedule. If the difference between the ratio schedules is large enough, a preference for the shorter schedule is demonstrable. A quantitative index of preference is obtained as follows: each time the animal switches to the shorter schedule, the number of pecks required to produce the next switch is increased. As the “ante” on the switching key increases, the effective difference between the two ratio schedules decreases. After each food reinforcement, when the bird is exposed to the choice-situation, it takes longer before the bird switches again. This is used to “titrate” the bird's preference. If it does not switch within x sec, the progressively increasing ratio schedule of the switching key is decreased. A specific value, in terms of a rather specific number of responses the bird settles at on the choice key, is obtained. This equilibrium is employed as a dependent variable. Several variables of which it is a function are explored.     

Controlled comparison of aversive therapy and covert sensitization in compulsive homosexuality

Ethical objections to the use of behaviour therapy in homosexuality are discussed. It is pointed out that these objections were often based on a limited view of the aims of the therapy. The need for evaluating such therapy, as it is currently used, is elaborated.Twenty subjects requesting behaviour therapy to reduce compulsive homosexual urges were randomly allocated, half to receive aversive therapy using electric shocks and half to receive covert sensitization. Both groups were studied for one year. There was no consistent trend for one therapy to be more effective than the other in reducing the strength of compulsive homosexual urges, and the response to both was similar to that reported in previous studies. It was considered that aversive therapies in homosexuality do not act by establishing a conditioned aversion, nor by altering the subjects' sexual orientation. They reduce aversive arousal produced by behaviour completion mechanisms when subjects attempt to refrain from homosexual behaviour in response to stimuli which have repeatedly provoked such behaviour in the past.     

Idea and reality of training analysis. A plea for reforms (II)

Thom? pleads for a form of psychoanalytic training in which the critical appropriation of psychoanalytic and humanistic knowledge as well as therapeutic competence are the focus and in which the personal analysis (super-therapy) is no longer overvalued. It seems possible to limit the length of training analyses. Qualification for professional practice should be worked out exclusively within the training institute and in close collaboration with instructors.     

The role of esteem and coping in response to a threat communication

Two experiments examined the relations among self-esteem, perceived competency to cope, and actual coping behaviors following a threat communication. Leventhal's “parallel response model” (in Advances in experimental social psychology, L. Berkowitz (Ed.), New York: Academic Press, 1970, Vol. 5) predicts that low-esteem subjects will show deficits in both competency and coping behaviors. Experiment 1 manipulated threat level of a tetanus communication. Low-esteem subjects showed coping deficits on measures of free associations, free recall, fatalism, and coping. Threat groups differed only on fear and danger measures. Experiment 2 manipulated the fear level of an antismoking film and used false feedback to alter perceived competency. Positive feedback increased perceived competency to quit smoking among low-esteem subjects only. Without feedback, low-esteem subjects reduced smoking less than high-esteem subjects; positive feedback reversed the pattern. The discussion argued that, consistent with Leventhal's model, the low-esteem coping deficit has two independent causes: (1) excessive concern with fear, and (2) inadequate perceived competency.     

Performance of typical and superior face recognizers on a novel interactive face matching procedure

Unfamiliar simultaneous face matching is error prone. Reducing incorrect identification decisions will positively benefit forensic and security contexts. The absence of view-independent information in static images likely contributes to the difficulty of unfamiliar face matching. We tested whether a novel interactive viewing procedure that provides the user with 3D structural information as they rotate a facial image to different orientations would improve face matching accuracy. We tested the performance of ‘typical’ (Experiment 1) and ‘superior’ (Experiment 2) face recognizers, comparing their performance using high-quality (Experiment 3) and pixelated (Experiment 4) Facebook profile images. In each trial, participants responded whether two images featured the same person with one of these images being either a static face, a video providing orientation information, or an interactive image. Taken together, the results show that fluid orientation information and interactivity prompt shifts in criterion and support matching performance. Because typical and superior face recognizers both benefited from the structural information provided by the novel viewing procedures, our results point to qualitatively similar reliance on pictorial encoding in these groups. This also suggests that interactive viewing tools can be valuable in assisting face matching in high-performing practitioner groups.     

Action models in inquisitive logic

Synthese - Information exchange can be viewed as a process of asking questions and answering them. While dynamic epistemic logic traditionally focuses on statements, recent developments have been...     

Quantifying precision and availability of location memory in everyday pictures and some implications for picture database design

The authors investigated whether memory for object locations in pictures could be exploited to address known difficulties of designing query languages for picture databases. M. W. Lansdale's (1998) model of location memory was adapted to 4 experiments observing memory for everyday pictures. These experiments showed that location memory is quantified by 2 parameters: a probability that memory is available and a measure of its precision. Availability is determined by controlled attentional processes, whereas precision is mostly governed by picture composition beyond the viewer's control. Additionally, participants' confidence judgments were good predictors of availability but were insensitive to precision. This research suggests that databases using location memory are feasible. The implications of these findings for database design and for further research and development are discussed.