Showing papers by "Temple University published in 1986"

Emotional processing of fear : exposure to corrective information

Abstract: In this article we propose mechanisms that govern the processing of emotional information, particularly those involved in fear reduction. Emotions are viewed as represented by information structures in memory, and anxiety is thought to occur when an information structure that serves as program to escape or avoid danger is activated. Emotional processing is denned as the modification of memory structures that underlie emotions. It is argued that some form of exposure to feared situations is common to many psychotherapies for anxiety, and that confrontation with feared objects or situations is an effective treatment. Physiological activation and habituation within and across exposure sessions are cited as indicators of emotional processing, and variables that influence activation and habituation of fear responses are examined. These variables and the indicators are analyzed to yield an account of what information must be integrated for emotional processing of a fear structure. The elements of such a structure are viewed as cognitive representations of the stimulus characteristic of the fear situation, the individual's responses in it, and aspects of its meaning for the individual. Treatment failures are interpreted with respect to the interference of cognitive defenses, autonomic arousal, mood state, and erroneous ideation with reformation of targeted fear structures. Applications of the concepts advanced here to therapeutic practice and to the broader study of psychopathology are discussed.

Extreme case formulations: A way of legitimizing claims

Abstract: This paper has described three uses of Extreme Case formulations The interactants in the illustrations were engaged in several types of activities, among which were complaining, accusing, justifying, and defending. As concluding remarks, a few comments will be made about why participants use Extreme Case formulations in these activities. Part of the business of complaining involves portraying a situation as a legitimate complainable. This may take the form of protraying the offense committed and/or the suffering endured in a way such that it would not be dismissed as minor. So as to legitimize a complaint and portray the complainable situation as worthy of the complaint, a speaker may portray the offense and/or the suffering with Extreme Case formulations. In both accusing and defending, participants ofyen present their strongest cases, including specifying Extreme Cases of their claims. Part of justifying a course of actions may involve portraying the precipitating circumstance as necessitating the action. The precipitating circumstance may be a problem circumstance which is portrayed as unfair, immoral, embarrassing, uncomfortable, or in some other way undesirable and/or intolerable. There is a shared assumption that the worse the problem, the more necessary it is to do something about it. In justifying, speakers use Extreme Case formulations to portray the circumstances that precipitated their actions as demanding their actions. A problem that participants have when engaged in, or reflecting on, conflicts, complaints, criticism, compliments, praise, etc. is to attribute the cause of the phenomenon. Who or what is responsible for the conflictual, complainable, praise-worthy state of affairs? One method that is used to determine what or who is responsible, i.e. to make an attribution, involves comparing the case in question to other similar cases. Through this procedure, persons determine that they are (are not) responsible for the state of affairsin questions. Extreme Case proportional formulations (‘everyone,’ ‘all,’ ‘every time’) are used to indicate that any individual member of that category is not responsible for the state of affairs; that responsibility is to be attributed elsewhere. The social order essentially is a moral order (Garfinkel, 1967). One of the ways of knowing what is acceptable and right is by finding out how people behave. There often is a shared assumption operating (one that is called into question on occasion): how people behave tells us what is the right way to behave. Proportional measures reporting the frequency or prevalence of practices are used to propose and substantiate the rightness and wrongness of those practices. Extreme Case formulations (‘all the time,’ ‘everybody,’ ‘no one’) propose behaviors are acceptable and right or unacceptable and wrong.

Performance of Some Resistant Rules for Outlier Labeling

Abstract: The techniques of exploratory data analysis include a resistant rule for identifying possible outliers in univariate data. Using the lower and upper fourths, FL and FU (approximate quartiles), it labels as “outside” any observations below FL − 1.5(FU — FL ) or above FU + 1.5(FU — FL ). For example, in the ordered sample −5, −2, 0, 1, 8, FL = −2 and FU = 1, so any observation below −6.5 or above 5.5 is outside. Thus the rule labels 8 as outside. Some related rules also use cutoffs of the form FL — k(FU — FL ) and FU + k(FU — FL ). This approach avoids the need to specify the number of possible outliers in advance; as long as they are not too numerous, any outliers do not affect the location of the cutoffs. To describe the performance of these rules, we define the some-outside rate per sample as the probability that a sample will contain one or more outside observations. Its complement is the all-inside rate per sample. We also define the outside rate per observation as the average fraction of outs...

Creativity - Genius and Other Myths

Abstract: his Second Edition offers an analysis of the relation of 'ordinary' thinking to 'creative' thinking, including computer modelling of thought, and an examination of the creative processes that led to mechanical inventions, scientific discoveries and works of art.

