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PubMed2005

[Trait anxiety and type behavior pattern (A and B) as modifiers of immediate reaction towards violent behaviors].

BACKGROUND: Experience of violence at the work place leads to serious consequences for both an employee and the organization. That is why prevention programs are necessary to reduce the risk of violence at work as well as possible adverse consequences of violent acts that cannot be predicted and prevented. Some research studies suggest that the range and severity of individual consequences of experiencing violence at work depend on the personality of victims, including their typical reactions to violent acts. In this paper, such personal characteristics as trait-anxiety, type A/B behavior pattern (TABP/TBBP) are discussed as potential modifiers of individual reaction towards the violence experienced at work. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A sample of 1163 nurses, representative of the Mazovian Voivodship was surveyed. The standardized "paper and pencil" questionnaires were employed in the survey. The relationship between direct reaction to violence and trait-anxiety and TABP/TBBP was analyzed. RESULTS: Tendency to express an aggressive reaction towards violent behavior of others was positively correlated with a high level of trait-anxiety and TABP and submissive reactions to violence with a high level of trait-anxiety and TBBP, whereas tendency to express assertive reaction when being attacked was related to a low level of trait-anxiety and TBBP. CONCLUSIONS: Statistically significant relationship between trait-anxiety and behavior pattern was observed. A high level of anxiety is correlated with ineffective coping with violent acts as submissive and aggressive reaction. The tendency to express these two kinds of behavior when facing violence is strengthen by behavior pattern. The tendency to aggressive reactions as a response to aggression of others is stronger when a high level of trait-anxiety is accompanied by TABP. The tendency to present submissive reactions as a response to aggression of others is stronger when a high level of anxiety and TBBP characterize the individual who faces a violent act. These individual characteristics are thought to be rather stable and difficult to change, but they should be taken into account in the process of designing the violence prevention programs for the organization. We believe that in our attempts to reduce the extent of the problem we should provide information on the role of individual characteristics in the process of coping with violence and recommend to employ positive effects of the repeated assertiveness training in the violence prevention programs as a useful tool for teaching people how to behave in the face of aggressiveness of others.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1976

[Participation of the hypothalamus in conditioning and emotional behavior. (1) Behavior model in rabbits and methods of its analysis].

An attempt was made to induce conflict behavior in rabbits by conditioning under hypothalamic electrical stimulation. Behavioral analysis was performed using our newly devised technique which employs the use of a vibration apparatus fixed to head and waist, and a recording of various behavior. Conditioning was carried out by sensory stimuli flight behavior. Reinforcement was as follows: the CS used was flickering light photic (10 Hz, 10 musec.,) and acoustic (250 Hz, 15 dB) and UCS electrical stimulation (100 Hz, 1 msec., not exceeding 2 v) in the medial hypothalamic area and peri-fornix. The restrained animals were placed on a table in an acoustically isolated room with a discrete monotonous background noise. CRs were obtained within a short time as were responses: (1) During the autonomicsomatic responses, (2) continuous run and (3) non-continuous run. Data obtained during the non-continuous run represent a conflict-induced type of behavior which may be applied in studies related to the psychopharmacological actions of drugs.

Animals↗
PubMed2001

Self-injurious behavior: gene-brain-behavior relationships.

This paper summarizes a conference held at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development on December 6-7, 1999, on self-injurious behavior [SIB] in developmental disabilities. Twenty-six of the top researchers in the U.S. from this field representing 13 different disciplines discussed environmental mechanisms, epidemiology, behavioral and pharmacological intervention strategies, neurochemical substrates, genetic syndromes in which SIB is a prominent behavioral phenotype, neurobiological and neurodevelopmental factors affecting SIB in humans as well as a variety of animal models of SIB. Findings over the last decade, especially new discoveries since 1995, were emphasized. SIB is a rapidly growing area of scientific interest to both basic and applied researchers. In many respects it is a model for the study of gene-brain-behavior relationships in developmental disabilities.

Animals↗
PubMed2006

The social control of behavior control: behavior modification, Individual Rights, and research ethics in America, 1971-1979.

In 1971, the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights began a three-year study to investigate the federal funding of all research involving behavior modification. During this period, operant programs of behavior change, particularly those implemented in closed institutions, were subjected to specific scrutiny. In this article, I outline a number of scientific and social factors that led to this investigation and discuss the study itself. I show how behavioral scientists, both individually and through their professional organizations, responded to this public scrutiny by (1) self-consciously altering their terminology and techniques; (2) considering the need to more effectively police their professional turf; and (3) confronting issues of ethics and values in their work. Finally, I link this episode to the formation of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, whose recommendations resulted in changes to the ethical regulation of federally funded human subjects research that persist to the present day.

