The effects of housing costs on polydrug abuse patterns: A comparison of heroin, cocaine, and alcohol abusers.

This study evaluated how price of housing affects hypothetical purchasing decisions. Participants (26 heroin, 28 cocaine, and 15 alcohol abusers, and 25 controls) were exposed to 4 conditions in which they "purchased" drugs, food, housing, and entertainment. Whereas income remained constant, housing prices varied across conditions. Except for 23% of heroin abusers, participants purchased housing regardless of cost, so that income increased as housing cost decreased. Demand for food was income inelastic, whereas demand for entertainment was income elastic. Each group showed income elastic demand for their drug of choice. Hypothetical choices were reliable; drug choices were correlated with urinalysis results, and willingness to forgo housing in the simulation was correlated with time spent homeless in real life. This study shows that changes in housing prices may affect choices for drug and nondrug reinforcers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Student engagement in high school classrooms from the perspective of flow theory.

We present a conceptualization of student engagement based on the culmination of concentration, interest, and enjoyment (i.e., flow). Using a longitudinal sample of 526 high school students across the U.S., we investigated how adolescents spent their time in high school and the conditions under which they reported being engaged. Participants experienced increased engagement when the perceived challenge of the task and their own skills were high and in balance, the instruction was relevant, and the learning environment was under their control. Participants were also more engaged in individual and group work versus listening to lectures, watching videos, or taking exams. Suggestions to increase engagement, such as focusing on learning activities that support students' autonomy and provide an appropriate level of challenge for students' skills, conclude the article. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Occupational burnout, tolerance for stress, and coping among nurses in rehabilitation units.

The relation of problem-solving confidence, perceived tolerance of stressors, and situation-specific coping efforts to occupational burnout was examined among 88 nurses in physical rehabilitation units. Participants completed measures of problem solving and burnout, and were administered a questionnaire that required them to list stressors encountered at work and their ability to tolerate this stressor. Participants were also asked to list their typical ways of coping with this stressor. Consistent with predictions, confidence in one's ability to handle problems and perceived tolerance were significantly predictive of lower burnout scores, regardless of time spent on the job. Of the coping variables, emotion-focused coping was significantly associated with higher burnout scores. Post-hoc analyses of self-reported coping activities indicated that some coping efforts (e.g., taking time off from work, confronting a supervisor) could be construed as symptoms of burnout, according to theoretical conceptualizations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Safety issues in the pharmacologic management of chronic pain in the elderly

In two experiments, we found that readers are sensitive to manipulations of syntactically marked focus and that focus is an effective message level contextual priming mechanism. Changes in focus resulted in changes in sentence context effects on subsequent target word processing. This was demonstrated in latency to name the target word (Experiment 1) and in initial looking time on the target in silent reading (Experiment 2). Experiment 2 also revealed direct effects on the focused items, as readers made fewer regressions and spent less total time on a word that was focused than when it was not focused. However, no initial processing time effects were found on the focused word.     

Modeling the effects of combined behavioral and pharmacological treatment on cigarette smoking: behavioral-economic analyses

Effects of different response requirements, response-independent cigarette puffs, and an alternative nondrug reinforcer on cigarette smoking were assessed in 2 experiments. The response requirement to obtain 2 puffs on a cigarette was manipulated while various numbers of response-independent puffs were provided (0, 6, or 12 in Experiment 1; 0 or 12 in Experiment 2). In Experiment 2, effects of response-dependent money ($0.25) on smoking were assessed within subjects. Response-dependent puff consumption decreased as price increased and as the number of response-independent puffs increased. Concurrently available money also decreased response-dependent smoking. The largest decrease in smoking occurred when puffs were at the highest price and when response-independent puffs and response-dependent money were both concurrently available. Findings suggest that combined pharmacological and behavioral interventions produce the greatest reductions in smoking.     

The effects of frequently rotating shiftwork on sleep and the family life of hospital nurses

The effects of three frequently rotating shifts in an irregular sequence on the daily activities of 239 Japanese female hospital nurses were studied by the time-budget method. The nurses recorded their daily activities for several consecutive days. The questionnaire was returned by 80.8% of the participants, and recordings of 1016 days were analysed. A two-way analysis of variance clarified that the shift combination influenced the daily activities. The most distinct result was that nurses spent significantly more time on free-time activities on the day when they worked the night shift followed by the evening shift than they did on the day when they worked any other shift combination. Nurses offset sleep deprivation either by sleeping during the day before and after working the night shift (82-100%) or by sleeping 2 to 4 h later in the morning after working the evening shift and on days off. There was a strong positive correlation between total sleep time (including day sleep) and the length of the interval between two consecutive shifts (r = 0.95, p < 0.001). This result suggests that more than 16 h between work shifts is required to allow more than 7 h of total sleep time. In an analysis by household status, nurses who had young children (average age, 2.8 years) slept less and spent less time on free-time activities than did other nurses.     