Apparatus and method for reconstructive surgery

Abstract: A method and apparatus for the permanent surgical reconstruction of the anterior cruciate ligament in the human knee, which will stabilize the tibia and femur relative to each other and restore a full range of motion to the knee, by precisely locating the ends and angular relationship of a replacement ligament within the knee joint, at bone attachment sites such that the degree of shortening and lengthening experienced by the replacement ligament over the range of joint motion is either as close to zero (isometric) as possible, or closely matches that of the natural uninjured ligament (physometric), whichever the surgeon feels is most desirable.

Sensitivity to feared stimuli in obsessive-compulsives: A dichotic listening analysis

Abstract: The experiment reported here was designed to test whether fear-relevant stimuli are preceived more readily than neutral ones, and whether vigilance for the former is due to fear or to familiarity. Eleven obsessive-compulsives were administered a dichotic listening task before and after treatment by exposure and response prevention. Behavioral (button press) and physiological (skin conductance response) measures revealed that fear-relevant words were detected more than neutral words before but not after treatment. Additionally, the magnitude of the skin conductance response was greater to fearrelevant than to neutral targets before but not after treatment. These findings suggest that sensitivity to fear-relevant stimuli is due to fear and not familiarity.

Turn Left at the Church, Or Three Miles North A Study of Direction Giving and Sex Differences

Abstract: This study examined how college students give directions from maps, either with maps perceptually available, or after maps had been memorized. Six aspects of direction giving were coded: use of lan...

The discourse of requests: Assessment of a politeness approach.

Abstract: A corpus of transcribed, oral requests used in a previous study of compliance-gaining strategies (Tracy, Craig, Smith, & Spisak, 1984) is examined interpretively from the perspective of the politeness theory of Brown and Levinson (1978). Findings include the following: (1) politeness strategies occur in great abundance and variety; (2) superstrategies are mixed in varyingly skillful ways; (3) goals are accomplished through multifunctional discourse; (4) the interpretation of politeness strategies confronts several kinds of indeterminacy; (5) facework strategies that fall outside the scope of the politeness theory, including aggravation and speaker-oriented strategies, are much in evidence. In response to the several theoretical problems that emerge in the course of the analysis, six tenets on which to build a new theory of facework are proposed.

An action spectrum for uv photocarcinogenesis

Abstract: — Hairless mice were irradiated repeatedly by exposure to unfiltered black-light (FR74T12 PUVA) fluorescent lamps and the time to development of skin tumors was determined. For several groups of animals the treatment variable was the size of the weekly dose. A similar approach had been used previously to determine dose-response characteristics for other ultraviolet radiation emitting sources: a xenon arc solar simulator (with a series of five cut-off filters producing five source spectra), and a fluorescent (FS40T12) “sunlamp”. The median tumor latent period (time period for just more than one half of the animals to develop at least one tumor each) was accurately predicted for all these ultraviolet radiation emitting sources by a mathematical equation incorporating the spectral source description and a spectral weighting function. The weighting function judged most appropriate for ultraviolet radiation-induced photocarcinogenesis was the action spectrum, determined previously, for acute (single dose) skin edema in hairless mice. The mathematical equation assigns no effectiveness to wavelengths greater than 330 nm. There was no evidence for wavelength interaction in the spectral range of 26MW nm. Our data, combined with results of others, lead us to conclude that radiation with wavelength greater than 330 nm has an average relative efficacy (297 nm =1.0) less than 0.0002, and that this efficacy is not detectable with sources in which at least 2% of the UV radiation is in the UV-B range.

Context-dependent effects on analogical transfer.

Abstract: The role of context in facilitating analogical transfer was investigated in two experiments. In both experiments, subjects first read two stories that were analogous to Duncker’s (1945) radiation problem. Later, subjects attempted to solve the radiation problem. In Experiment 1, the radiation problem was presented in a different context than that of the stories, and followed them by 6 min. Transfer was observed in subjects who were prompted to use the earlier stories in solving the problem. However, the solution frequency of subjects not given such prompts did not differ from control levels. In Experiment 2, the radiation problem was presented in the same context as the earlier stories to some subjects, and in a different context to others. The timing of the radiation problem also was varied. When a 6-min interval separated the stories from the radiation problem, transfer was a function of context, with weak transfer being observed in the samecontext condition, and no transfer being observed in the different-context condition. At a 45-sec delay, transfer was again observed in the same~ontext condition, and a nonsignificant trend toward transfer was observed in the different-context condition. The results were interpreted as indicating that context facilitates the retrieval of relevant problem-solving schemas, and as suggesting that the possession of relevant schemas is not sufficient to produce analogical transfer.

