How automatic are social judgments?

Do people infer personality dispositions automatically when they encode behavior? Tulving's encoding-specificity paradigm was adapted to test three operational indicants of automatism: absence of intention, of interference from other mental activity, and of awareness. Recruited for a digit-recall study, subjects read sentences describing actions during the retention interval of either an easy or a difficult digit recall task. Later, sentence recall was cued by (a) disposition cues, (b) strong semantic associates to the sentence actor, or (c) words representing the gist of the sentence, or (d) sentence recall was not cued. Awareness was measured immediately after the last sentence was read. Disposition-cued recall was higher than (b) or (d) and was unaffected by digit recall difficulty. Awareness of making dispositional inferences was only weakly correlated with disposition-cued recall. Results suggest that disposition inferences occurred at encoding, without intention, without interference by differential drain on processing capacity, and with little awareness. Thus, making dispositional inferences seems to be largely, but not entirely, automatic.

How automatic are social judgments?

Do people infer personality dispositions automatically when they encode behavior? Tulving's encoding-specificity paradigm was adapted to test three operational indicants of automatism: absence of intention, of interference from other mental activity, and of awareness. Recruited for a digit-recall study, subjects read sentences describing actions during the retention interval of either an easy or a difficult digit recall task. Later, sentence recall was cued by (a) disposition cues, (b) strong semantic associates to the sentence actor, or (c) words representing the gist of the sentence, or (d) sentence recall was not cued. Awareness was measured immediately after the last sentence was read. Disposition-cued recall was higher than (b) or (d) and was unaffected by digit recall difficulty. Awareness of making dispositional inferences was only weakly correlated with disposition-cued recall. Results suggest that disposition inferences occurred at encoding, without intention, without interference by differential drain on processing capacity, and with little awareness. Thus, making dispositional inferences seems to be largely, but not entirely, automatic.

When are social judgments made? Evidence for the spontaneousness of trait inferences

Do people make trait inferences, even without intentions or instructions, at the encoding stage of processing behavioral information? Tulving's encoding specificity paradigm (Tulving & Thomson, 1973) was adapted for two recall experiments. Under memory instructions only, subjects read sentences describing people performing actions that implied traits. Later, subjects recalled each sentence under one of three cuing conditions: (a) a dispositional cue (e.g., generous), (b) a strong, nondispositional semantic associate to an important sentence word; or (c) no cue. Recall was best when cued by the disposition words. Subjects were unaware of having made trait inferences. Interpreted in terms of encoding specificity, these results indicate that subjects unintentionally made trait inferences at encoding. This suggests that attributions may be made spontaneously, as part of the routine comprehension of social events.

A double-blind randomized study of an aspirin/caffeine combination versus acetaminophen/aspirin combination versus acetaminophen versus placebo in patients with moderate to severe post-partum pain

In a double-blind, randomized controlled trial among 500 post-partum patients experiencing moderate to severe pain, a single oral dose of an aspirin/caffeine combination (800 mg aspirin, 65 mg caffeine) provided significantly more pain relief at 2 hours than did a higher dose of an acetaminophen/aspirin combination (648 mg acetaminophen, 648 mg aspirin) and a higher dose of acetaminophen alone (1000 mg acetaminophen). At 3 and 4 hours, the acetaminophen/aspirin combination as well as the aspirin/caffeine combination were significantly superior to acetaminophen alone. At all times, all three drugs were significantly superior to placebo. There were no clinically significant adverse reactions. These results provide evidence of a potentiating effect of caffeine on aspirin's analgesic potency.

When are social judgments made? Evidence for the spontaneousness of trait inferences

Do people make trait inferences, even without intentions or instructions, at the encoding stage of processing behavioral information? Tulving's encoding specificity paradigm (Tulving & Thomson, 1973) was adapted for two recall experiments. Under memory instructions only, subjects read sentences describing people performing actions that implied traits. Later, subjects recalled each sentence under one of three cuing conditions: (a) a dispositional cue (e.g., generous), (b) a strong, nondispositional semantic associate to an important sentence word; or (c) no cue. Recall was best when cued by the disposition words. Subjects were unaware of having made trait inferences. Interpreted in terms of encoding specificity, these results indicate that subjects unintentionally made trait inferences at encoding. This suggests that attributions may be made spontaneously, as part of the routine comprehension of social events.

