Psychiatry and Psychology Commons^™

Selective Associations: A Methodological Critique, Rick A. Bevins

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

A crossover design must be used and a crossover data pattern must result if selective associations are to be inferred. In addition, three other methodological criteria must be met. (1) Only the nature of the reinforcer should be varied, (2) nonassociative explanations must be ruled out, and (3) the differences in behavior controlled by the conditioned stimuli (CSs) must be caused by a learning difference and not a performance difference. Experimental evidence typically cited as demonstrating the existence of selective associations was reviewed here and found to fall short of meeting the criteria stated herein. I conclude that interpretations invoking …

Rats’ Location During Conditioned Suppression Training, Rick A. Bevins, John J. B. Ayres

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Freezing is often cited as the interfering behavior responsible for barpress conditioned-suppression. However, auditory cues that precede shock can evoke more freezing than can visual cues despite producing similar suppression. In two experiments, we sought to resolve this paradox by measuring rats’ location in the box in addition to recording freezing during conditioned-suppression training to tones and lights. Tone evoked more freezing than light but similar suppression. During both cues, rats left the bar and dipper areas and moved to the lower middle and rear of the box. When the bar was then removed and the dipper entry sealed, the …

The Ear’S Versus The Eye’S Potential To Assess Characteristics Of Numeric Data: Are We Too Visuocentric?, John H. Flowers, Terry A. Hauer

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

A single experiment studied how effectively information about the central tendency, variability, and shape of numeric data distributions could be conveyed to statistically knowledgeable subjects. The data were summarized by visual histograms, auditory histograms that coded numeric value as pitch on the musical scale, and five-note auditory analogues of a box-whisker display that coded the minimum, quartile, and maximum scores as musical notes. Regression and multidimensional scaling analysis of judgments of dissimilarity between distributions showed that auditory depiction provides a highly effective means of conveying information about distributional characteristics. Auditory depicition may be a useful alternative to traditional visual graphics.

Cognitive Processes And Prosocial Behaviors Among Children: The Role Of Affective Attributions And Reconciliations, Gustavo Carlo, George Knight, Nancy Eisenberg, Ken J. Rotenberg

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Although attributions about others’ sad emotions have been shown to be positively related to helping behavior, there have been considerable inconsistencies in the findings. This study was designed to investigate the relations of affective attributions, affective reconciliations, and cognitive perspective-taking measures to prosocial behavior. Eighty-nine preschool through second grade children were administered various social cognition indices (two affective and one cognitive); the children were then given an opportunity to help a same-sex confederate child obtain toys. Helping that required a specific form of affective attribution and reconciliation was signifi cantly related to the affective attribution and reconciliation measures when the …

Personality And Socialization Correlates Of Vicarious Emotional Responding, Nancy Eisenberg, Richard Fabes, Mark Schaller, Paul Miller, Gustavo Carlo, Rick Poulin, Cindy Shea, Rita Shell

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

The relations of personality and family characteristics to adults’ negative vicarious emotional responses to sympathy and distress films were examined. Ss reported more sympathy and less personal distress and exhibited less skin conductance as well as heart rate deceleration when viewing a sympathy-evoking film. Dispositional emotional intensity and fantasy empathy were associated with greater self-reported emotional responding and higher skin conductance. Dispositional perspective taking and personal distress were positively and negatively correlated, respectively, with reported vicarious responding to the sympathy film when Ss were administered instructions to imagine the emotions of those in the films. Family cohesiveness was associated with …

The Altruistic Personality: In What Contexts Is It Apparent?, Gustavo Carlo, Nancy Eisenberg, Debra Troyer, Galen Switzer, Anna L. Speer

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Hypotheses concerning the specific contexts in which an altruistic personality might be most apparent were investigated, College students completed questionnaires tapping components of an altruistic personality, emotionality, and social desirability. At a 2nd session, the emotional evocativeness and ease of escape from the helping situation were experimentally manipulated. Ss were exposed to a distressed woman, completed state sympathy and personal distress indexes, and were given an opportunity to assist the woman. High scorers on dispositional altruism were expected to assist most when escape was easy, particularly when the distress cues were obvious. Altruistic and emotionally reactive persons were also expected …

