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Biomedical subjects

K L Wuensch

Publications and source records attributed to K L Wuensch.

12 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

The relationship between interview characteristics and accuracy of recall in young children: do individual differences matter?

The relationship between interview characteristics and accuracy of recall in young children, as mediated by child characteristics, was examined. The interview characteristics included preinterview instructions and level of questioning. Fifty-six children ranging from ages 3 to 6 years participated in a Circus Day event and were interviewed 10 days later. Following either instructions or filler questions, children were questioned about the event. Results indicated that based on several individual difference factors, young children varied significantly in the accuracy of their interviews and their ability to resist misleading questions. However, individual differences did not mediate children's ability to benefit from different question types or preinterview instructions. As a whole, children provided limited information to the most open-ended questions and more correct information to highly structured questions. In contrast to the research with older children, younger children did not benefit from preinterview instructions. Suggestions for future research and implications for investigative interviews in the field of child abuse are discussed.

Black or African American↗
PubMed1998

Alcohol consumption, strength of religious beliefs, and risky sexual behavior in college students.

Relationships among alcohol use, strength of religious convictions, and unsafe sexual practices of 210 students at a large public university in the "bible belt" were examined. The women with strong religious beliefs consumed less alcohol and were less likely to engage in risky sexual behavior than were female participants with weaker religious convictions. Among the men, religious conviction was not significantly correlated with alcohol consumption or risky sexual behavior, but alcohol consumption and inconsistent use of condoms and multiple sexual partners were significantly correlated. Men had higher rates of alcohol consumption and unprotected sexual activity than women did, yet the two groups did not differ in overall frequency of sexual activity. Future research is needed to (a) provide greater understanding of gender differences in alcohol use, risky sexual behavior, and religious beliefs of college students in the region and (b) determine whether similar correlations exist in other areas of the country.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1994

An investigation of habituation in the jellyfish Aurelia aurita.

Three experiments were conducted to examine the effectiveness of different forms of tactile stimulation, probe and stream, and interstimulus intervals (ISI) in producing habituation in the polypoid sessile stage of the jellyfish Aurelia aurita. Results from Experiment 1 showed that polyps significantly decreased their responsiveness to both forms of tactile stimulation with 30-s ISI across 60 trials. Response to a novel stimulus indicated that the response decrement had not been due to fatigue. When the ISI was lengthened to 6 min in Experiment 2, response to the probe form of tactile stimulation did not significantly decrease across 20 trials. Using an ISI of 1 min in Experiment 3, response to the probe form of tactile stimulation decreased significantly across 40 trials. A significant increase in response to the original stimulus (dishabituation) following presentation of a novel stimulus indicated that response decrement was due to habituation or a habituation-like process rather than simple effector fatigue or sensory adaptation.

Animals↗
PubMed1993

Cross-species fostering affects meat preferences of wild house mice.

Wild-strain male house mice were fostered at birth onto conspecifics, deer mice, or domestic Norway rats. In adulthood, their flesh-eating preferences were tested by allowing them to feed from freshly asphyxiated conspecifics and either deer mice or rats. The mice ate significantly more conspecific flesh than contraspecific flesh, except when the flesh offered was that of the contraspecies upon which the mouse had been fostered at birth. The failure of cross-species-fostered mice to discriminate between their own species and their foster species in flesh-preference tests is attributed to their having learned early in life to respond to the foster species in the same way they normally respond to conspecifics, that is, by approaching them, investigating them, and, when finding them dead, feeding upon them.

Animals↗
PubMed1993

Effects of an academic failure experience on subsequent performance on anagram and paired-associate tasks: differences among second-, fifth-, and eighth-grade children.

Failure on an academic task was experimentally induced in second-, fifth, and eighth-grade school children. The failure experience significantly retarded subsequent performance on an anagram task and a paired-associates task by second graders but not by fifth and eighth graders. Among the eighth-grade boys, performance on the paired-associates task was actually facilitated by the failure experience. It is suggested that the older students' greater experience with negative feedback in school accounts for their resistance to its negative effects.

Attention↗
PubMed1990

Sex differences in the flesh-eating preferences of wild house mice.

Freshly asphyxiated male or female house mice and prairie deer mice were presented to hungry male or female wild-strain house mice. Male subjects ate significantly more conspecific than contraspecific flesh, but females showed no statistically reliable preference. This sex difference, which is essentially opposite that previously reported in deer mice, is related to species-specific sex differences in aggressiveness using a response-competition model.

Aggression↗
PubMed1989

Acoustic interference in a recognition task.

Phonetic or acoustic characteristics of stimuli in recall studies have consistently been shown to generate more interference over short intervals than semantic characteristics. We performed three experiments to determine whether this characteristic also applied to recognition processes over short intervals. Subjects were shown study lists of eight words and were asked to recognize which of those words recurred on subsequent eight-word lists. Delays varied from 0 to 100 s between study and test, with a rehearsal-preventing task inserted during the delays. Phonetic distractors generated greater interference than semantic distractors at all delay levels, and semantic distractors generated greater interference than random distractors. These distractor-type differences were not present in long-term recognition tasks. The deterioration in performance over time was considerably slower in these recognition experiments than in previous recall studies.

Adult↗
PubMed1988

Female prairie deer mice prefer conspecific flesh over contraspecific flesh.

Hungry adult female deer mice were presented with freshly asphyxiated conspecifics and house mice. The deer mice showed a reliable preference for the conspecific flesh during the first 2 hr of testing, but this preference was attenuated during the following 20 hr of testing. Previous research has shown that male deer mice prefer contraspecific flesh. The preference of female deer mice for conspecific flesh is attributed to their tendency to be more aggressive toward living conspecifics than are male deer mice and their tendency to avoid living contraspecifics more than do male deer mice.

Aggression↗
PubMed1986

Development of responsiveness to conspecific scent in house mice: effects of preweaning and postweaning experiences.

Responses to male conspecific odors (soiled bedding) presented in an alleyway were compared among five groups of adult male albino house mice with different rearing histories. Both isolated mice that had as pups been fostered onto a rat mother and normally nursed mice that had been group housed since weaning showed reduced attraction to conspecific odor. Preweaning paternal presence, a factor known to affect the development of response to male conspecific scent in rats and gerbils, had no reliable effect with mice.

Aging↗
PubMed1986

Prairie deer mice prefer contraspecific flesh over conspecific flesh.

Hungry adult male deer mice were presented with freshly asphyxiated conspecifics and house mice. The deer mice showed a reliable preference for the contraspecific flesh during the first hour of testing, but this preference was attenuated during subsequent hours as subjects switched from eating the preferred parts of the contraspecific to the preferred parts of the conspecific.

Animals↗
PubMed1978

Exposure to onion taste in mother's milk leads to enhanced preference for onion diet among weanling rats.

Five mothers of 50 newborn rat pups were maintained on either standard lab chow or a diet composed of the same chow with onion powder added. Taste preference tests administered during weaning indicated that the pups whose mother was fed the onion chow showed a preference for onion diet, but that such preference dissipated across the five day testing period. A control group of pups who were exposed to any onion diet cues available through channels other than the mother's milk did not show a preference for onion diet. It was concluded that exposure to onion taste in mother's milk was responsible for an initial preference for onion diet.

Animal Feed↗