The effects of d-amphetamine on the reinforcing effects of food and fluid using a novel procedure combining self-administration and location preference

Using a laboratory animal procedure designed to measure two aspects of behavior related to commodity seeking (self-administration and location preference), five individually housed adult rhesus monkeys lived in three chambers: fluid- (sweetened Kool-Aid solution) related cues and oral fluid self-administration were specific to one end chamber, food pellet-related cues and food self-administration were specific to the other end chamber, and no food cues or fluid cues were available in the middle chamber. Throughout the 10 h experimental day, monkeys experienced multiple food, fluid, choice (food versus fluid), and no-commodity sessions. Oral d-amphetamine (AMPH; 0.5-1.5 mg/kg) or placebo was administered before the sessions to determine if this anorectic drug would differentially alter food and fluid self-administration. The effects of AMPH on the length of time monkeys spent in each chamber, when the stimulus lights indicating commodity availability were not illuminated (location preference) were also determined. AMPH decreased both food and fluid self-administration, but responding for fluid was reduced to a greater extent than responding for food. AMPH, however, increased the length of time monkeys spent in the food chamber, even when no stimulus lights indicating food availability were illuminated. The increase in the length of time spent in the food chamber was predicted by the decrease in the number of fluid deliveries, not the number of food deliveries. These results indicate that the relationship between self-administration and location preference, as measures of reinforcing effects, is not completely concordant. The current procedure may prove useful in comparing these two measures of reinforcing effects with other reinforcers.     

Carryover Effects of Feeling Socially Transparent or Impenetrable on Strategic Self-Presentation.

The authors proposed that social orientations, such as feeling transparent or impenetrable, that are created in one context can carry over and interact with elements in a different context to influence strategic self-presentation. Participants in 2 experiments wrote narratives that made them feel transparent or impenetrable. Later, they believed they would discuss problems from a social intelligence test with other group members and believed they could do well or poorly on the problems on the basis of practice test feedback. Self-presentations of social intelligence revealed the hypothesized interactions. When transparent, participants adjusted their self-presentations to how well or poorly they expected to perform, but when impenetrable, they presented themselves positively regardless of performance expectations. These results mimic effects obtained when performance is actually made publicly accessible or inaccessible, broaden the conceptualization of strategic self-presentation, and call into question long-held assumptions surrounding public versus private manipulations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of dose and interdose interval on conditioned heart rate tolerance to smoking.

The effects of an environmental cue and smoking administration on heart rate (HR) responses to smoking were investigated in 2 studies. The 1st study was performed without smoking, to rule out the possibility that the cue manipulations alone could produce HR habituation. Thirty-six male nonsmokers were exposed to 6 trials of a changing or repeating cue (segments of a story on audiotape), followed by a paced-breathing period. HR habituation was not found. In the 2nd study, 40 male smokers smoked 4 puffs every 10 min (small-dose/long-interdose interval [IDI]) or 6 puffs every 5 min (large-dose/short-IDI) in 6 trials. The same repeating or changing cue preceded smoking. Only the repeating-cue, small-dose/long-IDI group developed HR tolerance. Modifying the cue on Trial 6 did not reverse tolerance. The results indicated that (a) tolerance to smoking appears to be subject to conditioning, (b) this effect depends on the dose and IDI, and (c) the observed tolerance is not likely to be a result of the effects of the cue alone. Nonassociative tolerance to smoking a high-dose/short-IDI did not occur in this study. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Contingency Management of Reliable Attendance of Chronically Unemployed Substance Abusers in a Therapeutic Workplace.

The Therapeutic Workplace is an effective drug abuse treatment that integrates abstinence reinforcement into a work setting by using a salary that drug abusers earn for work. Drug abuse patients are trained and hired to become data entry operators in a Therapeutic Workplace business. Despite the opportunity to earn a high wage, participants frequently arrive at work late and fail to work complete shifts. In the present study, a contingency management intervention to promote consistent and reliable attendance was evaluated in 4 participants. Participants were not allowed to work on days that they arrived late, and their pay was temporarily reduced each time they arrived late at work or failed to complete a work shift. A within-subject reversal design showed that the intervention increased the frequency with which participants arrived at work on time and completed work shifts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Regulation of Drug Taking by Sensitization and Habituation.

