Thomas A. Askew letter

Askew writes to several correspondents regarding some business matters and payments. Letter on stationary featuring political flag of the Confederate States of America and entitling reading Head Quarters Chatham Artillery. Chatham Artillery was a militia organization from Savannah Georgia that entered service for the Confederacy in 1862.https://digitalcommons.wofford.edu/littlejohnmss/1027/thumbnail.jp

Learning to fear a second-order stimulus following vicarious learning

Vicarious fear learning refers to the acquisition of fear via observation of the fearful responses of others. The present study aims to extend current knowledge by exploring whether second-order vicarious fear learning can be demonstrated in children. That is, whether vicariously learnt fear responses for one stimulus can be elicited in a second stimulus associated with that initial stimulus. Results demonstrated that children’s (5–11 years) fear responses for marsupials and caterpillars increased when they were seen with fearful faces compared to no faces. Additionally, the results indicated a second-order effect in which fear-related learning occurred for other animals seen together with the fear-paired animal, even though the animals were never observed with fearful faces themselves. Overall, the findings indicate that for children in this age group vicariously learnt fear-related responses for one stimulus can subsequently be observed for a second stimulus without it being experienced in a fear-related vicarious learning event. These findings may help to explain why some individuals do not recall involvement of a traumatic learning episode in the development of their fear of a specific stimulus

Preventing the development of observationally learnt fears in children by devaluing the model's negative response

Vicarious learning has become an established indirect pathway to fear acquisition. It is generally accepted that associative learning processes underlie vicarious learning; however, whether this association is a form of conditioned stimulus-unconditioned stimulus (CS-US) learning or stimulus–response (CS-CR) learning remains unclear. Traditionally, these types of learning can be dissociated in a US revaluation procedure. The current study explored the effects of post-vicarious learning US revaluation on acquired fear responses. Ninety-four children (46 males and 48 females) aged 6 to 10 years first viewed either a fear vicarious learning video or a neutral vicarious learning video followed by random allocation to one of three US revaluation conditions: inflation; deflation; or control. Inflation group children were presented with still images of the adults in the video and told that the accompanying sound and image of a very fast heart rate monitor belonged to the adult. The deflation group were shown the same images but with the sound and image of a normal heart rate. The control group received no US revaluation. Results indicated that inflating how scared the models appeared to be did not result in significant increases in children’s fear beliefs, avoidance preferences, avoidance behavior or heart rate for animals above increases caused by vicarious learning. In contrast, US devaluation resulted in significant decreases in fear beliefs and avoidance preferences. Thus, the findings provide evidence that CS-US associations underpin vicarious learning and suggest that US devaluation may be a successful method for preventing children from developing fear beliefs following a traumatic vicarious learning episode with a stimulus

Effect of vicarious fear learning on children’s heart rate responses and attentional bias for novel animals

Research with children has shown that vicarious learning can result in changes to 2 of Lang’s (1968) 3 anxiety response systems: subjective report and behavioral avoidance. The current study extended this research by exploring the effect of vicarious learning on physiological responses (Lang’s final response system) and attentional bias. The study used Askew and Field’s (2007) vicarious learning procedure and demonstrated fear-related increases in children’s cognitive, behavioral, and physiological responses. Cognitive and behavioral changes were retested 1 week and 1 month later, and remained elevated. In addition, a visual search task demonstrated that fear-related vicarious learning creates an attentional bias for novel animals, which is moderated by increases in fear beliefs during learning. The findings demonstrate that vicarious learning leads to lasting changes in all 3 of Lang’s anxiety response systems and is sufficient to create attentional bias to threat in children

Reductions in children’s vicariously learnt avoidance and heart rate responses using positive modeling

