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PubMed1992

Behavioral asymmetries of psychomotor performance in rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta): a dissociation between hand preference and skill.

Hand preferences were recorded for 35 rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) as they manipulated a joystick in response to 2 computerized tasks. These preferences were then used to contrast 8 left- and 10 right-handed subjects on performance measures of hand skill. Individual hand preferences were found, but no significant population asymmetry was observed across the sample. However, the performance data reveal substantial benefits of right-handedness for joystick manipulation, as this group of monkeys mastered the 2 psychomotor tasks significantly faster than did their left-handed counterparts. The data support earlier reports of a right-hand advantage for joystick manipulation and also support the importance of distinguishing between hand preference and manual performance in research on functional asymmetries.

Animals↗
PubMed2004

Women's preferences for male behavioral displays change across the menstrual cycle.

Women prefer both the scent of symmetrical men and masculine male faces more during the fertile (late follicular and ovulatory) phases of their menstrual cycles than during their infertile (e.g., luteal) phases. Men's behavioral displays in social settings may convey signals that affect women's attraction to men even more strongly. This study examined shifts in women's preferences for these behavioral displays. A sample of 237 normally ovulating women viewed 36 or 40 videotaped men who were competing for a potential lunch date and then rated each man's attractiveness as a short-term and a long-term mate. As predicted, women's preference for men who displayed social presence and direct intrasexual competitiveness increased on high-fertility days relative to low-fertility days, but only in a short-term, not a long-term, mating context. These findings add to the growing literature indicating that women's mate preferences systematically vary across the reproductive cycle.

Adult↗
PubMed1975

Neurobehavioral dysfunction in uremia.

To summarize our concepts relating to impaired function of the mind in uremic patients before and during treatment with maintenance dialysis, the emphasis had gradually shifted from the use of "static taxonomy", the diagnostic labels of mental illness, to a more dynamic and sympathetic appreciation that the observed behaviors represent patients' attempts to cope with disease and threats of disability and death, as influenced by varying levels of intelligence, education, cultural conditioning, life experiences and organization of personality defense mechanisms. The dialysis patient is aware that his behavior evokes reciprocal and complicating responses from important people in his environment. These interactions are perceived and conducted by neurochemical mechanisms of the brain which may be impaired in the abnormal chemical environment imposed by renal failure. It is the behaviors we perceive as indicators of disordered nervous mechanisms. Therefore, it is logical that neurobehavioral phenomena should be measured quantitatively in order 1) to estimate objectively the patients' success in achieving the goal of maintenance dialysis treatment, 2) to assess the comparative adequacy of dialysis regimens and 3) to provide objective end-point measures which are relevant to uremia for further investigations of the etiology and pathogenesis of these critically significant uremic manifestations. Our experimental results using ipsitive cognition performance tasks clearly suggest that discrete human performances may be evoked and employed to detect mentational impairments of uremia in quantitative terms, a fundamental step having central relevance to what dialysis does in controlling uremic symptoms.

Attention↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Contraceptive use in Matlab, Bangladesh: the role of gender preference.

Research in several Asian societies has suggested that sons are generally preferred over daughters. The implications of gender preferences for actual fertility behavior have not been adequately investigated, however. This analysis examines the effect of the sex composition of surviving children on the acceptance and discontinuation of contraception in a sample of 3,145 women in Matlab, Bangladesh, who were observed for 60 months. Hazards regression analyses are employed in the analysis. Strong and highly significant effects of gender preference on contraceptive use are observed. The preference is not monotonically son-biased but is moderated toward a balanced composition, because parents desire to have several sons and at least one daughter. These findings suggest that gender preferences, particularly a preference for sons, represent a significant barrier to fertility regulation in rural Bangladesh.

