Some cognitive aspects of motivation.

Consider the possibility that "what we call motives are really a particular kind of perceptual or cognitive event… . We desperately need to discover the dimensions of motivated behavior." Factors discussed relating to motivated behavior include difficulty and novelty (encompassing change, unpredictability, and surprise). The cognitive approach to motivation is most promising in esthetics. The "cognitive contribution to why we do what we do is an important one. It is also one that we know very little about." Behavioral facts and relationships must precede a physiological theory of motivation. From Psyc Abstracts 36:01:3CC03P. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychosemantics: Some cognitive aspects of structural meaning.

Discusses aspects of semantic structure that have significance for cognitive psychology: (a) developments within the framework of transformational grammar that provide a semantic conception of syntactic relations, and (b) the structure of lexical meaning, especially the idea of semantic features as components of lexical meaning. While the theoretical status of semantic features is presently weak, there is some evidence that such components function in long-term memory. However, in addition to methodological problems, limitations on semantic features, as they have been previously conceived, are suggested by the possibility of semantic deep structure and the requirements of referential processes. (97 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Participant modeling with or without cognitive treatment for phobias.

To determine whether cognitive treatment would enhance the effectiveness of participant modeling (PM) treatment for phobias, 36 subjects phobic to dogs and cats were given either PM alone, PM with self-instructional training, PM with self-verbalizations ("thinking aloud"), or placebo treatment. The three PM treatments produced substantial and equivalent improvement in behavior at posttest, in contrast to the placebo group, which did not change. At follow-up, the combined PM/self instructional training group showed more phobic behavior and lower self-efficacy than the other PM groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Anxiety disorders and phobias: A cognitive perspective.

Reviews the book, Anxiety disorders and phobias: A cognitive perspective by Aaron T. Beck, Gary Emery, and Ruth L. Greenberg (see record 2006-01301-000). Aaron Beck and colleagues have done an excellent job in their attempt to present a comprehensive cognitive model for understanding and treating anxiety disorders and phobias. The authors set out to present a comprehensive cognitive model for the understanding and treating of anxiety disorders and phobias. What they covered is presented with scholarly thoroughness and depth. What seems to be lacking in their presentation is an attempt to address the impact of interpersonal context. Thus, while the cognitive model promises to be an extremely helpful component to the understanding and treatment of anxiety disorders and phobias, a comprehensive treatment regimen will often require attention to additional aspects. The book is well written and richly illustrated with case histories and examples. It provides important perspectives in the understanding and treatment of anxiety disorders and phobias. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stress-induced recovery of fears and phobias.

Asserts that the characteristics of human phobias resemble the kind of learning found during the amnesic period of infancy. As certain neural systems mature, conditioning begins to exhibit adult characteristics such as context dependency, sharp generalization, and rapid extinction. The adult learning system seems to be structured at least partially through the lasting influence of infantile experience. Under (hormonal) stress, residues of early experience are reinstated and incorporated into adult memory where they directly control behavior, and this control exhibits infantile characteristics. Evidence suggests that once acquired, such conditional fears might never be eliminated using traditional extinction or counterconditioning procedures. This view leads to a renewed emphasis on the role of experience in human development. (5 p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Fear-reduction research and clinical phobias.

Reviews research concerning the behavioral treatment of clinical phobias, and compares findings with related analog studies of Ss with mild fears. Despite the frequently expressed need for caution in generalizing from one population or type of fear to another, earlier reviews based largely on analog studies have tended to ignore this problem. Conclusions regarding the effects of nonspecific treatment variables, anxiety levels during treatment, imaginal or real exposure to phobic situations, and motivational variables in changing phobic behavior are qualified by reference to research with clinical populations. These findings suggest that analog studies may give misleading impressions of the relative importance of different components operating in clinical treatments. (66 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The existential psychotherapy of phobias.

