Effects of pimozide on escape and discrimination performance in a water-escape task.

Three experiments studied the effects of pimozide (0.2 and 0.4 mg/kg) on discrimination learning of 255 male CD1 mice in a water-escape paradigm in which the degree of motor difficulty was manipulated by varying water temperature. The drug marginally affected escape latencies in relatively warm water (25°C) but markedly disrupted escape latencies when the task was more demanding (e.g., 15 and 20°C water). The escape deficits, however, were not accompanied by disturbances in the acquisition of position discrimination or cue discrimination responses when Ss were required to make the highly prepared response of swimming to light or the contraprepared response of swimming to dark. Data suggest that in tasks involving aversive motivation, pimozide influences performance through its effects on response maintenance but does not appear to affect either associative or motivational processes. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Blood alcohol level discrimination by alcoholics: The role of internal and external cues.

Two groups of 4 chronic alcoholics lived in Rutgers' Alcohol Behavior Research Laboratory for separate 2-wk periods. During that time, Ss were taught to attend either to internal or to external cues to blood alcohol level (BAL). Mean age of the internal group was 36.2 yrs, and that of the external was 35.7 yrs. Internal Ss completed the Body Sensation Checklist and the Mood Adjective Check List. During a single training session, Ss received feedback on actual BAL following each of their BAL estimates. During pretraining and posttraining sessions, assessments of BAL estimation accuracy were obtained in the absence of feedback. Prior to training, both groups were equally inaccurate in estimating BAL. During training, when accurate BAL feedback was provided, estimation accuracy increased significantly for both groups. Once feedback of actual BAL was removed during the posttraining test session, however, only externally trained Ss maintained the ability to estimate BAL accurately. It is concluded that unlike the nonalcoholic Ss studied by H. Huber, R. Karlin, and A. E. Nathan (1976), the alcoholic Ss of the present study did not learn to discriminate BAL on the basis of internal feelings and sensations nearly as adequately as they did when they referred to external cues. It is suggested that these findings may have important implications for the clinical application of BAL discrimination training. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dimensions of internal versus external control.

Explored the tenability of the assumption that Rotter's Internal-External (I-E) scale measures a undimensional trait by factor analyzing the 23 I-E item responses given by 159 male and 157 female undergraduates. 2 factors were identified: a belief concerning felt mastery over the course of one's life, and a belief concerning the extent to which the individual citizen is deemed capable of exerting an impact on political institutions. It is suggested that predictions involving the I-E scale might be refined by separate considerations of the 2 factors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Detection versus sustained attention to drug cues have dissociable roles in mediating drug seeking behavior.

It is commonly thought that attentional bias for drug cues plays an important role in motivating human drug-seeking behavior. To assess this claim, two groups of smokers were trained in a discrimination task in which a tobacco-seeking response was rewarded only in the presence of 1 particular stimulus (the S+). The key manipulation was that whereas 1 group could control the duration of S+ presentation, for the second group, this duration was fixed. The results showed that the fixed-duration group acquired a sustained attentional bias to the S+ over training, indexed by greater dwell time and fixation count, which emerged in parallel with the control exerted by the S+ over tobacco-seeking behavior. By contrast, the controllable-duration group acquired no sustained attentional bias for S+ and instead used efficient detection of the S+ to achieve a comparable level of control over tobacco seeking. These data suggest that detection and sustained attention to drug cues have dissociable roles in enabling drug cues to motivate drug-seeking behavior, which has implications for attentional retraining as a treatment for addiction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Testing the influence of external and internal cues on smoking motivation using a community sample.

Exposing smokers to either external cues (e.g., pictures of cigarettes) or internal cues (e.g., negative affect induction) can induce urge to smoke and other behavioral and physiological responses. However, little is known about whether the two types of cues interact when presented in close proximity, as is likely the case in the real word. Additionally, potential moderators of cue reactivity have rarely been examined. Finally, few cue-reactivity studies have used representative samples of smokers. In a randomized 2 × 2 crossed factorial between-subjects design, the current study tested the effects of a negative affect cue intended to produce anxiety (speech preparation task) and an external smoking cue on urge and behavioral reactivity in a community sample of adult smokers (N = 175), and whether trait impulsivity moderated the effects. Both types of cues produced main effects on urges to smoke, despite the speech task failing to increase anxiety significantly. The speech task increased smoking urge related to anticipation of negative affect relief, whereas the external smoking cues increased urges related to anticipation of pleasure; however, the cues did not interact. Impulsivity measures predicted urge and other smoking-related variables, but did not moderate cue-reactivity. Results suggest independent rather than synergistic effects of these contributors to smoking motivation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mood dependent memory for internal versus external events.