Bangladesh↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Oral contraceptive switching patterns in the United Kingdom: an important potential confounding variable in studies of venous thromboembolism.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate whether patients changing from their current oral contraceptive (OC) are preferentially switched to third-generation preparations. METHOD: The database comprised 12 months of medical records generated during 1990-91 from 693,705 patients and 153,687 OC users aged 14-45 years registered with 398 practices in the United Kingdom. Subjects who switched OC preparations were identified. RESULTS: A total of 16,197 women (10.5%) switched OC preparations at least once during the study period. There was a statistically significant net switching from second-generation OCs to third generation OCs with a ratio of 1.19 (95% CI, 1.12-1.26). This switching behavior took place in both younger (< 25 years) and older (> or = 25 years) OC users. In addition, a significant net switching was observed from progestogen-only pills to both second- and third-generation OCs. This was more pronounced in women > or = 25 years. CONCLUSION: Bias resulting from preferential switching of women from second-generation to third-generation OCs may have influenced the results of recently published studies on combined OCs and the risk of venous thromboembolism. Studies of venous thromboembolism in women using OCs should either restrict from the study women who have switched preparations or should include switching as a variable in any analysis.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

[Voting behavior of elderly people at the time of the elections for the Lower House of the Federal Republic on December 2, 1990].

Elderly citizens in Germany are interested in politics, thus, a high percentage of this population group took part in the 1990 federal elections. The turnout of the elderly is higher than that of younger voters. For more than 30 years there has been a stable majority for the Christian Democratic and Christian Social parties among the elderly. The Social Democrats and the Liberals are supported more by the younger generations. Because of this stable voting pattern it seems likely that before reaching the age of 60 years German voters tend to develop a more conservative attitude towards politics. Therefore, the theory that voters retain the party preference they chose in their younger years seems not to be valid, at least for a certain part of this population.

Aged↗
PubMed2006

Implicit ambivalence from attitude change: an exploration of the PAST model.

Traditional models of attitude change have assumed that when people appear to have changed their attitudes in response to new information, their old attitudes disappear and no longer have any impact. The present research suggests that when attitudes change, the old attitude can remain in memory and influence subsequent behavior. Four experiments are reported in which initial attitudes were created and then changed (or not) with new information. In each study, the authors demonstrate that when people undergo attitude change, their old and new attitudes can interact to produce evaluative responses consistent with a state of implicit ambivalence. In Study 1, individuals whose attitudes changed were more neutral on a measure of automatic evaluation. In Study 2, attitude change led people to show less confidence on an implicit but not an explicit measure. In Studies 3 and 4, people whose attitudes changed engaged in greater processing of attitude-relevant information than did individuals whose attitudes were not changed.

Attitude↗
PubMed2006

Helping behavior in a rural and an urban setting: professional and casual attire.

This study assessed differences in helping behavior in a rural versus an urban location when directed toward either a professionally or a casually dressed woman. Convenience samples included 40 men and 40 women (10 people of each sex assigned to each condition: rural and professional, rural and casual, urban and professional, and urban and casual). A 21-yr.-old female confederate dropped an envelope near each target helper individually and recorded number of seconds for the target helper to retrieve or point out the dropped item. Analysis indicated significantly faster helping occurred in the rural than in the urban location and that men helped the confederate more often than women. No difference in frequencey of help was related to kind of attire.

Adult↗
PubMed2001

Comparison of two positive reinforcing stimuli: pups and cocaine throughout the postpartum period.

This set of experiments investigated the appetitive or motivational processes underlying the performance of maternal behavior. The place preference paradigm was adapted to simultaneously investigate the reinforcing properties of cocaine and pups for maternal, lactating dams. These modifications allowed the authors to assess which stimulus, either a 10 mg/kg s.c. injection of cocaine or 3 pups, had the strongest reinforcing value. At Postpartum Days 10 and 16, the dams preferred the cocaine cue-associated chamber, whereas the dams tested at Postpartum Day 8 preferred the pup cue-associated chamber. Overall, the data revealed an interaction between the postpartum period at testing and the exhibited preference for cocaine or pups. Further testing will investigate the neural circuitry underlying the appetitive processes of each stimulus.

Animals↗
PubMed2003

Selective attention determines emotional responses to novel visual stimuli.

