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PubMed2004

Nicotine serves as a feature-positive modulator of Pavlovian appetitive conditioning in rats.

The present experiments examined whether a nicotine state could set the occasion for a pairing between visual cues and a rewarding outcome in rats. Following nicotine administration, presentation of a conditional stimulus (CS; light-on) was followed by brief access to a sucrose solution. When saline was administered, the same CS was presented but was not followed by any consequence. In Experiment 1, two groups assessed whether rats could acquire this Pavlovian feature-positive discrimination via different training procedures. An anticipatory food-seeking conditioned response (CR) developed during the CS on nicotine sessions but not on saline sessions in both groups. In Experiment 2, centrally acting antagonists of nicotinic acetylcholine and opiate receptors (mecamylamine and naloxone, respectively) dose-dependently blocked nicotine's control of the CR, whereas the peripherally acting nicotinic antagonist hexamethonium had no effect. Increasing or decreasing the interval between nicotine administration and testing also attenuated the CR. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that nicotine can occasion appetitive Pavlovian relations via its action at central nervous system cholinergic receptors.

Animals↗
PubMed2005

Theory-based study of the basic values of 565 physical therapists.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: There is a prevailing belief expressed in the physical therapy literature that values influence behavioral choices. There is, however, meager research on physical therapists' values. A values theory was used to study the organization of physical therapists' basic values and to generate hypotheses about age-related value priority differences. SUBJECTS: Participants were volunteers from the Wisconsin Physical Therapy Association (N=565). METHODS: Values importance ratings were gathered using a modified Schwartz Values Survey. Demographic data were obtained with an investigator-developed questionnaire. Analyses included descriptive and nonparametric statistics and nonmetric multidimensional scaling. RESULTS: The organizational structure of therapists' values was similar to the theoretical model. Physical therapists rated values associated with benevolence as most important and values associated with power as least important. Three of 7 age-related hypotheses were supported. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: The theory adequately explained the organization of physical therapists' values and provided rational explanations for age-based value priority differences. Compared with occupationally heterogeneous samples, the results suggest that physical therapists highly prize values that benefit others and give remarkably little importance to values associated with power.

Adult↗
PubMed1986

Effects of atropine on response-to-change.

The effect of atropine on rats response to the change of brightness was investigated in a T-maze, in two procedural test versions differing in the exposure of visual stimuli. In the passive test the rats could observe the white and black arms through clear partitions which blocked the entrance to the arms, while in the active test they were allowed to explore the maze arms. In the subsequent free choice trial, when both arms were of the same brightness (either white or black) atropine in a dose of 16 mg/kg, injected 10 min prior to the exposure of stimuli, affected the rats' performance in the passive test. The druged rats showed random selection of the arms, whereas 80 percent of saline controls chose the arm whose brightness had been changed. In the active test the same dose of atropine had no effect on the choice behavior. Both atropine and saline groups showed a closely similar preference for the changed arm. The effect of atropine on response-to-change was compared to that of scopolamine investigated by us in the previous study.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1987

Scoring of prudent dietary habits and its relation to 25-year survival.

To evaluate the effect on longevity of a diet that is concurrent with common dietary guidelines, a simple diet scoring system was developed and applied in a follow-up study of 2,820 middle-aged Dutch civil servants and their spouses. In the early 1950s those civil servants were seen for a health examination that included a dietary survey. Consumption frequency data of the quantitatively most important food items at that time were used for the diet scoring. Overall survival after 25 years was 46.8% among men and 68.6% among women. In men, a significant positive association between prudent diet score and 25-year, age-adjusted survival could be demonstrated. Of the 10 food items that constituted the diet score, a higher intake of brown bread, porridge and/or yogurt, vegetables, fish, and fruit was associated with a slightly better survival. In a separate analysis we had found a significant inverse relationship between coffee consumption and survival. A similar trend, which, however, was not significant, was observed for alcohol intake. In women, the results for the separate food items were inconsistent, and no effect of a prudent diet score on longevity was observed. The proposed diet scoring system provides a means for evaluating the effects of the individual's food choice behavior on subsequent health and longevity.

Diet↗
PubMed1985

Influences of delay and rate of reinforcement on discrete-trial choice.

An adjusting procedure was used to measure pigeons' preferences among alternatives that differed in the duration of a delay before reinforcement and of an intertrial interval (ITI) after reinforcement. In most conditions, a peck at a red key led to a fixed delay, followed by reinforcement, a fixed ITI, and then the beginning of the next trial. A peck at a green key led to an adjustable delay, reinforcement, and then the next trial began without an ITI. The purpose of the adjusting delay was to estimate an indifference point, or a delay that made a subject approximately indifferent between the two alternatives. As the ITI for the red key increased from 0 s to 60 s, the green-key delay at the indifference point increased systematically but only slightly. The fact that there was some increase showed that pigeons' choices were controlled by more than simply the delay to the next reinforcer. One interpretation of these results is that besides delay of reinforcement, rate of reinforcement also influenced choice. However, an analysis that ignored reinforcement rate, but considered the delays between a choice response and the reinforcers on subsequent trials, was able to account for most of the obtained increases in green-key delays. It was concluded that in this type of discrete-trial situation, rate of reinforcement exerts little control over choice behavior, and perhaps none at all.

