Research on the effect of the benzodiazepines, Valium, and Librium on human psychomotor and cognitive functions is reviewed. Benzodiazepines which are the most important antianxiety medications also have anticonvulsant, hypnotic-sedative, and muscle-relaxant properties. Research on the benzodiazepine hypnotic "hangover" effects on cognitive and motor behavior is cited. The benzodiazepines Valium and Librium probably interact with neurotransmitters, especially GABA and very likely have specific receptors in the brain and central nervous system. Absorption and elimination rate vary with dosage, method of administration, and age. Valium and Librium have no gravely harmful side effects, little addictive potential; danger from overdosage is minimal. Although controlled studies of the impact of psychoactive drugs on psychomotor and cognitive performance are relatively recent, Valium and Librium apparently have little, if any, adverse effect on well established higher mental functions and may affect the speed with which simple repetitive motor actions are performed. None of their effects are irreversible. Benzodiazepines (BZ) have been remarkable drugs. They have virtually replaced all other forms of antianxiety medications (48, 95, 109, 225). All the BZ drugs additionally have anticonvulsant, sedative-hypnotic, and muscle-relaxant properties (4, 77, 88, 112, 252). Two of the BZ drugs, Valium (diazepam) and Librium (chlordiazepoxide) have been the best sellers of the BZ drug family and the most frequently prescribed drugs in the world (7, 15, 17, 77, 110, 137, 215, 257). The impact of Valium and Librium on human psychomotor and cognitive functions is the focus of this review of research. Since millions of people are using these drugs, how do Valium and Librium affect alertness and responsiveness, for example, in driving a car to work, or operating a machine in a factory (240)? Tranquilizing drugs like Valium and Librium were hailed when they replaced sedatives like barbiturates because they did not cloud the mind. Is decision-making or mental alertness affected in those who use Valium or Librium (69)? In studying the impact of drugs on the central nervous system (CNS) and brain, animal subjects frequently are employed. However, the human condition of anxiety for which Valium and Librium are usually prescribed is hard to evaluate and human subjects vary greatly, so that this review of research has been limited for the most part to studies with human subjects (8, 26, 50, 107, 108, 262, 263, 264).
Summary The relationships between correspondence and seriation tasks and between transitivity and seriation were investigated as well as the effects of the use of two different criteria on transitivity performance: judgment-only and judgment-plus-explanation. The Ss were 428 children from kindergarten and from primary school Grades 1 to 6, who completed these three types of tasks which were similar to those used by Piaget and his associates. The capacity to solve the correspondence tasks was acquired earlier in development than seriation. Acquisition of transitivity according to the judgment-only criterion preceded seriation, whereas transitivity according to the judgment-plus-explanation criterion was acquired after seriation.
It is argued that healthy personality is potentially as identifiable a pattern as is any diagnostic category and is not equivalent simply to "normality." In moving toward a theory of psychological health one needs to examine structure and dynamics with respect to the functions of instigation, regulation, meaning, and style. Psychoanalytic theory is taken as a point-of-departure. Viewed as a theory of neurosis, psychoanalysis does not provide an adequate treatment of ego-constructive functions, components of the superego (aside from conscience in a negative sense), or human motivation. Humanistic theory helps by focussing on health, although it falls short with regard to motivation. The essential properties of healthy humanness emerge as integration among the structures of personality and progression in the dynamics of personality functioning. Four major pathways in development are outlined to highlight how health differs from other patterns.
The research in psychopathology has revealed little interest in distinguishing between types of chronic mental patients. Chronics have usually been treated as a homogeneous group, and other possible subtypes have remained undefined because of the "melting-pot" effects of extensive hospitalization. Recently, there has been a renewed interest in the chronic patient, as well as in a differentiation of the largest group of such patients, the chronic schizophrenic. Ss were 129 inpatients at a state mental hospital in Maine. The present report begins the specification of a diagnostic system for chronic patients with the use of tasks that reflect developmental functions. Factor analysis of a set of developmental tasks, ranging from early reflex tests to later cognitive operations, resulted in a test battery which clearly defines specific developmental functions. Of most importance, the clusters of patients derived from these factors exhibited differential profiles indicating strengths and weaknesses on the developmental functions. The assumption of a developmental task sequence was not supported by the results, but the diagnosis of the chronic patient in terms of developmental functions appears promising.
