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Effects of learned helplessness training on instrumental heart rate control in humans
LEARNING
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Effects of Learned Helplessness Training on Instrumental Heart Rate Control in Humans ANITA D. MILLER AND ROGERM. TARPY Bucknell University In Experiment 1, subjects who received feedback contingent on short interbeat intervals (relative to a baseline period) learned to accelerate their heart rates, but subjects who received noncontingent feedback did not. In Experiment 2, subjects who were exposed to noncontingent aversive noises later showed significant performance deficits on both an instrumental and a cognitive task. Attributional style predicted helplessness deficits on the cognitive but not the instrumental task. Experiment 3 demonstrated that experimentally induced helplessness interferes with biofeedback learning. Attributional style did not predict the occurrence of helplessness deficits in this context. Results are discussed in terms of the nature of biofeedback training and the range of behaviors that learned helplessness training affects. Q 1991 Academic Press, Inc.
In the original work on the learned helplessness phenomenon, dogs who had been subjected to uncontrollable shocks were later unable to learn a simple escape reaction compared to naive dogs or to subjects who had previously been able to control shock (Overmier & Seligman, 1967; Seligman & Maier, 1967). The helplessness interpretation of such deficits argued that when organisms are exposed to noncontingent aversive outcomes, they come to expect that such uncontrollability will prevail in the future; as a result of such beliefs, they later display cognitive, motivational, and emotional deficits. The debilitating consequences of uncontrollable aversive stimuli have been reported in a number of species, including cats, fish, rats, and humans (see Maier & Seligman, 1976). In a representative study of helplessness in humans (Hiroto, 1974), a group of volunteers received a task in which These experiments were part of an Honors Thesis conducted by Anita Miller in partial fulfillment of the BA degree at Bucknell University. Ms. Miller is now at the Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235. The authors thank Drs. Jean E. Roberts and Kelly G. Shaver for their helpful comments. Reprints may be obtained from Roger M. Tarpy, Department of Psychology, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA 17837. 388 0023-9690/91 $3.00 Copyright 0 1991 by Academic Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
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button-pressing terminated bursts of an aversive noise. A second group received exactly the same number and duration of aversive noises, but they could not control them. A third group received no pretreatment. In the second phase of the study, all subjects were tested on a hand shuttlebox in which noise termination was now possible. The results were strikingly similar to those obtained with dogs: The group that received prior uncontrollable noise failed to learn the second task whereas the other two groups readily learned to escape the noise. The helplessness phenomenon is not limited to instrumental escape/ avoidance tasks. Hiroto and Seligman (1975), for instance, showed that a group given four insoluble discrimination problems was worse at solving anagrams than was a control group or a group that had been given soluble problems, They also demonstrated cross-modal deficits. Subjects pretreated with insoluble cognitive problems were debilitated at instrumental escape, and a group pretreated with inescapable noise was later debilitated at solving anagrams. Despite the success of these and other early studies in showing helplessness effects in humans, the picture is not entirely consistent. Some investigators, for example, have suggested that helplessness training may cause the opposite outcome- motivational arousal (reactance) and a corresponding increase in motivated behavior (see Roth & Bootzin, 1974; Wortman & Brehm, 1975). A good example is a study by Carlson and Feld (1981) on the effects of helplessness training on biofeedback control. Those authors told their subjects that the frequency of a tone would be contingent on blood vessel diameter and that they should try to reduce the pitch of the tone as much as possible. Although the feedback (i.e., tone frequency) during this initial phase was false for all groups, some subjects heard tones that systematically declined in pitch and, in addition, were told that they had succeeded on the task. Other subjects, however, received tones that varied randomly in pitch and were told that they had failed on the biofeedback task. A third group of subjects was told merely to listen to a tone that varied in frequency; they were given no further information concerning their performance. Following this pretreatment phase, all subjects were given the opportunity to relax their forehead muscles; here the contingent feedback was accurate-the greater the muscle relaxation, the greater the decrease in tone frequency. The results of the experiment were surprising from the point of view of learned helplessness theory. The “failure” group performed the biofeedback test at a higher level than did the combined “success” and control groups. In other words, believing that they had failed initially, these putative helplessness subjects actually showed improved performance later on. Because no other experiment to our knowledge has considered the
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effects of helplessness training on biofeedback control, we are uncertain about whether to view the results of the Carlson and Feld experiment as being inconsistent with the original helplessness theory, or as establishing a boundary line that differentiates between behaviors that are debilitated by experience with uncontrollable events (helplessness) versus those that are aroused by such events (reactance). Accordingly, the present set of experiments employed a more conventional design than that used by Carlson and Feld to determine whether the more usual form of helplessness training produces positive or negative transfer to a later biofeedback task. We addressed a second important issue, namely whether attributional style would predict the effects of helplessness training on biofeedback control. As noted above, the original learned helplessness theory was questioned by Brehm and his colleagues (see Wortman & Brehm, 1975) in light of reactance theory and also by those who had attempted to use the concept of helplessness to explain human depression (see Peterson & Seligman, 1984). The result was a reformulated theory of learned helplessness (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978). According to the reformulated model, when humans experience aversive events, they often attribute the outcome to some particular causal agent. These causal explanations then, not merely the uncontrollable events per se, are said to predict the expectations of helplessness, and, in turn, deficits in later behavior. The relationship between attributional style and helplessness-induced learning deficits was examined by Alloy, Peterson, Abramson, and Seligman (1984). They first asked college students to complete the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ; see Peterson, Semmel, von Baeyer, Abramson, Metalsky, & Seligman, 1982). A week later, subjects whose attributional style for negative outcomes was “global” and subjects whose style was “specific” were divided into three treatment groups. One group received escapable bursts of aversive noise; a second received inescapable bursts of the same noise. A third group received no noise. Finally, subjects were tested with one of two tasks-an instrumental noise escape task that was similar to pretreatment or a cognitive task (a series of anagrams) that was dissimilar to pretreatment. The results showed that subjects who had been exposed to the uncontrollable noise performed worse than the subjects in the other two groups. These deficits, however, were affected by the subjects’ attributional stylesubjects who had a “global” attributional style for negative outcomes exhibited deficits on both the instrumental and the cognitive tasks, whereas subjects who had a “specific” attributional style demonstrated learning deficits only on the instrumental task (the task that was similar to pretreatment). The main question that this work raises in the present context is whether
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attributional style as measured by the ASQ would also predict performance on a biofeedback task following uncontrollable aversive stimulation. Carlson and Feld did not use the ASQ, and although they claimed to have taken the subjects’ attributions into account, there are reasons to doubt whether their study provides an adequate test of the relationship between attributional style and biofeedback performance. First, the direction of the relationship in Carlson and Feld’s study was the reverse of what one would expect based on the reformulated helplessness modelthe “failure” subjects actually performed better on the biofeedback test than the “success” subjects. Second, Carson and Feld induced particular causal attributions as a means of evoking a specific form of behavior on the test, rather than following the usual procedure of measuring attributional style as a general and habitual covariate of the subjects’ performance. Finally, Carlson and Feld found no group differences following pretreatment on Raven’s (1960) Progressive Matrices task, and therefore concluded that “the effects of the failure pretraining upon expectancies and performance in this study were situation-specific and unrelated to generalized expectancies concerning control over outcomes of behavior” (Carlson & Feld, 1981, p. 88). Thus the negative situation-specific beliefs in the “failure” group must not have reflected habitual attributional styles or else a performance deficit would have occurred on the biofeedback task and a debilitating effect would have been shown on the Progressive Matrices test. Given these discrepancies, our secondary purpose was to reexamine the relationship between attributional style and biofeedback using a more conventional approach than the one used by Carlson and Feld, namely correlating scores on the ASQ with later test performance. EXPERIMENT
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Before addressing any of our objectives, however, we believed that two control experiments were appropriate. In Experiment 1, our purpose was merely to demonstrate the biofeedback phenomenon. Although control of heart rate has been shown by many investigators using a range of methodologies (Miller, 1978) we felt it was important to demonstrate strong levels of visceral control in our laboratory. We predicted that Experimental subjects who were given feedback contingent upon a higherthan-baseline heart rate would show a sustained elevation in rate whereas Control subjects who were given noncontingent feedback would not. Method Subjects. Sixteen undergraduate volunteers from Bucknell University participated in this experiment. Subjects were alternately assigned to either the Experimental or the Control group. Apparatus. On a table in the subject room was a 20.5 (high) x 40.5 (wide) x 20.5 cm ( deep) box and a Realistic Speaker, Model 40-1996B.
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Four jewel lights were spaced 5.5 cm apart on the front of the box. Electrodes were securely strapped on each forearm of the subject; a third (ground) electrode was placed on the lower left leg. Heart rate was monitored with a Phipps & Bird cardiotachometer (Model 7078-020). A 68.0db white noise marked the onset and termination of the experimental trials. The noise was produced by a Marietta white noise generator (Model 24-21-B) and amplified by a Kenwood Stereo Receiver (Model KRA5010). Procedure. Our procedure was based, in part, on a study by Obrist, Galosy, Lawler, Gaebelein, Howard, and Shanks (1975). The subjects were told only that the light was contingent upon their responses. Specifically, each subject first read the following instructions as the experimenter read them aloud: You are about to participate in a basic biofeedback experiment. The feedback light on the panel before you is contingent upon your responses, and your task is to team to keep the feedback light on as much as possible during the experimental trials. After a lo-minute rest period, you will receive 32 l-minute trials (2 practice trials and 30 experimental trials), the onset and termination of which will be signaled by the onset and termination of a white noise. As you participate in this experiment, please note that if you move around a great deal, the electrodes will not function properly. For this reason, do not move or tense your arms and hands. Focus your attention on the light and learn to control it during the 30 experimental trials.
