24 infants, 12 4-month-olds and 12 6-month-olds, were repeatedly shown slides of 3 facial expressions. The expressions were previously judged by obervers to be indicators of joy, anger, and no emotion, respectively. The duration of the first visual fixation to each presentation of the slides was monitored for each subject. The data indicated that the infants looked at the joy expression significantly more than at either the anger or neutral expressions. The results suggest that infants are capable of discriminating emotion expressions earlier in their development than previous studies have implied.

Three rats were trained to press a lever on a random-interval Lmin schedule of food reinforcement. In successive phases of the experiment, electric shocks were superimposed at I-min fixed intervals, 2-min fixed intervals, or at I-min random intervals. In the fixed-interval conditions, there was a steep gradient of reduction in response rate as the time for the next shock approached; in the random-interval condition, the response rate following a shock was relatively constant. The present method appears to be adequate to monitor the instantaneous level of fear. The results suggest that animals were timing in units proportional to the fixed interval and that aversive events which occur randomly in time are perceived as phenomenologically random by the rat.Is a schedule of aversive events which is objectively random in time perceived as phenomenologically random by a rat? An answer to this question assumes that the magnitude of fear can be monitored continuously through time. Then, if the aversive events are perceived as occurring randomly in time, the magnitude of fear should be independent of the time since the last occurrence of an aversiveevent.Various methods have been used to describe the magnitude of the fear response. The validity of direct measures of autonomic functions, e.g., heart rate, is doubtful, since such measures are markedly affected by motor effort (Black, 1971). Behavioral techniques have also been used to obtain indices of the level of fear. These include the method of acquired drive, secondary punishment, and the conditioned emotional response (Church, 1971). As they have typically been used, these behavioral methods provide measures of the average level of fear during an extended period of time (e.g., during a 3-min signal). But they do not serve to monitor the level of fear continuously.The basic assumption of the conditioned emotional response method of assessing the magnitude of fear is that a change in the mean response rate reflects a change in the magnitude of fear. In support of the assumption, changes in parameters which should increase fear (e.g., severity of the aversive event) do increase the magnitude of response suppression (Annau & Kamin, 1961). Presumably, the instantaneous response rate could serve as a continuous indicator of the level of fear.The first purpose of the present experiment was to validate the method for monitoring instantaneous levels of fear. The method consisted of presenting brief electric shocks to a rat that was pressing a lever for food reinforcement. In the first phase of the present experiment, the aversive event was repeatedly presented at fixed intervals of 1 min. This should lead to the temporal conditioning of fear, which should be reflected in a gradual decrease in response rate as the time of the next shock approached. This situation is simpler than the typical conditioned emotional response experiment in which additional external stimuli are correlated with the occurrence of the aversive event. To demonstrate that the rats were anticipating the n...

This study tested the hypothesis that Rorschach indicators of psychological instability and perceptual sensitivity are predictive of therapeutic outcome in a child psychiatric inpatient service. Thirty-four children, matched for age, were divided into two groups, Improvers and Decliners, based on changes in behavioral problems over 60 days of hospitalization. The groups were not distinguishable by scores on intellectual tests, sex, or the initial quality or severity of psychological disturbance. Analyses of Rorschach protocols indicated that children who obtained higher ep, ep-EA, Blends, Zf, and Z sum and lower Lambda had improved in treatment. The results suggest that children who are less stabilized and manifest perceptual sensitivity do achieve the greatest gains.

No abstract