Trait Psychology Comes Of Age, Paul T. Costa Jr., Robert Mccrae

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

It is sometimes thought that the relation between research on aging and the basic sciences is one-sided: gerontologists take the methods and theories of their specialty and apply them to aging populations, but they rarely initiate theories or report findings that could reshape the basic disciplines themselves. Whatever the truth of this perception in general, it is completely false with regard to the psychology of personality. When Eichorn, Clausen, Haan, Honzik, and Mussen (1981) published their summary of the Berkeley longitudinal studies, Sears and Sears (1982) heralded it as "probably the most important unified research contribution to adult social and …

Patterns Of Appraisal And Coping Across Different Stressor Conditions Among Former Prisoners Of War With And Without Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, John A. Fairbank, David J. Hansen, James M. Fitterling

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Little is known about how survivors of extreme events cope with traumatic memories and subsequent negative life experiences. The present study compared (a) repatriated prisoners of war (RPWs) from World War II (WWII) with chronic posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), (b) RPWs without PTSD, and (c) noncombat veterans on measures of general psychological functioning, appraisal, and coping. Appraisal and coping were assessed under 2 stressor conditions: memories of war/captivity and recent negative life events. RPWs with PTSD reported poorer general psychological functioning; significantly less control over memories of WW II; and more frequent use of self-isolation, wishful thinking, self-blame, and social …

Introduction Of Psychology And Aging: Nebraska Symposium On Motivation 1991, Theo Sonderegger

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Through the years, the Nebraska Symposium on Motivation has reflected topics of current interest to psychologists. This year is no exception: "psychology and aging" is a subject of concern to all readers no matter what their particular psychological specialties happen to be. All of us-if we are lucky, hope that we will experience the aging process and will join (or continue our membership in) the ever increasing population of the elderly. The quantity of research in the area is growing rapidly; new ideas and theories about the aging process are far from complete and are still emerging-as will be seen …

Priming By “Predictive” Context Stimuli In Visual Classification, John H. Flowers, Dorie Reed, Thomas D. Green

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Subjects participated in visual character- and word-classification-tasks-for-which-spatially contiguous context stimuli were exposed 100 or 1,000 msec prior to target onset. These context stimuli were physically identical to the target on 75% of the trials. Substantial facilitation of RT occurred for “valid” trials at both SOA levels. When the target differed from the context stimuli, evidence for priming the response category, as well as the semantic category of the target (letters vs. digits; metal names vs. furniture names), was obtained at the 100-msec SOA, but these effects were attenuated with the 1,000-msec SOA. With a full second to process a stimulus-predictive …

Ecology Of Depression In Late Childhood And Early Adolescence: A Profile Of Daily States And Activities, Reed Larson, Marcela Raffaelli, Maryse H. Richards, Mark Ham, Lisa Jewell

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

This study investigated daily states and time use patterns associated with depression. Four hundred eighty-three 5th to 9th graders reported on their experience when signaled by pagers at random times. Depressed youth reported more negative affect and social emotions, lower psychological investment, lower energy, and greater variability in affect. These differences were weaker for 5th and 6th graders, suggesting that self-reported feeling states are a poor indicator of depression prior to adolescence. No differences were found in the daily activities of depressed youths nor in the amount of time spent alone, but depressed youths experienced other people as less friendly …

Serial Conditioning As A Function Of Stimulus, Response, And Temporal Dependencies, William L. Palya, Rick A. Bevins

