Characteristics of the subjective symptomatology of asthma were explored within a group of 100 asthma inpatients. Patients rated the relative frequency with which 77 symptom adjectives were associated with asthma attacks. Key cluster analysis of the full set of 77 adjectives identified 5 symptom clusters: Two Mood clusters, Panic-Fear and Irritability, describe affective states concomitant with asthma, while two Somatic clusters, Hyperventilation-Hypocapnia and Bronchoconstriction, describe reports of more specific bodily symptoms. The fifth symptom cluster, Fatigue, describes the reduced energy level accompanying acute asthma. For the Mood symptom clusters, an increase in Panic-Fear and Irritability was reported to occur frequently by 42% and 34% of the patients respectively. For the Somatic symptom clusters, 9% and 91% of the patients reported the frequent occurrence of Hyperventilation-Hypocapnia and Bronchoconstriction symptoms. Seventy-eight percent (78%) reported the frequent occurrence of Fatigue. Reports of Bronchoconstriction were almost independent of the Mood clusters, Panic-Fear (r = 0.20) and Irritability (r = 0.18), although associated with increased reports of Fatigue (r = 0.43). In contrast, Hyperventilation-Hypocapnia was more highly related to both reports of Panic-Fear (r = 0.38) and Irritability (r = 0.39) during acute asthma episodes. This study suggests that complex patterning of subjective symptomatology is common in asthma. Symptom patterns described across each of the 5 symptom clusters may help to define coping styles related to the role of emotions in asthma and the course of illness.Clinical descriptions of asthma only occasionally describe the subjective symptomatology associated •with episodes of bronchoconstriction, although dyspnea, syncope, fear, depression, and fatigue have been reported (1-4). While the importance of subjective symptoms for

High and low socially anxious women were given identical feedback about their personality traits after a brief social interaction with a male confederate. The male confederate was trained to respond positively (success) to half of the subjects in each group during the interaction and negatively (failure) to the other half. Results of a subsequent recognition memory test for the feedback supported one of the main hypotheses and indicated that high socially anxious subjects had more accurate memory for negative information about themselves than did low socially anxious subjects. Success and failure experiences had no effects on memory. The possible contribution of such selective memory to the mediation and maintenance of social anxiety is discussed.

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Subjects sampled from Grades 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, and college solved three successive conceptual rule learning problems (relevant attributes of the concept given, rule unknown) based on one of four rules, conjunctive, disjunctive, conditional, or biconditional. Contrary to several a priori hypotheses, rules ranked identically in difficulty at every age (easiest to hardest as given above). The order of difficulty and the pattern of errors across stimulus types suggested an ad hoc interpretation based on preexperimental habits and stimulus generalization tendencies. Evidence of rule learning (relative amount of interproblem positive transfer), while somewhat dependent on the particular rule, increased with age through Grade 5, leveling off thereafter. The trend was consistent with a transition from concrete to abstract thought at ages 11-13 years.A class concept is a principle for grouping stimuli (objects, events, etc.), in the simplest case, into two categories, called positive and negative instances. There are two components of any concept, its relevant stimulus attributes and a rule joining those attributes. Thus, for example, the class concept crusty snow implicates perceptible attributes "crustiness" and "snowiness" via the rule-form "conjunction," the "and" rule. To be a positive instance of this concept, a given state of affairs must exhibit both relevant attributes, regardless of any other features it might possess; other states or objects, for example, crusty pie, mushy snow, mushy pie, and the like, are negative instances.Learning and applying a concept appropriately necessitates an ability to discriminate, to understand, and to use both its relevant stimulus features and its rule. While it seems obvious that a concept is ordinarily learned as a single unitary principle, there may be some empirical or analytic advantage

During training to relax the frontalis muscle, continuous biofeedback (BF) was compared to discrete verbal feedback (VF) delivered immediately after each trial. Both feedback modalities were based on frontalis electromyographic (EMG) activity. Training consisted of 3 consecutive daily session‐each comprised of 3 baseline (nonfeedback) trials followed by 10 training trials of 128 see. The presence or absence of the two informationally positive feedback modalities were combined factorially to define four training conditions: BF + VF, NO BF + VF, BF + NO VF, and NO BF + NO VF. Results indicated that while VF alone facilitated muscle relaxation, BF was clearly prepotent ill effecting consistent decreases in EMG activity both across trials and days of training. Additionally, the facilitating effect of BF transferred to nonfeedback trials while VF did not affect performance on nonfeedback trials. Finally, accuracy of self‐evaluations of performance on a trial by trial basis was markedly improved by BF, while VF improved accuracy only for trials having a very large absolute difference between levels of EMG activity. Ss receiving no feedback neither reduced muscle tension during training not were able to evaluate their performance accurately even when large absolute differences occurred between trials in frontalis EMG activity.

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