In order to establish a steady heart rate reading from the cardiotachometer, subjects were given a lo-minute warm-up period; no feedback was given during this initial phase. Each subject was then given 32 1-min trials marked by the onset and termination of a white noise. Trials were separated by an intertrial interval (ITI) that lasted 30 to 45 s. During the first two trials, no feedback was given; these trials served to establish a baseline. During the last 30 trials, the Experimental subjects received feedback that was contingent upon heart rate changes. Specifically, if the interbeat interval (IBI) of a subject decreased relative to the average IBI during baseline, the right-most panel light was illuminated. The light remained on as long as the just-recorded IBI was shorter than the baseline mean IBI. Each Control subject was yoked to the prior Experimental subject, meaning that the light pattern from the Experimental subject was replicated for the Control subject. These latter subjects therefore received feedback that was not contingent upon their heart rate changes. Results Each subject’s data were expressed as the median heart rate for blocks of five trials, and then converted to percentage of baseline values. Figure 1 shows the group mean percentage of baseline heart rate for each of the
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FIG. 1. Mean percentage of heart rate baseline as a function of six blocks of five biofeedback trials for the contingent (Experimental) and noncontingent (Control) groups in Experiment 1.
six five-trial blocks for the Experimental and Control groups. A 2 (Groups) x 6 (Blocks of Trials) analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to evaluate the overall differences. Although this analysis did not yield significant main effects for Groups (F = 3.63; df = 1,14; p > .OS) or Blocks of Trials (F = 0.42; df = 5,70; p > .05), a highly significant interaction between these factors was found (F = 6.89; u” = 5,70; p < .OOl). Discussion The data from Experiment 1 show quite clearly that Experimental subjects who were given feedback contingent on shorter-than-baseline IBI durations increased their heart rate to an average of 6.75 percent above baseline. Control subjects, on the other hand, who received noncontingent feedback did not; their heart rates actually decreased to an average of 7.50 percent below baseline. Overall then, heart rate increases were reliably acquired with contingent feedback in the Experimental group. All subjects received the same instructions and yet group differences in performance were found. The plausible conclusion is that the differences were the result of feedback being response contingent for one group but not for the other. It is interesting to note, however, that such a finding has not always been obtained. Some studies on biofeedback (e.g., see Schober & Lacroix, 1986) have shown that the contingency factor is relatively unimportant compared to the effect of task instructions.
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EXPERIMENT 2 Like Experiment 1, the second experiment was also a control study. Its primary purpose was to demonstrate the learned helplessness phenomenon in our laboratory using conventional procedures. Helplessness was induced using the triadic design as described by Hiroto and Seligman (1975). According to the original learned helplessness model, subjects who receive inescapable aversive noise during initial treatment should show helplessness deficits; that is, they should perform more poorly on both a cognitive (anagram) and an instrumental (noise escape) task than either a group that receives escapable noise or a group that has no special expectations regarding the escapability of the noise. In addition to experimentally inducing helplessness, attributional style was measured by the ASQ as a possible predictor on each task. According to the reformulated model of learned helplessness, attributional style should predict who will experience helplessness in the face of uncontrollable negative events. Method Subjects. Twenty-four undergraduate students from the introductory course at Bucknell University participated in this experiment. They were assigned, in groups of three, to the Experimental, Yoked Experimental (Helplessness), or Control group, respectively. Apparatus. An aversive (94.2 db) white noise was generated using the same equipment as in Experiment 1. The noise was presented to the subject through Koss earphones (Model 4AAA plus). Based on a pilot study, the noise was judged to be “moderately” to “very” aversive. In addition to the testing box described earlier, there were four springloaded buttons housed in a 16.0 x 13.5~cm base; the buttons were numbered 1 through 4. A small sign reading “Successful Noise Termination” was placed on the box above the left panel light and a sign reading “Failure to Terminate Noise” was placed above the right light. As in the experiment by Hiroto and Seligman (1975), anagrams were used as the cognitive test of helplessness. Here, the 20 five-letter anagrams were taken from a list published by Tresselt and Mayzner (1966). They were presented on an Apple IIe computer which measured the time taken to solve the anagram and the number of attempts made before finding the correct solution. Finally, the ASQ was used to measure attributional style. Briefly, this questionnaire presents six positive events (e.g. “You become very rich”) and six negative events (e.g. “You go out on a date and it goes poorly”). Subjects are asked to imagine that the event had happened to them and then to indicate a single major cause for each event, rating each on a 7point scale in accord with its perceived internality, stability, and globality.
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Procedure After completing the ASQ, subjects were given escapable or inescapable noise or the control condition followed by the cognitive and instrumental tests. Due to the unpleasantness of the aversive noise, subjects were first given a brief sample of the noise and the option of not participating in the experiment. No subject ever left after hearing a sample of the noise. Upon entering the subject room, the Experimental and the Helplessness groups were asked to read the following instructions as the experimenter read them aloud: You will hear a noise from time to time. When the noise comes on, you can stop it by pressing a specific 4-button sequence. You will have 45. trials to try to tind the appropriate sequence, and you may try as many sequences as possible during each of the 45 trials. There are 2 lights on the panel before you. These lights will tell you how the noise on each of the 45 trials was controlled. If you yourself do stop the noise, then the left light marked ‘Successful Noise Termination” will momentarily flash on after each time you stop the noise. If you do not stop the noise, then the right light marked “Failure to Terminate Noise” will flash when it stops automatically. Keep in mind, when the left light flashes on, this means that you have stopped the noise; but if the right light flashes, this means that you did not stop the noise but that it stopped automatically. Please do not take the earphones off or tamper with the apparatus in any way. Again, your goal is to discover the specific 4-button sequence so that you can turn the noise off as quickly as possible.
The Control
subjects were given the following
instructions:
During the first part of this experiment, a loud noise will come on from time to time. Please sit and listen to it.
The pretreatment consisted of 45 trials with the unsignaled noise lasting a maximum of 5 s (the IT1 ranged from 5 to 10 s). Triads of Experimental, Helplessness, and Control subjects received identical durations of noise for the 45 trials. In the Experimental condition, a subject could terminate the noise by pressing a specific four-button sequence; the randomly generated sequence was different for each subject. If the subject did not press the correct sequence by the end of five seconds, the right light, marked “Failure to Terminate Noise,” momentarily flashed. If the subject pressed the correct sequence, however, the noise stopped and the left light, marked “Successful Noise Termination,” flashed. In the Helplessness condition, the button-pressing response had no effect on the outcome of the noise. Thus, the light marked “Failure to Terminate Noise” flashed at the end of all 45 trials. For the Control subjects, the buttons were not used; this condition required only that the subjects sit and listen to the noise.
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MEAN
PERFORMANCE FOR THE EXPERIMENTAL, THREE MEASIJRE~ FOR THE ANAGRAM
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HELPLESSNESS, AND CQNTROL GROWS ON THE AND ESCAPE TASKS IN EXPERIMENT 2
Anagram task Group Experimental Helplessness Control
Trials to criterion
Failures
10.6 (6.3) 17.9
(l.5) (i.8)
(5.6)
14.4 (6.9)
(l.1)
Noise escape task Overall latency
Trials to criterion
Failures
Overall latency
27.9 (15.6) 47.5 (16.2) 33.7 (23.9)
(I::, 21.9 (5.4) 13.3 (6.5)
(K) 20.8 (6.9) 10.6 (6.4)
2.7 (54) 4.6 (.73) 3.1 (.89)
Note. Standard errors are given in parentheses.
Following the pretreatment phase, all subjects were tested with the cognitive task. The following instructions were given prior to the task: You are now asked to solve some anagrams. As you may know, anagrams are words with the letters scrambled. The problem for you is to unscramble the letters so they form a word and to do this in as little time as possible. After a scrambled word appears on the computer screen before you, type your answer on the keyboard and press (enter). There could be a pattern or principle by which to solve all of the anagrams, but that is up to you to figure out. You may try to solve each anagram as many times as you like, but you will have a 100~second time limit for each word.
