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Biomedical subjects

G T Wilson

Publications and source records attributed to G T Wilson.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources
PubMed1993

Alcohol and aggression: a social information processing analysis.

The present study represents a preliminary exploration of the effects of alcohol on aggression (a hypothetical response to a videotaped provocation), using a social information processing model. Subjects were male social drinkers who received either a control beverage (ginger ale), placebo, .45 g/kg alcohol or .85 g/kg alcohol. Subjects observed a series of videotaped scenes of potential conflict occurring in the lounge of a college dormitory. In these scenes, an intruder switched the channel on a television set without asking the person watching for permission. The four groups were similar in their ability to encode and interpret social cues. Subjects in the 0.85 g/kg group were less able to generate competent (nonaggressive) solutions and were less likely than controls to select adaptive (nonaggressive) solutions. Subjects in the .85 g/kg group were more likely than control subjects to respond aggressively after being frustrated by the intruder's negative reaction to the initial attempt to resolve the conflict.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

Alcohol and anxiety: postdrink-performance feedback alters affective and self-evaluative responses to a subsequent social stressor.

Several models of alcohol use and abuse implicate self-evaluation as a variable that mediates alcohol's anxiolytic effects. Self-evaluation when drinking, in turn, is affected by people's causal attributions for their behavior and alcohol expectancies. Accordingly, postdrink performance feedback was manipulated by having 20 subjects engage in a set of tasks before and after a moderate dose of alcohol. Half of the subjects received feedback that alcohol impaired their task performance whereas the other half received feedback that alcohol did not impair their performance. All subjects then participated in a stressful social interaction. As expected, subjects in the high behavioral impairment condition made more external performance attributions during the social stressor and reported less negative self-evaluation and subjective anxiety than subjects in the low behavioral impairment condition. Alcohol expectancies appeared to account partially for the data. The results indicate that information concerning alcohol-induced behavioral impairment moderates alcohol's effects on self-evaluation and subjective anxiety.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

The effect of alcohol on emotional response to a social stressor.

Social drinkers were administered either an alcoholic, placebo or no-alcohol control beverage. Subjects were next informed that they were to give a self-disclosing speech about their body and physical appearance. Subjects' heart rate and videotapes of their facial expression were recorded during this instruction. Facial reactions to the stressor were analyzed using a system based on the Maximally Discriminative Facial Coding System (Izard, 1979). Subjects who were intoxicated showed significantly less negative emotion, as measured by the facial expression analysis, than those subjects consuming either the control or placebo beverage. We attribute this effect of alcohol to its actions on subjects' appraisal of anxiety-inducing information.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Cognitive-behavioral treatment with and without response prevention for bulimia.

We compared cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) with and without exposure and response prevention (ERP) in the treatment of eating disorder patients who both binged and purged, and reported abnormal attitudes concerning body weight and shape. Both treatments produced significant and comparable reductions in binge-eating and purging, eating patterns, and attitudes about weight and shape at posttreatment. Treatment effects were generalized to improvements in different measures of general psychopathology, and were maintained over follow-ups of 3 and 12 months. The findings are consistent with prior research showing that CBT is an effective treatment for patients with the core features of bulimia nervosa. Furthermore, the data suggest that the addition of in-session exposure and response prevention does not enhance the effectiveness of the basic CBT program.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Chemical aversion conditioning in the treatment of alcoholism: further comments.

The literature on consummatory aversion (CA) conditioning in rats does provide a well-developed theoretical foundation for chemical aversion conditioning. Nevertheless, differences between rats and humans in CA learning suggest caution in extrapolating from the animal laboratory to the treatment of alcoholic patients. Serious methodological problems with studies of emetic therapy with alcoholics preclude unambiguous evaluation of its effects. Emetic therapy is an intrusive and relatively costly form of treatment which has not been shown to be more effective than alternative, less costly methods. The onus is on proponents of this method to demonstrate its specific advantages over alternative treatments.

Alcoholism↗
PubMed1991

Intoxication and exposure to stress: effects of temporal patterning.

In this study we explored the temporal patterning of intoxication and exposure to a stress-producing situation on alcohol's effects on stress. Forty male social drinkers received either a 0.7 g/kg dose of alcohol or a placebo. When exposure to a social stressor preceded intoxication, a significant alcohol-induced increase in heart-rate reactivity was found. When intoxication preceded exposure to the stressor, conventional analysis of the data indicated a stress-dampening effect on alcohol on heart rate. No differences were obtained from self-reports of anxiety in either pattern. The findings are explained in terms of attentional and cognitive-encoding processes.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Eating disorders in the DSM-IV.

