A comparative study of acquisition of conditioned response between delayed and trace conditioning paradigm

This study was examined the effects of trace interval on conditioned response between delayed and trace conditioning. Twenty subjects assigned to delayed conditioning group or trace conditioning group. A pure tone was used as CS, and an electric shock of 5 mA was used as UCS. Duration of CS was 10 seconds, and trace interval was 20 seconds. In delayed conditioning group, CS was immediately followed by UCS at CS-offset. In trace conditioning group, CS was followed by trace interval, and UCS was presented after trace interval. Six reinforcements were administered for subjects of both groups. Phasic changing pattern of HR were measured as indices of CR. The results were as follows : (1) In delayed conditioning group, HR during CS presentation showed triphasic changing pattern, while HR in trace conditioning group showed decelerative changing pattern. (2) Before UCS presentation, HR showed triphasic changing pattern both in delayed and trace conditioning. These results indicated that trace interval would affect CR acquisitive process

Effects of Affective-evaluative Response to CSs on Fear Conditioning

The preparedness theory of phobia holds that humans are biologically prepared to learn to fear ohjects and situations that threatened the human species throughout its evolutonary history (Seligman, 1971). Biological preparedness is postulated to be responsible for the rapid acquition of fear, a resistance to the influence of cognitive factors, resistance to extinction, and belongingness. Because of some difficulties, many reseachers suggest that preparedness effects may be produced by cognitive factors rather than biological factors. The present experiment aimed to test whether preparedness effects were found on CRs to neutral stimulus by semantic conditioning. In semantic conditioning, subjects recieved nine presentations of two types of CS word-UCS word pair. CS words were 'circle' and 'triangle', and UCS words were 'noisy' and 'silent'. After semantic conditioning, they were classically conditioned by nine CS-UCS pairs. The figure of circle was used as CS+, and CS-was that of triangle. Loudy-noise was used as UCS. In SCC group, CS word-UCS word pairs ('circle'-'noisy', 'triangle'-'silent') were meaningly concordant with CS-UCS pair. In SCD group, CS word-UCS word pairs ('circle'-'silent', 'triangle'-'noisy') were meaningly discordant with CS-UCS pair. Subjects of control group didn't expose to semantic conditioning. Heart rate, score of Affective Adjective Check List and affective-evaluative response (preference) to CSs were measured as indexes of conditioned response (CR). Primary results were as follows : (1) Directions of change on preferences to CSs by semantic conditioning and classical conditoning were concordant. (2) During classical conditioning, compared with other groups, SCC group's A. A. C. L. score were low, and SCD group's HR was higher than SCC group's. (3) Differentiation of initial preferences to CSs didn't effected on reported anxiety. These results indicated that preparedness effects could not be found by initial semantic relations between CSs and UCS, and by initial preference to CS

Factor analysis of Japanese version of the Obsessional-Compulsive lnventory

The 30-items Maudsley Obsessional-Compulsive Inventory (MOCI) was developed as an instrument for assessing the existence and extend of different obsessional-compulsive complaints by Hodgson & Rachman (1977). MOCI is composed of two major types of complaint, checking and cleaning compulsions, and two minor types, slowness and doubting. Rachman & Hodgson (1980) considered the complaints of checking and cleaning as the representative coping behaviors of prevention and provocation. These types of coping behavior could be observed in daily stressful situation. This study was to explore the Japanese version of MOCI available to evaluate the degree of obsessional-compulsive tendency observed in non-clinical persons. The Japanese version of MOCI was administered to 600 normal students to re-investigate the factor structure of this scale. Principal factor analysis and varimax rotation were adopted to extract the significant factors from 30×30 correlation matrix. Three factors, checking, cleaning and doubting-ruminating were extracted independently, but the complaint of slowness was not found as a significant factor. Additively to explore in their correlations with obsessional-complsive complaints, trait anxiety and time anxiety, MOCI, STAI-T form and TAS were administered to 213 normal students. TAS is composed of three subscales, namely, time confusion, time irritation and time submissiveness. The results were as follows. (1) Checking, cleaning and doubting were positively correlated with trait anxiety, but slowness was negatively correlated. (2) All obsessional-compulsive complaints but slowness were positively correlated with time confusion. Slowness and cleaning were positively correlated with time irritation, and negatively correlated with time submissiveness. These results indicate that slowness and cleaning complaints are somewhat different from other obsessional-compulsive complaints

Cognitive processes on Pavlovian conditioning.

The Pavlovian conditioning model has been proposed as a model of etiology of anxiety disorders. However, it has been pointed out that traditional Pavlovian conditioning model could not explain some of clinical issues, then clinical researchers cast doubts on validities as a model of anxiety disorders. In recent years, it was proposed a cognitive Pavlovian conditioning model to reconcile the model with clinical findings. This model has been assumed that an elicitation of conditioned response (CR) is determined by two cognitive evaluations, which are dealt with the expectancy process and the revaluation process for the unconditioned stimulus (UCS). Results of experimental and clinical researches indicated that this model could explain many clinical phenomena. This model, however, is not enough to examine the effect of biological factors and evaluative conditioning on a fear learning as a phobic model. Therefore, we have proposed a new cognitive Pavlovian conditioning model in consideration of the effect of affective-evaluative processing to conditioned stimulus (CS). This model has been able to explain both the effect of an evaluative and a signal learning

An attempt to construct the obsessive-compulsive tendencies scale

Obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptoms have been increasing among nonclinical populations. We constructed the scale of OC tendencies to measure the OC symptoms observed in nonclinicals. The Maudsley Obsessional-Compulsive Inventory (MOCI), the Padua Inventory (PI) and the Indecisiveness scale were administered to Japanese nonclinical students. Factor analysis followed by promax rotation extracted four factors; intrusion, checking, indecisiveness and cleaning, respectively. Inter-factor correlations showed that checking factor correlated with cognitive factors (intrusion and indecisiveness) stronger than cleaning factor did. The 24-items short version of the OC tendencies scale had good reliability (Cronbach's α : .72-.86; test-retest : r=.74-.82) and good criterion-related validity (with MMPI OC state : r=.21-.52). The OC tendencies scale was administered to OC disorder patients. OC disorder patients' scores of this scale was higher than those of nonclinicals. These results indicated the OC tendencies scale had the clinical validity

The effect of UCS inflation and UCS deflation procedure on fear conditioning

Unconditioned stimulus (UCS) inflation procedure was a method that UCS intensity was gradually inflated, and UCS deflation procedure was a method that UCS intensity was gradually deflated. This study was aimed to examine the effect of UCS inflation and UCS deflation procedures on the conditioned response (CR) strength by two differential conditioning experiments (experiment 1 and 2). In both experiments, fifteen undergraduate volunteers served as subjects. They participated in both experiment and control conditions. Both conditions were consisted of four sessions, those were pre-test, conditioning, UCS intensity operation and test. The difference of experiment and control conditions was the operation of UCS intensity. UCSs of varied intensity were used in experiment conditions, where as those of same intensity for conditioning sessions were used in control conditions. The main results were follows. (1) In experiment 1 with UCS inflation procedure, differential CRs were found during test session for experiment condition, where as those were not found for control condition. (2) In experiment 2 with UCS deflation procedure, differential CRs were not found for experiment condition, where as those were found for control condition. These results suggested that the CR strength were influenced by UCS intensity operations