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Biomedical subjects

A A Sappington

Publications and source records attributed to A A Sappington.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

Relationships among child abuse, date abuse, and psychological problems.

Data on child abuse, date abuse and psychological problems were gathered from the same participants, 133 female undergraduates, in order to better examine possible relationships among the variables. Verbal abuse in childhood or on dates was examined as well as physical and sexual abuse. Factors influencing whether people remain in or leave abusive relationships were examined, along with possible mediators of the relationships between child abuse, date abuse, and psychological problems. Verbal, physical, and sexual child abuse were all associated with an increased risk of later date abuse or psychological problems. Abuse by a date was also associated with psychological problems. Low self-esteem and anger may have played mediating roles.

Adolescent↗

A non-supervised training program for Carkhuff's discrimination and communication skills and its effects upon the reactions of others during brief interactions.

Used Carkhuff's Indices of Communication and Discrimination along with other measures to assess the level of communication and discrimination skills at various stages of communication training. Ss were 14 male and 9 female students in a psychology of adjustment class. Results indicated that: (a) treatment and control groups did not differ in communication skills before they went through training; (b) the treatment group offered higher levels of communication skill after it had completed training than did the control group before it began training; (c) the control group offered levels of communication skill equal to those of the treatment group once the control group also had completed training. A similar pattern was found for discrimination skill. The effects of training cannot be dismissed as paper-and-pencil artifacts because others who were ignorant of the growth conditions concept reacted differently in brief unstructured interactions to those who had completed training.

Adult↗

Self-efficacy expectancies, response-outcome expectancies, emotionally based expectancies, and their relationship to avoidant behavior and its reduction through therapy.

Investigated the relationship of four types of expectancy to snake avoidant behavior and its reduction through modeling. Response-outcome expectancies are beliefs about the consequences of a behavior; self-efficacy expectancies are beliefs about one's ability to perform the behavior. Intellectually based expectancies are views of oneself or the world that are perceived to be accurate representations of reality; emotionally based expectancies are views of oneself or the world that may be perceived as inaccurate or irrational by the person who holds them. Experiments I and II investigated the relationship of intellectually and emotionally based versions of both response-outcome expectancies and self-efficacy expectancies to snake avoidant behavior. It was found that all four expectancy variables correlate significantly with behavior on a snake avoidance task. Self-efficacy expectancies are not clearly better predictors of behavior than are response-outcome expectancies. Experiment III found that all four variables are changed as a consequence of modeling. It was concluded that a four-variable expectancy model is necessary to explain avoidant behavior.

Animals↗

Ketamine-facilitated induced anxiety therapy and its effect upon clients' reactions to stressful situations.

Evaluated the role of physiological arousal in the Induced Anxiety therapy procedure. Assigned 21 normal Ss to either conventional Induced Anxiety Induced Anxiety supplemented by the drug ketamine during arousal, or a no-treatment condition. The ketamine group was superior to the conventional group which was superior to the no-treatment group in reducing negative affect experienced during stressful situations. Most of the reduction was in depressive affect. The superior results obtained by increasing physiological arousal could not be accounted for by increased subjective emotional arousal.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

Two short versions of the Multiple Affect Adjective Check List.

In an attempt to fulfill the original purpose of the Multiple Affect Adjective Check List (MAACL), two shorter versions were devised. One version was simply a subset of the original items. A second version provided one 6-point semantic differential scale for each of the subscales of the standard MAACL. Concurrent validity was assessed for three separate college student populations and one drug patient population. Also, construct validity was assessed for both versions by measuring changes in negative affect during a single Induced Anxiety session. Correlations between the standard and subset version for total negative affect ranged between .49 and .99. Correlations between the standard and semantic differential versions for total negative affect ranged between .53 and .81.

Adolescent↗

Direct manipulation of physiological arousal in induced anxiety therapy - biofeedback approach.

This study investigated the role of physiological arousal in the affect induction phase of Induced Anxiety therapy by using biofeedback to facilitate arousal. Twenty-one college students who were suffering from free-floating anxiety were assigned randomly to one of three groups: (1) a no-treatment control group simply completed the measures before and after therapy; (2) a conventional Induced Anxiety group went through five standard Induced Anxiety sessions; and (3) biofeedback Induced Anxiety group went through a similar procedure except that biofeedback was used in the affect induction phase to facilitate heart rate increase. It was found that the biofeedback procedure did result in a greater heart rate increase during the affect induction phase arousal than did the conventional procedure (.01 level of significance), but did not facilitate subjective emotional arousal. Biofeedback Induced Anxiety resulted in a greater reduction of trait anxiety as measured by the Multiple Affect Adjective Check List than did the no-treatment group or the conventonal Induced Anxiety group. The conventional Induced Anxiety group did not differ significantly from the no-treatment control group.

Adult↗

Semantic desensitization: language conditioning or demand characteristics manipulation?

Previous studies in language conditioning, especially those called semantic desensitization, have shown changes in self-report, behavioral measures, and the semantic meaning of the target concept following treatment. This last has been proposed as a causal variable but experimental and control groups differed greatly in terms of their demand characteristics. The present study included a placebo group with demand characteristics similar to those of the control group. The target area was self-concept (18 male Ss, 9 female Ss). Significant changes in self-report and actual performance with a hand dynamometer were obtained but these were as great for the placebo group as for the experimental groups. It was suggested that factors other than conditioning are of importance in semantic desensitization.

Awareness↗