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Background: Research shows distributed practice enhances learning and skill development, but less is known about the effect on perceptions and attitudes toward the material being learned. Objective: This study examined whether distributed practice could improve performance and attitudes in statistics, a subject that students report finding unpleasant and anxiety-provoking. Method: This quasi-experiment compared statistics students who received distributed practice with Excel throughout the semester to a control group without distributed practice. At the end of the semester, all students completed a major data analysis project with Excel and a self-report measure of their perceptions and attitudes toward the class and statistics. Results: Significant results suggest students who received distributed practice: earned higher project grades; liked statistics more; and perceived the class to be more effective for knowledge and skill development, even though they found statistics to be more difficult than the control group. Conclusion: This study suggests distributed practice helps improve students' performance and attitudes toward statistics, even though they think it is difficult. Teaching Implications: In addition to improving performance in challenging subjects, distributed practice may be used to help students appreciate and feel more favorably about classes they find difficult.

Four successive randomized clinical trials studying contingency management (CM), involving various treatment arms of drug-abstinent housing and work therapy and day treatment (DT) with a behavioral component, were compared on common drug abstinence outcomes at 2 treatment completion points (2 and 6 months). The clinical trials were conducted from 1990 to 2006 in Birmingham, Alabama, with a total of 644 homeless persons with primary crack cocaine addiction. The meta-analysis utilized the weighted least squares approach to integrate data encompassing 9 different treatment arms to assess the effects of CM and DT (neither, DT only, CM only, and CM = DT) on a common estimate of prevalence of drug abstinence. Taken together, the results show much stronger benefits from CM = DT and from CM only than for DT alone. Throughout all of the Birmingham Homeless Cocaine Studies, the CM = DT consistently produced higher abstinence prevalence than did no CM.

Learning can be guided by unexpected success or failure, signaled via dopaminergic positive reward prediction error (+ RPE) and negative reward-prediction error (--RPE) signals, respectively. Despite conflicting empirical evidence, RPE signaling is thought to be impaired in drug addiction. To resolve this outstanding question, we studied as a measure of RPE the feedback negativity (FN) that is sensitive to both reward and the violation of expectation. We examined FN in 25 healthy controls; 25 individuals with cocaine-use disorder (CUD) who tested positive for cocaine on the study day (CUD +), indicating cocaine use within the past 72 h; and in 25 individuals with CUD who tested negative for cocaine (CUD --). EEG was acquired while the participants performed a gambling task predicting whether they would win or lose money on each trial given three known win probabilities (25,50, or 75%). FN was scored for the period in each trial when the actual outcome (win or loss) was revealed. A significant interaction between prediction, outcome, and group revealed that controls showed increased FN to unpredicted compared with predicted wins (i.e., intact + RPE) and decreased FN to unpredicted compared with predicted losses (i.e., intact --RPE). However, neither CUD subgroup showed FN modulation to loss (i.e., impaired -- RPE), and unlike CUD + individuals, CUD -- individuals also did not show FN modulation to win (i.e., impaired + RPE). Thus, using FN, the current study directly documents -- RPE deficits in CUD individuals. The mechanisms underlying -- RPE signaling impairments in addiction may contribute to the disadvantageous nature of excessive drug use, which can persist despite repeated unfavorable life experiences (e.g., frequent incarcerations). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No animal models replicate the complexity of human depression. However, a number of behavioral tests in rodents are sensitive to antidepressants and may thus tap important underlying biological factors. Such models may also offer the best opportunity to discover novel treatments. Here, we used several of these models to test the hypothesis that the acid-sensing ion channel-1a (ASIC1a) might be targeted to reduce depression. Genetically disrupting ASIC1a in mice produced antidepressant-like effects in the forced swim test, the tail suspension test, and following unpredictable mild stress. Pharmacologically inhibiting ASIC1a also had antidepressant-like effects in the forced swim test. The effects of ASIC1a disruption in the forced swim test were independent of and additive to those of several commonly used antidepressants. Furthermore, ASIC1a disruption interfered with an important biochemical marker of depression, the ability of stress to reduce BDNF in the hippocampus. Restoring ASIC1a to the amygdala of ASIC1a-/- mice with a viral vector reversed the forced swim test effects, suggesting that the amygdala is a key site of ASIC1a action in depression-related behavior. These data are consistent with clinical studies emphasizing the importance of the amygdala in mood regulation, and suggest that ASIC1a antagonists may effectively combat depression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]