Undergraduate Volunteers Research Articles

Comparison of use of meditation and rest in treatment of test anxiety.

Undergraduate volunteers (16 men, 19 women) were randomly assigned to either a meditation or a control condition balanced for expectancy to compare the function of these treatments in the alleviation of test anxiety. Self-report, performance, and physiological indices were assessed as moderated by gender, Scholastic Aptitude Test score, frequency of practice, repression, and expectancy of relief. The treatments were equally effective in reducing test anxiety. The moderators showed no consistent relation to outcome. Results are discussed with reference to different procedures for assessing these constructs.

Matching therapists' predicates: an in vivo test of effectiveness.

The theory of neurolinguistic programming predicts that a therapist's matching of a client's primary representational system, as expressed in the client's predicates, should result in increased therapist's rapport and social influence. This hypothesis was tested in an actual interview situation. Six relatively inexperienced therapists, two each in predicate matching, predicate mismatching, and predicate no-matching conditions, conducted a 30-min. interview with nine undergraduate student volunteers each, for a total of 54 subjects. After the appropriate interview condition was completed, subjects rated ther therapists on the Counselor Rating Form and the Counseling Evaluation Inventory. No significant differences among the three conditions on any of the measures were found. Results are compared with those of previous research on assessment and primary representational matching in analogue situations.

Employing Review Procedures in Elaboration of Prose Schemata

The effect of review procedures on recall of prose was investigated. After reading a passage, 42 undergraduate volunteers were randomly assigned to one of three conditions, those receiving questions following reading, those receiving interactive questions following reading, and a control. After the review session, subjects in all three conditions completed a free recall of the original passage. One week later, all subjects returned and another free recall was obtained. For repeated-measures univariate analyses of variance showed significant effects for groups, time, and their interaction in logical intrusions. The results support the notion that review procedures elaborate schemata and enhance recall.

Luck and learning: feedback contingencies and initial success in verbal discrimination learning.

Ninety undergraduate volunteers learned a 12-pair, low frequency, verbal discrimination list. The independent variables were feedback (positive only, negative only, or both) and initial success (17%, 50%, or 83% correct on trial one). With the total errors on nine trials as the dependent variable, the main effect of feedback was found to be not significant. The main effect of initial success was significant. Subjects who started at 50% correct had the most difficulty learning the list and subjects in the 83% correct condition learned quickest. The predicted interaction between feedback and initial success was not significant, even though the means for the three types of feedback at the 17% correct starting level reflect the expected differences. The results are interpreted as supporting the rule-use component of frequency theory. The relationship between initial success and subsequent performance appears to be curvilinear, rather than linear, as many theorists have assumed.

Ratings of Humor following Experience with Unsolvable Tasks

Seligman ( 1975) suggested that following experience with uncontrollable outcomes, a cluster of cognitive, motivational, and emotional factors develop which interfere with subsequent performance. Such a condition is called learned helplessness. The cognitive and motivational aspects of the phenomenon have been substantially researched, but few studies have addressed the emotional state following helplessness training. This study was conducted to observe whether differences in preference for humor could be noted following experience with varying degrees of unconuollability. Sixty undergraduate volunteers were randomly assigned to a Solvable Anagram group ( 100% solvable), a Mixed Anagram group ( 50% solvable), or an Unsolvable Anagram group (0% solvable). Each group was shown 20 slides of five-letter, single solution anagrams and given 30 sec. to write down the solution. Ninety-one percent of the solvable anagrams were solved. Immediately following the anagrams, subjects were asked to race five cartoons selected for aggressive content and five cartoons selected for word play on a five-point Likert scale, high scores indicating high humor, according to a procedure developed by Hetherington and Wray ( 1964). Aggressive cartoons were rated moderately humorous by the Solvable ( M = 2.93, range 1.8 to 4.0) and Mixed (M = 3.12, range 2.0 to 4.4) groups, while the Unsolvable group's ratings were significantly higher ( M = 4.11, range 2.6 to 5.0), by a Duncan's rest. No statistically significant differences were found in the ratings of the word play cartoons, although they were lower for the Unsolvable group (M = 2.89, range 1.6 to 4.0) than for the Mixed ( M = 3.42, range 2 0 to 4.6) or Solvable groups ( M = 3.55, range 2.2 to 4.2). These data suggest an aggressive emotional reaction following helplessness training.

