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Technological Consequences As from all scientific fields erectile dysfunction fact sheet purchase levitra soft 20 mg with visa, a number of practical applications flow from cognitive psychophysiology newest erectile dysfunction drugs buy cheap levitra soft on-line, perhaps the most important being principles for self-regulation erectile dysfunction protocol book review levitra soft 20 mg low price. As one continuously meets the stresses of life, there often eventuates some bodily malfunction. The primitive reaction of the body to stress is characterized as the startle reflex, a major component of which is the tensing of the skeletal musculature for fight or flight. Chronic states of excess tension throughout the skeletal musculature can result in two classes of bodily malfunctions: (1) psychiatric difficulties such as anxiety states, phobias, and depression; and (2) psychosomatic maladies such as ulcers, headaches, spastic colon, and elevated blood pressure. The original and apparently most effective method for alleviating these tension maladies is progressive relaxation, developed by Edmund Jacobson from 1908 on. In progressive relaxation one relaxes the skeletal muscle system, which in turn produces a state of tranquility throughout the central and autonomic nervous systems. Jacobson has shown that habitual relaxation can thereby alleviate many psychiatric and psychosomatic maladies such as those mentioned previously. However, perhaps the prophylactic application of progressive relaxation has even greater beneficial consequences. For this purpose Jacobson has advocated that tension control be universally taught to children while in the primary grades. Another prominent method aimed at the development of self-regulation is biofeedback, in which internal processes are transduced to make them publicly observable. The strategy is to monitor and thus control such internal events as brain waves, muscle signals, and electrodermal responses by visually observing them as on a cathode ray oscilloscope or by hearing them through an external speaker. Biofeedback holds considerable promise for helping us to better understand our internal world; much research is currently in progress in this important area. There are, however, difficulties in its clinical application, such as the dependency of the learner on a biofeedback signal. Another application has been in the understanding of reading and of the teaching of silent reading. It is a common myth that subvocalization-or, more technically, covert speech behavior-retards reading proficiency. Popular speed-reading courses, for instance, seek to increase reading rate by short-circuiting the speech musculature. Some teachers have attempted to prevent subvocalization by taping lips or filling the mouths of pupils with marbles, by wrapping the tongue around a pencil, and so forth. However, such efforts to inhibit subvocalization are futile, for the speech musculature still responds during silent reading even when so inhibited. The empirical generalization is that covert speech behavior occurs in all silent readers and is necessary for comprehending what is being read. Actually, as the reading rate becomes faster, the amount of covert speech behavior does not decrease, but increases. However, if speech muscles are well relaxed during reading through progressive relaxation, the reader fails to understand the meaning of the text. Actually, subvocalization becomes naturally reduced over time, although it still persists in the adult at a very reduced level. Lie detection, or more precisely the detection of deception, is a widespread application for espionage purposes, for the identification of criminals, and even as a criterion for employment. The polygraph, which relies heavily on cardiovascular measures, is the most widely used instrument for these purposes. Unfortunately the traditional polygraph, like newer variations of lie detectors such as the psychological stress evaluator and the voice stress analyzer, does not have sufficient validity to justify its standard use. However, techniques and principles are available within the field of cognitive psychophysiology to develop successful deception detection systems, and these systems will undoubtedly be made. The answer to the first question distinguishes cognitive theories from other theories of emotion. Theorists of all persuasions usually agree that anger, fear, or both are aroused when a situation is interpreted as annoying and/or dangerous. Many insist that such arousal is programmed into the nervous system during evolutionary prehistory and serves biological survival.