The correct letter order for all 20 anagrams was 3-4-2-S-l. Individual solution times and the number of trials it took to learn the pattern for the entire test were recorded. Finally, subjects were tested with an instrumental task that was identical to the pretreatment given to Experimental subjects except that only 25 trials were given and a new four-button sequence was used. Results Pretreahnent. During pretraining, all subjects in the Experimental group learned to solve the button-pressing task and thus to escape the aversive noise. The latency to escape during the 45 trials was analyzed with a oneway repeated measure ANOVA. The main effect of Blocks of Trials for the Experimental group was significant (F = 5.11; d’ = 44,7; p < .05), thus confirming that learning had occurred. Cognitive task. Three dependent measures identical to those used by Hiroto and Seligman (1975) were used to analyze performance on the cognitive (anagram) task-trials to criterion, failures to solve, and latency to solution (see Table 1). The trials to criterion was defined as the number
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of trials required to solve three consecutive anagrams in less than 15 s each. Group means are shown in Table 1. Although a one-way independent ANOVA showed no significant difference among the three groups (F = 2.29; df = 2,21; p > .05), an exceptionally large variance was noted in each group (subjects tended either to solve the problem rather quickly, or never at all, thus receiving the maximum possible score of 20). For this reason, additional nonparametric analyses were conducted. These analyses revealed significant differences between the Helplessness and the Experimental groups (U = 14; p < .025) and between the Helplessness and the Control groups (U = 13; p < .025). As expected, no difference was shown between the Experimental and the Control groups (U = 29; p > .l). The second dependent measure, failures to solve, was defined as the number of trials with the maximum latency of 100 s. It is clear that the Helplessness group had more failures than either the Experimental or the Control group (see Table l), although a one-way independent ANOVA showed that the Groups effect was not significant (F = 2.04; df = 2,21; p > .05). Nonparametric analyses, however, revealed a significant difference between the Helplessness and Experimental groups (U = 13; p < .025). The Helplessness and Control difference, and the Control and Experimental differences did not reach significance. Finally, the mean response latency to solve the 20 anagrams was calculated for each subject. Group means are shown in Table 1. A one-way independent ANOVA produced no significant difference among the three groups (F = 2.44; df = 2,21; p > .05), but nonparametric analyses revealed a significant difference between the Helplessness and the Experimental groups (U = 11; p < .025). As with number of failures to solve, the Helplessness and Control difference, and the Control and Experimental differences did not reach significance. lnsfrumentul tusk. For the instrumental escape task, three dependent variables, analogous to those for the cognitive task, were analyzed. The trials to criterion was defined as the number of trials before the subject escaped the aversive noise three consecutive times. Group means are shown in Table 1. A one-way independent ANOVA showed a significant Groups effect (F = 9.79; df = 2,21; p < .OOl). In addition, subsequent Scheffe tests indicated significant differences between the Experimental and the Helplessness groups (mean difference = 12.00, p < .Ol) as well as between the Helplessness and the Control groups (mean difference = 8.62, p < .05). As expected, no significant difference was found between the Experimental and the Control groups (mean difference = 3.88, p > .05). The failure to escape the aversive noise was defined as the number of trials with the maximum latency of 5 s (see Table 1). A one-way independent ANOVA showed a significant Groups effect (F = 11.58; df =
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2,21; p < .OOl). Scheffe tests confirmed that the differences between the Experimental and the Helplessness groups (mean difference = 14.50, p < .OOl) and between the Helplessness and the Control groups (mean difference = 10.12, p < .05) were significant. Again, the number of failures to escape for the Experimental group was not significantly different from that of the Control group (mean difference = 4.38, p > .05). Finally, the latency to escape was calculated (see Table 1). A 3 (Groups) x 5 (Blocks of Trials) mixed ANOVA found a significant main effect for both Groups (F = 13.40; df = 2,21; p < .OOl) and Blocks of Trials (F = 32.66, df = 4.84, p < .OOl) and a significant Groups x Blocks interaction (F = 3.81; df = 8,84; p < .OOl). ASQ. Individual dimension scores on the ASQ are calculated by averaging across events for each of the three dimensions. A composite score for explanations of negative events (CN) is obtained by summing a subject’s score on each of the three dimensions for the six negative events. Likewise, a composite score for explanations of positive events (CP) is also obtained by summing a subject’s score for the six positive events. Finally, a full scale score (CPCN) is obtained by subtracting the composite score for negative events from the composite score for positive events. For the Helplessness subjects, correlation coefficients between ASQ globality scores for negative events and each of the performance measures for the cognitive and instrumental tasks were computed. The globality dimension was chosen in order to conform to the procedures used by Alloy et al. (1984). For the cognitive task, only one of the three measures, number of trials to criterion, correlated significantly with the globality dimension score (r = .62, p < .05). The correlations between globality and the number of failures to solve (r = .44) and the mean latency to solve all anagrams (r = .44) were not significant. For the instrumental task, positive but nonsignificant correlation coefficients were found for each of the three performance measures and the globability score on the ASQ. The coefficient values were r = .20 for trials to criterion, r = .13 for number of failures, and r = .20 for overall mean latency. The same pattern of correlations was obtained between CPCN scores and each of the performance measures on both the cognitive and the instrumental tasks. For the cognitive task, significant correlations were found for the Helplessness group between CPCN scores and all three performance measures: r = - .67 for trials to criterion, r = - .62 for number of failures, and r = - .65 for overall mean latency (note the coefficients are negative simply because of the direction of the CPCN score). For the instrumental task, no significant correlations were found for the Helplessness group between CPCN scores and the three performance measures.
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Discussion The results of this study showed that the Helplessness subjects who experienced inescapable aversive noise performed more poorly on later tasks than the Experimental and Control subjects. This experiment therefore verifies the effects of helplessness training on cognitive and instrumental tasks as previously studied by Hiroto and Seligman (1975). It should be noted, in fact, that our results were, if anything, somewhat stronger than those found by Hiroto and Seligman. For example, for the instrumental-instrumental group, those authors did not obtain significant differences between the Helplessness and the Control conditions on two of the three instrumental task measures. Similarly, for their instrumentalcognitive subjects, the authors failed to show a significant difference between the Helplessness and the Experimental groups on the trials to criterion (cognitive task) measure. In light of our findings and those of Hiroto and Seligman, therefore, it would seem entirely appropriate to conclude that our pretreatment was successful in inducing helplessness on both the instrumental and the cognitive tasks. The role of attributional style in predicting who became helpless was more complex. Full-scale ASQ scores (CPCN) correlated significantly with deficits on the cognitive task for the Helplessness group, but not on the instrumental task. Similarly, the globality dimension score for negative events reliably predicted performance on only one of the cognitive task measures (trials to criterion), but did not predict any of the measures of the instrumental task. One could therefore conclude that (a) ASQ scores do not uniformly predict all kinds of behavior that are affected by helplessness pretreatment, and (b) that CPCN scores are more powerful predictors of helplessness deficits than the individual dimension scores used by Alloy et al. (1984). EXPERIMENT
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Experiment 1 verified that subjects in our laboratory can learn to increase their heart rate if given appropriate feedback. Experiment 2 essentially replicated the learned helplessness phenomenon, although it showed that full scale ASQ scores predicted performance of the helplessness subjects only on the cognitive task. Experiment 3 examined the extent to which the helplessness pretreatment affects biofeedback training and the extent to which the ASQ correlates with performance. It was hypothesized that those subjects who are given uncontrollable noise during pretreatment will show performance deficits on the biofeedback task. Based on the results of Experiment 2, we also hypothesized that full scale ASQ scores will predict the degree to which subjects demonstrate helplessness deficits in biofeedback training.
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Method Subjects. Twenty-four undergraduate volunteers participated in this experiment. As in Experiment 2, subjects were run in triads, alternating between Experimental, Helplessness, and Control conditions. Apparatus. The apparatus was the same as that used in Experiments 1 and 2. Procedure. After completing the ASQ, subjects were given differential exposure to the aversive noise according to the triadic design described in Experiment 2. Specifically, triads of subjects received 45 trials of the identical patterns of noise. The Experimental group could terminate the noise by pressing a specific four-button sequence. The Helplessness group, however, could not turn off the noise; rather, a light marked “Failure to Terminate Noise” flashed on every trial when the noise stopped. The Control subjects did not use the buttons, but merely sat and listed to the noise. All subjects were then tested on the acqusition of heart rate control with the identical biofeedback training procedure as used in Experiment 1. Results Pretreatment. During initial training, all subjects in the Experimental group successfully learned to escape the aversive noise as measured by the latency to escape the noise (I; = 7.76; df = 44,7; p < .Ol). Biofeedback training. As in Experiment 1, the heart rate data collected from each subject during the 30 1-min biofeedback trials was expressed as the median for blocks of five trials and then converted to percentageof-baseline values. The effects of differential pretreatment on biofeedback training are shown in Fig. 2. A 3 (Groups) x 6 (Blocks of Trials) mixed ANOVA showed a significant main effect for Blocks of Trials (F = 5.78; df = 5,105; p < .OOl) and significant interaction of Groups x Blocks (F = 2.50; df = 5,105; p < .Ol). Although the main effect for Groups was not significant in this initial analysis (F = 1.45; df = 2,21; p > .05), subsequent 2 x 6 mixed ANOVAs of the simple main effects revealed a significant Groups x Blocks of Trials effect for the Experimental and Helplessness groups (F = 2.49; df = 5,70; p < 0.05) and the Helplessness and Control groups (F = 3.21; df = 5,70; p < .05). The analysis did not show a significant Groups x Blocks of Trials interaction for the Experimental and Control groups (F = 1.97; df = 5,70; p > .05), but because neither group had been exposed to the helplessness pretreatment, differential performance on the test was not expected. ASQ. Correlation coefficients were computed between the full-scale ASQ score (CPCN) and the overall mean percentage-of-baseline heart rate for subjects in the Helplessness group. This analysis showed no sig-
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FIG. 2. Mean percentage of heart rate baseline as a function of six blocks of five biofeedback trials for the Experimental, Helplessness, and Control groups in Experiment 3.
