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Biomedical subjects

J J Furedy

Publications and source records attributed to J J Furedy.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1991

The roles of deception, intention to deceive, and motivation to avoid detection in the psychophysiological detection of guilty knowledge.

The present study focused on electrodermal differentiation between relevant and neutral items in the Guilty Knowledge paradigm. Three factors were varied in a between-subjects design. The role of deception was examined by varying the type of verbal answer to the questions ("yes," "no," and remaining silent). The intention to deceive factor was examined by contrasting subjects told to delay their answer ("yes" or "no") with those told to produce their answer immediately. Finally, motivation to avoid detection was manipulated by having half the subjects monetarily rewarded for an important (ego relevant) detection task (high motivation), whereas the remaining subjects were neither rewarded nor told that the task was important. The results indicated that a deceptive answer ("no") to the relevant question was associated with an increased differential skin conductance responsivity, but better than chance detection rates were obtained with truthful ("yes") and silent conditions. Equal and significant detection rates were observed when the responses were computed immediately following question presentation, whether the subjects had answered immediately or had delayed their answers. In contrast, differential electrodermal responsivity to the delayed answers was markedly attenuated. The motivation factor had no main or interactive effects on differential responsivity. The present results, together with those obtained in previous studies, suggest that whereas deception is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for psychophysiological detection, it may facilitate detection. Possible mechanisms through which such a facilitation could occur were considered.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Sharing a common language about conditioning requires accurate characterizations of each others' positions: reply to Shanks.

Shanks' characterizations of the positions taken in papers that he comments on are inaccurate on a number of basic counts. For example, the papers were concerned with human autonomic Pavlovian conditioning, whereas Shanks refers to no autonomic evidence in his reply. Again, the two papers more specifically targeted by Shanks (Furedy, 1988b; Furedy & Riley, 1987) do not deny "that cognitive processes have any relevance for conditioning", but rather advocate that both cognitive and non-cognitive factors play roles that need to be empirically determined for different preparations and conditions. And the characterization of cognitive factors in those papers, contrary to Shanks, is not a teleological, intentional one, no matter how fashionable such teleological forms of cognitive psychology may be among many current philosophers and psychologists. We can proceed towards an empirical resolution of disagreements about the role of cognitive factors in human Pavlovian autonomic conditioning only if we both refer to the relevant autonomic conditioning evidence, and also characterize each others' positions with some accuracy.

Animals↗
PubMed1989

Sex differences in small-magnitude heart-rate responses to sexual and infant-related stimuli: a psychophysiological approach.

Small-magnitude (2-3 beats per minute) heart-rate responses can show sex differences if assessed with a psychophysiological approach in which temporally fine-grained methods are used to determine topographical differences. Such differences emerged when 15 males and 37 females were shown videosegments depicting emotional scenes. Specifically, males accelerated to erotic segments (couples making love), while females accelerated to segments showing babies crying. In addition, the peak development of baby-cry-elicited accelerations occurred about 1 second before that of erotic segment-elicited accelerations. The results are consistent with a preparatory-response interpretation, but more research is needed both to investigate the generality of these sex differences in heart-rate responses, and to determine the role of experiential and psychosocial factors.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Human Pavlovian HR decelerative conditioning with negative tilt as US: a review of some S-R, stimulus-substitution evidence.

Interest in human Pavlovian heart rate (HR) conditioning with conventional shock and loud noise unconditional stimuli has declined, as measured by reports in the literature. Accompanying this decline have been the following views: (a) that HR should be abandoned as a psychophysiological index of the psychological (learning) process of Pavlovian conditioning; (b) that, following psychology's shift to a more cognitive emphasis, the self-regulation (S-R), stimulus-substitution view of pavlovian conditioning is wrong, because there is no equivalence in direction between shock- and loud noise-induced HR-accelerative unconditional response and the conditional response. This paper reviews recent reports of human Pavlovian conditioning of HR deceleration with negative tilt as the unconditional stimulus. The results support an S-R, stimulus-substitution interpretation of conditioning. In addition, these studies have potential therapeutic application in the teaching of (medically desirable) HR deceleration, especially when Pavlovian procedures are combined with instrumental (biofeedback) ones. However, such physiological aspects of the decelerative unconditioned response as the degree of vagal involvement are difficult to investigate in the human preparation.

Arousal↗
PubMed1989

Human Pavlovian HR-decelerative conditioning with negative tilt as US: evidence of vagal and sympathetic influences on the UR in dogs.

