Four experiments provided support for the hypothesis that tonic immobility (TI) in chickens, which may be analogous to response suppression ia the rat, is a result of fear and is mediated by central cholinergic systems. Experiment 1 established that scopolamine, a central and peripheral acting anticholinergic, will reduce the duration of TI, whereas methylscopolamine, which acts only peripherally, will not. Experiment 2 established a dose-response curve for scopolamine and TI. Experiment 3 demonstrated that scopolamine increased activity and that this increase may be a factor in reducing the duration of TI. Experiment 4 showed that physostigmine, which blocks acetylcholinesterase and allows longer action of acetylcholine at the synapse, increased the duration of TI.
This study was conducted to estimate the relationship between academic dishonesty and religiosity in a convenient sample of college students. Scores on the Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire and the Academic Practices Survey were correlated for 70 undergraduate students. Overall, religiosity and academic dishonesty were not significantly related. However, follow-up analyses by sex indicated that this association was significant for women but not men. Research should be conducted to investigate whether this pattern is robust and indicates a differing role for religiosity as a standard for appropriate or inappropriate behavior.
The effects of reaction time (RT) task and stimulus variability upon the habituation of skin conductance responses (SCR) and vasomotor responses (VMR) were studied in two experiments, In Experiment 1, subjects who performed an RT response to stimulus onset or who received stimuli which varied in frequency required more trials to reach an SCR habituation criterion than subjects who did not perform the task or receive frequency variability. While the overall VMR magnitude was affected by RT task and frequency variability, no VMR habituation itself was observed. In Experiment 2, the effects of RT task to stimulus offset and stimulus-duration variability were investigated. RT task again produced retardation of SCR habituation. This indicated that the task effect was not simply due to contraction-elicited SCRs, since the task reactions occurred well after the onset-elicited SCRs. Stimulus-duration variability reduced the overall effect of task, and it was hypothesized that manipulations which tend to increase postonset SCR reactivity have a negative effect on the persistence of onset reactivity.
Female human subjects received either one, five, or nine tone-light compound stimulus presentations followed without interruption by presentations of tone alone. Task subjects were instructed to make a reaction time response to onset of the light stimulus. Control groups made no RT responses. The effect of omission of the light on the orienting response was evaluated by examining magnitude of GSRs to tone stimulus onset. In groups that performed the RT task, GSRs to stimulus change (compound to simple) were found to be a function of the number of trials prior to stimulus change. This was not the case when subjects had not performed the RT task. The RT task itself was demonstrated to affect GSR magnitude and frequency. It was concluded that the behavioral significance of the stimulus and the number of significant stimuli previously presented to the subjects directly affected GSR magnitUde to stimulus change.
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