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Six experiments were used to examine the effects of explicit response, stimulus, and temporal dependencies on responding in an interfood interval. The first two experiments demonstrated that 10- segment 60-s interfood clocks controlled similar distributions of key pecking in pigeons regardless of whether response-reinforcement contiguity was required, allowed, or precluded. The third and fourth experiments found that in the absence of an explicit response-reinforcement dependency, systematic explicit stimuli in an interfood interval were sufficient to establish and maintain the characteristic distribution of key pecking and that an interval without an explicit clock failed to establish or maintain key pecking. The …

Priming Effects In Perceptual Classification, John H. Flowers

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Priming stimuli that spatially flank a fixated target stimulus may cause either facilitation or interference with target classification, depending on experimental context. Two experiments demonstrated distinct effects of response compatibility and semantic congruity between flankers and target. Response competition occurred when targets were flanked by context stimuli associated with the opposite response, but this effect diminished when the target was delayed relative to the flankers. Facilitative priming by response-compatible flankers, in contrast, required prior exposure of the flankers, and was strongly influenced by the semantic congruity of flankers and targets. These differing time courses suggest that perceptual priming encompasses a …

Introduction Of 38th Session Of The Nebraska Symposium On Motivation, Richard A. Dienstbier

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

This 38th session of the Nebraska Symposium on Motivation coincided with the 100th anniversary of the teaching of psychology at the University of Nebraska (1889) and with the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Department of Psychology (1939). The originator of early psychological instruction here, and the person to whom all recent volumes of this Symposium have been dedicated, is Harry K. Wolfe, one of Wilhelm Wundt's first two American students. In part because of the significance of these anniversaries, and because of the identification of this Symposium with psychology at the University of Nebraska, the Symposium Committee and …

School Transitions And Adjustment During Early Adolescence, Lisa J. Crockett, Anne C. Petersen, Julie A. Graber, John E. Schulenberg, Aaron Ebata

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

The aim of this investigation was to determine the impact of the timing and number of school transitions on young adolescents’ subsequent adjustment. Three groups of adolescents (total N = 253) were compared: those making a single early school transition prior to sixth grade, those making a single later transition prior to seventh grade, and those making a double transition prior to both sixth and seventh grades. Adjustment was assessed in terms of course grades and self-image. Negative effects were found for both early and repeated school transitions, with the double transition being especially debilitating. In addition, effects were seen …

Arousal And Physiological Toughness: Implications For Mental And Physical Health, Richard A. Dienstbier

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

From W. B. Cannon’s identification of adrenaline with “fight or flight” to modern views of stress, negative views of peripheral physiological arousal predominate. Sympathetic nervous system (SNS) arousal is associated with anxiety, neuroticism, the Type A personality, cardiovascular disease, and immune system suppression; illness susceptibility is associated with life events requiring adjustments. “Stress control” has become almost synonymous with arousal reduction. A contrary positive view of peripheral arousal follows from studies of subjects exposed to intermittent stressors. Such exposure leads to low SNS arousal base rates, but to strong and responsive challenge- or stress-induced SNS-adrenal-medullary arousal, with resistance to brain …

Pig Vocalizations Under Selected Husbandry Practices, H. Xin, J. A. Deshazer, Daniel W. Leger

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Acoustical characteristics of vocalizations of sows, piglets, and nursery pigs under selected husbandry practices were analyzed with a digital signal processing system. The duration (D) and major energy-resonance frequency (P) for each call were determined as follows: a) processing of piglets (D = 0.81 s and f* = 3 700 Hz); b) food anticipation of breeding-gestation sows (2.50 s and 3 000 Hz); c) isolation of piglet (0.34 s and 500, 3 500 Hz); d) startling of nursery pigs (0.29 s and 900 Hz); e) sows in heat (3.07 s and 1 375 Hz); f) farrowing (0.10 s and 3 …

Creativity And Perception, John H. Flowers, Calvin P. Garbin

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Informal thought about the nature of mental operations important to creative human behavior suggests that perceptual processes are of considerable importance. The ability to “see relationships among elements” is an attribution commonly made toward authors of major scientific discoveries or of noteworthy artistic achievements. For example, Shepard (1978, 1981) documented self-reports from several creative scientists and authors that strongly emphasize the role of visual imagery and the manipulation of visual codes in the creative process.