Following a review of studies employing negative tilt in human Pavlovian conditioning of heart rate (HR) deceleration (Furedy et al, in press), this paper reports data based on animal subjects on such physiological aspects of the decelerative unconditioned response (UR) as the degree of vagal involvement. Five anesthetized dogs underwent 90 degrees negative body tilts pre- and postbilateral vagotomy, while interbeat interval (IBI), left ventricular pressure (LVP) and its first derivative, d(LVP)/dt, which is a measure of sympathetic cardiac drive, were recorded. Consistent with the vagal interpretation of the tilt-induced decelerative UR, the results indicated that vagotomy markedly changed the tilt-induced bradycardic reflex from a fast-recruiting, large-magnitude (over 45%), and sustained (throughout the 20-27-s tilt) IBI increase, to slower-recruiting, and markedly smaller (less than 5%) IBI increase. However, there was also evidence of an initial sympathetic excitation of about 5 s, as indicated by a 45% increase in d(LVP)/dt, which returned to baseline level by 9 s following tilt onset. Vagotomy increased this tilt-induced sympathetic excitation to about 100%, and it remained at above 70% throughout the tilt. Prevagotomy LVP showed a slight (about 10%) and delayed (about 6 s following tilt onset) depressor response, which was eliminated by vagotomy. Finally, unaveraged data from individual dogs suggested that prevagotomy, LVP changes preceded IBI changes. Regarding implications of these results for human HR deceleration-inducing preparations, we conclude that the different physiological mechanisms that accompany and/or produce a given change in HR need continuing investigation with multiple dependent physiological variables (which are assessed for topographical differences), and in both human and animal preparations.

Animals↗
PubMed1989

Propositional and response processes as distinguishable and equally important aspects of conditioning: some clarifications.

Martin and Levey's (1988) commentary on our 1987 chapter points to the need for clearer definition of terms and much more open debate in the area of learning and conditioning. While raising some good points for further discussion, their characterisation of some issues appears to be based on a number of misinterpretations and misrepresentations of our position, and we attempt here to correct these functions. Issues which we regard as misinterpreted are those of truth value as a criterion of the cognitive, the epistemological status of a cognition as opposed to the object of the cognition, and the nature of propositional versus non-propositional learning theories. Issues which are misrepresented are those of our position on the nature of conditioning (which is called cognitive by Martin and Levey, but which is, in fact, a dual-process view), formal versus content-oriented distinctions, and the nature of human and non-human learning processes. Despite these differences between Martin and Levey and ourselves, it is apparent that such debates are necessary for furthering our understanding of the complexity and multiplicity of the processes involved in learning.

Association Learning↗
PubMed1989

On approaches to explaining cardiovascular reactivity: toward explanations that explain.

The control-system mode of analysis proposed by Pavloski for cardiovascular reactivity phenomena is a purposive or teleological form of explanation, because the explicans has purpose as the central term. The problem with such explanations is that they are circular and empty, providing only a rhetorical feeling of understanding, and absence of strong-inference research. The S-O-R approach, which Pavlovski opposes, provides at least the potential for non-circular explanations, provided that the O-related explanatory constructs are specified in normal cause-effect terms so that, in another context, the explicans can also serve as an explicandum, and vice-versa. Pavloski may be right in suggesting that the evidence requires a feedback, "control-system" construct to account for cardiovascular reactivity phenomena (although he is far from having proved this in his paper), but such a view would need to be supplemented by (non-purposive) control-system explanations that really explain in the logical rather than the merely rhetorical sense of that term.

Arousal↗
PubMed1988

Arguments for and proposed tests of a revised S-R contiguity-reinforcement theory of human Pavlovian autonomic conditioning: some contra-cognitive claims.

One of the consequences of the cognitive paradigm shift is that human Pavlovian autonomic conditioning of responses like the GSR has been considered to be a mere epiphenomenon or index of an underlying cognitive process. The paper begins by reviewing evidence against three such reductionist, cognitive accounts, and then proposes a revision of an S-R theory of classical conditioning that was first put forward in the early sixties. The revision is designed to increase the S-R theory's testability, and this increase is demonstrated by indicating four sets of experimental arrangements where the revised S-R theory forbids certain outcomes, and does so in a way that differentiates it from other competing theories. In this way we can proceed to begin the task of determining the boundary conditions of both cognitive and non-cognitive accounts of human Pavlovian autonomic conditioning, instead of engaging in territorial struggles between those accounts, struggles whose outcome is determined by changing Zeitgeist considerations rather than evidential ones.

Arousal↗
PubMed1987

Specific versus placebo effects in biofeedback training: a critical lay perspective.