Effects of seminal vesicle removal on fertility and uterine sperm motility in the house mouse.

Abstract: The relative significance of the accessory glands of the male reproductive tract in fertility is unclear. To clarify the role of the seminal vesicles, fertility and uterine sperm motility were determined before and after removal of seminal vesicles in the house mouse. After removal of seminal vesicles, the pregnancy rate (number of females pregnant/number of females X 100) was reduced and the time to birth was increased, while the average litter size was not changed. Fertilization, determined by examining the oocytes 30 h after mating, was highly variable after matings with males whose seminal vesicles were removed; in some cases none of the oocytes were fertilized. The motility of sperm recovered from the uterus 1 h after matings with males before and after seminal vesicle removal and sham operations was analyzed using a videomicrographic system. The motility of uterine sperm was less progressive with more lateral displacement of the head about the trajectory and a less linear trajectory after removal of the seminal vesicles. Sham-operated animals showed no consistent changes in motility of uterine sperm. The changes in sperm motility could contribute to the reduction in fertilization since sperm motility is necessary for transport in the female reproductive tract and interaction with the oocytes.

Temporal aggregation in the arima process

Abstract: . The effect of temporal aggregation on ARIMA models is investigated. The paper discusses the change of model form resulting from aggregation. For the IMA model it is noted that reduction of model order may occur, due to aggregation, which takes an arbitrarily high order IMA (d, q) process to an IMA (d, 0) process for the aggregates. For the AR process, we derive the exact order for the aggregate model and show that aggregation of an AR (p) series does not necessarily produce an ARMA (p, q) aggregate series as has been suggested in the literature. In particular, the AR order of AR (p) and ARIMA (p, d, q) can be reduced upon aggregation. The paper gives the general conditions under which this reduction of order may occur.

High molecular weight kininogen binds to unstimulated platelets.

Abstract: Studies were performed to determine if the unstimulated platelet membrane has a site for high molecular weight kininogen (HMWK) binding. 125I-HMWK bound to unstimulated platelets. Zn++ was required for 125I-HMWK binding to unstimulated platelets and binding was maximal at 50 microM Zn++. Neither Mg++ nor Ca++ substituted for Zn++ in supporting 125I-HMWK binding to unstimulated platelets, and neither ion potentiated binding in the presence of 50 microM zinc. 125I-HMWK competed with equal affinity with HMWK for binding, and excess HMWK inhibited 125I-HMWK-platelet binding. Only HMWK, not prekallikrein, Factor XII, Factor XI, Factor V, fibrinogen, or fibronectin inhibited 125I-HMWK-platelet binding. 125I-HMWK binding to unstimulated platelets was 89% reversible within 10 min with a 50-fold molar excess of HMWK. Unstimulated platelets contained a single set of saturable, high affinity binding sites for 125I-HMWK with an apparent dissociation constant of 0.99 nM +/- 0.35 and 3,313 molecules/platelet +/- 843. These studies indicate that the unstimulated external platelet membrane has a binding site for HMWK that could serve as a surface to modulate contact phase activation.

Inhibition of tumor development by dehydroepiandrosterone and related steroids.

Abstract: The naturally occurring adrenal steroid, dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), is a potent non-competitive inhibitor of mammalian glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PDH). Oral administration of DHEA to mice inhibits spontaneous breast cancer and chemically induced tumors of the lung and colon. Topical application of DHEA to mouse skin inhibits 7,12-dimethylbenz(a)anthracene (DMBA)-initiated and tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate (TPA)-promoted papillomas and DMBA-induced carcinomas at both the initiation and promotion phase. Evidence is presented that critical steps in the initiation process (mixed-function oxidase activation of a carcinogen) and promotion process (enhanced rates of cell proliferation and superoxide formation) all require NADPH and may be inhibited by DHEA and structural analogs as a result of a lowering of the NADPH cellular pool. Results obtained by others with fibroblasts and lymphocytes from individuals with the Mediterranean variant of G6PDH deficiency also indicate that a reduction in the NADPH cellular pool confers resistance to benzo(a)pyrene. Preliminary data suggest that food restriction may depress G6PDH levels and this may contribute to the tumor preventive effect of underfeeding.