&cant relationship (r = - .29, p > .05). A second analysis between CPCN scores and the percentage of baseline score on the last block of trials also showed no significant correlation (r = - .42, p > .05). Disczmion The results of Experiment 3 confirm the hypothesis that subjects who are given uncontrollable noise during pretreatment will show performance deficits in biofeedback conditioning for heart rate acceleration. These results directly contradict those obtained by Carlson and Feld who found that a “failure” group performed better, not worse, than the “success” group. There are, of course, differences in procedure that could account, at least in part, for this discrepancy. First, Carlson, and Feld did not use a wholly and distinctly aversive procedure during pretreatment. Subjects likely saw the task in a distinctly positive light, because they were told that reducing “one’s blood vessel diameter at an early age may prevent later heart disease” (p. 83). By inference, the “failure” group can be said to have experienced noncontingent positive reinforcement. Second, the pretreatment and test behaviors used by Carlson and Feld were unlike those previously used in learned helplessness research. We believe, however, that the consequence of these procedural differences was probably minimal. First, the “failure” subjects in Carlson and Feld’s study did find the pretreatment significantly more frustrating and difficult; one could therefore infer that the pretreatment, in its entirety, was aversive for
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those subjects. But even if the subjects did not find the pretreatment to be aversive, it is the lack of control, not the quality of the reinforcer or the nature of the response, that is responsible for the helplessness phenomenon (Goodkin, 1976). Second, it seems very unlikely that Carlson and Feld’s finding was simply a result of employing an unusual response class, because many kinds of responses have been shown to be debilitated by helplessness treatment (see Maier & Seligman, 1976). Indeed, it is hard to imagine how the two tasks used by Hiroto and Seligman (1975), anagram solving and motor learning, could be more discrepant, and yet helplessness effects were shown in both cases. We are, in the balance, unable to say for certain why our results differ so dramatically from those of Carlson and Feld. Clearly, we are not suggesting that their reactance effect (performance facilitation) was an unwarranted prediction or a spurious finding. Our speculation is that some as-yet-unspecified facet of the procedure determines whether the transfer is positive or negative. One possible factor is the task instructions. Instructions are known to affect biofeedback learning to a very considerable degree (Schober & Lacroix, 1986), and they may well have been critical in Carlson and Feld’s study. For example, the instructions for both the “success” and the “failure” groups “were designed to impress upon the subject the importance of learning to perform this task” (Carlson & Feld, 1981, p. 83). Such general instructions should have uniformly encouraged the success and failure subjects to exert significant effort on the task, and thus may well have obscured the effect of the specific differential message given during the pretreatment phase. It is interesting to note in this regard that no statistical difference was found on the test between those two groups. Although the mean score for the failure group was lower than for the success group, it differed statistically only from the combined mean of the success and “control” groups. In short, the discrepancy between our results and those of Carlson and Feld could be a function of differences in the instructions. In their case, subjects were strongly encouraged to succeed on such an important task; in our experiment, subjects were told merely “to keep the feedback light on as much as possible.” According to our analysis then, it is perhaps not surprising that Carlson and Feld’s failure subjects, responding primarily to the task instructions, showed an improvement in performance whereas our helplessness subjects, responding primarily to the experimental contingencies, showed a decline. A second and even more likely candidate is the degree or severity of the helplessness training. According to Wortman and Brehm’s (1975) integrative model, a reactance effect is likely to occur when the helplessness pretreatment is minimal in degree or severity, because a subject’s prior belief set, namely that he or she calm produce the desirable outcome, will prevail. It is only with extended experience with lack of control that a subject becomes helpless and shows a performance deficit. In terms of
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the present experiment, the inescapable noise can be judged to be significantly more severe in changing a subject’s belief set than the biofeedback failure treatment used by Carlson and Feld. The job of exploring the relationship between extent and severity of training and kind of transfer, of course, remains. Our secondary objective was to examine whether the ASQ scores reliably predict the helplessness effect in this context. Our hypothesis was clearly not supported: CPCN scores do not predict the degree to which helplessness subjects demonstrate a performance deficit. In many ways, this result is not very surprising. For one thing, the use of the ASQ as a measure of attributional style has been questioned by a number of investigators (Miller, Smith, & Uleman, 1981; Solomon, 1978). More important, the ASQ is a measure of cognitive style; it’s utility has therefore been more as a predictor of other cognitive styles, such as depression (see Peterson & Seligman, 1984 for a review), than overt instrumental behaviors. Given this fact, the ASQ should have correlated more highly with failure on the cognitive task than on the instrumental task (as indeed we found in Experiments 2 and 3). Again, future research will have to determine the generality of such a conclusion. Experiment 3 was not designed to examine any of the theoretical issues pertaining specifically to instrumental autonomic conditioning (see Grigg & Ashton, 1984; Lacroix, 1981; Roberts, 1988; Ross, 1982) but our results appear to confirm Carlson’s (1982) assertion that biofeedback is affected by a subject’s cognitions. This finding is not unexpected either, given that Schwartz (1971) has shown that specific thoughts, which are self-generated and self-presented, can affect heart rate, and that Engel (1986) has made a strong case for the idea that “cardiovascular responses are aspects of behavior . . . [that] obey the same rules as do other aspects of behavior” (Engel, 1986, p. 294). In other words, it is reasonable to conclude that instrumental control of heart rate increases (shorter-than-baseline IBIS) is essentially no different than instrumental control of motor actions. Both kinds of behavioral control may be debilitated by a helplessness pretreatment, although the degree of debilitation in either case is not reliably predicted by the ASQ. REFERENCES Abramson, L. Y., Seligman, M. E. P., & Teasdale, J. D. (1978). Learned helplessness in humans: Critique and reformulation. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 87, 49-74. Alloy, L. B., Peterson, C., Abramson, L. Y., & Seligman, M. E. P. (1984). Attributional style and the generality of learned helplessness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 681-687. Carlson, J. G. (1982). Some concepts of perceived control and their relationship to bodily self-control. Biofeedback and Self-Regulation, 7, 341-375. Carlson, J. G., & Feld, J. L. (1981). Expectancies of reinforcement: Control of reinforcement in biofeedback and cognitive performance. Biofeedback and Self-Regulation, 6, 79-91.
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Engle, B. T. (1986). An essay on the circulation as behavior. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 9, 285-318. Goodkin, F. (1976). Rats learn the relationship between responding and environmental events: An expansion of the learned helplessness hypothesis. Learning and Motivation, 7, 382-394. Grigg, L., & Ashton R. (1984). Heart rate discrimination and heart rate control: A test of Brener’s theory. international Journal of Psychophysiology, 2, 185-201. Hiroto, D. S. (1974). Locus of control and learned helplessness. Journal of Experimental Psychology 102, 187-193. Hiroto, D. S., & Sehgman, M. E. P. (1975). Generality of learned helplessness in man. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31, 311-327. Lacroix, J. M. (1981). The acquisition of autonomic control through biofeedback: The case against an afferent process and a two-process alternative. Psychophysiology, 18, 573587. Maier, S. F., & Seligman, M. E. P. (1976). Learned helplessness: Theory and evidence. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 105, 3-46. Miller, F., Smith, E. R., & Uleman, J. (1981). Measurement and interpretation of situational and dispositional attributions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 17, 80-95. Miller, N. E. (1978). Biofeedback and visceral learning. Annual Review of Psychology, 29, 373-404. Obrist, P. A., Galosy, R. A., Lawler, J. E., Gaebelein, C. J., Howard, J. L., & Shanks, E. M. (1975). Operant conditioning of heart rate: Somatic correlates. Psychophysiology, 12, 445-455. Overmier, J. B., & Seligman, M. E. P. (1967). Effects of inescapable shock upon subsequent escape and avoidance learning. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 63, 28-33. Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (1984). Causal explanations as a risk factor for depression: Theory and evidence. Psychological Review, 91, 347-374. Peterson, C., Semmel, A., von Baeyer, C., Abramson, L. Y., Metalsky. G. I., & Seligman, M. E. P. (1982). The Attributional Style Questionnaire. Cognitive Therapy and Research,
6, 287-299.
Raven, J. C. (1960). Guide to the Standard Progressive Matrices. London: H. K. Lewis. Roberts, L. E. (1988). Theory and evidence in psychophysiology: Is biofeedback conditioning or action? Journal of Psychophysiology, 2, 5-12. Ross, A. (1982). Concurrent assessment of heart rate discrimination and control. Biological Psychology, 14, 231-244. Roth, S., & Bootzin, R. R. (1974). Effects of experimentally induced expectancies of external control: An investigation of learned helplessness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
29, 253-264.
Schober, R., & Lacroix, J. M. (1986). Effects of task instructions and contingency on the development of phasic heart rate control and its correlates. Canadian Journal of Psychology,
49, 54-64.
Schwartz, G. E. (1971). Cardiac responses to self-induced thoughts. Psychophysiology, 8, 462-467. Seligman, M. E. P. & Maier, S. F. (1967). Failure to escape traumatic shock. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 74, l-9. Solomon, S. (1978). Measuring dispositional and situational attributions. Personality and Social
Psychology
Bulletin,
4, 589-603.
Tresselt, M. E., & Mayzner, M. S. (1966). Normative solution times for a sample of 134 solution words and 378 associated anagrams. Psychonomic Monograph Supplements, 1, 293-298.