Events that originate through internal mental operations such as reasoning, imagination, and thought may be more colored by or connected to one's current mood than are those that emanate from external sources. If so, then a shift in mood state, between the occasions of event encoding and event retrieval, should have a greater adverse impact on one's memory for internal than for external events. To investigate this inference, a series of studies was conducted that relied on a continuous music technique to modify mood, and on the generate/read procedures devised by N. J. Slamecka and P. Graf (see record 1980-20399-001) to distinguish internal from external events. Considered collectively, the results suggest that internal events are less likely than external events to be recalled after a shift in mood state. Discussion centers on both the empirical limitations and theoretical implications of the present result, as well as on prospects for future research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Selective and divided attention in a Stroop task.

Three experiments employed a modified version of the Stroop Color-Word Test to document some conditions under which attention may be differentially deployed. Ss were 66 undergraduates. Within limits, Ss chose either to selectively attend to a single stimulus or to distribute processing resources over several stimuli. Thus, attentional strategies may be actively chosen to suit prevailing conditions. Once established, these different modes of attending were themselves differentially open to strategic modulation. (French abstract) (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conditional discriminations based on external and internal cues in rats with cytotoxic hippocampal lesions.

Septal-hippocampal system lesions, mostly using aspiration techniques, have been reported to impair performance of conditional tasks. Rats with axon-sparing cytotoxic, hippocampal lesions were therefore tested in a range of instrumental conditional paradigms. They did not differ from controls in their ability to choose the appropriate object in a conditional object discrimination cued by internal state (hunger or thirst) or on performance of conditional visuospatial object discriminations. Acquisition of a conditional visuospatial discrimination with black and white boxes as stimuli was also unimpaired. In contrast, lesioned rats were profoundly impaired on an open T-maze task when cued by either their internal state (reference memory task) or their previous response (working memory task). The results indicate that perception or use of spatial cues, rather than conditional responding per se, is impaired by cytotoxic hippocampal lesions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Spatial and temporal information as cues in a time-sharing task.

Investigated the effects of directional and nondirectional cues on a task where 17 male undergraduates responded to moving visual stimuli that entered critical zones in each of 3 visual displays. Ss given directional cues that supplied spatial and temporal information performed significantly better than ss in the nondirectional group, who received only temporal cues, and a control group that did not receive any experimental cues. Furthermore, ss in the control group performed as well as ss given nondirectional cues. Thus, temporal cues did not lead to enhanced performance unless the display requiring attention was designated by a spatial cue. These data indicate that increased speed stress led to linear decrements in performance. (22 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Task cues, dominance cues, and influence in task groups.

Both basic and applied research indicates that women are generally seen as less competent and are less influential in task groups than men. Two studies were conducted, with both female and male speakers, to examine the effectiveness of influence attempts when displaying task cues (behaviors that imply ability or task competence) or dominance cues (attempts to influence or control through threat). Results indicated a significant positive effect of task cues on perceived competence and actual influence, whereas the display of dominance cues was ineffective in gaining status and influence and resulted in negative reactions from others. Furthermore, this pattern held for female and male speakers. These results suggest that the display of task cues is an effective means to enhance one's status in groups and that the attempt to gain influence in task groups through dominance is an ineffective and poorly received strategy for both men and women. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Use of human visual attention cues by olive baboons (Papio anubis) in a competitive task.

The ability of 4 olive baboons (Papio anubis) to use human gaze cues during a competitive food task was investigated. Three baboons used head orientation as a cue, and 1 individual also used eye direction alone. As the baboons did not receive prior training with gestural cuts, their performance suggests that the competitive paradigm may be more appropriate for testing nonhuman primates than the standard object-choice paradigm. However, the baboons were insensitive to whether the experimenter could actually perceive the food item, and therefore the use of visual orientation cues may not be indicative of visual perspective-taking abilities. Performance was disrupted by the introduction of a screen and objects to conceal food items and by the absence of movement in cues presented. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Location and frequency cues in auditory selective attention.

The roles of frequency and location cues in auditory selective attention were investigated in a series of experiments in which target tones were distinguished from distractors by frequency, location, or the conjunction of frequency and location features. When frequency separations in high-rate tone sequences were greater than 1 octave, participants were fastest at identifying targets defined by frequency and were sometimes faster at identifying conjunction than location targets. Frequency salience diminished as filtering demands were reduced: At long interstimulus intervals (> 2.0 sec), performance was superior in location conditions. The results suggest that frequency may play a role in auditory selective attention tasks analogous to the role of spatial position in visual attention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of work task cues and play task cues on information processing, judgment, and motivation.