Deviant sexual fantasies become sadistic in order to erectile dysfunction treatment san francisco generic levitra soft 20 mg free shipping maintain a high level of sexual arousal impotence drugs buy levitra soft master card. Adult sexually sadistic criminals are introverted impotence vacuum pump generic 20mg levitra soft with amex, shy, and socially inept and isolated. They rarely show violence, but they have an interest in guns and detective magazines (Brittain, 1970). Finally, they have a rich fantasy life and are engaged in a diversity of paraphilic behaviors (Gratzer & Bradford, 1995). Regarding their personality, sexually sadistic criminals are usually described as psychopathic and narcissistic (Dietz et al. Such a diagnosis is congruent with their lack of empathy during their crimes and with their view of themselves as supercriminals. However, their usual way of relating to others is instead characterized by avoidant. The criminal offences of sexual sadists are well planned and organized (Ressler et al. After the crime, sexual sadists behave normally until their next offense (Podolsky, 1965). Finally, they may consider that they are superior to the police because they avoid detection. In fact, as suggested by Brittain (1970), a sexual sadist "may feel himself to be inferior, except as regard to his offence" (p. Classifying sexual offenders: the development and corroboration of taxonomic models. Commonly reported satanic symbols (Pulling, 1989) include the pentagram, inverted pentagram, hexagram (Star of David), cross of Nero (peace symbol or broken cross), swastika, anarchy symbol, thaumaturgic triangle, udjat (all-seeing eye), scarab, lightning bolts, the number 666, ankh, inverted cross, black mass indicator, an emblem of Baphomet, the symbol of the Church of Satan, and the cross of confusion. In 1998, the potential legal suits against mental health professionals were estimated to be in the thousands (Brown, Scheflin, & Hammond, 1998). The basic controversy is over whether such cults exist, and if they do exist, how they are organized and how they conspire to abuse people (Sakheim & Devine, 1992). The increased production of satanic word associations was not found to be associated with high hospital or media exposure. A number of states amended their statutes of limitations to grant delayed discovery, wherein adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse could sue their reported abusers (Crnich & Crnich, 1992). Five states (Louisiana, Missouri, Texas, Idaho, and Illinois) have passed laws addressing the ritual abuse of children (Simandl, 1997). Simandl (1997) saw these teens as having an undue fascination with death, torture, and suicide; alienation from family and religion; drastic change in grades; and a "compulsive interest in occult material, fantasy role games, and films and videos (all with themes of death, torture, and suicide)" (pp. Adult Survivors of Childhood Ritual Abuse Young, Sachs, Braun, and Watkins (1991) reported a study of 37 adult patients with dissociative disorder who reported ritual abuse as children. Ritual Abuse of Children Snow and Sorensen (1990) conducted a study of ritualistic child abuse in five separate neighborhood settings. They discovered that in four out of five neighborhoods, three distinct components of the sexual abuse appeared: incest, juvenile perpetration, and the adult ritual sex ring. Finkelhor and Williams (1988) conducted a 3-year study of sexual abuse in day care centers in America and noted that 13% of the cases involved ritualistic abuse. Kelly (1989) found that the ritualistically abused children experienced significantly more types of sexual abuse, severe physical abuse, and threats of being watched by Satan. Adult Therapeutic Considerations Clinical presentations are often dissociative (Leavitt, 1994) and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms, in addition to "cult-related phenomena, bizarre self-abuse, and unremitting eating, sleep, and anxiety disorders" (Young & Young, 1997, p. Treatment would thus involve principles and techniques that have been found to be effective with posttraumatic stress disorder and dissociative disorders (Kluft, 1985; Putnam, 1989, 1997; Silberg, 1996; van der Kolk, 1987; van der Kolk, McFarlane, & Weisaeth, 1996; Whitfield, 1995). Treatment typically involves the three stages of safetystability, trauma work, and integration (Herman, 1992; Rhoades, 1995a), while taking precautions to help prevent false memory allegations (Rhoades, 1995a, 1995b, 1995c). Treatment methods include abreaction; hypnosis; expressive therapies such as journaling, art, and sand tray; medication; hospitalization, including voluntary restraints (Young, 1992; van der Kolk, 1987; van der Kolk, McFarlane, & Weisaeth, 1996) and 12-step groups as an adjunct to therapy (Shaffer & Cozolino, 1992). Child Therapeutic Issues Gould (1992) noted that the three factors of drugs, hypnosis, and intolerable abuse leading to dissociation, combined with the ritualistic abuse of children, before the age of 6 often create "amnesic barriers," making spontaneous disclosure of abuse unlikely. Gould (1992) developed a twelve-category checklist for signs and symptoms of ritualistic abuse in children. Therapy involved play therapy with the gradual disclosure of the abuse to the therapist and nonabusive parents (Gould, 1992). The therapist was to be active in the treatment in structuring the therapeutic activities and providing motivation to the child to address issues that otherwise the child may avoid, including possible multiplicity and mindcontrol programs (Gould & Cozolino, 1992).