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Wortman, C. B., & Brehm, J. W. (1975). Responses to uncontrollable outcomes: An integration of reactance theory and the learned helplessness model. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 8), pp. 277-336). New York: Academic Press. Received July 17, 1990 Revised November 2, 1990
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Effects of Learned Helplessness Training on Instrumental Heart Rate Control in Humans ANITA D. MILLER AND ROGERM. TARPY Bucknell University In Experiment 1, subjects who received feedback contingent on short interbeat intervals (relative to a baseline period) learned to accelerate their heart rates, but subjects who received noncontingent feedback did not. In Experiment 2, subjects who were exposed to noncontingent aversive noises later showed significant performance deficits on both an instrumental and a cognitive task. Attributional style predicted helplessness deficits on the cognitive but not the instrumental task. Experiment 3 demonstrated that experimentally induced helplessness interferes with biofeedback learning. Attributional style did not predict the occurrence of helplessness deficits in this context. Results are discussed in terms of the nature of biofeedback training and the range of behaviors that learned helplessness training affects. Q 1991 Academic Press, Inc.
In the original work on the learned helplessness phenomenon, dogs who had been subjected to uncontrollable shocks were later unable to learn a simple escape reaction compared to naive dogs or to subjects who had previously been able to control shock (Overmier & Seligman, 1967; Seligman & Maier, 1967). The helplessness interpretation of such deficits argued that when organisms are exposed to noncontingent aversive outcomes, they come to expect that such uncontrollability will prevail in the future; as a result of such beliefs, they later display cognitive, motivational, and emotional deficits. The debilitating consequences of uncontrollable aversive stimuli have been reported in a number of species, including cats, fish, rats, and humans (see Maier & Seligman, 1976). In a representative study of helplessness in humans (Hiroto, 1974), a group of volunteers received a task in which These experiments were part of an Honors Thesis conducted by Anita Miller in partial fulfillment of the BA degree at Bucknell University. Ms. Miller is now at the Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235. The authors thank Drs. Jean E. Roberts and Kelly G. Shaver for their helpful comments. Reprints may be obtained from Roger M. Tarpy, Department of Psychology, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA 17837. 388 0023-9690/91 $3.00 Copyright 0 1991 by Academic Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
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button-pressing terminated bursts of an aversive noise. A second group received exactly the same number and duration of aversive noises, but they could not control them. A third group received no pretreatment. In the second phase of the study, all subjects were tested on a hand shuttlebox in which noise termination was now possible. The results were strikingly similar to those obtained with dogs: The group that received prior uncontrollable noise failed to learn the second task whereas the other two groups readily learned to escape the noise. The helplessness phenomenon is not limited to instrumental escape/ avoidance tasks. Hiroto and Seligman (1975), for instance, showed that a group given four insoluble discrimination problems was worse at solving anagrams than was a control group or a group that had been given soluble problems, They also demonstrated cross-modal deficits. Subjects pretreated with insoluble cognitive problems were debilitated at instrumental escape, and a group pretreated with inescapable noise was later debilitated at solving anagrams. Despite the success of these and other early studies in showing helplessness effects in humans, the picture is not entirely consistent. Some investigators, for example, have suggested that helplessness training may cause the opposite outcome- motivational arousal (reactance) and a corresponding increase in motivated behavior (see Roth & Bootzin, 1974; Wortman & Brehm, 1975). A good example is a study by Carlson and Feld (1981) on the effects of helplessness training on biofeedback control. Those authors told their subjects that the frequency of a tone would be contingent on blood vessel diameter and that they should try to reduce the pitch of the tone as much as possible. Although the feedback (i.e., tone frequency) during this initial phase was false for all groups, some subjects heard tones that systematically declined in pitch and, in addition, were told that they had succeeded on the task. Other subjects, however, received tones that varied randomly in pitch and were told that they had failed on the biofeedback task. A third group of subjects was told merely to listen to a tone that varied in frequency; they were given no further information concerning their performance. Following this pretreatment phase, all subjects were given the opportunity to relax their forehead muscles; here the contingent feedback was accurate-the greater the muscle relaxation, the greater the decrease in tone frequency. The results of the experiment were surprising from the point of view of learned helplessness theory. The “failure” group performed the biofeedback test at a higher level than did the combined “success” and control groups. In other words, believing that they had failed initially, these putative helplessness subjects actually showed improved performance later on. Because no other experiment to our knowledge has considered the
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effects of helplessness training on biofeedback control, we are uncertain about whether to view the results of the Carlson and Feld experiment as being inconsistent with the original helplessness theory, or as establishing a boundary line that differentiates between behaviors that are debilitated by experience with uncontrollable events (helplessness) versus those that are aroused by such events (reactance). Accordingly, the present set of experiments employed a more conventional design than that used by Carlson and Feld to determine whether the more usual form of helplessness training produces positive or negative transfer to a later biofeedback task. We addressed a second important issue, namely whether attributional style would predict the effects of helplessness training on biofeedback control. As noted above, the original learned helplessness theory was questioned by Brehm and his colleagues (see Wortman & Brehm, 1975) in light of reactance theory and also by those who had attempted to use the concept of helplessness to explain human depression (see Peterson & Seligman, 1984). The result was a reformulated theory of learned helplessness (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978). According to the reformulated model, when humans experience aversive events, they often attribute the outcome to some particular causal agent. These causal explanations then, not merely the uncontrollable events per se, are said to predict the expectations of helplessness, and, in turn, deficits in later behavior. The relationship between attributional style and helplessness-induced learning deficits was examined by Alloy, Peterson, Abramson, and Seligman (1984). They first asked college students to complete the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ; see Peterson, Semmel, von Baeyer, Abramson, Metalsky, & Seligman, 1982). A week later, subjects whose attributional style for negative outcomes was “global” and subjects whose style was “specific” were divided into three treatment groups. One group received escapable bursts of aversive noise; a second received inescapable bursts of the same noise. A third group received no noise. Finally, subjects were tested with one of two tasks-an instrumental noise escape task that was similar to pretreatment or a cognitive task (a series of anagrams) that was dissimilar to pretreatment. The results showed that subjects who had been exposed to the uncontrollable noise performed worse than the subjects in the other two groups. These deficits, however, were affected by the subjects’ attributional stylesubjects who had a “global” attributional style for negative outcomes exhibited deficits on both the instrumental and the cognitive tasks, whereas subjects who had a “specific” attributional style demonstrated learning deficits only on the instrumental task (the task that was similar to pretreatment). The main question that this work raises in the present context is whether
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attributional style as measured by the ASQ would also predict performance on a biofeedback task following uncontrollable aversive stimulation. Carlson and Feld did not use the ASQ, and although they claimed to have taken the subjects’ attributions into account, there are reasons to doubt whether their study provides an adequate test of the relationship between attributional style and biofeedback performance. First, the direction of the relationship in Carlson and Feld’s study was the reverse of what one would expect based on the reformulated helplessness modelthe “failure” subjects actually performed better on the biofeedback test than the “success” subjects. Second, Carson and Feld induced particular causal attributions as a means of evoking a specific form of behavior on the test, rather than following the usual procedure of measuring attributional style as a general and habitual covariate of the subjects’ performance. Finally, Carlson and Feld found no group differences following pretreatment on Raven’s (1960) Progressive Matrices task, and therefore concluded that “the effects of the failure pretraining upon expectancies and performance in this study were situation-specific and unrelated to generalized expectancies concerning control over outcomes of behavior” (Carlson & Feld, 1981, p. 88). Thus the negative situation-specific beliefs in the “failure” group must not have reflected habitual attributional styles or else a performance deficit would have occurred on the biofeedback task and a debilitating effect would have been shown on the Progressive Matrices test. Given these discrepancies, our secondary purpose was to reexamine the relationship between attributional style and biofeedback using a more conventional approach than the one used by Carlson and Feld, namely correlating scores on the ASQ with later test performance. EXPERIMENT
1
Before addressing any of our objectives, however, we believed that two control experiments were appropriate. In Experiment 1, our purpose was merely to demonstrate the biofeedback phenomenon. Although control of heart rate has been shown by many investigators using a range of methodologies (Miller, 1978) we felt it was important to demonstrate strong levels of visceral control in our laboratory. We predicted that Experimental subjects who were given feedback contingent upon a higherthan-baseline heart rate would show a sustained elevation in rate whereas Control subjects who were given noncontingent feedback would not. Method Subjects. Sixteen undergraduate volunteers from Bucknell University participated in this experiment. Subjects were alternately assigned to either the Experimental or the Control group. Apparatus. On a table in the subject room was a 20.5 (high) x 40.5 (wide) x 20.5 cm ( deep) box and a Realistic Speaker, Model 40-1996B.
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Four jewel lights were spaced 5.5 cm apart on the front of the box. Electrodes were securely strapped on each forearm of the subject; a third (ground) electrode was placed on the lower left leg. Heart rate was monitored with a Phipps & Bird cardiotachometer (Model 7078-020). A 68.0db white noise marked the onset and termination of the experimental trials. The noise was produced by a Marietta white noise generator (Model 24-21-B) and amplified by a Kenwood Stereo Receiver (Model KRA5010). Procedure. Our procedure was based, in part, on a study by Obrist, Galosy, Lawler, Gaebelein, Howard, and Shanks (1975). The subjects were told only that the light was contingent upon their responses. Specifically, each subject first read the following instructions as the experimenter read them aloud: You are about to participate in a basic biofeedback experiment. The feedback light on the panel before you is contingent upon your responses, and your task is to team to keep the feedback light on as much as possible during the experimental trials. After a lo-minute rest period, you will receive 32 l-minute trials (2 practice trials and 30 experimental trials), the onset and termination of which will be signaled by the onset and termination of a white noise. As you participate in this experiment, please note that if you move around a great deal, the electrodes will not function properly. For this reason, do not move or tense your arms and hands. Focus your attention on the light and learn to control it during the 30 experimental trials.