Actual versus predicted expectancies and their influence in flooding therapy.

24 snake-phobic undergraduate volunteers were randomly assigned to one of four treatment groups, three flooding and one placebo. All subjects were provided rationales describing the treatment procedures in either positive, neutral, or negative terms, intended to induce differential expectancies for improvement. However, an analysis of expectancy scores at pre-treatment indicated that appropriate expectancies were not induced. Comparisons between the treatment and placebo groups on all outcome measures (behavioral, subjective, physiological) indicated no differences between groups. In a supplementary study identical descriptions of various procedures were administered to an independent group of 85 snake-phobics, who rated them as equally credible. Another independent group of 18 highly fearful snake-phobics, who did not expect to participate in treatment, rated their expectancy induced by reading one of the three original flooding rationales. The manipulation was successful in altering expectancy in the predicted direction. Taken as a whole, the findings reflect on the typical lack of adequate strategies of assessment in this area of research, and the need to extend investigations to different populations is considered.

Parental hypertension and cardiovascular response to cognitive and isometric challenge.

ABSTRACTThe purposes of this investigation were to contrast the cardiovascular responses of sons of hypertensive and normotensive parents to tasks involving cognitive and isometric challenge, and lo examine the relationship of individual differences in heart rate (HR) reactivity to baseline blood pressure (BP) measurements. Thirty‐six male, undergraduate volunteers (18 with and 18 without a parental history of hypertension) were scheduled for two, 1‐hr experimental sessions (Days I and II). On Day 1, HR and BP measurements were obtained while subjects performed each of three laboratory tasks: a difficult test in concept formation, serial subtraction, and a sustained handgrip at 30% of maximum voluntary contraction. Each task lasted 3 min and was preceded by a 3‐min baseline interval. On Day II, subjects were instructed to relax quietly while baseline measures of HR and BP were recorded. Relative to sons of normotensive parents, offspring of hypertensives exhibited higher mean Systolic BPs during all task periods; no corresponding group differences were observed on either Day I or Day II baseline recordings. Unlike SBP, Diastolic BP measurements did not vary reliably by parental hypertensive/normotensive status. Although the mean HRs of sons of hypertensives were significantly higher than in offspring of normotensives, these differences obtained uniformly across both the baseline and task intervals. Among subjects identified as High HR reactors during the two cognitive tasks, sons of hypertensive parents exhibited Day II baseline SBPs about 9 mmHg higher than did subjects without a parental history of hypertension. Among subjects identified as Low HR reactors, baseline SBPs did not differ reliably between sons of hypertensive and normotensive parents.

Remembering what you feel: Effects of emotion on memory.

In two studies, recall was best when subjects' manipulated facial expressions were consistent with the emotional content of material recalled. In both studies, subjects' mood response to manipulated expressions was first assessed in a separate procedure. Subjects whose mood was affected were designated the selfproduced cue group. In Study 1, 60 undergraduate volunteers then read two passages of the same emotional content, either anger-provoking editorials or humorous selections by Woody Allen. Later, one selection was recalled while frowning and one while smiling. In the self-produced cue group, recall was significantly better for the editorials when frowning and for the Woody Allen stories when smiling. In the nonself cue group, expressions did not affect recall. In Study 2, 20 subjects heard and recalled three kinds of sentences, angry, sad, or fearful, in the same three expressions. Again, only in the self-produced cue group was recall significantly better when sentence and expression were consistent. The combination of studies indicates that these effects are due to mood rather than expression and to the match between expression and content at the time of recall.

Psychophysiological effects of noxious imagery: Prevalence and prediction

Research suggests that people who generate psychophysiological arousal in emotive imagery therapies are likely to show the largest therapeutic gains. This study investigated the frequency of occurrence and methods of predicting this imagery skill. The effects of five fearful imagery themes on 95 undergraduate volunteers were evaluated in individual sessions by psychophysiological (SRL, EKG and EMG), self-report (anxiety and clarity ratings) and behavioral (motoric expression) measures. Additionally, four questionnaires (Betts, Gordon, APQ and STAI) were administered in a group session. EKG arousal occurred in 66% of our subjects, SRL arousal in 38% and EMG arousal in 16%. Only 9% of our subjects experienced arousal in all three psychophysiological responses and 24% experienced arousal in neither. Motoric expression (overt behavioral emoting) best predicted psychophysiological arousal, self-report ratings were a distant second, and the questionnaires were worthless in this regard. Imagery-induced psychophysiological arousal appears to be a fairly common phenomena, though it eludes convenient prediction. Some training strategies were discussed, (response proposition instructions, biofeedback and motoric coaching), which could be employed with persons deficient in psychophysiological imagery skills prior to their commencing an emotive imagery therapy.