Describes the existential psychotherapy of phobic patients. The failure of much contemporary psychotherapy is based in an insufficient psychology of the phobic process. The phobic mechanism is intentional and derives from the focused awareness patients have of their own vulnerability in a certain situation and an attempt to preempt the situation by the creation of a mythology that permits a degree of control and a concomitant loss of awareness of the experience to be avoided. The psychotherapy of phobic patients is comprised of 5 stages. Patients must be assured as to the correctness, integrity, and limited effect of their anxiety. They then come to see the intentionality and integrity in their phobic structures and subsequently recognize their power over the process should they be willing to restructure their way of being in the world. The 4th step occurs with the reclamation of the specific knowledge and feelings that patients have attempted to render unconscious. The final stage is the constant attentiveness to the interpersonal process and the suffering and survival of the primary difficulty. (9 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Preparedness and phobias: A review.

The preparedness theory of phobia holds that humans are biologically prepared to learn to fear objects and situations that threatened the survival of the species throughout its evolutionary history (Seligman, 1971). Biological preparedness is postulated to be responsible for the rapid acquisition, irrationality, belongingness, and high resistance to extinction considered characteristic of phobias. Psychophysiological experiments testing this theory have involved comparisons between fear-relevant stimuli (e.g., slides of snakes) and fear-irrelevant stimuli (e.g., slides of flowers) as conditioned stimuli in Pavlovian aversive conditioning paradigms. Researchers have predicted that autonomic responses conditioned to fear-relevant stimuli should mimic the aforementioned characteristics of phobias. The evidence most consistent with the theory is the enhanced resistance to extinction of electrodermal responses established to fear-relevant stimuli. Hypotheses regarding ease of acquisition, irrationality, and belongingness have received either only minimal or equivocal support. Alternative explanations are discussed for the resistance to extinction effect, the conceptual basis of preparedness theory, and its clinical implications. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Some dynamic aspects of posthypnotic compliance.

"Within the context of a general, psychoanalytically oriented theory of hypnosis there were presented 2 hypotheses on the nature of compliance with posthypnotic suggestions. According to the first, such compliance is viewed as facilitated by the Ss being able to interpret the posthypnotic suggestion in a manner consistent with the mechanisms and affective reactions that, for him, characterize and maintain the hypnotic relationship. In the second, compliance with a posthypnotic suggestion is viewed as facilitated if that suggestion permits the S safely to express and indulge a previously warded-off and conflicted drive. Case record data drawn from a recent experimental study were presented which tend to confirm these 2 hypotheses." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Some aspects of the executive personality.

The responses of 44 top-level executives to the Tomkins-Horn Picture Arrangement Test were compared with the responses of 41 college professors and with those of a group of 25 males comparable to the executives in age, education, and intelligence level. Two characteristics were associated with executives' responses (as distinguished from the responses of the control groups): a generalized fear of illness and a tendency to react to problem situations with a feeling of some degree of helplessness and a sense of being dependent on others for a solution. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Implosive therapy with semiclinical phobias.

Describes a 2-phase investigation using 52 female volunteers with semiclinical phobias of insects. Ss' interview data support vicarious learning family-dependency interpretations rather than traumatic conditioning interpretations of the etiology of phobias. Compared with previous samples of phobic college students Ss showed significantly greater degrees of fear on an overt-behavior assessment test and self-report measures (e.g., Fazio's Inventory of Reported Fears). A brief course of implosive therapy was not found to be as effective as a form of treatment based on J. Andrews' suggestions. Treatment-research implications are briefly discussed. (33 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age of onset in different phobias.

The age of onset, other background data, and measures from behavioral avoidance tests were studied in 370 phobic patients. They belonged to six different categories: agoraphobia (n?=?100), social phobia (n?=?80), claustrophobia (n?=?40), animal phobia (n?=?50), blood phobia (n?=?40), and dental phobia (n?=?60). Results showed that animal phobia had the earliest onset age (7 years), followed by blood phobia (9 years), dental phobia (12 years), social phobia (16 years), claustrophobia (20 years), and agoraphobia (28 years). The groups also differed in marital and occupational status, heart rate, anxiety experiences during the behavioral test, and general fearfulness. On the whole, agoraphobia and animal phobia stood out as the extremes on many measures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attitudinal and cognitive aspects of intensive study of a second language.

