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Elderly parents and their younger relatives acting as caregivers and ex-caregivers were interviewed to ascertain the correlates and consequences of their satisfaction with intergenerational, joint living arrangements. Data included circumstances surrounding the change in living arrangement, changes in life satisfaction, attitudes regarding intergenerational obligations, and, most importantly, variables reflecting dependence as an indication of power disparity in the dyad. Results showed, as predicted by social exchange theory, that satisfaction is directly related to balance in the power structure, i.e., both parties are happier when the elderly person is less dependent and able to give something of value to the caregiver in return for the cost involved in caregiving. Conversely, the greater the caregiver's power advantage, the less the satisfaction experienced by both caregiver and care receiver and the greater the likelihood that the joint living arrangement will end in dissolution.

In this longitudinal study of mothers, their families, and their infants, both discriminant and regression analyses showed that prenatal reports of family dynamics predicted infant disposition at 8 months with considerable accuracy. The most important predictive component was organization and consistency within the family unit as well as the dependability of other family members. Possible mechanisms by which family dynamics might affect the infant's developing disposition are discussed.

The results of this study suggest that anesthetics administered to mothers during delivery affect infants' autonomic function for at least 8 postnatal months. Under repeated auditory stimulation, those infants born without medication tended to show heart rate deceleration (orienting reflex) whereas those born under medication shifted from initial deceleration to acceleration (defense reflex).

The stability of the OR habituation rate as an individual difference trait was investigated in 2 studies. The 1st focused on motor OR's to auditory stimuli at 3 ages within the 1st month of life, and the 2nd examined the HR responses to auditory stimuli at 4 and 8 months. The results indicate that motor OR's did not differ significantly with age and were moderately stable across ages. The stability decreased with age across consecutive days but increased across consecutive weeks. The cross-age correlation for HR responses was moderate. The results were compared with similar findings on other parameters of the OR.

As an introduction to behavioral teratology, this article discusses types of teratogenic agents, behavioral targets, organismic vulnerability during growth spurts, teratogenic “routing,” exposure, and duration of effects. It also describes some chemical neurotoxins, using lead as a paradigm, that are known to affect cognitive and noncognitive behaviors crucial to learning and appropriate conduct in the classroom. Finally, the article points out two ways in which behavioral teratology is particularly important for special education. First, behavioral teratology balances the tendency to attribute educational problems exclusively to social or environmental antecedents. Second, it provides a much needed subject matter for the educational curriculum of the nation's junior and senior high schools.

Elderly parents were interviewed to assess their overall satisfaction with their children, with particular characteristics of each child, and with features of the parent-child relationship. Results indicated that from an elderly parent's perspective, the most nearly perfect child is a second-born of either sex who is married, who has surpassed the parent in educational achievement and occupational status, and who maintains relatively frequent contact with the parent. Spouses and grandchildren were less important contributors to satisfaction than were children.

As a test of the hypothesis that gender differences in neonatal behavior may be linked to circumcision, we reviewed 38 recent studies which provide relevant information. No strong data exist to support the hypothesis or to document the existence of gender differences in neonatal behavior.

This study sought to identify some important characteristics of women who reject hospitals as a place of birth and to determine whether those characteristics are also associated with choice between the two nontraditional alternatives available, ie, birth in a free-standing birth center and birth at home. Data were obtained from 200 mothers on demographics and health-promoting behaviors, with particular focus on exposure to and information about drugs during pregnancy and childbirth, perceived locus of control, factors entering into the decision to choose one or the other nontraditional birthplaces, and extent of satisfaction with this choice. There were differences between groups in the use of drugs for health-related complaints, in information about drugs, and in consumption of drugs (including drugs implicated as teratogenic) during pregnancy and childbirth. There were no differences in the extent to which mothers perceived themselves as being in control of their environments or in the extent to which they engaged in behavior known to promote health and prevent disease.

In human studies, the possible long-term effects on behavior of early physical insult or pharmacological agents have received little attention. We present both circumstantial and direct evidence that circumcision of male infants leads to behavioral changes. In some American studies using circumcised infants, reported gender differences may instead be the result of the altered behavior of circumcised males. We suggest that circumcision requires more study in its own right, and that it requires description if not control in all neonatal and infancy studies.

This study investigated drug exposure during pregnancy and childbirth, the status of those drugs with respect to adverse effects, and the amount of information mothers have about the drugs to which they are exposed. Data on drug exposure and information were obtained by interview and from medical records. Subjects were 304 randomly selected postpartum inpatients who had delivered clinically normal babies. Results indicate that during pregnancy many mothers consume drugs with teratogenic or toxic potential. They have very little information about these drugs. During labor and delivery, most mothers are administered drugs with even more teratogenic or toxic potential and have even less information about these drugs.