Effect of feedback sensitivity upon learned heart rate acceleration.

ABSTRACTTwelve undergraduate volunteers received 12 sessions of heart rate biofeedback training involving one of two experimental conditions. One‐half of the subjects received 4 sessions of high sensitivity analogue heart rate biofeedback, followed by 4 sessions of low sensitivity feedback, and then, 4 final sessions of high sensitivity feedback. The other half of the subjects received the exact opposite order of feedback conditions. All subjects were instructed to accelerate heart rate during 8 trials in each session. The results were contrary to the hypothesis derived from a motor skills model of visceral learning, i.e., the low feedback sensitivity condition consistently produced larger magnitude heart rate acceleration in comparison to the high sensitivity condition. These findings were discussed in terms of methodological suggestions for future research and in terms of the motor skills model of visceral learning.

Presentational style of therapeutic directive and response to cold pressor pain.

Both therapists and physicians give people directives to perform acts that are presumably therapeutic for them. Noncompliance with such therapeutic directives is surprisingly high (1). Styles of giving such directives often differ markedly. The present experiment compared three styles of giving therapeutic directives (persuasion, collaboration, and written directives) to manage the discomfort of the cold pressor, a treatment for strains and sprains and a frequent analogue for short-term counseling. Female undergraduate volunteers (N = 60) from psychology classes at a large urban university were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions and were individually pre- and posaested for ice-water tolerance (10-min. limit) by one of two male experimenters blind to treatment condition. After each test, participants rated their pain on a 100-point scale. Berween tests, rhey received training in the use of pleasant imagery as a pain palliadve. Training was conducted using one of three presentational styles. Persuasion consisted of the trainer giving directives in a clear, straightforward manner. Written instructions used a script identical to persuasion. In the collaborative style, the trainer solicited from the women expressions that imagery might be used to cope with pain, then he reinforced that and asked the women to elaborate on how rhey might use imagery, type of imagery, and content of specific scenes. An analysis of covariance, using the pretest tolerance as the covariate, was performed for posttes: tolerance and self-reported pain. For tolerance, groups did not differ. For self-reported pain, however, there was a significant effect for presentational style. Women hearing the persuasive style reported lower psin than those reading the same instructions. Women collaborating with the trainer did not differ from other women. Acrusl reported imagery use was significantly correlated with less self-reported pain. Theories of counseling indicate that enh~ncing clients' perceived self-control should increase their compliance with therapeutic directives. Samaan and Parker (2) found collaborative directives better than persuasive directives at inducing career exploration. On the other hand, physicians have traditionally issued directives without consulting patients. The present experiment indicates that for simple therapeutic directives, a persuasive style is superior to writren instructions and not different from a collaborative style in producing therapeutic gain. This may be true because persuasion maximizes

Participant characteristics and the effects of two types of meditation vs. quiet sitting

Randomly assigned 61 undergraduate volunteers to Clinically Standardized Meditation (CSM), quiet sitting (SIT), or wait list' and 19 others to Open Focus (OF) or wait list2. Ss were tested before training and again 8 weeks later. All groups but wait list2 decreased significantly on Spielberger's trait anxiety. All groups became nonsignificantly more internal on Rotter's locus of control. On the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, meditation volunteers were more introverted than extraverted, intuitive than sensing, feeling than thinking, and perceiving than judging. All groups became more intuitive, approaching signicance for CSM only. OF became significantly more extraverted than both CSM and SIT, and CSM significantly more so than wait list'. Practice time correlated with anxiety reduction for the combined treatment groups. More evidence was found for correlations of practice time and outcome with growth motivation than with either new experience motivation or expectancy of benefit.

Sensitivity of the stanford sleepiness scale to the effects of cumulative partial sleep deprivation and recovery oversleeping.