In order to establish a steady heart rate reading from the cardiotachometer, subjects were given a lo-minute warm-up period; no feedback was given during this initial phase. Each subject was then given 32 1-min trials marked by the onset and termination of a white noise. Trials were separated by an intertrial interval (ITI) that lasted 30 to 45 s. During the first two trials, no feedback was given; these trials served to establish a baseline. During the last 30 trials, the Experimental subjects received feedback that was contingent upon heart rate changes. Specifically, if the interbeat interval (IBI) of a subject decreased relative to the average IBI during baseline, the right-most panel light was illuminated. The light remained on as long as the just-recorded IBI was shorter than the baseline mean IBI. Each Control subject was yoked to the prior Experimental subject, meaning that the light pattern from the Experimental subject was replicated for the Control subject. These latter subjects therefore received feedback that was not contingent upon their heart rate changes. Results Each subject’s data were expressed as the median heart rate for blocks of five trials, and then converted to percentage of baseline values. Figure 1 shows the group mean percentage of baseline heart rate for each of the
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OF 5 TRIALS
FIG. 1. Mean percentage of heart rate baseline as a function of six blocks of five biofeedback trials for the contingent (Experimental) and noncontingent (Control) groups in Experiment 1.
six five-trial blocks for the Experimental and Control groups. A 2 (Groups) x 6 (Blocks of Trials) analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to evaluate the overall differences. Although this analysis did not yield significant main effects for Groups (F = 3.63; df = 1,14; p > .OS) or Blocks of Trials (F = 0.42; df = 5,70; p > .05), a highly significant interaction between these factors was found (F = 6.89; u” = 5,70; p < .OOl). Discussion The data from Experiment 1 show quite clearly that Experimental subjects who were given feedback contingent on shorter-than-baseline IBI durations increased their heart rate to an average of 6.75 percent above baseline. Control subjects, on the other hand, who received noncontingent feedback did not; their heart rates actually decreased to an average of 7.50 percent below baseline. Overall then, heart rate increases were reliably acquired with contingent feedback in the Experimental group. All subjects received the same instructions and yet group differences in performance were found. The plausible conclusion is that the differences were the result of feedback being response contingent for one group but not for the other. It is interesting to note, however, that such a finding has not always been obtained. Some studies on biofeedback (e.g., see Schober & Lacroix, 1986) have shown that the contingency factor is relatively unimportant compared to the effect of task instructions.
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EXPERIMENT 2 Like Experiment 1, the second experiment was also a control study. Its primary purpose was to demonstrate the learned helplessness phenomenon in our laboratory using conventional procedures. Helplessness was induced using the triadic design as described by Hiroto and Seligman (1975). According to the original learned helplessness model, subjects who receive inescapable aversive noise during initial treatment should show helplessness deficits; that is, they should perform more poorly on both a cognitive (anagram) and an instrumental (noise escape) task than either a group that receives escapable noise or a group that has no special expectations regarding the escapability of the noise. In addition to experimentally inducing helplessness, attributional style was measured by the ASQ as a possible predictor on each task. According to the reformulated model of learned helplessness, attributional style should predict who will experience helplessness in the face of uncontrollable negative events. Method Subjects. Twenty-four undergraduate students from the introductory course at Bucknell University participated in this experiment. They were assigned, in groups of three, to the Experimental, Yoked Experimental (Helplessness), or Control group, respectively. Apparatus. An aversive (94.2 db) white noise was generated using the same equipment as in Experiment 1. The noise was presented to the subject through Koss earphones (Model 4AAA plus). Based on a pilot study, the noise was judged to be “moderately” to “very” aversive. In addition to the testing box described earlier, there were four springloaded buttons housed in a 16.0 x 13.5~cm base; the buttons were numbered 1 through 4. A small sign reading “Successful Noise Termination” was placed on the box above the left panel light and a sign reading “Failure to Terminate Noise” was placed above the right light. As in the experiment by Hiroto and Seligman (1975), anagrams were used as the cognitive test of helplessness. Here, the 20 five-letter anagrams were taken from a list published by Tresselt and Mayzner (1966). They were presented on an Apple IIe computer which measured the time taken to solve the anagram and the number of attempts made before finding the correct solution. Finally, the ASQ was used to measure attributional style. Briefly, this questionnaire presents six positive events (e.g. “You become very rich”) and six negative events (e.g. “You go out on a date and it goes poorly”). Subjects are asked to imagine that the event had happened to them and then to indicate a single major cause for each event, rating each on a 7point scale in accord with its perceived internality, stability, and globality.
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Procedure After completing the ASQ, subjects were given escapable or inescapable noise or the control condition followed by the cognitive and instrumental tests. Due to the unpleasantness of the aversive noise, subjects were first given a brief sample of the noise and the option of not participating in the experiment. No subject ever left after hearing a sample of the noise. Upon entering the subject room, the Experimental and the Helplessness groups were asked to read the following instructions as the experimenter read them aloud: You will hear a noise from time to time. When the noise comes on, you can stop it by pressing a specific 4-button sequence. You will have 45. trials to try to tind the appropriate sequence, and you may try as many sequences as possible during each of the 45 trials. There are 2 lights on the panel before you. These lights will tell you how the noise on each of the 45 trials was controlled. If you yourself do stop the noise, then the left light marked ‘Successful Noise Termination” will momentarily flash on after each time you stop the noise. If you do not stop the noise, then the right light marked “Failure to Terminate Noise” will flash when it stops automatically. Keep in mind, when the left light flashes on, this means that you have stopped the noise; but if the right light flashes, this means that you did not stop the noise but that it stopped automatically. Please do not take the earphones off or tamper with the apparatus in any way. Again, your goal is to discover the specific 4-button sequence so that you can turn the noise off as quickly as possible.
The Control
subjects were given the following
instructions:
During the first part of this experiment, a loud noise will come on from time to time. Please sit and listen to it.
The pretreatment consisted of 45 trials with the unsignaled noise lasting a maximum of 5 s (the IT1 ranged from 5 to 10 s). Triads of Experimental, Helplessness, and Control subjects received identical durations of noise for the 45 trials. In the Experimental condition, a subject could terminate the noise by pressing a specific four-button sequence; the randomly generated sequence was different for each subject. If the subject did not press the correct sequence by the end of five seconds, the right light, marked “Failure to Terminate Noise,” momentarily flashed. If the subject pressed the correct sequence, however, the noise stopped and the left light, marked “Successful Noise Termination,” flashed. In the Helplessness condition, the button-pressing response had no effect on the outcome of the noise. Thus, the light marked “Failure to Terminate Noise” flashed at the end of all 45 trials. For the Control subjects, the buttons were not used; this condition required only that the subjects sit and listen to the noise.
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MEAN
PERFORMANCE FOR THE EXPERIMENTAL, THREE MEASIJRE~ FOR THE ANAGRAM
1
HELPLESSNESS, AND CQNTROL GROWS ON THE AND ESCAPE TASKS IN EXPERIMENT 2
Anagram task Group Experimental Helplessness Control
Trials to criterion
Failures
10.6 (6.3) 17.9
(l.5) (i.8)
(5.6)
14.4 (6.9)
(l.1)
Noise escape task Overall latency
Trials to criterion
Failures
Overall latency
27.9 (15.6) 47.5 (16.2) 33.7 (23.9)
(I::, 21.9 (5.4) 13.3 (6.5)
(K) 20.8 (6.9) 10.6 (6.4)
2.7 (54) 4.6 (.73) 3.1 (.89)
Note. Standard errors are given in parentheses.
Following the pretreatment phase, all subjects were tested with the cognitive task. The following instructions were given prior to the task: You are now asked to solve some anagrams. As you may know, anagrams are words with the letters scrambled. The problem for you is to unscramble the letters so they form a word and to do this in as little time as possible. After a scrambled word appears on the computer screen before you, type your answer on the keyboard and press (enter). There could be a pattern or principle by which to solve all of the anagrams, but that is up to you to figure out. You may try to solve each anagram as many times as you like, but you will have a 100~second time limit for each word.