Behavior Control↗
PubMed1992

Sensitivity and specificity of the Behavioral Summarized Evaluation (BSE) for the assessment of autistic behaviors.

The Behavior Summarized Evaluation (BSE), developed for the assessment of autistic behavior, was specifically designed to evaluate the severity of behavioral problems in autistic children involved in bioclinical and therapeutic studies. The reliability studies and the factorial analysis of this scale have been previously published. The present paper examines the effectiveness of the BSE to discriminate 58 autistic from 58 nonautistic mentally retarded children. The BSE clearly separated the two samples of children. A most efficient combination of 8 items emerged from the stepwise item selection procedure. The between-group differences were highest on 4 items, indicating that the most particular pattern in autistic compared to nonautistic children could be the association of autistic withdrawal and stereotypic behaviors. Our findings suggest that the BSE could help in the detection and evaluation of autistic developmental deviance. Implications for further research are discussed.

Autistic Disorder↗
PubMed1994

Treating childrens' severe behavior disorders: a behavioral diagnostic system.

This paper presents a behaviorally-oriented four-category diagnostic system for assessing and diagnosing severe behavior disorders. The model categorizes problem behavior in terms of its environmental function. The possibility of behaviors serving multiple functions and the ramifications for treatment prescription are discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1983

Reproductive success, postpartum maternal behavior, and masculine sexual behavior of neonatally androgenized female hamsters.

Sex differences in maternal behavior induced by pup stimulation (sensitization) have been reported for rats and hamsters and may be affected by the presence or absence of perinatal androgen treatment. Postpartum maternal behavior and litter survival in golden hamsters treated with testosterone propionate (TP) as neonates were studied. A high dose of TP (300 micrograms)1 eliminated feminine reproductive capacity when given on Day 2 or 4 postpartum and had no discernible effect on Day 12. Treatment on Days 6, 8, or 10 resulted in treatment day-dependent deficiencies in reproductive success which fell short of sterility in most females. These deficiencies included low birth weight, weight gain, and higher litter losses than controls. However, the maternal behavior of TP dams, as measured by retrieval and crouching, appeared to be normal. The disparity between delivery and successful rearing of normal-weight young may include uterine incompetence, lactation deficiency, and hypercannibalism. Behavioral masculinization was a more sensitive index of neonatal androgen action than any aspect of defeminization, but the two phenomena were dissociated in individuals.

Animals↗
PubMed1976

Effects of prepartal stress on postpartal nursing behavior, litter development and adult sexual behavior.

Sprague-Dawley rats were exposed to the stress of restraint, heat and bright lights three times daily from Days 14 to 22 of gestation. Because prepartal stress did not markedly disturb the mother's retrieving and crouching behavior, disturbances in postpartal nursing behavior do not seem to account for the abnormal sexual behavior of male offspring as adults. The most significant finding was that litter weights were reduced, not only at birth, but for 3 weeks thereafter, suggesting that prepartal stress not only altered the pups in utero but also affected postpartal milk synthesis. The possibility emerges that prepartal stress may alter adult sexual behavior in males by modifications in fetal and/or maternal pituitary glands.

Animals↗
PubMed1991

Stereotypic behavior, adrenocortical function, and open field behavior of individually confined gestating sows.

The adrenocortical response and open field behavior of a random sample of 37 individually confined gestating sows in different parities were tested around day 85 of pregnancy. The sows were classified as stereotyped [S] and nonstereotyped [N] based on 8-h individual behavioral observations during daytime. Behavioral analysis from time-lapse video recordings included percentage of time spent standing and sitting, as well as the duration spent performing elements of stereotyped actions. Blood samples were drawn for cortisol analysis by suborbital sinus puncture before and after adrenocortical stimulation with 200 IU ACTH. Locomotor activity in an open field, isolated visually and auditorily from other sows, was also studied. Seventeen sows exhibited stereotyped behavior for 54.9 +/- 4.8% of the 8-h observation period during daytime. The total time the sows spent standing and sitting was positively correlated with age and was significantly higher for [S] sows than for [N] sows. Sows in the [S] group exhibited a higher adrenocortical response to ACTH stimulation than [N] sows. Mean locomotor scores in the open field were higher for [S] than for [N] sows but these did not correlate with the physical activity and adrenocortical function in the home crate. Our results provide no evidence that the performance of stereotypies constitutes a mechanism that helps sows to cope in an environment of low complexity.

Adrenal Cortex↗
PubMed1993

Activation of an apomorphine behavior pattern by cocaine: a new behavioral test for drug substitution.

