The influence of aversive conditions on interpersonal attraction was investigated using 60 female undergraduates as subjects. Dyads were formed and equally divided into aversive (loud-noise) and neutral (low-noise) conditions. After completing an attitude survey questionnaire subjects completed a short filler task while the experimenter…

We begin with the suggestion that the definition of Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) still faces some challenges. Conceptually, inhibition of the Pavlovian kind preexisted the "behavioral inhibition" popular in the USA; the difference between them has to be understood in order to understand ADHD. The present project examines…

Provides the counselor a current survey of behavior therapy procedures as well as information concerning their applicability and validity. Reviews procedures based on operant learning principles, classical learning principles, and social psychological principles. Examples and case presentations are included. (Author/RC)

An overview is provided of the principles of cognitive psychology that can be used to enhance the effectiveness of computer-assisted instruction (CAI). First, the paper looks at the features of classical and operant conditioning that provide the foundation for important parts of mastery learning and CAI programs. Next, findings from four areas of…

Investigated the application of verbal praise as a reward with 84 third and fourth grade children who completed a digit-symbol coding task under contingent versus noncontingent and direct versus implicit reward conditions. Noncontingent rewards possessed no significant reinforcer effect under either reward condition. (SKC)

This discussion is based on the premise that a significant proportion of school learning is emotional or affective and that much of this learning is in the form of classical conditioning or respondent learning. (Authors/JA)

Probably as a result of America's "socialization" process, girls and women have tended to develop rather negativistic views of females. That this negativism may be part of a developmental indoctrination process is further advanced by the present experiment's finding that older girls in this experiment demonstrated significantly less favorable…

Historically, sensory systems have been largely ignored as potential loci of information storage in the neurobiology of learning and memory. They continued to be relegated to the role of "sensory analyzers" despite consistent findings of associatively induced enhancement of responses in primary sensory cortices to behaviorally important signal…

Describes a partnership between Zoo Atlanta and the Georgia Institute of Technology in teaching the principles of operant conditioning to students in an experimental psychology class. Maintains that the positive training techniques used in zoos are models of applied operant conditioning. Includes a discussion of zoo training goals. (MJP)

Describes a method of teaching classical conditioning to an introductory psychology class which involves demonstrating the conditioned response that occurs when a needle pierces, but does not pop, a balloon. (GEA)

In two conditioned lick suppression experiments using water-deprived rats, we examined the effects of following Pavlovian conditioned inhibition training (i.e., A-US/AX-NoUS) with pairings of the training excitor (A) and the unconditioned stimulus (US). Experiments 1 and 2 assessed the effects of this posttraining inflation treatment on Pavlovian…

Previous work has demonstrated that drugs increasing brain concentrations of acetylcholine can enhance cognition in aging and brain-damaged organisms. The present study assessed whether galantamine (GAL), an allosteric modulator of nicotinic cholinergic receptors and weak acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, could improve acquisition and retention of…

In studies of function transformation, participants initially are taught to match stimuli in the presence of a contextual cue, X; the stimuli to be matched bear some formal relation to each other, for example, a relation of opposition or difference. In a second phase, the participants are taught to match arbitrary stimuli (say, A and B) in the…