The authors argue that drug taking is an operant behavior that is reinforced by the drug itself. The effectiveness of a drug as a reinforcer is modulated by sensitization and habituation to the drug as it is consumed. According to this model, drug taking stops when habituation reduces the ability of the drug to reinforce its own consumption. Drug taking resumes when spontaneous recovery restores the effectiveness of the drug as a reinforcer. This parsimonious model provides a framework for understanding many findings in the drug literature, including acute and chronic tolerance, the effect of deprivation on consumption, the contextual specificity of tolerance, polydrug abuse, cross-sensitization between stress and drugs, behavioral sensitization, priming, and reinstatement. Although this model cannot explain all aspects of drug taking (e.g., the effect of cognitive manipulations), it has many implications for understanding and controlling human drug consumption and addiction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of d-amphetamine on task performance and social behavior of humans in a residential laboratory.

Six healthy adult male volunteers lived for 11 days in a residential laboratory. Acute effects of d-amphetamine (0, 5, or 10 mg/70 kg) on performance of tasks, social interaction, and self-reports of drug effects were measured. Each day, participants engaged in a 6.5-hr work period and a 6.5-hr recreation period. Beverages containing d-amphetamine or placebo were consumed daily before the work period and before the recreation period. d-Amphetamine increased response rate without affecting accuracy on some tasks. d-Amphetamine increased the proportion of time spent engaging in verbal interaction during the first but not the second week of the study. No changes in self-reported drug effects were observed. Thus, d-amphetamine improved performance in the absence of stimulant-like subjective effects. This differentiation between performance and subjective effects confirms the importance of determining the effects of drugs on a range of behaviors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of cue exposure and deprivation on cognitive resources in smokers.

Examines the effects of manipulations designed to induce an urge to smoke on cognitive resources. Two cue-exposure experiments were conducted in which current smokers' reported urge to smoke and cognitive resources, as measured by a secondary reaction time (RT) probe, were assessed. In each study, Ss came to the laboratory twice, once while deprived of smoking for 12 hrs and once when they were nondeprived. During each session, Ss were exposed to both smoking and control cues. Results indicated that experimental manipulations designed to elicit a strong urge to smoke led to an increase in self-reported urge to smoke and a decrease of available cognitive resources, as measured by RT. In addition, these 2 measures were significantly correlated. These data, in conjunction with previous findings (M. A. Sayette et al, 1994) using alcohol-dependent Ss, lend support to the validity of RT as an objective measure of the effects of cue exposure on cognitive resources. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the recollection of specific- and partial-source information

Memory judgments can be based on information that is more or less specific with respect to the source of an item. The authors introduce a procedure and multinomial model for measuring specific- and partial-source information. In 2 experiments, participants heard words spoken by 4 different voices: 2 male voices and 2 female voices. During the test, participants were required to remember who spoke the test items (e.g., Male 1, Male 2, Female 1, Female 2, or new word). Participants often remembered information about the gender of the source (i.e., partial-source information) when they did not remember information that identified the source itself (i.e., specific-source information). Dividing attention during retrieval impaired participants' memory for specific-source information (i.e., voice information) but did not affect memory for partial-source information (i.e., gender information).     

Contributions of inadequate source monitoring to unconscious plagiarism during idea generation.

Participants engaged in a creative idea-generation task that required them to monitor source to devise ideas not offered previously by others. In Experiment 1, inadvertent plagiarism (cryptomnesia) occurred more often when participants were generating ideas than when they were taking a recognition test. In Experiment 2, focusing participants on the origin of their ideas during generation resembled the focusing that occurs in recognition performance and reduced plagiarism. In Experiment 3, a speeded-response condition increased inadvertent plagiarism by mimicking conditions in which people cannot or do not adequately monitor source. In Experiment 4, plagiarism was reduced both when participants offered their new ideas in a one-on-one context as compared with a more anonymous group setting and when participants were specifically instructed to avoid plagiarism. The results are discussed in terms of source-monitoring decision criteria and the conscious and unconscious processes that support that monitoring. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of self-generated facial expressions on mood.

