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This is the final article in a three-part series about questionable ideas in child and adolescent psychotherapy. Topics in this installment relate to externalizing issues and daily routines and include [...]

This experiment investigated observers' attribution of ability based on a student's performance. 115 subjects viewed a graphical representation of one of four patterns of alleged performance on a series of concept-formation exercises: success in the first half and failure in the second half, failure in the first half and success in the second half, success in both halves, or failure in both halves. In contrast to the typical finding of a primacy effect in ability attribution, results showed a strong recency effect. Thus, the student's performance on the second half of the learning task was the major determinant of attribution of ability.

This study compared, within the context of a socially integrated preschool, the nonverbal emotional expressions of young children with autism to those of typical children. Measures were taken of happy, sad, angry, and neutral facial expressions, and of the environmental contexts in which these emotional displays occurred. Comparison groups were five children with autism and five typical children, matched for chronological age. The results indicated that children with autism were similar to typical children in the frequency of their emotional displays, with both groups spending the majority of time in a neutral stance. However, the two groups of youngsters displayed differing facial expressions in various situations; specifically, children with autism displayed happy, sad, and angry faces during incongruent contextual events. These findings have both diagnostic and educational implications.

This study tested a behavior-suppressing punishment system and how its activity may be altered by agents known to interrupt or enhance serotonergic (5-HT) transmission. Holtzman male albino rats were tested for shuttle box avoidance acquisition and intertrial responding either 1 or 8 h following daily injections of fenfluramine (FEN) or fluoxetine (FXT). When the drug-test interval was 1 h, a time when both drugs are presumably potentiating 5-HT activity, avoidance acquisition and intertrial responding were impaired. When testing occurred 8 h after drug treatment, a time when 5-HT levels are unaltered by FXT and are maximally reduced by FEN, these drugs had no effect on avoidance acquisition, but FEN produced an increase in intertrial responses whereas FXT did not. These results support the proposal of an inhibitory 5-HT system. Furthermore, these data demonstrate that FEN is capable of exerting a biphasic action on intertrial responding and suggest that the time interval between drug administration and behavioural testing is a crucial variable when investigating FEN.

The facial expressions of emotion and the circumstances under which the expressions occurred in a sample of the most popular children's television programs were investigated in this study. Fifteen-second randomly selected intervals from episodes of five television programs were analyzed for displays of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise. In addition, the contexts in which the emotions occurred were examined. Results indicated that particular emotional expressions occurred at significantly different frequencies and that there was an association between emotional displays and emotion-contexts. The high rate of emotional displays found in television shows has implications for the development of knowledge regarding emotional display rules in viewers.

A procedure for improving children's skill in decoding facial expressions of emotion was studied in this experiment. In the first phase of the study, thirty-six fifth and sixth grade children watched video segments showing facial expressions of stimulus persons experiencing happiness, sadness, or fear and tried to identify each stimulus person's emotion. Subjects assigned to the feedback condition were given the correct answer for each segment, and subjects assigned to the no feedback condition received no information. Results for the second phase of the experiment, in which subjects' decoding skills were assessed, showed that the feedback method was effective in improving general decoding abilities. Furthermore, differences between subjects in the feedback and no feedback conditions were affected by subjects' sex and the specific emotion being decoded.

Sixty-one male and female high school students observed male and female models either succeeding or failing on an anagram task. Results on measures of subjects' expectations for their own future performance on the task and estimates of their own ability on the task showed that male subjects were influenced by male models' performance but not female models' performance, while female subjects were not influenced by the performance of either male or female models.

The nature of nonverbal disclosure of deception was experimentally examined. Stimulus persons, who were led to be verbally truthful or deceptive, were 28 male and female urban Koreans in three age groups: first graders, seventh graders, and college-age students. They were secretly videotaped, and their nonverbal facial expressions were analyzed by adult Korean judges. Results showed that all stimulus persons, except the female seventh graders, were able to be successfully deceptive nonverbally. However, the nature of the successful deception varied according to the age and sex of the stimulus person. The female college students were the most successful at recreating a veridical response, while the first grade females and all the males appeared more pleased when being deceptive than when being truthful.

Gadolinium is used as a contrast media for magnetic resonance imaging and, experimentally, to block Kupffer cell phagocytosis. In this study, we utilize electron probe microanalysis to determine the subcellular localization of gadolinium chloride (GdCl3) administered to mice in a short-term toxicology study. Male CD-1 mice were administered 0.0, 2.5, or 8.0 mg/kg GdCl3iv for 14 consecutive weekdays. Liver-associated enzymes were significantly elevated in high-dose animals only and correlated histologically with multifocal, hepatocellular degeneration associated with a neutrophilic infiltrate. Morphological investigations were performed on high-dose animals. Hepatocytes and Kupffer cells had morphologic features of cellular injury consisting of swollen mitochondria and vesiculated profiles of endoplasmic reticulum. Hepatocytes, Kupffer cells, bile canaliculi, and neutrophils in the liver contained discrete aggregates of electron-dense granular material, as did pulmonary interstitial macrophages, splenic macrophages, and mesangial cells of the renal glomerulus. The intracellular granular material in the liver, lung, spleen, and kidney was confirmed as gadolinium by qualitative electron probe microanalysis. These results document both hepatic and extra-hepatic accumulation of gadolinium in cells of the mononuclear phagocytic system and highlight the importance of electron probe microanalysis in toxicologic assessment.