The sensitivity of the Stanford Sleepiness Scale (SSS) to short-term cumulative partial sleep deprivation (PSD) and subsequent recovery oversleeping was examined. A repeated-measures design included 7 paid healthy undergraduate volunteers, who were normal sleepers (mean sleep time 7.6 hr), and consisted of the following schedule: (a) pre-baseline; (b)sleep reduction of 40% of 1 night (mean, 4.6 hr) for 5 nights; (c) recovery oversleeping for night 1 (mean, 10.6 Hr) and night 2 (mean, 9.1 hr); (d) post-baseline. Daytime performance testing utilized a 1 hr auditory vigilance task and four short-duration (10 min) tests, two of which have been shown sensitive to total and partial sleep loss effects. Subjects completed SSS forms every min while awake and 1-9 scales of mood and energy upon awakening. Subjective measures were analyzed across conditions for mean all-day and task-related SSS values and mood and energy ratings. A correlational analysis investigated individual correspondences between ratings and performance. Results indicate that SSS is sensitive to deficits in alertness following PSD. However, it generally does not predict individual performance efficiency and therefore cannot act as a substitute for performance measures in studies involving chronic sleep loss.

Disclosing self to friends and family: A reexamination of initial questions

This study reinvestigated questions raised by Sidney Jourard in the initial stages of research on self‐disclosure. Using new conceptualizations and measures, this study attempted to assess the viability of previous research conclusions. The study specifically investigated the effects of discloser sex, topic of disclosure, and the target of disclosure on five dimensions of reported self‐disclosure. With 104 undergraduate volunteers as subjects, 2 × 2 × 2 (sex by topic by target) analysis of variance and follow‐up tests revealed that disclosures to both parents were more positive but less honest, frequent, and intimate than to best same‐sex friend. Topic affected or interacted to affect three of the dimensions of disclosure while the sex variable interacted to affect only one. These results provide little support for the conclusions drawn by Jourard. Evidently, topic and target now function as constraints on the ways individuals reveal information about themselves.

Relationship between Locus of Control and Sex-Role Stereotyping

Research concerning the relationship between locus of control and sex-role stereotyping has produced differing results. Hochreic (2) instructed subjects to complete the Rotter Internal-External (I-E) Scale as if they were extremely male or extremely female. She reported that an external orientation is part of the female sex-role stereotype while an internal orientation is congruent with the male sex-role stereotype. Mennigerode (3), however, correlated scores on the I-E scale and the Bem Sex-role Inventory and noted that both male and female sex-role stereotyped individuals scored more external on the I-E scale than those not sex-role stereotyped. However, he did not analyze data separately for men and women. Perhaps the fact that he had more women than men (61 to 43) confounded the possible finding that highly sex-role stereotyped males score more internal. The present study ( 1) was designed to determine if analysis of the dam by sex of subject would yield findings similar to Hochreic's results. The sample of 192 volunteer undergraduates included equal numbers of men and women. Each student was administered the Bem Skx-role Inventory and the I-E scale. Men attained a mean score of 10.86 and SD of 5.24 for the I-E scale, while women's mean score was 10.89, with a SD of 3.9. A mean score of 10.88 and a SD of 4.6 was obtained for all subjects. The mean Bern score for males was 112.8 with a SD of 16.14, while the mean score for females was 112.71 with a SD of 24.97. The over-all Bem mean score was 112.75 with a SD of 20.97. Bem scores were calculated by the ratio method and then multiplied by 100. The Pearson product-moment correlation between scores on Bem's inventory and on the I-E scale was .207 for the women and -0.225 for the men. Both cortelations were significant (respective ps = .04 and .02). Women scoring high on the I-E scale (external) significantly tended to score high on Bem's scale (sex-role stereotyped). The reverse was true for men; internally oriented men seemed to score as sex-role stereotyped on Bem's scale. The above findings are consistent with Hochreic's results, but the magnitudes of the significant correlations account for very little of the variance.

Effects of Information on Preference for an Occupation

Thirty‐two undergraduate female volunteers were randomly assigned to one of four treatment groups in which occupational information was presented in these ways: glamorous‐reinforced, glamorous‐nonreinforced, objective‐reinforced, and objective—nonreinforced. They were given the Holland Vocational Preference Inventory (VPI) and shown a 5 minute slide/tape presentation about an occupation with the appropriate glamour and model reinforcement variation. Posttesting used a modified semantic differential scale and a ranking questionnaire. The results of an analysis of variance (ANOVA) suggest that the glamorous groups rated the occupation as more professional and more rewarding than the nonglamorous groups. While there were no effects for reinforcement and no significant differences on the ranking test, they were in the expected direction, as were the results on 13 of 14 semantic differential scales. Within limitations, the results are discussed with respect to the impact of information on career preference.