Scheduling of reinforcement has been investigated extensively in relation to the conditioning of non-social responses. The results of these studies indicate in general that a schedule by which reinforcement follows every response is less effective in maintaining performance of that response during extinction than is a schedule by which reinforcement follows only some of those responses (4). This investigation attempts to extend the study of frequency and patterning of reinforcement to the area of social learning and to cortically immature subjects. The purpose of the research is to evaluate the relative efficacy of intermittent as opposed to regular reinforcement upon frequency of smiling in infants. The use of an instrumental conditioning paradigm in this study is in contrast to past studies of the conditioning of the smiling response (2, 7, 8), all of which, though differing in methodology, have utilized a classical conditioning paradigm in conceptualizing results. The inappropriateness of this framework in accounting for response change over time is most clearly illustrated in the study by Dennis (2).

This study compared the effects of three auditory background conditions—no sound, intermittent sound, and continuous sound—on level of arousal in infants. The study also investigated responsiveness to discrete auditory stimuli superimposed upon these background conditions. The results indicated that level of arousal was decreased by continuous sound and increased by intermittent sound, relative to the no sound condition. Measures of level of arousal included state, respiration, heart rate, and motor activity. Responsiveness to discrete auditory stimuli, superimposed upon the background conditions and measured by evoked responses, was not predictable from indices of arousal level.

The relationship of state to HR and behavioral responding to white noise stimulation was investigated in 2-week old infants. Results indicated that state is a potent determinant of various behavioral and HR phenomena. State was related to prestimulus HR levels. Cardiac responses elicited in active sleep were larger than those elicited in quite awake, even after prestimulus effects on responding were partialled out. Infants who were asleep throughout testing (group I) showed rapid behavioral and large HR response decrement. Infants whose state changed from active sleep to awake (group II), from quiet awake to asleep (group III), and from quiet awake to crying (group IV), showed significantly slower behavioral response decrement than those in group I, but behavioral response decrement was nevertheless evident in all groups. Cardiac response over trials also was examined in these 4 groups.

In 2 experiments, 3rd-grade boys learned a series of discriminations under reinforcement delay intervals of 0 or 10 sec. and under a condition of low or high amplitude of response. Relearning took place 1 day or 8 days following acquisition. Retention was facilitated by delay for all groups in both experiments. It was also facilitated by high amplitude of motor response, but not by amplitude of verbal response. There was no interaction between reinforcement delay and response amplitude. Amplitude of response varied inversely with learning efficiency. An interpretation of this unexpected finding was offered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)

An extraneous task introduced between response and reinforcement for delayed-reinforced S s and after reinforcement for immediately reinforced S s seriously impaired both learning and retention for the latter S s but had no effect on the former. A replication carried out by three new experimenters confirmed these results. The S s in both experiments were second and third grade boys.

Temporal and auditory classical conditioning of an autonomic response (pupillary reflex) and a somatic response (eyeblink) were attempted in 4 separate experiments with clinically normal human infants. Time as a conditional stimulus (CS) was effective for conditioning pupillary dilation and constriction, but sound as CS was ineffective. Conversely, sound was effective for conditioning eyeblinking, but time was not. These discrepancies in conditionability were related to (1) the parameters comprising the classical conditioning paradigms employed, and (2) the implications of infant learning for developmental neurophysiology.

Tactile, auditory and temporal classic conditionings of a somatic response (sucking) were attempted in three separate experiments with clinically normal human infants. Conditioning to tactile and auditory CSs was successful, but not to temporal CS. These results were discussed apropos of differential conditionability as a function of the source of nervous system innervation of the CR and in terms of the importance of considering the interaction of stimulus and response in infant conditioning.

The results of two studies indicated that infant vocalizations can be conditioned by using only one or two elements of the traditionally employed composite social reinforcer, consisting of auditory, tactile, and visual stimuli. It was also found that the components, both singly and in pairs, are of relatively equal effectiveness in increasing response rate.

The widespread use of the questionnaire and interview as measuring instruments in population research has been, for the large part, unaccompanied by evaluation of their reliability. More than 25,000 publications in the field of population were referenced in the Population Index during the 1960s, which gives an indication of the breadth of research in this growing field. Nevertheless, virtually none of these studies addressed the problem of the reliability of the data being used. This omission is a serious one. Without assurance that responses are reliable, a researcher can never be certain that he is measuring the variable he intends to measure. In other words, validity presupposes reliability. A recent study of fertility patterns in the United States by Ryder and Westoff (1971) includes reinterview data on 382 white, married, adult women. It thus represents one attempt to assess consistency, or stability, of knowledge, attitude, and practice responses over time. The present study adds to these much needed methodological data by presenting test-retest reliability results for teenagers in a metropolitan area in the United States who completed questionnaires focused on issues related to family formation and population. The goal of this study was to ascertain if and how reliability is differentially affected by characteristics of the questionnaire and of the respondent. Specifically, it asked whether reliability varies as a function of: (1) the content (personal history, family formation, population); (2) the psychological nature of the item (knowledge; attitudes, beliefs, and opinions; desires, expectations, and intentions); and (3) the characteristics of the respondent (sex; age [younger versus older teenagers]; race [white versus nonwhite]; religion [Catholic versus non-Catholic]).