The extent of parent and teacher agreement on the assessment of developmentally delayed children's behavior was examined. Parents and teachers of 98 developmentally delayed children were asked to rate their child's abilities in areas of self-help skills, speech and language, and play skills, as well as indicate the presence or absence of 18 behavior problems. While significant levels of parent/teacher agreement were noted for 77% of the items assessed, the mean level of agreement was only 68.1%. This suggests that there was sufficient disagreement to cast suspicion upon the clinical utility of ratings by parents or teachers alone. Possible explanations for these findings are presented and implications regarding skill and behavioral assessment are discussed.

In a single‐session tutoring situation, a sixth‐grade tutor taught a concept‐formation task to a third‐grade tutee. Over the series of trials, performance of the tutee was controlled to create differential patterns of success and failure on the task: success‐success, failure‐failure, success‐failure, and failure‐success. Results showed that sequence of performance exerted a strong impact on the tutor's attributions of ability and affective responses concerning the tutee. The tutee's initial performance had greater impact on the tutor's reactions than later performance, indicating a strong primacy effect. Differential performance by the tutee did not affect the tutor's evaluation of his own teaching ability.

Rats were trained to discriminate 3 mg/kg fenfluramine (FEN) from saline using a milk-reinforced (FR 10 schedule) two-lever operant task. To assess the involvement of the serotonin (5-HT) system in elicitation of the FEN cue, 5-HT compounds were tested for their ability to substitute for or to antagonize the the discriminative stimulus produced by FEN. Following acquisition, the FEN cue was dose-dependent, had a rapid onset (10 min) and a long duration (12 h), and was stereospecific. The putative 5-HT receptor antagonists methysergide and cinanserin antagonized the FEN discriminative stimulus, while chlordiazepoxide, an indirect inhibitor of 5-HT turnover, did not. The FEN cue was also antagonized by the selective 5-HT reuptake inhibitor fluoxetine. Norfenfluramine, p-fluoroamphetamine, and p-chloroamphetamine, compounds structurally and pharmacologically similar to FEN, substituted for FEN, whereas fluoxetine cinanserin, methysergide, and chlordiazepoxide did not. The 5-HT precursor 5-hydroxytryptophan partially generalized to the FEN cue. It was further shown that the discriminative stimulus properties of FEN are not based on its anorectic action. These results suggest that the cue properties of FEN might be partially mediated through an interaction with the 5-HT system.

Rats were given chlordiazepoxide (CDP) before testing in the Ulrich and Azrin shock-induced aggression paradigm for 10 consecutive days. CDP significantly decreased shock-induced aggression but fighting rates did not increase over the course of testing with the drug. Thus any tolerance to the general behavioral depressant effect of the drug either did not occur, or the behavioral depression was not responsible for the reduction in aggression.

A group of male albino rats were subjected to the Maier paradigm (insoluble problem followed by a soluble problem) using the Lashley jumping stand. Forty-two animals which failed the soluble problem by adopting a position stereotype were then randomly assigned to eight drug groups in a 2×2 design. Animals were guided to the correct window on odd days but received no guidance on even days. Animals received either pilocarpine nitrate (5.0 mg/kg) or scopolamine hydrobromide (1.0 mg/kg) in one of three different sequences. These sequences included drug on both odd and even days (drug-drug), only on the odd day (drug-no drug), or only on the even day (no drug-drug). One other drug group received scopolamine methylbromide (1.0 mg/kg) in a drug-no drug sequence, while the control group received saline on both days.

This experiment investigated the possibility that chlordiazepoxide (CDP) has unique properties that account for state dependent learning, and prevention of conflict-induced behavior fixations.

A group of rats that received daily doses of chlordiazepoxide before testing on a discrimination problem on a Lashley jumping apparatus persisted longer in prelearning preferences, had higher learning scores, and produced more learning failures than a no-drug group. Since 93% of the no-drug group solved the problem, the fear engendered by responding to the incorrect (locked) window was not great enough to produce conflict and fixations, but since the performance of the chlordiazepoxide treated animals was inferior, it is suggested that the drug attenuated the incentive value of the negative reinforcement of incorrect responses.

Chlordiazepoxide (Librium) was found to prevent conflict induced behavior fixations during a discrimination problem if administered during the preceding conflict stage. A replication of the experiment with a chemical congener, diazepam, did not show similar effects. Since the difference in results could have been due to differences in dose, comparisons were made between different dosages of these two drugs utilizing an assay technique that measured the effect of the drugs on response latency. Response latency was presumed to be dependent upon the complex of drives existing in the situation. On the basis of the comparative tests, a dosage of diazepam was found that also prevented behavior fixations. It is proposed that these drugs of the benzodiazepine class exert their effects by reducing an animal's involvement with negative incentives.

Spontaneous locomotor activity was investigated in rats treated with chlordiazepoxide (CDP) or CL 218,872, a synthetic nonbenzodiazepine ligand for benzodiazepine receptors. Acute administration of CDP (2.5 mg/kg) increased activity, whereas a higher dose (10 mg/kg) decreased activity. Acute injection of CL 218,872 (2.5–10 mg/kg) produced a significant dose-dependent suppression of locomotor activity, a finding at variance with a previous report that anxiolytic doses of CL 218,872 are devoid of depressant side effects. Chronic pretreatment with CDP or CL 218,872 (10 mg/kg daily for 6 days) produced a tolerance to the sedative effect of CDP (10 mg/kg), but not to the activity suppressant action of CL 218,872 (10 mg/kg).

• We studied two cases of subarachnoid hemorrhage that occurred within several minutes of "snorting" cocaine. In one case the bleeding was from an anterior communicating artery aneurysm, and in the other case from an arteriovenous malformation in the temporoparietal region. To our knowledge, this hazard of cocaine abuse has not been previously reported.