Given the anecdotal and self-report evidence for a relationship between creative behavior and aspects of perceptual processing, it initially may seem surprising that there is …

The Relations Of Pubertal Status To Intrapersonal Changes In Young Adolescents, Lorah D. Dorn, Lisa J. Crockett, Anne C. Petersen

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relations between pubertal development and adolescents’ perceptions of their physical and emotional states. Two research questions were posed: (a) What are the effects of pubertal status upon satisfaction with appearance and mood states of the adolescent; and, (b) What are the patterns of those pubertal effects in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades? A nonclinical group of adolescents (N = 253) was selected from two cohorts and was followed from sixth through eighth grade. Multiple measures were used to assess satisfaction with appearance and mood states. Significant multivariate findings were limited to …

Catecholamine Training Effects From Exercise Programs: A Bridge To Exercise-Temperament Relationships, Richard A. Dienstbier, Robert L. Laguardia,, Marc Barnes, Gerald Tharp, Richard J. Schmidt

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Three studies were conducted to test whether a catecholamine training effect results from a long-term aerobic exercise program. Study 1 showed significant increases in urinary adrenaline and noradrenaline following moderate mental stress/challenge for male aerobics subjects after a semester of training. Control groups of nonexercisers and continuously in-condition marathoners showed no comparable pre- to post semester catecholamine increases. Male and female Aerobics subjects were contrasted with nonexercisers across a semester in Study 2; the hypothesis was confirmed that postsemester increases in catecholamines occurred only following an episode of mental challenges/stress, and not following base-rate-rest conditions. Under conditions of more active …

Congruence Between Objective And Self-Report Data In A Sample Of Young Adolescents, Lisa J. Crockett, John E. Schulenberg, Anne C. Petersen

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Methodology texts frequently emphasize the limitations of self-report measures. Empirical information on the validity of self-report data, however, tends to be limited to particular topics and populations. This paper examines the validity of self-report data in a sample of young adolescents for whom objective and self-report data were available on course grades, height, and weight. A comparison of the two kinds of data generally supported the validity of the self-reports, although there was some evidence of response effects. It was concluded that while young adolescents exhibit some systematic errors in reporting, self-reports can provide a useful substitute for some kinds …

Maternal And Nutritional Contributions To Infant Rats’Activational Responses To Ingestion, Brian H. Bornstein, Leslie M. Terry, Joseph A. Browde Jr.

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Infant rats deprived of food, maternal care, and the opportunity to suckle display a dramatic behavioral activation and vigorously ingest when provided milk through oral cannulas. These experiments assessed which components of deprivation are important in producing these responses to milk. Nutritional deprivation alone, with or without the presence of an active maternal female, appears to be sufficient to produce ingestion. Behavioral activation, on the other hand, appears to require both nutritional deprivation and deprivation from a maternal female. The effect of maternal stimulation on later behavioral reactivity was not a function of the pups’ opportunity to suckle. However, active …

The Relationship Of Temperament To Tolerance Of Cold And Heat: Beyond “Cold Hands-Warm Heart”, Richard A. Dienstbier, Robert L. Laguardia, Noreen S. Wilcox

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Thermal regulation and peripheral arousal in episodes of emotion are dependent upon similar autonomic and hormonal processes. Thermal-tolerance measure were developed and validated in order to indirectly assess adrenergic (cold tolerance) and cholinergic (heat tolerance) responsivity. We hypothesized that cold tolerance would correlate with reduced emotionality (largely fear and anxiety) and depression, and with increased stimulus seeking and dispositions toward activity; those hypotheses were confirmed. Tentatively advanced hypotheses that heat tolerance would correlate with reduced depression and emotional states were not confirmed, but heat tolerance was positively associated with activity and (weakly) with some of the same dimensions of temperament …