Distinct complex brain systems support selective attention and emotion, but connections between them suggest that human behavior should reflect reciprocal interactions of these systems. Although there is ample evidence that emotional stimuli modulate attentional processes, it is not known whether attention influences emotional behavior. Here we show that evaluation of the emotional tone (cheery/dreary) of complex but meaningless visual patterns can be modulated by the prior attentional state (attending vs. ignoring) used to process each pattern in a visual selection task. Previously ignored patterns were evaluated more negatively than either previously attended or novel patterns. Furthermore, this emotional devaluation of distracting stimuli was robust across different emotional contexts and response scales. Finding that negative affective responses are specifically generated for ignored stimuli points to a new functional role for attention and elaborates the link between attention and emotion. This finding also casts doubt on the conventional marketing wisdom that any exposure is good exposure.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

Effect of preference for rock music on magnitude-production scaling behavior in young adults: a validation.

The purpose of the presence study was to examine the effect of preference for rock music on magnitude-production scaling behavior in young adults as an attempt to validate further the 1993 magnitude-estimation scaling results obtained by Fucci, Harris, Petrosino, and Banks. Two groups of young adults, 20 who liked rock music and 20 who disliked rock music, were tested. Subjects were instructed to adjust the intensity of a 10-sec. sample of rock music in response to seven written stimuli presented in random order. Analysis indicated that there was a significant difference in performance by the two groups of subjects on the magnitude-production scaling task. Those subjects who liked rock music adjusted the intensity of the music to higher levels than did the subjects who disliked rock music.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

Prenatal cocaine exposure and infants' preference for novelty and distractibility.

The authors used the Fagan Test of Infant Intelligence (J. F. Fagan, L. T. Singer, J. E. Montie, & P. A. Shepherd, 1986) to examine preferences for novelty and to evaluate several indicators of attention (off- and on-task indexes and durations) in 6- and 9-month-old infants who had been prenatally exposed to cigarette smoke only or to cocaine plus other substances. The infants were matched for socioeconomic status. The authors found no group differences in preference for novelty, but the off-task distractibility index and duration were affected by exposure history and showed effects of dosage at the 9-month test time. Infants exposed to cocaine had a higher off-task index and a shorter average off-task look duration than did infants in the other groups. The authors interpreted this pattern of behavior as an indicator of distractibility or stimulation seeking. There were no group differences in measures involving on-task looks or duration at either test time. Correlations between the off-task look index and duration and teratogen use produced moderate correlations at 9 months of age. The authors calculated partial correlations between teratogen exposure and the off-task index at each trimester. Cocaine use during the 1st and 2nd trimesters was significantly correlated with the off-task index at 9 months of age, even when the authors controlled for neonatal measures (e.g., gestational age, birth weight) and during the 1st trimester when they controlled for alcohol and cigarette exposure.

Adult↗
PubMed1994

bendless, a Drosophila gene affecting neuronal connectivity, encodes a ubiquitin-conjugating enzyme homolog.

The Drosophila bendless (ben) gene was originally isolated as a mutation affecting the escape jump response. This behavioral defect was ascribed to a single lesion affecting the connectivity between the giant fiber and the tergotrochanter motor neuron. A closer examination of the ben phenotype suggests that ben activity is broader and affects a variety of other neurons including photoreceptor cells and their axons. Mosaic analysis indicates that the focus of ben activity is presynaptic. We have cloned the ben gene through a chromosomal walk and show that it is homologous to a class of ubiquitin-conjugating enzymes. The major role of ubiquitination in the protein degradative pathway suggests that ben regulates neural developmental processes such as growth cone guidance by targeting specific proteins for degradation.

Amino Acid Sequence↗
PubMed2001

The role of cognitive resources in the valuation of near and far future events.

People's behaviors often appear short-sighted, suggesting they overvalue the near future and undervalue the far future. In three experiments, the present research focussed on the role of cognitive resources in the valuation of near and distant future events. Experiment 1 tested a new discounting paradigm for use in the subsequent experiments. Experiments 2 and 3 used different manipulations (time pressure and a concurrent tone task) to restrict the cognitive resources of participants valuing a series of future events. In both experiments, this manipulation caused an increase in the valuation of far future events but not in the valuations of near future events. Implications of these findings for the role of cognitive resources in time discounting processes are briefly discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

Alcoholic beverage preferences of drinking-driving violators.

