Cardiovascular responses of Oriental and Caucasian men to alcohol: some psychological correlates

After drinking a small dose of alcohol, Orientals flushed, their heart rates increased and their diastolic pressures decreased; Caucasians' skin reflectance did not change, but their heart rates and systolic blood pressures decreased. In both groups, flushing was associated with an increase in feelings of vigor. Other mood correlates depended on condition.     

Autonomic, behavioral, and neural analyses of mild conditioned negative affect in marmosets.

Avoidance and alerting behaviors and accompanying physiological responses, including changes in heart rate (HR), are core components of negative emotion. Investigations into the neural mechanisms underlying the regulation and integration of these responses require animal models that simultaneously measure both the physiological and behavioral components of emotion. A primate model is of particular importance in view of the well developed prefrontal cortex of primates, and this region’s critical role in emotion regulation and the etiology of affective disorders. Therefore, we have developed a simple aversive conditioning paradigm to assess, simultaneously, cardiovascular and behavioral responses in the marmoset (Callithrix jacchus). Validation of the paradigm was achieved by (1) comparing conditioned responses to a predictive cue with pseudoconditioned responses to a nonpredictive cue; (2) assessing the acquisition of conditioning following lesions of the amygdala, a region essential for associative learning in humans and rats; and (3) determining the contributions of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system to the conditioned autonomic responses. Marmosets acquired conditioned HR and behavioral responses in the conditioned, but not the pseudoconditioned or amygdala lesioned groups. Conditioned HR accelerations were reduced by both parasympathetic and sympathetic blockade. Thus, a model of associative learning of mild negative emotion in the marmoset has been validated by psychological, neurological, and pharmacological investigation. Future studies will determine the role of the prefrontal cortex in the regulation of these negative emotional responses, to provide insights into the neuropathology of affective disorders. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Autonomic responses and their relationship to race attitudes.

Slides showing Negroes elicited greater GSR in Ss having scale-measured prejudice. But the sex of the S also was a factor. "Autonomic activity may be considered as another dimension of attitudinal behavior to be considered along with the verbal and overt action dimension." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

McCollough effects as conditioned responses: Reply to Skowbo.

Replies to the conclusion of D. Skowbo (see record 1984-30511-001) that the available evidence does not support a classical conditioning interpretation of the McCollough effect and takes exception to her characterization of the relevant literature. It is indicated that studies from the animal learning and contingent aftereffect literatures strongly support a Pavlovian conditioning analysis of the McCollough effect. (41 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The male role, alcohol use, and alcohol problems: A structural modeling examination in adult women and men.

Most research on sex differences in alcohol involvement suggests that drinking is a component of the male gender role, but the impact of specific male role factors on alcohol involvement has not yet been studied. The authors used structural modeling to examine the relationships among 3 male role variables (agency, traditional male role attitudes, and masculine gender role stress), alcohol consumption, and alcohol-related problems in a sample of women and men. To determine whether sex moderates this relationship, models were computed separately for men and women. For men, traditional attitudes led to more alcohol consumption, whereas agentic traits protected them from experiencing alcohol-related problems, and experiencing masculine gender role stress was a risk factor for these problems. Male role variables were unrelated to women's alcohol consumption, but women who believed more in the traditional role of men suffered from more alcohol-related problems. Discussion centers on the contribution of components of the male role on alcohol outcomes as well as the different implications for men and women. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Women's responses to sexual aggression: The effects of childhood trauma, alcohol, and prior relationship.

This study examined effects of alcohol consumption (control, moderate dose, high dose) and type of relationship (new, established) on women's responses to escalating male sexual aggression. The role of childhood trauma was also examined. After consuming a beverage, participants (N=220) projected themselves into a story portraying a social interaction with a man that depicted escalating sexual aggression. The story was paused 3 times to assess assertive, polite, and passive resistance as well as consent. Alcohol consumption increased consent and interacted with type of relationship to increase passive resistance and with level of sexual aggression to increase polite resistance. Assertive resistance increased and other responses decreased as the man's sexual aggression escalated. Childhood trauma lowered consent initially and increased passive resistance when rape was threatened. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

McCollough effects as conditioned responses: Reply to Dodwell and Humphrey.