Recent research has indicated that vicarious learning can lead to increases in children’s fear beliefs and avoidance preferences for stimuli and that these fear responses can subsequently be reversed using positive modeling (counterconditioning). The current study investigated children’s vicariously acquired avoidance behavior, physiological responses (heart rate), and attentional bias for stimuli and whether these could also be reduced via counterconditioning. Ninety-six (49 boys, 47 girls) 7- to 11-year-olds received vicarious fear learning for novel stimuli and were then randomly assigned to a counterconditioning, extinction, or control group. Fear beliefs and avoidance preferences were measured pre- and post-learning, whereas avoidance behavior, heart rate, and attentional bias were all measured post-learning. Control group children showed increases in fear beliefs and avoidance preferences for animals seen in vicarious fear learning trials. In addition, significantly greater avoidance behavior, heart rate responding, and attentional bias were observed for these animals compared to a control animal. In contrast, vicariously acquired avoidance preferences of children in the counterconditioning group were significantly reduced post-positive modeling, and these children also did not show the heightened heart rate responding to fear-paired animals. Children in the extinction group demonstrated comparable responses to the control group; thus the extinction procedure showed no effect on any fear measures. The findings suggest that counterconditioning with positive modelling can be used as an effective early intervention to reduce the behavioral and physiological effects of vicarious fear learning in childhood

QCD Predictions for the Transverse Energy Flow in Deep-Inelastic Scattering in the Small x HERA Regime

The distribution of transverse energy, $E_T$, which accompanies deep-inelastic electron-proton scattering at small $x$, is predicted in the central region away from the current jet and proton remnants. We use BFKL dynamics, which arises from the summation of multiple gluon emissions at small $x$, to derive an analytic expression for the $E_T$ flow. One interesting feature is an $x^{-\epsilon}$ increase of the $E_T$ distribution with decreasing $x$, where $\epsilon = (3\alpha_s/\pi)2\log 2$. We perform a numerical study to examine the possibility of using characteristics of the $E_T$ distribution as a means of identifying BFKL dynamics at HERA.Comment: 16 pages, REVTEX 3.0, no figures. (Hardcopies of figures available on request from Professor A.D. Martin, Department of Physics, University of Durham, DH1 3LE, England.) Durham preprint : DTP/94/0

Properties of the BFKL equation and structure function predictions for HERA

The general properties of the Lipatov or BFKL equation are reviewed. Modifications to the infrared region are proposed. Numerical predictions for the deep-inelastic electron-proton structure functions at small $x$ are presented and confronted with recent HERA measurements.Comment: 21 pages, 11 figures, Latex file, Durham preprint DTP 92/2

Inhibition of vicariously learned fear in children using positive modeling and prior exposure

One of the challenges to conditioning models of fear acquisition is to explain how different individuals can experience similar learning events and only some of them subsequently develop fear. Understanding factors moderating the impact of learning events on fear acquisition is key to understanding the etiology and prevention of fear in childhood. This study investigates these moderators in the context of vicarious (observational) learning. Two experiments tested predictions that the acquisition or inhibition of fear via vicarious learning is driven by associative learning mechanisms similar to direct conditioning. In Experiment 1, 3 groups of children aged 7 to 9 years received 1 of 3 inhibitive information interventions psychoeducation, factual information, or no information (control)—prior to taking part in a vicarious fear learning procedure. In Experiment 2, 3 groups of children aged 7 to 10 years received 1 of 3 observational learning interventions—positive modeling (immunization), observational familiarity (latent inhibition), or no prevention (control)— before vicarious fear learning. Results indicated that observationally delivered manipulations inhibited vicarious fear learning, while preventions presented via written information did not. These findings confirm that vicarious learning shares some of the characteristics of direct conditioning and can explain why not all individuals will develop fear following a vicarious learning event. They also suggest that the modality of inhibitive learning is important and should match the fear learning pathway for increased chances of inhibition. Finally, the results demonstrate that positive modeling is likely to be a particularly effective method for preventing fear-related observational learning in children

BFKL versus HERA

The BFKL equation and the kT-factorization theorem are used to obtain predictions for F2 in the small Bjorken-x region over a wide range of Q**2. The dependence on the parameters, especially on those concerning the infrared region, is discussed. After a background fit to recent experimental data obtained at HERA and at Fermilab (E665 experiment), we find that the predicted, almost Q**2 independent BFKL slope lambda >= 0.5 appears to be too steep at lower Q**2 values. Thus there seems to be a chance that future HERA data can distinguish between pure BFKL and conventional field theoretic renormalization group approaches.Comment: 26 pages, 6 eps figures, LaTeX2e using epsfig.sty and amssymb.st