Students attending a 6-week French Summer School were examined for attitudes toward French people and culture, their orientations toward learning a 2nd language, and their feelings of anomie at the start and end of the course. Attention was also given to modification in the meanings of French and translated-equivalent English concepts. Students at 2 levels of skill in French were compared. Results supported the theory that learning a 2nd language efficiently depends on an appropriate pattern of attitudes toward the other cultural group and a particular orientation toward language study. Anomie increased for both groups of students during the course. Students utilized the semantic features of both their languages and permitted the 2 to interact. This linguistic interdependence correlates positively with achievement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Strategy-dependent effects of reflecting on self and tasks: Some implications of optimism and defensive pessimism.

Two studies investigated the hypothesis that individuals using the cognitive strategy of defensive pessimism will perform better and feel better when allowed to play through possible outcomes and reflect on their progress. In contrast, individuals using an optimistic strategy will perform more poorly and feel worse when they are encouraged or required to reflect on themselves and their goals. A laboratory experiment and a study using experience-sampling methodology (ESM) revealed this pattern for self-reported mood, appraisal of tasks, and progress toward goals; objective performance; and a physiological measure, though the interaction was not always statistically significant. Discussion focuses on the probable content of reflective thought for these individuals, the relative costs and benefits of each approach, and the usefulness of a strategy-oriented approach to the study of individual differences and self-regulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Some aspects of impotence

The fine structure of human nasal sero-mucinous glands was studied in 15 chronic allergic patient. There was total absence of the mucous glands, and proliferation of seroud elements, with hugely dilated lumina containing large numbers of intact zymogen granules, and absence of microvilli. The relation between the goblet cells and the nasal glands was discussed. An interchange between the serous and mucous elements was deduced.     

Conditioned defensive reflex in the edible snail (molecular-genetic aspects)

The proliferation of glioma cells requires cholesterol, which could be provided by synthesis within the cells or by uptake of cholesterol esters in particles of Low Density Lipoprotein (LDL). Cholesterol esters and cholesterol were therefore analysed in human glioma tissue, its surrounding areas and serum from 40 patients. The analyses revealed an increased concentration of cholesterol esters up to 100 times (0.1-10 mumol/g) in both tumour-tissue and surrounding areas compared with control material (< 0.1 mumol/g). The analyses also demonstrated that cholesterol esters in tumour tissue eminated mainly from serum. The cholesterol concentrations were significantly lower in tumour tissue compared with surrounding areas as expected. These results indicate that tumour cell proliferation utilises serum derived cholesterol esters presumably carried by LDL particles.     

Components in a treatment of insect phobias.

Tested 3 components of a supportive but directive approach to overcoming mild aversion to insects. Ss were 28 female undergraduates in 3 treatment groups and 1 control group (n = 7 each). Treatment tapes used signal-safety conditioning messages, positive reinforcement, or negative reinforcement. Self-report and overt behavior measures of fear were recorded for 5 consecutive approach-assessment tests. Each treatment component was associated with significant (p     

Assessment of childhood phobias

Childhood phobias can be successfully treated using a variety of behavioral strategies, provided there has been a psychometrically sound assessment. Measures are also important for the evaluation of treatment efficacy and the testing of hypotheses generated by new ideas and theories of children's phobias. This paper outlines broad-based assessment procedures used in the evaluation of children's phobias, including the behavioral or problem-focused interview, the diagnostic interview, self-report inventories, caregiver completed instruments, behavioral observations, self-monitoring and physiological assessment. Reflecting recent theoretical and clinical advances in the study of childhood internalizing disorders, we also explore laboratory-based measures and family assessment measures. Particular attention is given to psychometric issues and developmental sensitivity in our discussion of these assessment procedures.     

Some theoretical & philosophical aspects of educational psychology.

The author was invited to discuss "the extent and character of the theoretical and philosophical aspects" of educational psychology. His own work in educational psychology, however, is concerned primarily with research methodology, measurement, and statistical analyses as applied in educational research methods, and his major tie to philosophy has been in the philosophy of science. Therefore, he touches on topics such as behaviorism, logical positivism, cause-and-effect relationships, objectivity and subjectivity, relationships among variables, and Evolutionary Critical-Realism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)