Pubertal Status And Psychosocial Development: Findings From The Early Adolescence Study, Lisa J. Crockett, Anne C. Petersen

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Beginning in 1978, we have conducted a longitudinal study of early adolescent development. A major objective of this research has been to examine the influence of pubertal changes on other aspects of development during this period. With regard to pubertal effects we wished to address two major questions. First, what aspects of behavior seem to be affected by pubertal development? (In other words, are pubertal effects pervasive or relatively circumscribed, and if they are circumscribed, which aspects of behavior are involved?) Second, how does pubertal change exert an influence--does it operate directly on specific aspects of behavior and performance (for …

Pubertal Timing And Grade Effects On Adjustment, Anne C. Petersen, Lisa J. Crockett

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Effects on adjustment of biological maturation and social timing were com pared using data from a longitudinal sample of 335 young adolescents, who were followed from the sixth through eighth grades. Biological maturation was estimated from the relative timing of the adolescent growth spurt. Social timing was assessed by grade in school. Five adjustment constructs were examined: school achievement (course grades in five subjects), family relations (a 17-item scale), peer relations (a 10- item scale), body image (an 11-item scale), impulse control (an 8-item scale), and psychopathology (an 11-item emotional tone scale and an 11-item general psychopathology scale). All but …

How Does Familiarity Affect Visual Search For Letter Strings?, John H. Flowers, Doris J. Lohr

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Subjects visually searched for letter string targets consisting of either familiar English three-letter words (e.g., SEX) or featurally similar nonword trigrams (e.g., SFX). Distractor items were either words or nonwords and had varying degrees of feature overlap with the target among different blocks of trials. Search was facilitated by a word-nonword category distinction between target and distractors, particularly when target-noise feature overlap was high, but such facilitation consisted of slope reductions in an apparently serial, self-terminating search pattern as opposed to a "pop-out" effect.

Rationality, Culture, And The Construction Of “Ethical Discourse”: A Comparative Perspective , Carolyn P. Edwards

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

The problem of ethical relativism has never been resolved or laid to rest. It turns out to be a complicated set of problems, involving many philosophical issues of meaning (Brandt 1954; Ladd 1957). For example, how should we define morality and ethics? How should we define the problem of ethical relativism? How does the problem of ethical relativism relate to the problem of cultural relativism?

One question that is part of this package is a scientific one and concerns whether there are even aspects of moral values and ethical discourse that can be validly abstracted from their cultural context and …

Effects Of Interpersonal Problem-Solving Training With Chronic Aftercare Patients On Problem-Solving Component Skills And Effectiveness Of Solutions, David J. Hansen, Janet S. St. Lawrence, Karen A. Christoff

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Seven chronic psychiatric patients who were enrolled in a partial-hospitalization program and had difficulty solving interpersonal problems received group skills training. A multiple-baseline design was used to demonstrate training effectiveness through improved problem solving on trained situations and through skill generalization to novel, untrained situations. Maintenance of the training was evaluated after 1 month and 4 months. Social validation was accomplished by comparing the problem-solving competency of the patient sample with skills demonstrated by “normal” nonpsychiatric persons in their community.

The Role Of Emotion In Moral Socialization, Richard A. Dienstbier

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

The major aim of this chapter is to discuss a research program designed to assess emotion-cognition-behavior relationships in moral decision making. While pursuing that aim, I will discuss the relationship of that research to some of the more enduring theoretical issues in emotion.

Theories of emotion wax and wane across a more extended time frame than is typical for theoretical approaches in many other areas in psychology. Perhaps these extended cycles of emotion theory result from the relative difficulty in the recent past in doing definitive research within the area of human emotion. The field was thereby insulated from sudden …

Personal Computers And Behavioral Observation: An Introduction, John H. Flowers, Daniel W. Leger

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Some fundamental aspects of observational data are outlined, and some basic issues in implementation of small computers in observational research are discussed.