The development of a set of inventories for objectively assessing the adjustment and social behavior of pre-psychotic and ex-hospital patients in the community is described. The underlying rationale and the operational criteria for the scales are presented, along with the results of several studies having to do with their discriminative validity in a follow-up study, the development of the separate measures of adjustment and social behavior, the internal consistencies, and the stability of the measures across populations. The major characteristics of the scales are their reliance on both the patient and a relative in measuring social behavior, the use of a relative as a direct reporter, and the establishment of his reliability in describing patient behavior. The scales have been designed for application to the problems of describing and classifying patients in accordance with their behavior prior to entrance to the hospital and in the community follow-up evaluation and comparison of psychiatric treatments.

The experiment reports the effects of appropriate and inappropriate instructions and 2 drugs (.5 g chloral hydrate and 10 mg racemic amphetamine sulphate) on motor performance and mood measures. The Ss were 90 older men randomly assigned to 9 experimental groups. The design used was expansion of a model design involving Drug Disguised groups, Placebo groups (300 mg lactose), an Untreated group, and Amphetamine, Chloral Hydrate, and Neutral instructions. The drugs and placebos were given to the Ss in capsules, and all Ss received orange juice, which was also the vehicle for the disguise. The Untreated group received orange juice only. Instructions alone affected performance, but had little or no effect on mood. Instructions appropriate to the presumed drug effects produced performance deterioration on the simple motor tasks used. Instructions inappropriate to the presumed drug effects counteracted much of the drug produced decrement. A slight decrement in performance was found in the Placebo group which received Amphetamine instruction. Amphetamine treated Ss produced reports of greater comfort on the mood index than did chloral hydrate. On the other hand, the chloral hydrate instructions resulted in greater comfort than the Amphetamine instructions. There was no interaction between drug effects and instructional effects. The 2 Placebo groups did not differ significantly on the mood index. The effects of instructions on mood were found only when the drug was present. Several suggestions are offered for further research.

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