Abstract
Twenty-six children diagnosed as having minimal brain dysfunctions (MBD) were compared with 26 controls in a conditinoing and generalization procedure. Skin resistance, heart rate, and muscle action potentials were monitored throughout. Success involved learning which of two tones signalled the accessibility of a penny. Whereas 92 per cent of controls reached the criterion of five successive correct responses, only 62 per cent of MBD’s did. Further, a third of the MBD’s were so maladaptive as to force procedural variations, while only a few minor irregularities occurred with the controls. Quality of performance was related to age, intelligence, and ability to discriminate and remember tones. Controls were more physiologically reactive than MBD’s, especially in skin resistance. Physiologic differentiation of the two tones was significant in both groups of children and appeared concurrently with motor differentiation. The only evidence of physiologic generalization was in the SR data of controls. The possibility that defective arousal structures, or defective coupling of arousal structures and other perceptual and motor structures, could account for the decreased physiologic reactivity, short attention spans, and poor concentration ofsome MBD’s is discussed. This research, in conformity with other laboratory studies of the brain, indicates that motivational as well as cognitive defects may be organically based.
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This investigation was begun under grant MH-01091 from the National Institute of Mental Health. The work was completed with support from grants MH-12888 and MH-00142 from the same agency. Dr. Dykman is the recipient of a Public Health Service Research Career Program Award (K3-MH-2504) from the National Institute of Mental Health. The work of Dr. Boydstun was supported by a training grant for medical students (5-T2-5903), also by the National Institute of Mental Health. On the basis of this research Dr. Boydstun received a Student Research Award in Psychiatry from the Arkansas Association for Mental Health. We are indebted to the Biometry Department of the University of Arkansas Medical Center, which is supported by NIH grant FR-00208, for assistance given in data processing, and to the Arkansas State Department of Education, who have supported our clinical work with MBD children. We also wish to acknowledge the loan from the Veterans Administration of physiologic equipment used in this research.
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Boydstun, J.A., Ackerman, P.T., Stevens, D.A. et al. Physiologic and motor conditioning and generalization in children with minimal brain dysfunction. Conditional Reflex 3, 81–104 (1968). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03001140
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03001140