P. C. Dodwell and G. K. Humphrey (see record 1990-14039-001) criticized the Pavlovian conditioning analysis of the McCollough effect, claiming that it was conceptually flawed and that it did not assign the McCollough effect any useful function. In this article, it is suggested that the error-correction interpretation that Dodwell and Humphrey proposed as an ostensible alternative to the conditioning interpretation can be subsumed by the conditioning interpretation. Furthermore, the conditioning interpretation does ascribe a useful function to the McCollough effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Autonomic nervous system activity in autistic, schizophrenic, and normal men: Effects of stimulus significance.

Deficits in attention and cognition in autistic children have been attributed to problems in the early stages of stimulus processing and to autonomic dysregulation, but the evidence is conflicting. Our study addressed this problem by recording skin conductance, skin temperature, respiration rate, and heart rate (HR) during (a) a rest period, (b) a series of nonsignal tones, and (c) a simple warned reaction time (RT) task in autistic, schizophrenic, and normal men; we sought to remove extraneous sources of variance by testing only high-functioning autistic men (n?=?13); age?=?18–39). Control subjects were age-matched normal men (n?=?19) and schizophrenic men (n?=?13) not chronically hospitalized. Autistic men had higher respiration rates, lower skin temperature, and higher HR variability at rest than controls. They were not different on other arousal measures or generally in responding to nonsignal tones but had severely impaired tonic and phasic autonomic responses and motor responses in the RT task. Schizophrenic subjects were also impaired but significantly less so in some aspects of responding. The results do not suggest problems in stimulus processing, but there is evidence of autonomic dysregulation and a pronounced inability to mobilize processing resources appropriately, perhaps a common problem with schizophrenia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Amphetamine-induced conditioned activity is insensitive to perturbations known to affect Pavlovian conditioned responses in rats.

Psychostimulant-induced conditioned activity is characterized by the presence of a hyperactivity in drug-free rats exposed to an environment previously paired with the effects of a psychostimulant. This phenomenon is thought to result from a Pavlovian conditioning process. This hypothesis predicts that conditioned activity will be sensitive to perturbations known to affect classical conditioned responses. In direct contrast with this prediction, the authors report here that conditioned activity is insensitive to (a) the temporal order between the stimulant injection and the exposure to the environment, (b) unsignaled stimulant injections between drug-environment pairings, and (c) drug preexposures before the start of drug-environment pairings. It is concluded that the stimulant effects responsible for the establishment of conditioned activity may not be amenable to a Pavlovian associative process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Autonomic reactivity of high and low ego-strength subjects to repeated anxiety eliciting scenes.

Conducted an experiment to answer the question of whether patients labeled high or low in ego-strength differentially responded to scenes designed either to elicit anxiety or produce little (neutral) affect. Ss were 48 18-62 yr old male psychiatric inpatients. High ego-strength Ss initially responded to anxiety scenes with reliably more affect than to neutral scenes as indexed by their skin conductance level, heart rate measures, and by responses to the Fear Thermometer test and Affect Adjective Check List. Repeated presentations of anxiety scenes across 4 sessions led to a rapid extinction effect for the autonomic measures recorded. The same comparisons over these indices for low ego-strength Ss failed to produce any reliable differences. This latter result occurred despite the finding that low ego-strength Ss reported reliably more psychopathology on the pretest MMPI and Fear Survey Schedule when compared with high ego-strength Ss. Differences in baseline autonomic reactivity and responding to a standard stressor test were not obtained between ego-strength conditions. Data from nontreated Ss suggest that the presentation of anxiety scenes produced no ill effects for either ego-strength population. A tentative learning theory interpretation of the data is advanced. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Asian Indians' responses to discrimination: A mixed-method examination of identity, coping, and self-esteem.

