Fundamental statistics in psychology and education.

Psychotropic Medication Use for Challenging Behaviors in Persons with Intellectual Disabilities: An Overview.

This chapter outlines the relationships between a number of key factors that influence learning and memory, and illustrates them by reference to studies on the foraging behaviour of fish. Learning can lead to significant improvements in foraging performance in only a few exposures, and at least some fish species are capable of adjusting their foraging strategy as patterns of patch profitability change. There is also evidence that the memory window for prey varies between fish species, and that this may be a function of environmental predictability. Convergence between behavioural ecology and comparative psychology offers promise in terms of developing more mechanistically realistic foraging models and explaining apparently 'suboptimal' patterns of behaviour. Foraging decisions involve the interplay between several distinct systems of learning and memory, including those that relate to habitat, food patches, prey types, conspecifics and predators. Fish biologists, therefore, face an interesting challenge in developing integrated accounts of fish foraging that explain how cognitive sophistication can help individual animals to deal with the complexity of the ecological context.

Learning of foraging skills by fish

Motor incoordination is frequently used as a behavioral index of intoxication by drugs that depress the central nervous system. Two tasks that have been used to assay incoordination in mice, the balance beam and the grid test, were evaluated to optimize aspects of apparatus and testing procedures for studying genetic differences. Mice of eight inbred strains were given one of several doses of ethanol or saline and tested for intoxication. Strains differed in sensitivity to ethanol in both tests, indicating a significant influence of genotype on ethanol sensitivity. For the balance beam, the width of the beam affected the strain sensitivity pattern, and only the widest beam worked well at all doses. For the grid test, both ethanol dose and the time after drug injection affected strains differentially. Although the behavioral sign of intoxication recorded for both tests was a foot-slip error, the correlations of strain means for ethanol sensitivity across the two tasks were generally not significant. This suggests that the genes influencing ethanol sensitivity in the two tasks are mostly different. These results make clear that a single set of task parameters is insufficient to characterize genetic influences on behavior. Several other issues affect the interpretation of data using these tests.

https://www.physiology.org/doi/pdf/10.1152/japplphysiol.00132.2003

Genotypic differences in ethanol sensitivity in two tests of motor incoordination.

Manifestation of life-history strategy is through the allocation of resources acquired by foraging. Foraging efficiency can be improved by learning, as fishes adjust their behaviour to changing circumstances. We briefly review the influence of learning on the foraging behaviour of fishes and make recommendations for further research. We stress the importance of quantifying learning and memory in relation to ontogeny and life history.

Optimizing foraging behaviour through learning

Drugs and mental retardation

• Forty mentally retarded adolescents were divided into two divisions on the basis of prestudy assessments that identified subjects as thioridazine hydrochloride responders or nonresponders. Within each division, the participants were assigned randomly to one of four groups. Members of each group received three administrations of the Leiter international performance scale. Four conditions were examined: testing under standard conditions and testing under reinforcement conditions while receiving and not receiving thioridazine. Condition sequences were random in all four groups. Assessments were double-blind and placebo controlled. The results showed that while both drug responders and nonresponders were receiving thioridazine there were no major differences in test scores obtained under standard and reinforcement conditions. While subjects were not receiving thioridazine there were considerable increases in scores obtained under the reinforcement conditions.

Effects of Thioridazine on the Intellectual Performance of Mentally Retarded Drug Responders and Nonresponders

The present study was designed to examine the effects of gradual phenytoin withdrawal on the matching to sample performance of three mentally retarded persons. The percentage of correct responses per session served as the dependent variable, and the sample and comparison stimuli were red, green, and

Effects of Phenytoin Withdrawal on Matching to Sample and Workshop Performance of Mentally Retarded Persons

Comparison of psychotropic drug, response cost, and psychotropic drug plus response cost procedures for controlling institutionalized mentally retarded persons

Stephen E. Breuning

Papers

Drugs and mental retardation

Effects of Thioridazine on the Intellectual Performance of Mentally Retarded Drug Responders and Nonresponders

Effects of Phenytoin Withdrawal on Matching to Sample and Workshop Performance of Mentally Retarded Persons

Comparison of psychotropic drug, response cost, and psychotropic drug plus response cost procedures for controlling institutionalized mentally retarded persons

Analysis of single-double blind procedures, maintenance of placebo effects, and drug-induced dyskinesia with mentally retarded persons