In current tests for drug substitution using the 2-choice operant bar press paradigm, an animal can be trained to respond differentially between an interoceptive drug state stimulus vs. saline. Despite the long history and extensive number of investigations, the interpretation of such test results, nevertheless, is limited by number of potential sources of stimulus drug effects which can occur with repeated drug administration but which cannot be distinguished by this paradigm: (1) local effects at the injection site; (2) peripheral effects; (3) central activity effects; and/or (4) sensory-motor dysfunctional effects. By using a video-image analysis of behavior in an intact animal model and a pavlovian drug treatment protocol, new, spontaneous but environmentally contingent and stable behavior patterns emerge selectively in the paired treatment group with repeated drug administration which can be used as a behavioral marker to assess dose-response effects and drug substitution test results with a novel drug. A study with repeated administration of the DA agonist apomorphine and with a drug substitution assessment by a cocaine drug test is presented as a reference example to illustrate the new response-based methodological approach to the study of central mechanisms mediating the stimulus and response effects of drugs. Additionally, the observed efficacy of cocaine to activate a complex acquired behavioral pattern unique to repeated apomorphine treatment supports a critical role for dopaminergic mechanisms in the mediation of cocaine induced stereotypy.

Animals↗
PubMed2006

Depressive behavior in mice due to immune stimulation is accompanied by reduced neural activity in brain regions involved in positively motivated behavior.

BACKGROUND: Immune stimulation inhibits positively motivated behavior and induces depressive illness. To help clarify the mechanism of these effects, neural activity in response to a positive stimulus was examined in brain regions associated with positively motivated activity defined on the basis of prior behavioral studies of central alpha1-adrenoceptor action. METHODS: Mice pretreated with either lipopolysaccharide or, for comparison, reserpine were exposed to a motivating stimulus (fresh cage) and subsequently assayed for fos expression and mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) phosphorylation, two measures associated with alpha1-adrenoceptor-dependent neural activity, in several positive-activity-related (motor, piriform, cingulate cortex, nucleus accumbens, locus coeruleus) and stress-related brain regions (paraventricular hypothalamus, bed nucleus stria terminalis). RESULTS: Both lipopolysaccharide and reserpine pretreatment abolished fresh cage-induced fos expression and MAPK activation in the positive activity-related brain regions but enhanced these measures in the stress-related areas. CONCLUSIONS: The results support the hypothesis that immune activation reduces alpha1-adrenoceptor-related signaling and neural activity in brain regions associated with positive activity while it increases these functions in stress-associated areas. It is suggested that neural activities of these two types of brain regions are mutually antagonistic and that a reciprocal shift toward the stress regions is a factor in the loss of positively motivated behaviors in sickness behavior and depressive illness.

Adjuvants, Immunologic↗
PubMed2003

Repeated i.v. cocaine exposure produces long-lasting behavioral sensitization in pregnant adults, but behavioral tolerance in their offspring.

Repeated exposure to cocaine during sensitive periods of forebrain development produces specific, long-lasting changes in the structure and function of maturing neural circuits. Similar regimens of drug exposure in adult animals with mature, homeostatically regulated nervous systems produce neuroadaptations that appear to be quite different in nature and magnitude. We studied the ability of cocaine to induce behavioral sensitization and/or tolerance following repeated administration of i.v. cocaine (3 mg/kg, twice daily) to pregnant rabbits during the period of peak differentiation within the rabbit cerebral cortex (embryonic day [E] 16-E25). Offspring and the adult mothers were behaviorally tested following acute administration of amphetamine 2 months after the litters were born. The offspring, having received cocaine during the prenatal sensitive period, showed profound behavioral tolerance to the amphetamine challenge. In contrast, the mothers of these offspring, who received cocaine at the same dose and duration, and experienced the same period of withdrawal, exhibited robust behavioral sensitization. These data indicate that specific adaptive changes in neural signaling and/or circuitry that occur in response to repeated exposure to psychostimulants are highly dependent upon the maturational state of the brain during which the exposure occurs.

Amphetamine↗
PubMed1990

Multisensory regulation of maternal behavior and masculine sexual behavior: a revised view.

Frank Beach's view of the multisensory regulation in Norway rats of copulation in males (12) and of pup retrieval in females (23) is critically analyzed and revised in terms of Lashley's influence, Beach's other work, and current neurobiological knowledge. Beach's view was that no single sensory stimulus is essential to elicit these behaviors, but that all relevant stimuli available summate in the neocortex; consequently, (a) sexual "arousal" is increased in males, leading to copulation, and (b) the "efficiency," or likelihood, of retrieval is increased in postpartum mothers. The revised view is based on a component analysis in which each of these behaviors consists of a chain of motoric responses elicited by somatosensory stimulation. Distal stimuli emanating from the female or pups induce proximity by provoking orientation, attention and arousal; the meaning of these stimuli is largely learned by conditioned associations during the initial executions of the behavior, although odors may have a prepotent influence for some individuals. Stimuli are integrated in a multisensory manner by both subcortical and neocortical mechanisms. Generalizations concerning the reproductive behavior of other mammalian species are suggested.

