Increasing attendance at sport training sessions.

A lottery incentive system was shown to be effective in increasing attendance at athletic training sessions. 20 players on one team were awarded a playing card for each training session attended, with a cash prize being presented at the end of the week to the player accumulating the best poker hand. Attendance was shown to increase during intervention and decrease when it was withdrawn.

A descriptive notation system for contingency diagramming in behavior analysis.

We describe a notation system for diagramming behavioral contingencies. The system is descriptive. Stimulus functions are not represented with special symbols, such as S(R), S(D), or UCS, but are simply described in terms of the relation between behavior and stimulus change, and the resulting outcome. The system is atheoretical, self-explanatory, and easy to use. Our goal is to provide an approach to contingency diagramming for the student that represents directly the exact relations and outcomes involved in operant and respondent processes.

The effects of selective inattention upon the electrodermal orienting reflex: a test of information-processing theory.

Information-processing theories of the orienting reflex (OR) predict that disruptions of attention which impede the registration of a stimulus in memory should retard habituation of the OR. Studies examining effects of selective inattention upon rate of habituation of skin conductance responses (SCRs) to concurrently presented stimuli have yielded inconsistent results. We employed a dichotic vigilance task calling for selective attention to either male-voice or female-voice words. Comparisons between previously attended versus nonattended stimuli were subsequently conducted for habituation of SCR, as well as for a direct measure of recognition memory. Although there were unequivocal differences in long-term memory between attended and non-attended material, there was no clear evidence for corresponding differences in either initial magnitude or rate of habituation of SCR. These data, which replicated results from an earlier study, failed to demonstrate an effect of memory on the OR as predicted by information-processing theories.

Psychologic effects of cardiovascular conditioning: a controlled experiment.

Although there have been numerous studies documenting a relationship between physical fitness and psychologic functioning, few have employed the type of experimental design that would allow conclusions to be drawn regarding cause and effect. In the present study, college students were randomly assigned to a cardiovascular conditioning program or to a control program designed to give the appearance of physical training while minimizing cardiovascular benefits. Both groups were tested for cardiovascular fitness as well as on a number of self-rating scales before and after the 6-week program. The cardiovascular group demonstrated a significantly greater improvement in cardiovascular fitness than the control group and also tended to show a greater reduction in anxiety and greater increase in measures of general psychologic well-being.

Effects of physical activity on initial level and response magnitude: an experimental study of the LIV.

Two exercise and two relaxation conditions were used to manipulate subjects' overall level of physical activity. A digit-transformation-and-recall task was administered under each of these four conditions in order to elicit physiological responses. Measures of prestimulus level and response magnitude were taken for each of six dependent variables: skin conductance (SC), heart rate (HR), finger pulse volume (PV), and three respiration indices. It was hypothesized that as the subject's degree of activity increased the physiological variables would show ergotropic changes in prestimulus level together with decreasing magnitudes of response to the digit task. The results provided a reasonable degree of support for these predictions. Evidence for concomitant changes in prestimulus level and response magnitude was consistent with Wilder's Law of Intial Value (LIV). There were some cases, however, where response magnitude showed a predicted effect of treatment in the absence of a difference in prestimulus level; these findings could not be explained by the traditional LIV model.