Animals↗
PubMed1973

Frontopolar rats performance in Dashiell maze.

Frontopolar and unoperated control rats were given two or five trials for 20 days in Dashiell maze. Both groups made a negligible number of errors and showed considerable preference for peripheral paths. No marked differences were found in number of perseverative responses, number of different paths chosen and number of shifts between paths. The findings indicate that frontopolar lesion does not increase the perseverative tendency in a situation involving no difficulty in choice behavior. This lesion also does not affect the directional orientation.

Animals↗
PubMed1983

Promoting effective decision-making in sexually active adolescents.

Promoting effective decision-making in adolescents who are active sexually and those who are not incorporates knowledge of the changes occurring in the intellectual, psychological, and emotional realms. The health professional must provide comprehensive and effective counseling in a variety of creative ways during the adolescent period. The time to begin is with the young adolescent, 10 or 11 years old, and continue over time. The key to success is prevention: prevention of sex without full consent, unwanted pregnancy, ignorance of one's own body, and decisions by default.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1995

Smoke screen.

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1997

Differential changes in sucrose/ethanol and sucrose maintained responding by independently altering ethanol or sucrose concentration.

Increased reinforcing efficacy of sucrose/ethanol solutions in comparison to sucrose solutions has been previously demonstrated. However, the contribution of the components of the sucrose/ethanol solution is not well defined. The present study used a multiple schedule of reinforcement to evaluate the differential changes in reinforcer presentations as sucrose or ethanol concentrations were altered. Male Long-Evans rats were trained to press a lever on a multiple fixed ratio 4-fixed ratio 4 schedule which was composed of alternating 2-min components. During one component, 5% sucrose/10% ethanol was presented as the reinforcer and, in the second component, 5% sucrose was presented. Independent manipulations of the ethanol concentration (0, 5, and 20%) in the sucrose/ethanol solution or sucrose concentration (0, 10, and 20%) in the sucrose solution were then performed. Increasing the ethanol concentration in the sucrose/ethanol solution resulted in decreases in reinforcer delivery but increases in ethanol intake (grams per kilogram) and total session caloric intake. Increasing the sucrose concentration in the sucrose solution resulted in significant increases in sucrose reinforcer delivery and total session caloric intake. During the concentration manipulations, the number of reinforcers presented of the unchanged reinforcer was not affected. Differential changes in the pattern of reinforcer presentation after ethanol and sucrose concentration manipulations during successive access periods suggest that sucrose and sucrose/ethanol maintained responding are differentially regulated. Changes in sucrose maintained responding after increases in the sucrose concentration were observed early in the session suggesting a strong influence of taste in regulating intake. Changes in sucrose/ethanol maintained responding after increases in the ethanol concentration occurred later in the session and suggest that postingestive effects (i.e., pharmacology) play a major role in the regulation of sucrose/ethanol intake. In addition, the differential patterns of sucrose/ethanol and sucrose maintained behavior suggest that the ethanol component of the sucrose/ethanol solution plays an important role in maintaining sucrose/ethanol reinforced behavior.

Alcohol Drinking↗
PubMed1998

Education for health promotion and disease prevention: convince them, don't confuse them.

Promotion of health and prevention of disease have become some of the most emphasized issues of the 1990s. The government, health professionals, and private organizations have made the primary prevention of disease a priority. Quality education is a major intervention by which prevention is realized. However, superior quality educational offerings entail significant pre-preparation via the development of clear and realistic teaching/learning plans, faculty knowledge of educational psychology, metacognition and cognitive processing, understanding of cultural diversity, incorporation of adult learning principles, the use of varied teaching/learning strategies, and astute application of program evaluation skills. Educators, like nurses, physicians, and allied health professionals, must work with people to mutually decipher their healthcare needs and plan educational experiences that learners can merge with their own life experiences and ethnocultural perspectives. In addition, educators should use health education materials that match learners' literacy levels. Most importantly, such programs must be thoughtfully evaluated in light of the achievable goals that were outlined during preplanning stages. Without outcomes assessment as part of health promotion/disease prevention education programs, health educators are less likely to produce interventions that learners value and from which they truly benefit. Optimally, education programs about health promotion/disease prevention should generate long-term critical thinking processes that produce positive health choices, behavioral change, and healthy life styles.

Adult↗
PubMed1976

The effects of chlordesmethyldiazepam on behavioral performance and subjective judgment in normal subjects.

Eight normal subjects were tested on a battery of subjective and psychological tests 12 hours after a hypnotic dose of chlordesmethyldiazepam (1 or 2 mg), amylobarbitone sodium (100 mg), and a placebo. The tests included self-ratings of hypnotic effects and alertness; reactiontime, card-sorting, coding and cancellation tasks; arithmetic; and tapping. Before each task, test anxiety and performance expectation was self-rated; and after the task, judgment of performance was self-rated. Residual effects were definitely detectable after the 2-mg dose of benzodiazepine with both behavioral impairment and subjective hangover. Both the 1-mg dose and the barbiturate were almost devoid of such effects. Very few drug effects on test anxiety and performance judgment were discerned. Plasma concentrations of amylobarbitone were related to decreases in test anxiety and of chlordesmethyldiazepam with ratings of sleepiness.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed2002

Delay of gratification: impulsive choices and problem behaviors in early and late adolescence.

