The influence of four variables (status of communicator of drug effects, attitude of dentist, attitude of dental technician, and message of drug effects) on the obtainment of placebo effects in an oral surgery clinic was investigated. Dependent variables were (1) rating of pain experienced from mandibular-block injection, (2) pre-post placebo state anxiety, and (3) pre-postplacebo fear of injection. Enthusiastic messages of drug effects produced statistically and clinically significant reductions in postplacebo fear of injection and state anxiety and markedly lower ratings of pain experienced during injection of local anesthetic. Although there was a strong tendency for positive placebo effects to occur when the dental staff was perceived as friendly and supportive, only the attitude factors obtained statistical significance. The status of the communicator accounted for very small portions of the variance.

The relative effectiveness of biofeedback techniques on the voluntary control of heart rate was examined by randomly assigning 32 Ss to one of four feedback conditions in a bi-directional heart-rate control task: (1) no feedback, (2) binary feedback--S was signaled when an interbeat interval had changed in the correct direction, (3) "real-time," proportional feedback--S was provided information about the relative duration of successive interbeat intervals, and (4) numerical, proportional feedback--each interbeat interval was represented as a numeral indicating its relationship to pre-trial mean by direction and magnitude. Significant over-all heart-rate changes were evidenced for both increase and decrease directions, but no differences were found between the feedback conditions. While these data suggest that feedback may be a relatively insignificant factor in voluntary heart-rate control, it was recommended that further investigation examine the role of feedback within the context of other training, mediating and motivational variables.

WISC and WISC-R subtest and IQ scores were compared in two samples of juveniles referred to a large metropolitan juvenile probation department (Ns = 180 and 185, respectively). The samples were equated for age, sex, race, and grade level. Significant differences were found on six of the 10 subtests. There were also significant differences between WISC and WISC-R scores on the Verbal, Performance, and Full Scale scores. In each case the WISC-R score was lower than the WISC score with the exception of the Arithmetic subtest. We conclude from these data that juvenile delinquents score significantly lower on the WISC-R than on the WISC. Psychologists using the WISC-R where the WISC had been previously used should educate their referral sources and other users of scores from the WISC-R to the differences in the test scores between the WISC and WISC-R.

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