Animals↗
PubMed1998

Automated telephone conversations to assess health behavior and deliver behavioral interventions.

The medical care system is not very effective in modifying health behavior of individuals, in particular, ensuring patient compliance with medication regimens, healthy diets, regular physical activity, and regular health screening, and in the avoidance of substance abuse. Telephone-Linked Care (TLC) is a telecommunications technology that enables computer-controlled telephone counseling with patients in their homes. It has been applied to the task of improving a number of different health behaviors. Randomized controlled studies suggest that use of the system for as little as 3 months is associated with improvement in adherence to medication regimens, dietary change in hypercholesterolemia, and increased physical activity among sedentary individuals. Future work involves applying the technology to other important health behaviors, optimally using health behavior theory in the system design, targeting use of TLC to the most appropriate patient groups, incorporating new computer and telecommunications technology into the system, and interfacing TLC into the health care delivery system.

Aged↗
PubMed2003

A cognitive-behavioral intervention to reduce HIV risk behaviors in crack and injection drug users.

This paper presents the results of a study evaluating the efficacy of a theory-based cognitive-behavioral intervention to reduce HIV risk among street-based crack and injection drug users not currently in drug treatment in Long Beach, California. A nine-session, 4-month enhanced intervention (including HIV counseling and testing) was compared to a two-session standard counseling and testing intervention developed by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) in terms of their efficacy for reducing drug- and sex-related risk behaviors. The theory-based enhanced intervention rarely was found to be different from NIDA's standard counseling and testing intervention in reducing both drug- and sex-related risks, as indicated by cessation and/or reduction of drug use (measured by urine test and self-report), entry into drug treatment, and increased frequency of condom use. One of the few significant effects was that the enhanced intervention significantly increased injecting drug users' use of their own injection equipment. On the other hand, for both interventions, most risk behaviors were significantly reduced. It is concluded that the theory-based cognitive-behavioral intervention has limited advantage over the standard intervention in terms of both magnitude and frequency of HIV risk reduction achieved by high-risk, active drug users.

Adult↗
PubMed1986

Food intake, aggression, and fear behavior in the mother rat: control by neural systems concerned with milk ejection and maternal behavior.

Mother rats eat more, are more aggressive, and show less fear behavior (freezing) than during other stages of the reproductive cycle. Electrolytic lesions in the peripeduncular area of the lateral midbrain made nursing mother rats eat less and interact peacefully with male intruders. This midbrain area forms part of the ascending milk-ejection pathway, so it seems plausible that the suckling stimulus maintains hyperphagia and aggression in mother rats. Because no alteration in fear behavior was observed in mothers with lesions, it was predicted that the reduction in freezing was related primarily to maternal responsiveness to pup cues other than suckling. In line with this hypothesis, it was found that the experimental induction of maternal behavior in ovariectomized, hormone-treated females was associated with a significant decrease in fear behavior, with no concomitant changes in food intake or aggression.

Afferent Pathways↗
PubMed1975

Behavioral adjustment of psychiatric hospital patients and helping behavior.

This study investigated the relationship between behavioral adjustment of mental hospital patients and helping behavior in two distinctly different controlled situations. Forty hospitalized male patients between the ages of 20 and 45 were assigned to two groups of equal size according to ratings they received on the MACC Behavioral Adjustment Scale. Each subject was exposed to two separate and independent experimental situations calling for helping behavior. Helping in the first situation was defined as offering a confederate the use of an extra pencil, while in the second it was defined as offering to help a confederate in the hallway to pick up a box of pencils that had just been dropped. The results of both experiments confirmed the hypothesis that persons suffering more severe levels of disturbance and maladjustment perform significantly fewer helpful acts. Results were discussed in terms of empathy, self-concern, and response cost. Also some implications for treatment were discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

Behavioral screening in well-child care: validation of the Toddler Behavior Screening Inventory.

OBJECTIVE: To provide additional normative and validity data on the TBSI, especially to examine differences in clinical and nonclinical samples. METHODS: The sample included 312 nonclinical and 50 clinical mothers of toddlers. Clinical participants consisted of mothers of toddlers who had been referred for outpatient psychological services. Mothers completed the TBSI, a 40-item behavioral screening measure for children 12 to 41 months old. The measure assesses frequency in which the behaviors occur and whether the mothers perceived the behaviors as problematic. In addition to the TBSI, mothers also completed several measures of maternal distress and social support. RESULTS: The findings support the reliability and validity of the TBSL. In addition, the study found that TBSI scores effectively discriminated clinical from nonclinical participants. CONCLUSIONS: The TBSI is a promising behavioral screening instrument that can be easily incorporated into a medical practice.

Adult↗