Clinical and statistical issues related to predicting therapeutic outcome.

Attempted to determine whether the therapeutic outcome of an alcoholism treatment program could be predicted (N = 81). Data were analyzed both by a mathematically oriented linear regression approach and by a clinically oriented retrospective parametric approach. When the two types of analyses were applied to the same data base each analysis identified different predictors of therapeutic outcome. This created an apparent dilemma as to how prediction of therapeutic outcome ought to be done. It was suggested that the correlational regression approach be used to determine what to expect from therapy and the parametric clinical approach be used to explain why therapy succeeded or failed.

Suppression of mouse killing and apomorphine-induced social aggression in rats by local anesthesia of the mystacial vibrissae.

Local anesthesia of the facial epidermis can effect a substantial decrease in shock-elicited fighting of paired rats. The present experiments constitute methodological extensions to mouse killing and spontaneous drug-induced social aggression. In the first experiment, known mouse-killing rats were given bilateral lidocaine or placebo injections administered under ether anesthesia. Attack and kill latencies were significantly longer under lidocaine than under placebo; all subjects killed under placebo, whereas a third of all subjects failed to kill on the initial lidocaine test. On subsequent lidocaine testing, latencies decreased and nonkilling rats killed. In a second experiment intense apomorphine-induced conspecific fighting of rats preselected for aggressiveness was markedly reduced following lidocaine anesthesia. The comparative results of both experiments are interpreted in reference to theoretical assertions regarding the import of sensory information in stimulus-bound attack and the typology of central aggression systems.