The guiding principles and operating procedures of the Eating Disorders Work Group are described. Provisional diagnostic criteria for the 4th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders for anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are listed, together with an explanation of how and why they differ from the revised 3rd edition (American Psychiatric Association, 1987). Consideration of a possible new diagnosis is noted.

Anorexia Nervosa↗
PubMed1990

Alcohol and correspondence between self-report and physiological measures of anxiety.

The present study was designed to determine the main effects of alcohol intoxication on self-report and physiological measures of anxiety. Second, we aimed to assess the role of the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability (MCSD) scale in predicting the relationship between self-report and physiological indices of anxiety irrespective of drink content. A final purpose of the study was to determine whether the MCSD could account for discrepancies in the effects of alcohol on the two anxiety response systems. Subjects were male social drinkers who received an 0.70 g/kg dose of alcohol or placebo. Results indicated that irrespective of drink content, subjects with high MCSD scores reported lower levels of anxiety than did subjects with low MCSD scores. This relationship was not evident for heart rate. These results for measures of anxiety were not influenced by drink content.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Bulimia nervosa and dietary restraint.

Patients with bulimia nervosa were compared with non-bulimic restrained and unrestrained eaters on several questionnaire and interview measures related to eating patterns, preoccupation with dieting and food, and general psychopathology. Bulimic subjects did not differ significantly from non-bulimic restrained eaters on measures of fear of weight gain, dietary restraint, and the Eating Disorders Inventory (EDI) subscales of Drive for Thinness and Body Dissatisfaction, although both groups scored significantly higher on these measures than unrestrained eaters. Subjects with bulimia nervosa differed significantly from both restrained and unrestrained eaters on the Eating Habits Checklist, the Beck Depression Inventory, the EDI total score and Interoceptive Awareness, Introversion and Bulimia subscales, the Three Factor Eating Questionnaire (TFEQ), Disinhibition subscale and the Symptom Checklist 90-revised version. These findings show that bulimic patients may be quite similar to their restrained, non-bulimic counterparts on dietary concern and ideals of slenderness and suggest the importance of including a restrained control group in attempts to isolate the variables that differentiate individuals with the clinical eating disorder from their peers who demonstrate normative discontent about body weight and shape.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Cognitive moderators of alcohol's effects on anxiety.

The present study was designed to test the prediction from the attention-allocation model that intoxication in the absence of a pleasant distractor will fail to produce anxiolytic effects. A second prediction, that the sequence of intoxication and exposure to the anxiety-producing situation would influence alcohol's effects, was also tested. Subjects were male social drinkers who received an 0.85 g/kg dose of alcohol or a placebo. Conventional statistical analysis of the results indicated an anxiolytic effect of alcohol on heart rate but a problem with this analysis is identified. An alternative interpretation provides no support for an anxiolytic effect. Exposure to the anxiety-producing stimulus prior to intoxication led to greater heart rate reactivity than if it followed intoxication.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Alcohol and anxiety reduction in female social drinkers.

The present study used a 3 X 2 factorial design to investigate effects on assertive behavior and social anxiety of different doses of alcohol and individual differences in female social drinkers. Contrary to previous findings with men, a dose-dependent effect of alcohol was not found during the social interaction task. The high dose had mixed effects, reducing anxiety on some but not other dependent measures. The moderate dose resulted in significantly less assertiveness and increased heart rate during the social interaction, in high-tolerant subjects. Expectancies about intoxication failed to show significant effects. Of the individual difference variables, only acute tolerance significantly influenced alcohol's effects on anxiety. Alcohol did not reduce self-awareness.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

Alcohol and self-disclosure: analyses of interpersonal behavior in male and female social drinkers.

We examined the effects of alcohol and expectations about drinking on self-disclosure in male and female social drinkers. Consistent with cognitive social learning theory, these effects were shown to vary as a function of dose, expectations about alcohol consumption and gender-related social learning history. In men, alcohol increases self-disclosure, but only at a moderate blood alcohol level. Expectations emerged as a powerful influence on self-disclosure. Men who believed that they and their female partner were both intoxicated showed increased self-disclosure although no alcohol was consumed. Women who believed that they were intoxicated showed the opposite pattern of a decrease in self-disclosure. Another gender difference was that moderate alcohol had no effect on women's self-disclosure. The self-awareness model of alcohol use failed to receive support.

Alcohol Drinking↗