Psychophysiological adaptation: An investigation of multiple parameters

Heart rate (EKG), digital skin resistance level (SRL), and frontalis electromyography (EMG) of 20 undergraduate volunteers were monitored in three 30-min sessions to chart the course and magnitude of adaptation. As a group, 7, 13, and 13 min of adaptation were required for SRL, EMG, and EKG, respectively. High arousal levels in any of these measures at the session's outset resulted in longer adaptation times compared to low initial arousal. EMG showed the strongest variance across sessions. Females required longer adaptation periods than males in SRL and EKG. Self-reported trait anxiety levels bore little relationship to adaptation course. Methods were outlined for setting individualized adaptation periods by either the min 1 EMG level or regression equations for the initial values of each of the measures. Overall, psychophysiological adaptation proved to be an influential variable requiring experimental management to avoid confoundment with treatment effects.

Predominance of Central Self-Descriptive Adjectives in Random Time Interval Self-Reports

In studying self-concept, Gergen (1971) has identified self-attribute centrality as one of the three prominent factors affecting salience of self-attribute. The present study tested Gergen's assertion by using two different forms of self-assessment. The first was a general form in which the person gave an over-all self-description not tied to specific situations and in which he weighted each description in terms of its centrality to self-concept. In the second form, the person, using the over-all description as a source pool, repeatedly gave specific self-descriptions at randomly selected times of the day to provide a measure of the salience of specific aspects of the more general form. It was predicted than central aspects of self-concept would be more salient than less central aspects in the momentary self-descriptions of individuals. A secondary interest was whether the relationship between centrality and salience of an attribute would be greater for people who tended in general to be more aware of their own thoughts and feelings, i.e., higher on private self-consciousness (Fenigstein, Scheier, & Buss, 1975 ) . Forty undergraduate volunteers (20 males and 20 females), preselected for high or low private self-consciousness, described themselves using the Adjective Check List (Gough, 1952), marking adjectives that wer: and those that were merely descriptive. Subjects were then given a pouch containing an electronic random timer set at a mean 90-min. interval and a booklet in which each page listed the adjectives they had checked. Subjects carried the pouch for two days completing one page whenever the timer buzzed by describing themselves during the past 10 min. Results indicated no'.sex differences = .07), no differences due to level of private self-consciousness (F,.aa = 2.52), nor any interactions. However, results did indicate that, when subjects described themselves at specific moments in time, their self-descriptions contained a greater percentage of very descriptive adjectives than did the general description of self (K,sa = 13.63). These results support Gergen by suggesting that central aspects of self-concept identified through a general self-assessment technique are the aspects most likely to be predominant in the person's moment-by-moment self-assessments.

Changes in cognitive processing following short-term cumulative partial sleep deprivation and recovery oversleeping

Abstract The effects on cognitive processing of 1 and 5 cumulative nights of partial sleep deprivation (PSD) and 1 and 2 nights of subsequent recovery oversleep was studied using an anagrams test and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. Seven paid undergraduate volunteers (5 male; 2 female) aged 18–23 who had normative 6.5–8.0 hr sleep patterns participated. They followed an 8-day schedule of morning and afternoon testing sessions consisting of 2 days in each of the experimental conditions: prebase-line, PSD, recovery sleep, and postbaseline. Sleep duration was calculated relative to individual habitual by subtracting 40% per night (PSD) and adding 40% and 20%, respectively (recovery sleep). On the anagrams test, results showed exaggerated time of day differences during both sleep manipulation conditions. Card-sorting performance was characterized by lesser efficiency of cognitive strategies (> non-perseverative errors) during recovery sleep and tendency towards perseveration with sleep loss. Results were dis...

Effects of Modeling and Audience on an Aversive Task

Using magnitude of self-administered shock as the aversive task, 90 female undergraduate volunteer subjects were exposed to one of three conditions: (1) no-model condition in which a subject was asked to self-administer an electric shock; (2) model condition wherein a subject witnessed a young female graduate student self-administer increasingly stronger shocks; and (3) model + audience condition in which a non-evaluative audience witnessed the model condition. Analysis of variance indicated that neither model nor presence of an audience combined with a model affected willingness to self-administer higher levels of shock.