Regardless of the rapidity of change erectile dysfunction family doctor buy levitra soft 20 mg low price, however erectile dysfunction garlic generic levitra soft 20 mg with amex, these changes generally occur in a fixed sequence impotence statistics buy 20mg levitra soft fast delivery. The first stage of brain development is cell migration, during which nerve cells are formed in the inner or ventricular lining of the brain. After formation they migrate from the inner lining through the layers that already exist, to eventually form a new outer layer. This means that structures such as the cortex actually mature from the inner to the outer surfaces. During the cell migration stage, axonal growth manifests itself, as axons begin to sprout from the migrating cells. Axons are the elongated neural process that carries information away from the cell body to be received by other cells down the line. Each axon has a specific target that it must reach if the neuron is to be functional. This growth does not begin until after the cell reaches its final location after migration. At some stages of dendritic growth there appears to be an overabundance of dendritic branches. Some of these excess or unused branches are eventually lost in a process referred to as "pruning," which is actually a loss of neural material. Synapses begins to form about 2 months before birth and grow rapidly for several months. One speculation is that only the regularly used synapses survive, with unused synapses disappearing through a process sometimes referred to as "shedding. There is even some suggestion that brain growth occurs at irregular intervals, called "growth spurts" (Banich, 1997). Such spurts occur at around 3 to 18 months and at 2 to 4, 6 to 8, 10 to 12, and 14 to 16 years of age. Except for the first (rather long) spurt, during which brain weight increases by about 30%, each subsequent growth spurt increases brain mass by 5 to 10%. It is tempting to try to correlate these growth spurts with overt changes in development. An important factor in the later stages of neuropsychological development is cell loss. For instance, the area of the occipital cortex that receives projections from the fovea of the eye contains about 46 million neurons per gram of tissue in a 20-year-old. In an 80-year-old, however, the neuronal density is reduced by nearly one half, to only 24 million neurons per gram of tissue. This cell loss is believed to account for some of the loss of visual acuity in older individuals (Coren, Ward, & Enns, 1999). Similar losses in other areas of the brain might also be expected to affect normal functioning. Exposure to a stimulus rich environment seems to increase brain size, especially in the neocortex. Such enriched stimulus exposure seems to increase the number of dendrites and synapses, especially if the enriched experience occurs early in life. Furthermore, animals with larger brains as a result of more varied experience seem to perform better on a number of behavioral tasks, including those involving memory and learning. In contrast, animals reared from birth with restricted sensory inputs, such as no light to the eyes, possess a reduced number of functioning cells and more abnormal neurons in the appropriate sections of the cortex. Environmental effects in the form of traumas that affect the developing fetus-such as toxic agents, mechanical injury, chemical imbalances, a stressful birth, or a difficult pregnancy-can cause both subtle and dramatic disturbances in neural development. In some cases, changes in function ("soft signs") are used to determine the likelihood that there is some form of damage or disruption in neurological development that cannot specifically be seen in physiological examinations, but must be inferred from behavioral changes. Generally speaking, neuropsychological development follows a fixed sequence of stages with an initial developmental predisposition, period of environmental vulnerability, period of plasticity, and finally fixed functional properties.