Teacher beliefs toward academically at risk students in inner urban schools

Abstract: Research has consistently documented that teacher expectations influence student outcomes. These expectations are communicated via specific classroom behaviors and practices that differ substantially for high- vs. low-expectation students. Expectations, to a large extent, are a part of a personal belief system influenced by prior experience with diverse students, teachers' role definition, knowledge of appropriate strategies and techniques, and support services available. In urban schools where there are large proportions of academically at-risk students, these factors interact to determine whether or not students receive instruction necessary to improve their low achievement levels.

Families with physically handicapped children: Social ecology and family systems.

Abstract: This paper reviews research on families with physically handicapped children, and integrates this work within a social ecological perspective. Methodological difficulties in past research that contribute to a lack of consensus in the area are discussed. Research on stresses experienced by various subsystems within families with handicapped children is presented, with recommendations for future family-oriented research and intervention. The interactions of families with handicapped children with their social support networks are reviewed, underscoring the importance of these processes for coping and adaptation.

The Last Sixty Years: Toward a Social History of Americanist Archeology in the United States

Abstract: This paper provides an overview of the development of Americanist archeology in the United States. Since the 1920s, there have been two, and sometimes more, interpretive communities among Americanist archeologists in the United States. These reflect and are related to the development of U.S. society. One articulates the concerns of national capital and its allies; the other, the interests of international capital and its allies. They are grounded in different theoretical traditions. The discourses produced by their proponents resonate with particular world views that reflect different relations to power.

High molecular weight kininogen is an inhibitor of platelet calpain.

Abstract: Recent studies from our laboratory indicate that a high concentration of platelet-derived calcium-activated cysteine protease (calpain) can cleave high molecular weight kininogen (HMWK) On immunodiffusion and immunoblot, antiserum directed to the heavy chain of HMWK showed immunochemical identity with alpha-cysteine protease inhibitor--a major plasma inhibitor of tissue calpains Studies were then initiated to determine whether purified or plasma HMWK was also an inhibitor of platelet calpain Purified alpha-cysteine protease inhibitor, alpha-2-macroglobulin, as well as purified heavy chain of HMWK or HMWK itself inhibited purified platelet calpain Kinetic analysis revealed that HMWK inhibited platelet calpain noncompetitively (Ki approximately equal to 5 nM) Incubation of platelet calpain with HMWK, alpha-2-macroglobulin, purified heavy chain of HMWK, or purified alpha-cysteine protease inhibitor under similar conditions resulted in an IC50 of 36, 500, 700, and 1,700 nM, respectively The contribution of these proteins in plasma towards the inhibition of platelet calpain was investigated next Normal plasma contained a protein that conferred a five to sixfold greater IC50 of purified platelet calpain than plasma deficient in either HMWK or total kininogen Reconstitution of total kininogen deficient plasma with purified HMWK to normal levels (067 microM) completely corrected the subnormal inhibitory activity However, reconstitution of HMWK deficient plasma to normal levels of low molecular weight kininogen (24 microM) did not fully correct the subnormal calpain inhibitory capacity of this plasma These studies indicate that HMWK is a potent inhibitor as well as a substrate of platelet calpain and that the plasma and cellular kininogens may function as regulators of cytosolic, calcium-activated cysteine proteases

The human ribosomal RNA genes: structure and organization of the complete repeating unit

Abstract: The complete repeating unit of the human ribosomal RNA gene has been reconstructed by the cloning of approximately 27 kilobases (kb) of non-transcribed spacer. The structure of this tandemly repeated gene can now be studied in its entirety. We report the analysis of spacer DNA by molecular cloning and its organization in the genome by Southern transfer analysis. These studies reveal both length and sequence variation of the spacer. Sequence variations are distributed throughout the spacer while the length variations exist near the 5' end of the transcript and just beyond the 3' end. The human spacer shares extensive homology with primates but little with other mammals. Within the primates the degree of homology reflects the rapid evolutionary changes characteristic of the primate group.

Histogenesis of adenoid cystic carcinoma of the salivary glands. Light and electronmicroscopic study.

Abstract: This ultrastructural study, based on 12 cases of adenoid cystic carcinoma of the major and minor salivary glands, was conducted to determine the role and extent of participation of myoepithelial cells in their histogenesis. The tumors were composed of four major cell types; intercalated duct, myoepithelial, secretory, and pluripotential reserve/stem cells. The cellular composition of adenoid cystic carcinoma is similar to that in the "terminal tubule" complex stage of a developing salivary gland except that in the tumor the pluripotential reserve/stem cells differentiate predominantly along the intercalated duct cell line rather than secretory cells as in the acinic cell carcinoma. Furthermore, adenoid cystic carcinoma appears to contain a far greater number of myoepithelial cells than acinic cell carcinomas.