Two experiments were conducted in which participants looked at photographs (Experiment 1, n?=?129) or slides (Experiment 2, n?=?90) of people engaging in positive or negative facial expressions. Participants attempted to communicate these facial expressions as accurately as they could to a video camera while viewing themselves in a mirror or without viewing themselves in a mirror. Participants in a control group maintained neutral facial expressions. Participants experienced increased positive moods when they engaged in positive facial expressions and decreased positive moods when they engaged in negative facial expressions. These effects were enhanced when participants viewed themselves in a mirror. The effects of facial expressions on positive affect were stronger for participants with high private self-consciousness. Results were integrated with research identifying individuals who are responsive to self-produced versus situational cues and with theory and research on self-awareness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Divergent worlds: The daily emotional experience of mothers and fathers in the domestic and public spheres.

Compared the emotional states experienced by mothers and fathers during daily activities in the domestic and public spheres. Participants carried pagers for 1 wk and reported their states when signaled at random times. Patterns for mothers and fathers differed markedly. Mothers reported more positive states in activities away from home, including during work at a job. These states were related to the perceived friendliness of co-workers. Fathers reported more positive states in the home sphere, partly because they spent more of this time in personal and recreational activities and partly because they experienced more choice, even during family work. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of concurrent semantic categorization on delayed serial recall.

The influence of semantic processing on the serial ordering of items in short-term memory was explored using a novel dual-task paradigm. Participants engaged in 2 picture-judgment tasks while simultaneously performing delayed serial recall. List material varied in the presence of phonological overlap (Experiments 1 and 2) and in semantic content (concrete words in Experiment 1 and 3; nonwords in Experiments 2 and 3). Picture judgments varied in the extent to which they required accessing visual semantic information (i.e., semantic categorization and line orientation judgments). Results showed that, relative to line-orientation judgments, engaging in semantic categorization judgments increased the proportion of item-ordering errors for concrete lists but did not affect error proportions for nonword lists. Furthermore, although more ordering errors were observed for phonologically similar relative to dissimilar lists, no interactions were observed between the phonological overlap and picture-judgment task manipulations. These results demonstrate that lexical-semantic representations can affect the serial ordering of items in short-term memory. Furthermore, the dual-task paradigm provides a new method for examining when and how semantic representations affect memory performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Therapy set: Its effects on subjects' involvement in systematic desensitization and treatment outcome.

Hypothesized that therapy instructions significantly augment desensitization treatment effects by influencing Ss' involvement in the conditioning procedure. 45 female undergraduate snake phobics were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 treatment groups or a no-treatment control. Therapy set and involvement instructions were manipulated within a 2 * 2 factorial design to create therapeutically and experimentally oriented Ss who were either unencouraged or encouraged to work hard at the experimental procedure. Analyses revealed therapy instructional effects on both behavioral and self-report measures of fear change which could not be attributed to experimenters' awareness of instructional manipulations. Therapy oriented Ss' performance scores were not, however, significantly greater than those obtained by Ss with an experimental orientation. Alternative hypotheses and future research strategies for testing therapy instructional effects are discussed. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Bupropion improves attention but does not affect impulsive behavior in healthy young adults.

Bupropion is an effective abstinence aid for cessation of smoking and possibly other drug use as well. There is evidence that bupropion improves attention and impulse control in certain patient populations, and improvements in these processes could mediate its efficacy as an abstinence aid. In the present study, we tested the effects of acute bupropion on measures of attention and impulsivity in healthy adults with d-amphetamine included as a positive control. Twenty-two nonsmokers (11 women) and 11 smokers (4 women) completed four 4-hr sessions where they received placebo, bupropion (150 or 300 mg), or d-amphetamine (20 mg) in capsules. Ninety minutes after capsule administration, participants were tested on attention with a simple reaction time task (SRT) and on impulsivity with the stop task, a delay and probability discounting task (DPD), and the balloon analogue risk task (BART). Participants also completed mood questionnaires during sessions. Bupropion (150 mg) decreased lapses in attention on the SRT, but did not affect performance on the stop task, DPD, or BART. Amphetamine decreased lapses in attention and speeded sensory motor processing time on the SRT but did not significantly affect responding on the stop task or DPD. On the BART, d-amphetamine tended to decrease risk taking in men but increased risk taking in women. Bupropion (300 mg) and d-amphetamine increased ratings of arousal. These results suggest that bupropion improves attention without affecting impulsive behavior in healthy adults. Improvements in attention may contribute to the effectiveness of bupropion as a pharmacotherapy for smoking. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)