The focus on racial injustice in ethnic minority psychology recognizes a need to understand the effects of racism experienced by Asian Indians in the U.S. Utilizing a mixed-method approach with 102 first and second generation Asian Indians, we examined (a) when and why race and ethnicity are salient for Asian Indians, (b) the mediating roles of racial identity and ethnic identity, and (c) the moderating roles of generational status and racial socialization on the relationship between racism related stress, self-esteem and coping. Qualitative analyses revealed distinct and overlapping themes related to race and ethnicity highlighting the relevance of both constructs to participants. Quantitative analyses revealed racial identity to be a significant mediator in the relationship between racism related stress, self-esteem, and coping. Neither generational status nor racial socialization experiences moderated this relationship. Implications of these findings for research and clinical intervention with Asian Indians are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Biographical and self-report correlates of female guilt responses to visual erotic stimuli.

Divided 60 female undergraduates into high- and low-sex guilt groups on the basis of their responses to D. L. Mosher's True-False Guilt Inventory. All Ss reported an increase in state of sexual arousal after viewing erotic stimuli. None of the Ss reported any significant difference in state of guilt after viewing the stimuli. Low-sex guilt Ss rated the masturbation, coitus, and petting stimuli as more sexually arousing, better, more pleasant, safer, and more appealing than did high-sex-guilt Ss. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of alcohol on tests of executive functioning in men and women: A dose response examination.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 19(4) of Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology (see record 2011-16762-001). This article contained errors in the text. These errors are explained and corrected in the correction.] Alcohol has been shown to affect performance on tasks associated with executive functioning. However, studies in this area have generally been limited to a single dose or gender or have used small sample sizes. The purpose of this study was to provide a more nuanced and systematic examination of alcohol's effects on commonly used tests of executive functioning at multiple dosages in both men and women. Research volunteers (91 women and 94 men) were randomly assigned to one of four drink conditions (alcohol doses associated with target blood alcohol concentrations of .000%, .050%, .075%, and .100%). Participants then completed three tasks comprising two domains of executive functioning: two set shifting tasks, the Trail Making Test and a computerized version of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task, and a response inhibition task, the GoStop Impulsivity Paradigm. Impaired performance on set shifting tasks was found at the .100% and .075% dosages, but alcohol intoxication did not impair performance on the GoStop. No gender effects emerged. Thus, alcohol negatively affects set shifting at moderately high levels of intoxication in both men and women, likely attributable to alcohol's interference with prefrontal cortex function. Although it is well established that alcohol negatively affects response inhibition as measured by auditory stop-signal tasks, alcohol does not appear to exert a negative effect on response inhibition as measured by the GoStop, a visual stop-signal task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Autonomic origins of cardiac responses to nonsignal stimuli in the rat.

Heart rate (HR) and blood pressure responses to nonsignal auditory stimuli were measured in rats after saline or pharmacological blockade of the sympathetic or vagal innervation of the heart. HR responses to the low-intensity stimulus were predominantly deceleratory, whereas responses to the high-intensity stimulus were more notably acceleratory. Both stimuli elicited a biphasic pressor–depressor response, although potential baroreflex influences accounted for only a small proportion of the HR response variance. Deceleratory responses to the low-intensity stimulus were eliminated by scopolamine and thus appeared to be predominantly of vagal origin. Acceleratory response to the high-intensity stimulus appeared to be mediated primarily by sympathetic activation because it was substantially attenuated by the β? antagonist atenolol. Furthermore, HR responses to the low-intensity stimulus appeared to reflect coactivation of both sympathetic and vagal systems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Autonomic responses to threatening stimuli in relation to the repression sensitization dimension.

