Search PubMed⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

J Rodin

Publications and source records attributed to J Rodin.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources
PubMed1980

Social and immediate environmental influences on food selection.

The current environmental stimuli that may often override biological regulation as influences on food selection are considered, eg time of day, food availability, convenience and variety of foods, the media, conditions of eating a meal, emotions. Schachter's hypothesis that overweight people are more responsive to external stimuli than leaner peers is examined and new work to test the theory is reported.

Animals↗
PubMed1979

Environmental determinants of memory improvement in late adulthood.

Two studies were conducted with nursing home residents to determine whether memory could be improved. This was accomplished by increasing the cognitive demand of the environment and then varying the extent to which residents were motivated to attend to and remember these environmental factors. In Study 1, motivation to practice recommended cognitive activities was manipulated by varying the degree of reciprocal self-disclosure offered by interviewers in a series of dyadic interactions. In Study 2, motivation to practice recommended cognitive activities was manipulated by varying whether positive outcomes were contingent on attending to and remembering these activities, which increased in demand over time. Whether as a function of interpersonal (Study 1) or practical (Study 2) incentives, engaging in cognitive activity resulted in improvement on standard short-term memory tests, including probe recall and pattern recall, as well as in improvement on nurses' ratings of alertness, mental activity, and social adjustment for experimental groups relative to controls.

Aged↗
PubMed1979

Metabolic and behavioral differences between dieting and intestinal bypass.

The present studies were designed to compare physiological and behavioral changes produced by weight loss induced with dieting and the weight loss which follows intestinal bypass. A group of 7 grossly obese individuals were hospitalized in a metabolic unit and studied at their initial weight after 4 weeks on a hypocaloric diet and again following a comparable weight loss after intestinal bypass surgery. The score indicating depression increased after dieting, but returned to initial levels after bypass. A number of other behavioral changes were recorded including a reduction in the time spent thinking about food, the time when the individual felt hungry and a greater percentage of time when they felt "full". After bypass, the patients also selected and ate smaller quantities of food. There were no metabolic differences following the period of dieting. Among the metabolic changes after bypass were an increase in glycerol and a decrease in insulin. The possible relationships between the metabolic and behavioral changes have been reviewed.

Blood Glucose↗
PubMed1977

Long-term effects of a control-relevant intervention with the institutionalized aged.

Elderly nursing home residents who were tested as part of an intervention designed to increase feelings of choice and personal responsibility over daily events were reevaluated 18 month later. Nurses' ratings and health and mortality indicators suggest that the experimental treatment and /or the processes that it set in motion had sustained beneficial effects.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed1977

Effects of degree of obesity, age of onset, and weight loss on responsiveness to sensory and external stimuli.

Four experiments tested responsiveness to external and sensory stimuli in female human subjects who differed in degree of overweight and in age of onset of their obesity. The effects of weight loss upon external responsiveness were assessed by testing subjects before and after weight reduction in order to determine the role of energy deficit and deprivation in mediating heightened responsiveness to external cues. There was no significant positive correlation between degree of overweight and degree of external responsiveness. In general, the age of onset of the obesity was also not a relevant factor in the degree of externality. Weight loss did not change responses to visual and cognitive cue salience manipulations in measures of feeding, emotionality, time perception, and short-term recall, whereas responsiveness to variations in palatability increased following weight reduction. While external cue responsiveness does not appear to result from adiposity per se or from deprivation, responsiveness to taste stimuli may reflect these parameters. The role of external and sensory cues in the development and maintenance of obesity is discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1977

Treatment of obesity: comparison of physician and nonphysician therapists using placebo and anorectic drugs in a double-blind trial.

In a randomized double-blind trial, 60 obese patients were assigned in groups of 12 to five therapists. The patients for each therapist were then randomly assigned in groups of four to placebo or one of two preparations of mazindol. Ninety-three percent of the patients completed the nine weeks of treatment. Weight loss averaged 1.1 lb per week and there was no advantage to pharmacological agents over placebo. However, there were significant differences between therapists. Weight loss by the patients assigned to physicians was no better than for those assigned to nonphysician personnel, but there were significant differences between individual nonphysician personnel. These findings support the concept that nonphysician personnel may be effective in treating many obese patients. In addition, we could not find a significant effect of either form of mazindol when compared to placebo.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1977

Predictors of successful weight loss in an outpatient obesity clinic.

Patients attending weight reduction clinics were tested at the beginning of the program to assess a variety of background variables which might influence successful weight loss. These included measures of self-esteem, social acceptance, locus of control, responsiveness to external stimuli, attitudes toward weight loss, and knowledge about nutrition. Success was related to social conformity and desire for social acceptance but not to self esteem or locus of control. Individuals who believed that poor eating habits caused their obesity and those who were less responsive to environmental cues which may trigger feeding, were also more successful.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1976

Externality in the nonobese: effects of environmental responsiveness on weight.