[Effect of occupational lead exposure on various elements in the human blood. Effects on calcium, cadmium, iron, copper, magnesium, manganese and zinc levels in the human blood, erythrocytes and plasma in vivo]

The influence of occupational lead-exposure on calcium, magnesium and trace elements concentration in blood was investigated. We examined 96 lead-exposed persons and for comparison 46 persons without occupational lead exposure. The levels of lead, cadmium, calcium, iron, copper, magnesium, manganese and zinc were determined by atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS) in whole-blood, erythrocytes, as well as in plasma. The median of the lead-concentration in whole blood of the exposed group was 646 micrograms/l (+/- 66.6%-range: 449-814 micrograms/l). For the normal persons a median of 148 micrograms Pb/l (+/- 66.6%-range: 107-235 micrograms Pb/l) was calculated. In whole-blood, erythrocytes and plasma all element-concentrations of the non-exposed persons were in the normal ranges. The lead-exposed workers showed a higher manganese level. The other elements were found in normal values for this group. Increasing lead-concentrations in blood correlated with elevated levels of manganese and zinc in whole-blood, erythrocytes and plasma. The lead workers showed for the whole-blood manganese concentration a median of 14.2 micrograms/l (+/- 66.6%-range: 8.5-22.3 micrograms/l), for zinc a median of 6.3 mg/l (+/- 66.6%-range: 5.2-8.2 mg/l). Those levels were significantly higher than the levels of the non-exposed persons. For this group the median concentration of manganese was 4.8 micrograms/l (+/- 66.6%-range: 2.7-8.6 micrograms/l) and 5.7 mg/l (+/- 66.6%-range: 5.1-6.3 mg/l) for zinc respectively. For zinc positive correlation between blood lead levels and the levels of manganese and zinc in the three blood-compartments was found. An essential change of the element concentrations between erythrocytes and plasma, in the sense of a displacement from one blood-compartment to the other could not be detected.

Double-blind comparison of single oral doses of oxaprozin, aspirin, and placebo for relief of post-operative oral surgery pain

The safety and efficacy of single oral doses of oxaprozin (1200 mg), aspirin (650 mg), and placebo were compared in an 8-hour double-blind study of 105 patients with moderate to severe post-operative dental-surgical pain. As measured by mean and cumulative mean scores obtained with the pain intensity and verbal pain relief scales, both active drugs produced significantly (p less than 0.05) more analgesia than did placebo. A significantly (p less than 0.05) greater proportion of patients reported effective (moderate or better) pain relief in the oxaprozin and aspirin groups than in the placebo group at 2, 3, and 4 hours; significant (p less than 0.05) differences between the oxaprozin and placebo groups continued for the entire 8 hours. Oxaprozin provided more pain relief than aspirin during the latter part of the study. There were no statistically significant differences, however, in any of the efficacy assessments between the oxaprozin and aspirin groups. By the end of the 8-hour observation, significantly (p less than 0.01) fewer patients taking oxaprozin (27%) than placebo (60%) were considered treatment failures and needed a replacement analgesic. Of those taking aspirin, 41% were treatment failures, not statistically different from the proportion of treatment failures with placebo. Adverse effects were infrequent, mild, comparable between the active treatment and placebo groups, and not definitely related to drug therapy. Oxaprozin provided greater pain relief than placebo and was comparable to aspirin during the first 4 hours of the evaluation; thereafter, greater pain relief occurred in the oxaprozin-treated group than either the aspirin or placebo-treated group.

Analgesic combinations with orphenadrine in oral post-surgical pain

Two hundred male and female patients underwent a variety of oral surgical procedures and were treated afterwards in four test groups. They took a combination of orphenadrine (25 mg) and acetaminophen (325 mg), either drug alone, or placebo. A double-blind study design was used. All patients had moderately severe baseline pain intensity; post-treatment pain relief was recorded at 30 minutes, one, two, four and six hours. A back-up analgesic (codeine-ASA) was made available if needed. Pain intensity difference (PID) and sums of pain intensity difference (SPID) were calculated using established analgesic study techniques. Statistical analyses indicated better analgesic efficacy in both PID and SPID scores for the orphenadrine-acetaminophen combination over the three other treatments. This was evident at 30 minutes and continued through the sixth hour. Each active drug, in turn, was also significantly better throughout than placebo for pain relief. Sub-groups in each treatment regimen required additional pain relief prior to six hours, with significantly more placebo than orphenadrine-acetaminophen patients needing remedication. Side-effect incidence was very low and randomly distributed among the four groups.

Analgesic activity of ibuprofen (Motrin) in postoperative oral surgical pain

The effectiveness of 400 and 800 mg. of ibuprofen was compared to that of 650 mg. of aspirin, 65 mg. of propoxyphene HCl, and placebo in 510 patients experiencing pain subsequent to oral surgical procedures. In double-blind study, patients were randomly assigned to one of five experimental groups and instructed to report the intensity of pain (complete, partial, or none) over a 3-hour period of evaluation. Ibuprofen, at both doses, was shown to be more effective for both degree and duration of relief from pain.