The correct letter order for all 20 anagrams was 3-4-2-S-l. Individual solution times and the number of trials it took to learn the pattern for the entire test were recorded. Finally, subjects were tested with an instrumental task that was identical to the pretreatment given to Experimental subjects except that only 25 trials were given and a new four-button sequence was used. Results Pretreahnent. During pretraining, all subjects in the Experimental group learned to solve the button-pressing task and thus to escape the aversive noise. The latency to escape during the 45 trials was analyzed with a oneway repeated measure ANOVA. The main effect of Blocks of Trials for the Experimental group was significant (F = 5.11; d’ = 44,7; p < .05), thus confirming that learning had occurred. Cognitive task. Three dependent measures identical to those used by Hiroto and Seligman (1975) were used to analyze performance on the cognitive (anagram) task-trials to criterion, failures to solve, and latency to solution (see Table 1). The trials to criterion was defined as the number
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of trials required to solve three consecutive anagrams in less than 15 s each. Group means are shown in Table 1. Although a one-way independent ANOVA showed no significant difference among the three groups (F = 2.29; df = 2,21; p > .05), an exceptionally large variance was noted in each group (subjects tended either to solve the problem rather quickly, or never at all, thus receiving the maximum possible score of 20). For this reason, additional nonparametric analyses were conducted. These analyses revealed significant differences between the Helplessness and the Experimental groups (U = 14; p < .025) and between the Helplessness and the Control groups (U = 13; p < .025). As expected, no difference was shown between the Experimental and the Control groups (U = 29; p > .l). The second dependent measure, failures to solve, was defined as the number of trials with the maximum latency of 100 s. It is clear that the Helplessness group had more failures than either the Experimental or the Control group (see Table l), although a one-way independent ANOVA showed that the Groups effect was not significant (F = 2.04; df = 2,21; p > .05). Nonparametric analyses, however, revealed a significant difference between the Helplessness and Experimental groups (U = 13; p < .025). The Helplessness and Control difference, and the Control and Experimental differences did not reach significance. Finally, the mean response latency to solve the 20 anagrams was calculated for each subject. Group means are shown in Table 1. A one-way independent ANOVA produced no significant difference among the three groups (F = 2.44; df = 2,21; p > .05), but nonparametric analyses revealed a significant difference between the Helplessness and the Experimental groups (U = 11; p < .025). As with number of failures to solve, the Helplessness and Control difference, and the Control and Experimental differences did not reach significance. lnsfrumentul tusk. For the instrumental escape task, three dependent variables, analogous to those for the cognitive task, were analyzed. The trials to criterion was defined as the number of trials before the subject escaped the aversive noise three consecutive times. Group means are shown in Table 1. A one-way independent ANOVA showed a significant Groups effect (F = 9.79; df = 2,21; p < .OOl). In addition, subsequent Scheffe tests indicated significant differences between the Experimental and the Helplessness groups (mean difference = 12.00, p < .Ol) as well as between the Helplessness and the Control groups (mean difference = 8.62, p < .05). As expected, no significant difference was found between the Experimental and the Control groups (mean difference = 3.88, p > .05). The failure to escape the aversive noise was defined as the number of trials with the maximum latency of 5 s (see Table 1). A one-way independent ANOVA showed a significant Groups effect (F = 11.58; df =
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2,21; p < .OOl). Scheffe tests confirmed that the differences between the Experimental and the Helplessness groups (mean difference = 14.50, p < .OOl) and between the Helplessness and the Control groups (mean difference = 10.12, p < .05) were significant. Again, the number of failures to escape for the Experimental group was not significantly different from that of the Control group (mean difference = 4.38, p > .05). Finally, the latency to escape was calculated (see Table 1). A 3 (Groups) x 5 (Blocks of Trials) mixed ANOVA found a significant main effect for both Groups (F = 13.40; df = 2,21; p < .OOl) and Blocks of Trials (F = 32.66, df = 4.84, p < .OOl) and a significant Groups x Blocks interaction (F = 3.81; df = 8,84; p < .OOl). ASQ. Individual dimension scores on the ASQ are calculated by averaging across events for each of the three dimensions. A composite score for explanations of negative events (CN) is obtained by summing a subject’s score on each of the three dimensions for the six negative events. Likewise, a composite score for explanations of positive events (CP) is also obtained by summing a subject’s score for the six positive events. Finally, a full scale score (CPCN) is obtained by subtracting the composite score for negative events from the composite score for positive events. For the Helplessness subjects, correlation coefficients between ASQ globality scores for negative events and each of the performance measures for the cognitive and instrumental tasks were computed. The globality dimension was chosen in order to conform to the procedures used by Alloy et al. (1984). For the cognitive task, only one of the three measures, number of trials to criterion, correlated significantly with the globality dimension score (r = .62, p < .05). The correlations between globality and the number of failures to solve (r = .44) and the mean latency to solve all anagrams (r = .44) were not significant. For the instrumental task, positive but nonsignificant correlation coefficients were found for each of the three performance measures and the globability score on the ASQ. The coefficient values were r = .20 for trials to criterion, r = .13 for number of failures, and r = .20 for overall mean latency. The same pattern of correlations was obtained between CPCN scores and each of the performance measures on both the cognitive and the instrumental tasks. For the cognitive task, significant correlations were found for the Helplessness group between CPCN scores and all three performance measures: r = - .67 for trials to criterion, r = - .62 for number of failures, and r = - .65 for overall mean latency (note the coefficients are negative simply because of the direction of the CPCN score). For the instrumental task, no significant correlations were found for the Helplessness group between CPCN scores and the three performance measures.
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Discussion The results of this study showed that the Helplessness subjects who experienced inescapable aversive noise performed more poorly on later tasks than the Experimental and Control subjects. This experiment therefore verifies the effects of helplessness training on cognitive and instrumental tasks as previously studied by Hiroto and Seligman (1975). It should be noted, in fact, that our results were, if anything, somewhat stronger than those found by Hiroto and Seligman. For example, for the instrumental-instrumental group, those authors did not obtain significant differences between the Helplessness and the Control conditions on two of the three instrumental task measures. Similarly, for their instrumentalcognitive subjects, the authors failed to show a significant difference between the Helplessness and the Experimental groups on the trials to criterion (cognitive task) measure. In light of our findings and those of Hiroto and Seligman, therefore, it would seem entirely appropriate to conclude that our pretreatment was successful in inducing helplessness on both the instrumental and the cognitive tasks. The role of attributional style in predicting who became helpless was more complex. Full-scale ASQ scores (CPCN) correlated significantly with deficits on the cognitive task for the Helplessness group, but not on the instrumental task. Similarly, the globality dimension score for negative events reliably predicted performance on only one of the cognitive task measures (trials to criterion), but did not predict any of the measures of the instrumental task. One could therefore conclude that (a) ASQ scores do not uniformly predict all kinds of behavior that are affected by helplessness pretreatment, and (b) that CPCN scores are more powerful predictors of helplessness deficits than the individual dimension scores used by Alloy et al. (1984). EXPERIMENT
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Experiment 1 verified that subjects in our laboratory can learn to increase their heart rate if given appropriate feedback. Experiment 2 essentially replicated the learned helplessness phenomenon, although it showed that full scale ASQ scores predicted performance of the helplessness subjects only on the cognitive task. Experiment 3 examined the extent to which the helplessness pretreatment affects biofeedback training and the extent to which the ASQ correlates with performance. It was hypothesized that those subjects who are given uncontrollable noise during pretreatment will show performance deficits on the biofeedback task. Based on the results of Experiment 2, we also hypothesized that full scale ASQ scores will predict the degree to which subjects demonstrate helplessness deficits in biofeedback training.
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Method Subjects. Twenty-four undergraduate volunteers participated in this experiment. As in Experiment 2, subjects were run in triads, alternating between Experimental, Helplessness, and Control conditions. Apparatus. The apparatus was the same as that used in Experiments 1 and 2. Procedure. After completing the ASQ, subjects were given differential exposure to the aversive noise according to the triadic design described in Experiment 2. Specifically, triads of subjects received 45 trials of the identical patterns of noise. The Experimental group could terminate the noise by pressing a specific four-button sequence. The Helplessness group, however, could not turn off the noise; rather, a light marked “Failure to Terminate Noise” flashed on every trial when the noise stopped. The Control subjects did not use the buttons, but merely sat and listed to the noise. All subjects were then tested on the acqusition of heart rate control with the identical biofeedback training procedure as used in Experiment 1. Results Pretreatment. During initial training, all subjects in the Experimental group successfully learned to escape the aversive noise as measured by the latency to escape the noise (I; = 7.76; df = 44,7; p < .Ol). Biofeedback training. As in Experiment 1, the heart rate data collected from each subject during the 30 1-min biofeedback trials was expressed as the median for blocks of five trials and then converted to percentageof-baseline values. The effects of differential pretreatment on biofeedback training are shown in Fig. 2. A 3 (Groups) x 6 (Blocks of Trials) mixed ANOVA showed a significant main effect for Blocks of Trials (F = 5.78; df = 5,105; p < .OOl) and significant interaction of Groups x Blocks (F = 2.50; df = 5,105; p < .Ol). Although the main effect for Groups was not significant in this initial analysis (F = 1.45; df = 2,21; p > .05), subsequent 2 x 6 mixed ANOVAs of the simple main effects revealed a significant Groups x Blocks of Trials effect for the Experimental and Helplessness groups (F = 2.49; df = 5,70; p < 0.05) and the Helplessness and Control groups (F = 3.21; df = 5,70; p < .05). The analysis did not show a significant Groups x Blocks of Trials interaction for the Experimental and Control groups (F = 1.97; df = 5,70; p > .05), but because neither group had been exposed to the helplessness pretreatment, differential performance on the test was not expected. ASQ. Correlation coefficients were computed between the full-scale ASQ score (CPCN) and the overall mean percentage-of-baseline heart rate for subjects in the Helplessness group. This analysis showed no sig-
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FIG. 2. Mean percentage of heart rate baseline as a function of six blocks of five biofeedback trials for the Experimental, Helplessness, and Control groups in Experiment 3.