To test empirically the oft-repeated clinical hypothesis of a relationship between the self-derogation component of low self-esteem and severity of psychopathology across the entire range of pathology, including nondepressive disorders, the present study examined this relationship in two samples of Ss. The first were 152 patients and expatients from two community mental health catchment areas followed up two years after their first functional-disorder psychiatric admission. The second group were 97 outpatients from the same catchment areas beginning therapy at a community mental health clinic. Within each sample self-derogation was related significantly to severity of diagnosis, overall health-sickness, numerous indices of symptomatology severity, and a measure of difficulty in social/employment functioning. These findings point to the need to recognize and treat self-derogation in psychopathological states other than depression. In addition, they raise the important question of direction of causality between self-derogation and observed psychopathology.
The rate of habituation and rehabituation and the magnitude of dishabituation were investigated in four-month-old infants (24 boys, 24 girls) as a function of stimulus preference. Infants were habituated to either a preferred or nonpreferred stimulus and rehabituated with the opposite stimulus. Infants initially viewing a preferred stimulus required more trials to habituate and fewer trials to rehabituate than those in the nonpreferred group. In addition, the magnitude of dishabituation was greater for infants in the latter group. The data were discussed in terms of the importance of stimulus preference in studies of infant habituation.
The present study examined the impressions of personality formed from written descriptions of behavior by over 200 hospitalized male schizophrenics, tested individually when they seemed in contact with reality. One description was of extrovert (E) behavior by a youth named Jim; another was of his introvert (I) behavior in similar settings. Combined communications gave one description immediately after the other. After 150 patients read one of the communications, they were generally willing and able to respond to a 36-item questionnaire about Jim. This also occurred when 96 patients were asked to answer it before any communication, on the basis of their expectations about Jim; 56 subsequently received a communication, followed by readministration of the questionnaire. Patients' responses, before or after the communications, revealed few pathological signs and, like those of normal Ss, could usually be classified as E or I. Patients had less differential effects, and far fewer I responses than normal Ss. Patients and normals showed preconceptions of Jim as extrovertive. Results were discussed in light of the projective hypothesis and other theories.
An Adolescent Social Behavior Scale (ASBS) was developed to measure the imaginary audience construct and aspects of adolescent self-consciousness in social situations. There were 60 Ss (30 male, 30 female) at each of three grade levels, 8, 10, and 12, and 26 adults (9 male, 15 female) in the sample. Results show that younger Ss gave significantly more imaginary audience behavior and externally self-conscious responses than older Ss, while only moderate age differences were apparent for internally motivated self-consciousness. High anxiety was generally associated with high self-consciousness of both types, but not with imaginary audience behavior. The need for clarity in operationalizing the concepts of imaginary audience behavior and self-consciousness is emphasized.
In two studies Ss (N = 114) aged 3-5 years of age were assessed as to their ability to reconstruct or recognize spatial displays depicting Euclidean geometric features. The Ss responded either with the standard display present or in its absence, a memory condition. Items differed as to whether the objects located in the plane required attention to either one axis, the horizontal or vertical, or to both. In Study I Ss constructed their matches with an open-ended assessment device, while in Study II, they selected the match from a field of four distractors. Results from both studies were convergent despite differences in assessment technique and specifics of data analysis, and indicated an effect for age and condition, and that children do less well when dealing with double-axis displays in the memory condition. In addition, it appears that males were less attentive to display orientation cues than were females. Results are discussed in terms of Piagetian theoretical formulations about children's spatial development, their sensitivity to Euclidean spatial features, and the lack of synchrony between perceptual abilities and memory.