Recent interchanges on the question of how to evaluate biofeedback have been cast in terms of a researcher versus clinician dichotomy. This tends to make the arguments ad hominem and focuses attention on minutiae that are of limited general interest. Accordingly, one purpose of the present paper is to state the specific-effects approach to biofeedback evaluation from a critical lay, rather than a research, perspective. The logic of the specific-effects approach to treatment evaluation is first illustrated by a hypothetical example (the Minefield Parable), and it is then suggested that the approach is appropriate for the evaluation of any treatment, be it physical, psychological, or some complex combination. The other purpose of the paper is to further clarify the specific-effects position by responding to some difficulties that have been raised by critics of the position. Some of these difficulties are based on misrepresentations of the position, while others are genuine. However, even for the genuine difficulties, practical solutions are available. The paper concludes that the question of whether a particular class of treatments works is one that is properly raised by the intelligent consumer, and that, for the answer to that question, only the facts, based on adequately controlled clinical studies, will do.

Biofeedback, Psychology↗
PubMed1987

Specific versus placebo effects in biofeedback: some brief back-to-basics considerations.

Following the semantic complexities raised in earlier papers, this paper seeks to return to some of the more basic considerations arising from the preceding discussion. A critical part of the context of that discussion is the increasingly important issue of accountability. In this context, the citing of supportive studies is not enough; one must also be able to justify the logical relevance of those studies. The discussion therefore turns on the logic of treatment evaluation, which must be treated as objectively as possible. Also critical is the distinction between the question of whether an effect is present and the question of what the source of that question might be. In the quest for treatment evaluation, only the former question is important. However, this quest is one that is in the interest of researchers, clinicians, and consumers, for all of whom only the facts will do.

Biofeedback, Psychology↗
PubMed1987

On some research-community contributions to the myth and symbol of biofeedback.

This paper suggests that some of the responsibility for the misrepresentations of biofeedback noted by Kimmel (Int. J. Psychophysiol., 1986, 3: 211-218) rests with the research community's treatment of the topic. With regard to the "myth" of biofeedback, it is argued that, after Miller's (Science, 1969, 163: 434-445) influential paper, most researchers' treatment of the proper-control-for-biofeedback problem was one that selectively lowered normal methodological standards, and therefore produced results that were improperly interpreted as evidence for biofeedback (or instrumental conditioning). The shift from instrumental conditioning to biofeedback terminology, which was based primarily on political ideology rather than on logic, may have been made easier by a reluctance on the part of the scientific community to engage in reflective analyses of concepts and definitional problems.

Arousal↗
PubMed1986

The human dive reflex: an experimental, topographical and physiological analysis.

This study examined the eliciting conditions, response topography and autonomic nervous system (ANS) control of the dive reflex as evoked in humans. Twenty-four subjects received eight trials in each of the three treatment conditions: breath holding without face immersion (BH); face immersion without breath holding (FI); and the "full dive" FIBH condition. It was the combination of both FI and BH in 23 +/- 0.5 degrees C water that was necessary to elicit the dive reflex. A precise topographical analysis differentiated the FIBH condition from the FI and BH control conditions in terms of the emergence of a secondary component initiated approximately 12 seconds after trial onset. During this secondary component, augmentation of bradycardic (mean = 16.3 bpm) and digital vasoconstrictive (mean = -24.9%) responses were maintained throughout the duration of the 40-second dive. A joint consideration of the heart rate and the T-wave amplitude measures as indices of the action of both branches of the ANS suggested that the dive reflex involves concurrent sympathetic and parasympathetic activation. A potential conditioning application of the dive reflex for countering paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia was discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1986

Effects of respiratory depth and rate on HR and TWA: an indirect assessment of the respiratory confound in cognitive task difficulty manipulations.

Manipulations of respiration depth and rate were performed in order to observe their effects on HR and TWA. The shallow breathing conditions were considered respiratorily similar to the conditions existing during the performance of an iterative subtraction task. Although significant HR increases and TWA decreases were noted in the deep breathing conditions, the changes in the shallow conditions were not of sufficient magnitude to account for the HR increases and TWA decreases which have been observed during the performance of subtraction tasks. Therefore it appears that respiratory confounds are not responsible for the effects that have been observed in previous studies.

Adult↗
PubMed1986

Effects of electrode placement on direction of T-wave amplitude changes in psychophysiological studies.

Psychophysiological studies, which measure small changes in T-wave amplitude (TWA) induced by behavioral manipulations, usually employ a single electrode placement for obtaining the ECG. The present study varied electrode placement (EP) within subjects among three EPs that have been reported in the literature (a lead-II limb placement, and two chest placements) to determine whether, as has been claimed, the direction of TWA changes can be changed by varying EP. Both HR and TWA were monitored in 24 males during the Baseline, Listen, and Task phases of an iterative subtraction task. The EP variation did not affect the direction of TWA change. Reliable TWA attenuation accompanied by HR acceleration was observed in all leads.

Adult↗