&cant relationship (r = - .29, p > .05). A second analysis between CPCN scores and the percentage of baseline score on the last block of trials also showed no significant correlation (r = - .42, p > .05). Disczmion The results of Experiment 3 confirm the hypothesis that subjects who are given uncontrollable noise during pretreatment will show performance deficits in biofeedback conditioning for heart rate acceleration. These results directly contradict those obtained by Carlson and Feld who found that a “failure” group performed better, not worse, than the “success” group. There are, of course, differences in procedure that could account, at least in part, for this discrepancy. First, Carlson, and Feld did not use a wholly and distinctly aversive procedure during pretreatment. Subjects likely saw the task in a distinctly positive light, because they were told that reducing “one’s blood vessel diameter at an early age may prevent later heart disease” (p. 83). By inference, the “failure” group can be said to have experienced noncontingent positive reinforcement. Second, the pretreatment and test behaviors used by Carlson and Feld were unlike those previously used in learned helplessness research. We believe, however, that the consequence of these procedural differences was probably minimal. First, the “failure” subjects in Carlson and Feld’s study did find the pretreatment significantly more frustrating and difficult; one could therefore infer that the pretreatment, in its entirety, was aversive for
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those subjects. But even if the subjects did not find the pretreatment to be aversive, it is the lack of control, not the quality of the reinforcer or the nature of the response, that is responsible for the helplessness phenomenon (Goodkin, 1976). Second, it seems very unlikely that Carlson and Feld’s finding was simply a result of employing an unusual response class, because many kinds of responses have been shown to be debilitated by helplessness treatment (see Maier & Seligman, 1976). Indeed, it is hard to imagine how the two tasks used by Hiroto and Seligman (1975), anagram solving and motor learning, could be more discrepant, and yet helplessness effects were shown in both cases. We are, in the balance, unable to say for certain why our results differ so dramatically from those of Carlson and Feld. Clearly, we are not suggesting that their reactance effect (performance facilitation) was an unwarranted prediction or a spurious finding. Our speculation is that some as-yet-unspecified facet of the procedure determines whether the transfer is positive or negative. One possible factor is the task instructions. Instructions are known to affect biofeedback learning to a very considerable degree (Schober & Lacroix, 1986), and they may well have been critical in Carlson and Feld’s study. For example, the instructions for both the “success” and the “failure” groups “were designed to impress upon the subject the importance of learning to perform this task” (Carlson & Feld, 1981, p. 83). Such general instructions should have uniformly encouraged the success and failure subjects to exert significant effort on the task, and thus may well have obscured the effect of the specific differential message given during the pretreatment phase. It is interesting to note in this regard that no statistical difference was found on the test between those two groups. Although the mean score for the failure group was lower than for the success group, it differed statistically only from the combined mean of the success and “control” groups. In short, the discrepancy between our results and those of Carlson and Feld could be a function of differences in the instructions. In their case, subjects were strongly encouraged to succeed on such an important task; in our experiment, subjects were told merely “to keep the feedback light on as much as possible.” According to our analysis then, it is perhaps not surprising that Carlson and Feld’s failure subjects, responding primarily to the task instructions, showed an improvement in performance whereas our helplessness subjects, responding primarily to the experimental contingencies, showed a decline. A second and even more likely candidate is the degree or severity of the helplessness training. According to Wortman and Brehm’s (1975) integrative model, a reactance effect is likely to occur when the helplessness pretreatment is minimal in degree or severity, because a subject’s prior belief set, namely that he or she calm produce the desirable outcome, will prevail. It is only with extended experience with lack of control that a subject becomes helpless and shows a performance deficit. In terms of
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the present experiment, the inescapable noise can be judged to be significantly more severe in changing a subject’s belief set than the biofeedback failure treatment used by Carlson and Feld. The job of exploring the relationship between extent and severity of training and kind of transfer, of course, remains. Our secondary objective was to examine whether the ASQ scores reliably predict the helplessness effect in this context. Our hypothesis was clearly not supported: CPCN scores do not predict the degree to which helplessness subjects demonstrate a performance deficit. In many ways, this result is not very surprising. For one thing, the use of the ASQ as a measure of attributional style has been questioned by a number of investigators (Miller, Smith, & Uleman, 1981; Solomon, 1978). More important, the ASQ is a measure of cognitive style; it’s utility has therefore been more as a predictor of other cognitive styles, such as depression (see Peterson & Seligman, 1984 for a review), than overt instrumental behaviors. Given this fact, the ASQ should have correlated more highly with failure on the cognitive task than on the instrumental task (as indeed we found in Experiments 2 and 3). Again, future research will have to determine the generality of such a conclusion. Experiment 3 was not designed to examine any of the theoretical issues pertaining specifically to instrumental autonomic conditioning (see Grigg & Ashton, 1984; Lacroix, 1981; Roberts, 1988; Ross, 1982) but our results appear to confirm Carlson’s (1982) assertion that biofeedback is affected by a subject’s cognitions. This finding is not unexpected either, given that Schwartz (1971) has shown that specific thoughts, which are self-generated and self-presented, can affect heart rate, and that Engel (1986) has made a strong case for the idea that “cardiovascular responses are aspects of behavior . . . [that] obey the same rules as do other aspects of behavior” (Engel, 1986, p. 294). In other words, it is reasonable to conclude that instrumental control of heart rate increases (shorter-than-baseline IBIS) is essentially no different than instrumental control of motor actions. Both kinds of behavioral control may be debilitated by a helplessness pretreatment, although the degree of debilitation in either case is not reliably predicted by the ASQ. REFERENCES Abramson, L. Y., Seligman, M. E. P., & Teasdale, J. D. (1978). Learned helplessness in humans: Critique and reformulation. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 87, 49-74. Alloy, L. B., Peterson, C., Abramson, L. Y., & Seligman, M. E. P. (1984). Attributional style and the generality of learned helplessness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 681-687. Carlson, J. G. (1982). Some concepts of perceived control and their relationship to bodily self-control. Biofeedback and Self-Regulation, 7, 341-375. Carlson, J. G., & Feld, J. L. (1981). Expectancies of reinforcement: Control of reinforcement in biofeedback and cognitive performance. Biofeedback and Self-Regulation, 6, 79-91.
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Engle, B. T. (1986). An essay on the circulation as behavior. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 9, 285-318. Goodkin, F. (1976). Rats learn the relationship between responding and environmental events: An expansion of the learned helplessness hypothesis. Learning and Motivation, 7, 382-394. Grigg, L., & Ashton R. (1984). Heart rate discrimination and heart rate control: A test of Brener’s theory. international Journal of Psychophysiology, 2, 185-201. Hiroto, D. S. (1974). Locus of control and learned helplessness. Journal of Experimental Psychology 102, 187-193. Hiroto, D. S., & Sehgman, M. E. P. (1975). Generality of learned helplessness in man. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31, 311-327. Lacroix, J. M. (1981). The acquisition of autonomic control through biofeedback: The case against an afferent process and a two-process alternative. Psychophysiology, 18, 573587. Maier, S. F., & Seligman, M. E. P. (1976). Learned helplessness: Theory and evidence. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 105, 3-46. Miller, F., Smith, E. R., & Uleman, J. (1981). Measurement and interpretation of situational and dispositional attributions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 17, 80-95. Miller, N. E. (1978). Biofeedback and visceral learning. Annual Review of Psychology, 29, 373-404. Obrist, P. A., Galosy, R. A., Lawler, J. E., Gaebelein, C. J., Howard, J. L., & Shanks, E. M. (1975). Operant conditioning of heart rate: Somatic correlates. Psychophysiology, 12, 445-455. Overmier, J. B., & Seligman, M. E. P. (1967). Effects of inescapable shock upon subsequent escape and avoidance learning. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 63, 28-33. Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (1984). Causal explanations as a risk factor for depression: Theory and evidence. Psychological Review, 91, 347-374. Peterson, C., Semmel, A., von Baeyer, C., Abramson, L. Y., Metalsky. G. I., & Seligman, M. E. P. (1982). The Attributional Style Questionnaire. Cognitive Therapy and Research,
6, 287-299.
Raven, J. C. (1960). Guide to the Standard Progressive Matrices. London: H. K. Lewis. Roberts, L. E. (1988). Theory and evidence in psychophysiology: Is biofeedback conditioning or action? Journal of Psychophysiology, 2, 5-12. Ross, A. (1982). Concurrent assessment of heart rate discrimination and control. Biological Psychology, 14, 231-244. Roth, S., & Bootzin, R. R. (1974). Effects of experimentally induced expectancies of external control: An investigation of learned helplessness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
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Schober, R., & Lacroix, J. M. (1986). Effects of task instructions and contingency on the development of phasic heart rate control and its correlates. Canadian Journal of Psychology,
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Schwartz, G. E. (1971). Cardiac responses to self-induced thoughts. Psychophysiology, 8, 462-467. Seligman, M. E. P. & Maier, S. F. (1967). Failure to escape traumatic shock. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 74, l-9. Solomon, S. (1978). Measuring dispositional and situational attributions. Personality and Social
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Tresselt, M. E., & Mayzner, M. S. (1966). Normative solution times for a sample of 134 solution words and 378 associated anagrams. Psychonomic Monograph Supplements, 1, 293-298.
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Wortman, C. B., & Brehm, J. W. (1975). Responses to uncontrollable outcomes: An integration of reactance theory and the learned helplessness model. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 8), pp. 277-336). New York: Academic Press. Received July 17, 1990 Revised November 2, 1990