A sample of elderly parents in the state of Florida was contrasted with a national sample of parents in their childbearing years with respect to the satisfactions and dissatisfactions of having children. For both groups, children were most commonly seen as satisfying the needs for love and companionship and fun and stimulation. The Older group was more likely than the younger to report that children fill economic-utility needs. The older group was also more likely to indicate that there were no disadvantages to having children, and they were less likely to specifically mention disadvantages such as restrictions on freedom or financial costs. This study found that elderly parents are actually more likely to be giving financial help to their children than receiving it, and that contact with children was frequent despite geographical barriers.

When fetal organs are developing, exposure to many drugs and other substances may produce behavioral, neurological, and structural changes. These agents are called teratogens when they produce physical changes and behavioral teratogens when they produce behavioral changes with or without accompanying physical changes. Figure 1 shows, for a rat fetus, the limited periods during embryogenesis when it is susceptible to physical deformity and the longer period, preceding and following birth, when the animal is vulnerable to central nervous system damage. In human beings, the period of vulnerability to central nervous system damage from exposure to drugs and chemicals lasts much longer. Even after birth, important areas of brain are growing and differentiating at a rapid rate and are still, therefore, especially vulnerable to damage. It has been estimated that the “growth spurt” in the cerebellum lasts for about 18 months, and that in the hippocampus, for about 4.5 years.

This study investigated biochemical substrates of the continuous stimulation effect, i.e. the developmental phenomenon whereby continuous stimulation depresses arousal level. Neonatal rats were injected intracisternally with 6-hydroxydopamine. Motility, heart rate, and brain amines were measured in theses animals, as well as in injected and noninjected control animals, at 14 and 28 days of age in an own-control design with and without continuous auditory stimulation. Brain norepinephrine was significantly and inversely related to the magnitude of the continuous stimulation effect and experimental-control differences increased with age. These results indicate that an intact catecholaminergic system is necessary for the mediation of increased arousal during stimulation.

The effectiveness of continuous stimulation in lowering arousal level, as indexed by state and heart rate, was studied in 30 uncircumcised males, 30 circumcised males, and 30 female subjects. The continuous-stimulation effect was shown to be directly related to auditory stimulus intensity. It is more complexly related to preexisting stress, operationally defined as subjects' circumcision status.

This study investigated stereotype temporal conditioning of pupillary dilation and constriction in infants. Stereotype conditioning of dilation was obtained, though it was less uniform over subjects than simple temporal conditioning of the same responses. Relevant speculative concepts concerning the physiological basis of discriminating time and ordinal position are presented.

Conditioning of the autonomically regulated pupillary reflex was studied in young human infants, Sound as a CS was not effective for conditioning the pupillary reflex. Both time and time plus sound were effective CSs for establishing both conditioned pupil dilation and constriction. The results indicate a capacity in young human infants for accurately perceiving the passage of short intervals of time.

Publisher Summary This chapter describes the work that is currently underway or has been recently completed in the Behavior Development Laboratory of the University of Denver. It covers studies of orienting and arousal in infants and studies conditioning to various types of stimuli. As superficially discrepant as studies of arousal, orienting, and conditioning may seem, they have the common aim of seeking to understand the human being's developing ability to cope with sensory stimulation. The conditioning studies, of course, yield information on this and other problems as well. Much of the research strategy represented here, including the aspect of diversification, stems from that used by Pavlov, who felt that the two principal ways of studying the functional development of sensory analyzers—which may be translated as “sensory modalities” without violating Pavlov's meaning—are first, via the study of the orienting reflex, a basic response to stimulation common to all sensory analyzers, and, second, by studying the ways in which sensory function reveals itself during the process of conditioning.

This study compared the relative effectiveness of four continuously presented auditory stimulus conditions in reducing arousal level in neonates and preschool children. The stimulus conditions were no sound, heartbeats, metronome beats, and lullabies. A low arousal level was defined as a pattern of low heart rate, low general motor activity, stable respiration rate, stable heart rate, minimal crying, and rapid onset of sleep. A comparison of the results produced by no sound vs. any sound confirmed the results previously found by Irwin and his students that prolonged auditory stimulation quiets infants. A comparison of heartbeat vs. any other condition contradicted the recent claims made by Salk that the effectiveness of heartbeat in quieting infants is unsurpassed by that of any other sound.

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Analysis of data from 340 second- and third-grade Ss indicated that stimulus perseveration (SP) errors are a significant factor in children's discrimination learning. In accord with hypotheses, such errors appeared more frequently with familiar than with unfamiliar material and appeared more frequently 8 days after acquisition than 1 day after acquisition. Contrary to hypothesis, the effects of reinforcement delay during learning on SP errors were not clearcut.