The study considered whether external responsiveness in normal weight people would predict changes in eating behavior and weight following major alteration of environmetnal food cues. Normal weight children were tested for externality on measures of eating, slide recall, and extremity of affective responsiveness during the first week of a summer camp, and were weighed biweekly thereafter. There was a significant correlation between externality and weight change, indicating that the more externally responsive the children were, the more weight they gained. The implications of this finding for theories about the development of obesity were considered.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1976

Menstruation, reattribution, and competence.

Experiment 1 tested whether performance is influenced by the reattribution of task-relevant emotional arousal. Arousal was manipulated by level of anticipated shock and test anxiety. Tasks included the digit symbol substitution test, the Stroop Color-Word Interference Test, anagram solution, and unsolvable puzzles. Aroused subjects who were either given a pill attribution for their arousal or correctly warned that shock and test anxiety might upset them performed significantly better than aroused subjects who were given no manipulated attribution. Experiment 2 compared the performance of menstruating women complaining of moderate or severe symptoms with others not currently menstruating. It was expected that the latter two groups would not have a salient alternative attribution for task-relevant arousal and that women with stronger symptoms would. Experimentally aroused, high-symptom menstruating women performed significantly better than the other two aroused groups. The results suggest the beneficial effects of predictability and perceived normative standards upon performance, and the reattribution phenomenon was reconsidered within that context. The implications of these findings for competence during menstruction were also also discussed.

Arousal↗
PubMed1976

The effects of choice and enhanced personal responsibility for the aged: a field experiment in an institutional setting.

A field experiment was conducted to assess the effects of enhanced personal responsibility and choice on a group of nursing home residents. It was expected that the debilitated condition of many of the aged residing in institutional settings is, at least in part, a result of living in a virtually decision-free environment and consequently is potentially reversible. Residents who were in the experimental group were given a communication emphasizing their responsibility for themselves, whereas the communication given to a second group stressed the staff's responsibility for them. In addition, to bolster the communication, the former group was given the freedom to make choices and the responsibility of caring for a plant rather than having decisions made and the plant taken care of for them by the staff, as was the case for the latter group. Questionnaire ratings and behavioral measures showed a significant improvement for the experimental group over the comparison group on alertness, active participation, and a general sense of well-being.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed1976

Intestinal bypass surgery for obesity decreases food intake and taste preferences.

Food intake was measured in 22 obese patients before and after jejunioleostomy for obesity. Most of the weight loss could be accounted for by the observed reduction of caloric intake. Malabsorption was also present as indicated by increased loss of fat in the stools, and decreased absorption of D-xylose and vitamin B12. A dislike for sweet tastes developed after surgery in most patients. Preferences for concentrated solutions of sucrose and glucose were reduced after patients showed a depression of food intake by a 440-calorie preload which had not been detected before surgery. These studies show a decrease in food intake after intestinal bypass surgery and suggest a role for taste or other gastrointestinal factors in regulating food intake.

Adult↗
PubMed1975

Causes and consequences of time perception differences in overweight and normal weight people.

Three experiments considered whether there are differences between overweight and normal weight subjects in time perception which represent the obese subjects' lack of internal responsiveness as well as heightened external reactivity in a noneating setting. In the first study, no time-relevant cues were provided, and overweight subjects were inaccurate in their temporal judgments and showed significantly higher group variability than did normals. In the second study, the effects of differential temporal information generated by interesting and boring cues was considered. The presentation of these time-relevant external cues reduced the judgment variability of the overweight subjects and influenced their perceived passage of time significantly more than normals. The third study examined the influence, on eating behavior, of differences in perceived passage of time as a consequence of manipulating cues for interest or boredom. When bored, overweight subjects perceived time to pass more slowly than did normals and thus ate sooner. Similarly, they delayed eating, judging time to have passed more quickly than it actually had, when they were attending to interesting cues. The implications of a generalized lack of internal sensitivity for a theory about the development and consequences of obesity are discussed.

Attention↗
PubMed1975

Effects of obesity and set point on taste responsiveness and ingestion in humans.

Two experiments investigated the relationships among degree of obesity, nearness to set point for adipose tissue mass, and responsiveness to taste. In Experiment 1, subjects rated milkshakes varying in sweetness intensity. Overweight and normal weight subjects did not have significantly different detection thresholds or preference ratings. However, overweight subjects worked longer than normals to obtain their most preferred substance. Experiment 2 varied the ease of tasting the milkshake. Preference and food intake of moderately overweight subjects were significantly more influenced by tastes that they found positive and negative than was the preference of normal weight or obese subjects. The ease of ingesting the taste substance also significantly influenced preference and food intake of the moderately obese only. Nearness to set point, operationally defined as weight stability for 2 years, had no significant effects.

Adipose Tissue↗