High school students were offered a monetary incentive for participating in research. They were given a choice between a smaller fee immediately or a larger fee one week later. Compared to students who delayed gratification, those who chose the immediate fee showed more self-regulatory deficits. They showed greater involvement with cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana, had a poorer self-concept and underperformed academically. A replication study with middle-school students and different reward parameters yielded equivalent results. Younger adolescents who chose the immediate monetary incentive showed a similar pattern of problem behaviors as the high school students. The findings indicate that this simple choice-delay procedure yields an unobtrusive behavioral measure of self-regulation and offers a developmentally appropriate extension of the delay-of-gratification paradigm for use with older children and adolescents.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

Influences on food choice and dietary behavior.

There are a number of possible reasons for the lack of effectiveness of attempts at changing dietary behaviors. While lack of information and knowledge about foods and nutrient contents might play a part, motivation to change is likely to be much more important. Food choice, like any complex human behavior, is influenced by many interrelating factors, including various physiological, social and cultural factors, and these need to be taken into account when considering dietary interventions. In many cases people lack motivation to change. This can be related to optimistic bias, where people underestimate the risk to themselves relative to others from a variety of hazards. People feel less at risk personally for many dietary risks and this is related both to the control they feel they have over dietary behaviors and also to their considering themselves to have better diets than the average. The 'stages of change' model is a possible means for trying to address these motivational issues. While this model has been applied to various forms of behavior such as smoking, there are a number of problems transferring such a model from smoking to dietary behaviors, including the lack of clear cut specific behaviors and behavior change targets in the dietary field.

Attitude↗
PubMed2006

The rising share of nonmarital births: fertility choice or marriage behavior?

Much of the sharp rise in the share of nonmarital births in the United States has been attributed to changes in the fertility choices of unmarried and married women-in response, it is often argued, to public policy. In contrast, we develop and test a model that attributes the rise to changes in marriage behavior, with no necessary changes infertility. A variety of empirical tests strongly support this conclusion and invites focused attention to issues related to marriage behavior as well as to the interactions between marriage and fertility.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2000

The effect of choice on intention-behavior consistency.

Three studies were conducted with the aim of investigating whether choice of behavioral alternative increases intention-behavior consistency. In Study 1 undergraduates were asked to write and mail back an essay on a topic they either chose or were assigned. Demonstrating an effect of choice, significantly more subjects who chose an essay topic mailed back the essays. These subjects also rated their intention to write the essay as stronger, thus suggesting that the difference between choice and no choice is that the intention is self-generated. Supporting this interpretation, no differences in mail-back rates were observed in Studies 2 and 3 between a difficult and easy choice condition. Furthermore, an alternative hypothesis that choice induces implementation intentions did not receive support since independent effects were in Study 2 found of deciding when and where to write the essay and in Study 3 of making an outline of the essay.

Adult↗
PubMed2002

Group choice and individual choices: modeling human social behavior with the Ideal Free Distribution.

Group choice describes the behavioral phenomenon in which a group of individuals chooses between two behavioral alternatives over time and the Ideal Free Distribution (IFD) [Acta Biotheor. 19 (1970) 16] describes group choice analogous to individual choice and the matching law. Our experiments investigated the usefulness of IFD analyses of human group choice based on a procedure reported in Sokolowski et al. [Psych. Bull. Rev. 6 (1999) 157]. A group of humans distributed into two subgroups to receive points that could earn cash prizes. The participants aligned themselves into subgroups by choosing between two rows of chairs, two different colored cards, or two cyber-subgroups. Different methods of distributing points to participants showed that IFD matching was dependent on the method (i.e. sharing points evenly produced near IFD matching, but probabilistic point distribution produced more undermatching). In addition, the sensitivity measures of individual choices in the groups differed from the sensitivity of the groups' choices.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2002

Individual and environmental influences on adolescent eating behaviors.

Food choices of adolescents are not consistent with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Food intakes tend to be low in fruits, vegetables, and calcium-rich foods and high in fat. Skipping meals is also a concern among adolescents, especially girls. Factors influencing eating behaviors of adolescents need to be better understood to develop effective nutrition interventions to change eating behaviors. This article presents a conceptual model based on social cognitive theory and an ecological perspective for understanding factors that influence adolescent eating behaviors and food choices. In this model, adolescent eating behavior is conceptualized as a function of individual and environmental influences. Four levels of influence are described: individual or intrapersonal influences (eg, psychosocial, biological); social environmental or interpersonal (eg, family and peers); physical environmental or community settings (eg, schools, fast food outlets, convenience stores); and macrosystem or societal (eg, mass media, marketing and advertising, social and cultural norms).

Adolescent↗