These data clearly suggest that parenting techniques in stepparent families are not necessarily inferior to erectile dysfunction herbal medications generic 20 mg levitra soft mastercard those in intact families erectile dysfunction shakes menu cheap 20mg levitra soft with amex. There are virtually no data that compare stepfather or stepmother families with divorced-mother or father-custody families erectile dysfunction oral treatment cheap levitra soft 20 mg overnight delivery. Mothers with custody seem to have a particularly difficult time with sons, and some evidence suggests that fathers with custody may be more competent in rearing sons than daughters. Pavlov (1927) and his associates first demonstrated this phenomenon in laboratory experiments with dogs. After experiencing a succession of paired stimuli, such as a tone with food, the dog eventually comes to salivate reliably to the tone. If a test phase is instituted following this training so that the dog experiences tones varying in similarity to the original tone but without the food, its responding to the new stimuli declines as the test stimuli became more dissimilar to the training stimulus. This outcome is referred to as stimulus generalization, and this gradient of responding reflects the extent to which the training stimulus controls responding. A flat gradient implies that the original stimulus exercises little control over the response; in other words, there is complete generalization. In contrast, a steep gradient suggests little or no generalization; responding is confined largely to the training stimulus. Although the demonstration of generalization gradients appears straightforward, their measurement, the variables that affect them, and their role in the learning process are complex. Stimulus similarity is usually measured with reference to some physical dimension of the stimulus such as wavelength, size, or intensity, although psychophysical units are used occasionally. The number of responses made to each test stimulus results in an absolute generalization gradient. Absolute gradients can be transformed into relative gradients by expressing responses to a test stimulus as a proportion of the total number of responses made to all stimuli during the test phase or to responses made previously to the training stimulus. Relative gradients correct for conditions in which wide variation in responding exists among subjects. Which type of gradient to use depends on whether the scale corrects for floor or ceiling effects, remains unchanged when a manipulated variable has no effect on the gradient, or makes the results consistent with other experiments. A disadvantage with this procedure was that limited responding occurred to test stimuli because each test trial was also an extinction trial. To offset extinction effects, researchers began reinforcing training stimuli intermittently; however, it was soon apparent that reinforcement schedules directly affected the generalization gradients. Schedules influence the extent to which incidental contextual cues present during the training and test phases affect responding. For example, when the average time interval between reinforcements is lengthened, responding to test stimuli increases, which results in flatter gradients (Haber & Kalish, 1963; Hearst, Koresko, & Poppen, 1964). Presumably, response-produced stimuli that occur during the interval between reinforcements provide additional information as to when the reinforcement will occur, and this stimulation is still present during the generalization test phase (Thomas & Switalski, 1966). As a general rule, the more experience with the training stimulus prior to generalization testing, the less generalization is observed. In effect, more training results in a steeper gradient (Hearst & Koresko, 1968; Razran, 1971). An exception occurs when external stimulation is uniform and proprioceptive cues control responding. Under this condition the gradient is flat regardless of the training received on the original stimulus (Margoluis, 1955; Walker & Branch, 1998). This counterintuitive notion predicts that performance improves with higher levels of motivation, implying higher and steeper absolute gradients with increasing motivation. If the discrimination between training and test stimuli is easy, high levels of motivation produce steep slopes. However, when the stimuli are difficult to discriminate, higher levels of motivation result in flatter gradients (Kalish & Haber, 1965). Excitatory gradients are generated by a decline in responding as test stimuli become more dissimilar to the training stimulus. In contrast, stimuli predicting the absence of reinforcement control the tendency not to respond, and this control can be measured by an increase in responding as the similarity between the original inhibitory stimulus and the test stimuli decreases (Honig, Boneau, Burstein, & Pennypacker, 1963; Jenkins & Harrison, 1962; Karpicke & Hearst, 1975). It not only facilitates survival- behavior resulting in finding food, securing a mate, or escaping a predator may generalize to new but similar situations-but it is also viewed as a process that underlies more complex learning phenomena (Hull, 1943; Spence, 1936). Conditioning-extinction theory is a major representative of this approach (Hull, 1943, 1952; Spence, 1956). The theory assumes that excitation (a tendency to respond) develops to a stimulus paired with reinforcement and that the excitation generalizes to other similar stimuli.
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