Explored how task cues affect cognition, attitudes, and behavior in this laboratory study with 82 MBA students. Linguistic analysis of responses to the same puzzle task, cued as either work or play, revealed that task cues influenced how information was perceived and was used to form judgments and to shape behavioral responses. Ss performing work tasks attended more to information about the quantity of their performance and made more streamlined, goal-directed responses. Ss performing play tasks attended more to information about the quality of their performance; made more elaborated, image-laden responses; and were more intrinsically motivated. Links among task cues, cognitive processes, and performance were explicated through path analysis. Task cues affected performance outcomes indirectly by instantiating associated cognitive orientations: a means orientation in play and an ends orientation in work. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The use of auditory cues in a visual search task.

Can an operator in a man machine system monitoring an instrument display do it better if he has both auditory and visual cues? 50 college students were assigned randomly to one of 5 conditions tested. A simulated man machine visual display was used for visual search tasks; a headset was used for sound. "In general, it appears that auditory cueing can be used effectively in conjunction with a visual search task." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Shifts of visual attention to multiple simultaneous location cues.

Conducted 2 experiments to examine the effects of adjacent double cueing on target identification response times (Exp 1) and to determine whether similar results would be obtained with nonadjacent double cueing (Exp 2). For 14 observers, single and simultaneous multiple location cues were presented a brief period of time before the onset of targets that they were required to identify. Single and multiple cueing effects were similar, even when targets were presented at locations "in between" pairs of cues. The increase in response times that occurred when a target was presented at uncued locations in between a pair of cued locations suggests that pairs of cued locations are encoded independently by an operation called spatial indexing. A multiple indexing proposal and its role in mediating visual attention shifts initiated by direct cueing is described. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Multidimensionality of internal versus external control: Addition of a third dimension and non-distinction of self versus others.

Notes that 2 separate dimensions-Fatalism and Social System Control (ssc)-have been identified in recent research on internal-external (I-E) control. The present 2 studies with a total of 301 college students examined whether subdimensions or other separate factors besides these 2 exist in I-E. Contrary to previous interpretations, Ss did not distinguish control of self from control of others within these 2 dimensions. Rather, the factor analytic data supported the interpretation that Fatalism and ssc differ only in terms of their "source" of control. The hypothesis that there is a 3rd dimension of I-E was supported. This dimension was identified as Self-Control of one's impulses, desires, and emotions. Interpretation and implications for the application of these dimensions of I-E are discussed. (French summary) (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stress and consumption: Inescapable shock, neophobia, and quinine finickiness in rats.

Exposure to inescapable shock has been shown to result in reduced consumption of quinine in water (the finickiness effect) in rats. In the present experiment, (1) a clear difference in finickiness occurred between male adult rats exposed to inescapable shock and those exposed to escapable shock (the first such demonstration), (2) finickiness was reinstated 20 days later, and (3) finickiness was eliminated by quinine exposure prior to treatment. The 1st 2 results support the role of uncontrollability and/or unpredictability in finickiness and extend its potential impact to long-term consequences. This allows greater potential for the modeling of long-term effects, such as eating disorders and depression in humans. The finding that preexposure to quinine eliminated finickiness is contrary to current accounts of the effect. Accounts of finickiness are proposed in terms of classically conditioned aversions, bitterness, and neuropeptide control of ingestion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Internal versus external control of reinforcement and the deployment of attention in experimental situations.

In 2 investigations, internal-control (I) and external-control (E), 28 and 61 undergraduates, respectively, were compared in their attention to cues in the experimental situation. Visual attention and observations were obtained in 1, and observations of unusual, situation-defining cues in the other. In both studies I Ss exhibited different attention behaviors than E Ss although the latter group improved notably when it became clear that attention was the focus of E's interests. I Ss appeared more vigilant when confronting a person exhibiting unusual behavior and observed more behavior than E Ss. E females appeared least observant of unusual cues in the experimental situations. (French summary) (19 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Failure to learn to escape in rats previously exposed to inescapable shock depends on nature of escape response.

Results of previous studies show that dogs exposed to inescapable shocks in a Pavlov harness subsequently fail to learn to escape shock in a shuttle box. The present 6 experiments attempted to replicate this finding with male Sprague-Dawley rats (N = 182). In agreement with many previous investigations, Exp I found that Ss exposed to inescapable shock did not fail to learn to escape in a shuttle box. Exp II, III, and IV varied the number, intensity, and temporal interval between inescapable shocks and did not find failure to learn in the shuttle box. An analysis of responding in the shuttle box revealed that Ss shuttled rapidly from the very 1st trial, whereas dogs acquire shuttling more gradually. Exp V and VI revealed that Ss exposed to inescapable shock failed to learn to escape when the escape response was one that was acquired more gradually. Exp V utilized a double crossing of the shuttle box as the escape response and Exp VI utilized a wheel-turn response. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)