Relationships between the preferred type of alcoholic beverage and various drinking-driving behaviors and attitudes were examined in a representative sample of 1000 licensed U.S. drivers interviewed in a national telephone survey. Substantial differences were found between subjects who preferred beer and those who preferred wine or distilled spirits. Those who preferred beer typically drank to higher levels of intoxication, were more likely to drive after drinking and tended to consider driving while intoxicated to be less serious. With few exceptions, these findings were true regardless of sex, age, education, income and marital status. These data contradict the popular perception of beer as a relatively harmless drink of moderation, and challenge policies of special concessions for the legal purchasing age and advertising of beer.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2000

Effects of dopaminergic drugs on delayed reward as a measure of impulsive behavior in rats.

RATIONALE: Impulsive individuals exhibit an exaggerated preference for immediate rewards over delayed but larger rewards, perhaps because they value the delayed rewards less. Dopamine (DA) has been postulated to mediate the incentive value of rewards, thus it may also mediate the exaggerated preference for immediate rewards in impulsive individuals. In this paper, we investigate the effects of DA agonists and antagonists on the value of delayed versus immediate rewards. OBJECTIVES: The study had three main objectives: (1) to determine the effects of D1 and D2 type DA antagonists on the value of delayed rewards, (2) to determine the effect of the indirect DA agonist d-amphetamine on the value of delayed rewards, (3) to determine the sensitivity of the adjusting amount (AdjAmt) procedure to acute one-day changes in delay to reward, amount of reward, deprivation level and starting amount. METHODS: In the AdjAmt procedure, rats choose between an adjusting amount of water given immediately (adjusting alternative) and a constant 150 microliters water delayed by 4 s (standard alternative). The immediate amount of water is adjusted across trials until the rat chooses both alternatives with equal frequency (indifference point). The final adjusted amount is an indicator of the subjective value of the standard alternative. RESULTS: The D1/D2 antagonist flupenthixol (25, 50, and 100 micrograms/kg) and the D2 antagonist raclopride (40, 80, and 120 micrograms/kg), decreased the indifference points, whereas the D1 antagonist SCH 23390 (5, 10, and 20 micrograms/kg) did not affect the indifference point. All three DA antagonists slowed responding. The indirect DA agonist amphetamine (0.5, and 1.0 mg/kg) had effects opposite to those of the DA antagonists, it decreased choice latency, increased the number of trials completed and increased the indifference point. Decreasing the water deprivation level (6, 24, and 48 h) had no effect on the indifference points but slowed responding. Increasing the delay to reward (2, 4, and 8 s) and decreasing the amount of water available for choosing the standard alternative (300, 150, 75 microliters) decreased the indifference point. CONCLUSIONS: The results indicate that amphetamine increased the value of delayed rewards (decreased impulsivity) and that D2 but not D1 receptor antagonists decreased the value of delayed rewards (increased impulsivity). The procedure was sensitive to acute 1-day changes in delay and magnitude of reward.

Amphetamine↗
PubMed1994

Chronic aluminum fluoride administration. I. Behavioral observations.

This study examined the behavioral effects of chronic ingestion of various monofluoroaluminum complexes (AlF3) in drinking water. Forty young adult male Long-Evans rats were divided into four groups of 10 rats each. The groups received different concentrations of AlF3 in the drinking water from three sample solutions having a total Al concentration of 0.5, 5.0, and 50 ppm, respectively, or double-distilled deionized water on an ad lib. basis for 45 weeks. General decline of bodily appearance was observed in the lowest concentration AlF3 group, and animals in this group succumbed in greater numbers during the course of the study than those in any other group. Examinations of performance in an open field, an analysis of walking patterns, and a balance beam test did not find any difficulties indicative of motor disorder. Indeed, on the initial trial on the balance beam, the AlF3-treated animals exhibited superior performance. No group differences were found in behavior assessed by spontaneous alternation or by a modified Morris water maze test. When retested in the Morris maze after a low dose of scopolamine (0.4 mg/kg), the control animals took longer to reach the platform while the AlF3-treated rats were not affected. In an olfactory preference test, the AlF3-treated animals failed to show preferences exhibited by the controls, indicating a possible olfactory impairment. The level of Al in the brains of the AlF3-exposed rats, as determined by direct current plasma analysis, was almost double that of the control animals. There was a similar trend for the Al content found in the kidneys.

Aluminum Compounds↗