The home environments of 32 children of alcoholic parents and 22 children with neither parent alcoholic are compared. The home environments of the children of alcoholics show diminished global functioning. In particular they are characterized by marital conflict, parent-child conflict, poor adaptive functioning an the part of the parents and in some cases by physical abuse. Out of the 32 children with alcoholic parents, a majority of the children received 1 or more DSM-III diagnoses. A comparison of the home environments of the children of alcoholics with and without psychiatric diagnoses shows that the homes of the 'disturbed' children are characterized by a greater exposure to the effecu of parental drinking, more parent-child confiict and less parent-child interaction than the homes of children who received no diagnoses.

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An attempt was made to reduce the cigarette smoking of three subjects by means of a special cigarette case that delivered aversive shock when opened. The number of cigarettes smoked was recorded by a counter in the cigarette case. The validity of the counter readings as a measure of smoking was obtained by a specially designed participant-observer technique. It was found that the rate of smoking decreased as a function of the intensity of the shock. Also, the smoking returned to its previously unpunished level after the shock punisher was discontinued. Both of these findings confirm the results of laboratory studies of punishment of simpler responses and extends them to more complex responses in a naturalistic situation. Surprisingly, the duration for which the apparatus was worn also decreased as a function of the intensity of the shock. This finding reveals that this aversive shock technique produced avoidance behavior that prevents the technique from having extensive applicability for eliminating smoking. The same limitation may apply to the use of aversive shock -or eliminating other undesirable behaviors.

No abstract