Presented 3 neutral and 3 threat-producing pictures to 20 undergraduate sensitizers and 20 repressers, identified by Byrne's Represser-Sensitizer Scale. The GSR was employed to measure RT of the autonomic responses, affective arousal, and recovery time from affective arousal. In addition, the Herr-Kobler psychogalvanometric test of neuroticism was employed to determine the relative autonomic reactivity of the 2 groups. Results indicate no difference in autonomic RT between or within the groups, or in autonomic reactivity on the index of neuroticism. No difference in affective arousal was found between groups, but both repressers and sensitizers showed greater physiological emotional arousal to critical than to neutral pictures. There was no difference in recovery time from affective arousal between groups, but both groups took longer to recover from critical than from the neutral pictures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Multichannel responses to an interpersonal stressor: Interrelationships among facial display, heart rate, self-report of emotion, and threat appraisal.

60 undergraduates were exposed to a potent, provocative interpersonal stressor while facial displays of emotion were unobtrusively videotaped and heart rate was continuously monitored. Following the stressor situation, Ss completed the Differential Emotions Scale and a questionnaire designed to assess S's appraisal of threat. The video-taped facial expressions were coded by 13 naive judges to assess the intensity of the expression displayed. Minimally expressive Ss reported experiencing more guilt, displayed a significant heart rate increase, and evaluated the situation as more threatening than did the expressive Ss. Results are consistent with aspects of a discharge model of emotion that predict an inverse relationship between overt emotional displays and physiological reactivity in response to an emotional stressor. Findings argue against a facial-feedback hypothesis. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Autonomic, subjective, and expressive responses to emotional films in older and younger Chinese Americans and European Americans.

Previously, the authors found that during idiosyncratic emotional events (relived emotions, discussions about marital conflict), older European American adults demonstrated smaller changes in cardiovascular responding than their younger counterparts (R. W. Levenson, L. L. Carstensen, W. V. Friesen, & P. Ekman, 1991; R. W. Levenson, L. L. Carstensen, & J. M. Gortman, 1994). This study examined whether such differences held when the emotional events were standardized, and whether they extend to another cultural group. Forty-eight old (70–85 years) and 48 young (20–34 years) European Americans and Chinese Americans viewed sad and amusing film clips in the laboratory while their cardiovascular, subjective (online and retrospective), and behavioral responses were measured. Consistent with previous findings, older participants evidenced smaller changes in cardiovascular responding than did younger participants during the film clips. Consistent with earlier reports, old and young participants did not differ in most subjective and behavioral responses to the films. No cultural differences were found. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Semantic generalization of classically conditioned responses: A review.

25 experiments on semantic generalization of classically conditioned responses are reviewed. Several major methodological inadequacies are discussed. These included frequent failure to convincingly demonstrate conditioning, failure to distinguish between generalization effects and extinction effects, and failure to control for simultaneous conditioning to the generalization stimuli. 2 alternative inferred mechanisms of generalization are discussed. While mediation by common responses is not strongly supported by evidence, there is suggestive evidence of the importance of Ss' categorizing generalization stimuli as similar to the conditioned stimuli, as evidenced by Ss' reported expectation of reinforcement. (50 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Subjective responses to nicotine in smokers may be associated with responses to caffeine and to alcohol.

Sensitivity in responses to one drug may relate to sensitivity to other drugs, suggesting broad individual differences in characteristic responsivity across drugs. Data from two separate studies of smokers were reanalyzed to examine associations between acute subjective and cardiovascular effects of nicotine vs. caffeine and between nicotine vs. alcohol. Typical intakes of cigarettes, alcohol, and caffeine were included as covariates when they were correlated with the responses of interest. Significant associations between nicotine and caffeine were seen for most of the subjective measures and for blood pressure responses. Fewer significant associations were observed between nicotine and alcohol. Responses associated between nicotine and both of the other drugs tended to reflect psychomotor stimulation. These results suggest that smokers who are more responsive to some of nicotine's subjective and blood pressure effects are also more sensitive to the same effects of caffeine and, to a lesser extent, of alcohol. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)