Measurement of the Effects of Abstinence from Tabacco Research Paper

Measurement of the Effects of Abstinence from Tabacco - Research Paper Example Such an all-encompassing impulse commenced as a reaction to the radical behaviorism of Watson, Pavlov and Skinner. The latter had boasted that any and every behavior could be learned or â€Å"extinguished† by applying the principles of operant conditioning alone. Behaviorism failed as a universal paradigm because it could not account for resilience, motivation and altruism, among others. Humanistic psychology emerged as a return to the inward-looking thrust of the great pioneers of psychiatry (e.g. Freud). Subsequently, discoveries in neurology and biochemical psychology led to the other extreme of viewing human dysfunction as singular or cascading biochemical phenomena. Following that line of reasoning, any source of discomfort or disequilibrium should be treated forthwith with the appropriate drugs. Hence, even â€Å"childhood hyperkinesis†, the other term for ADD, was routinely treated with psychoactive drugs such as the CNS stimulants Methylphenidate/Dexmethylphenid ate, the high-risk norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, and amphetamine derivatives (Zieve & Berger, 2011), the latter classed by the Drug Enforcement Administration as Type II addictive substances. Such an aggressive approach has been called into question, partly on the grounds that long-term drug use fail to reverse depressive states in adults, for example, and the observed bias for referring male pupils as so rowdy that they â€Å"must be† afflicted by chronic ADD (Sciutto, Nolfi, & Bluhm, (2004). In 1970, Howell, Huessy and Hassuk (1985) embarked on a longitudinal study that followed a cohort of school children for the next decade-and-a-half. That rigorous research design, which produced the data set subject of this paper, aimed to strengthen construct validity. If it could be shown that children who scored high on an ADD screening study instrument also had adverse outcomes in point of academic achievement, grade point average, dropping out of school, social adjustment, an d failing to graduate from high school despite controlling for intelligence, then it could reasonably be concluded that ADD was a crippling condition and not just a transient phenomenon in child development. Method Participants (ALREADY WRITTEN IN STUDENT DRAFT) Procedure (DITTO) Measures (DITTO) Results Descriptive Statistics Tables 1 and 2 (below) show, first of all, the variables that have to do purely with participant profiles for gender and IQ, from the Howell, Huessy and Hassuk (1985) data set of 216 students. Table 1 Descriptive Statistics for Gender Descriptive Statistics: GENDER N 216 Range 1 Sum 316 Mode 1 Median 1 Mean N.A. Std. Deviation N.A. N.A. = Not applicable because nominal-type variable. Table 2 Descriptive Statistics for IQ N Valid 216 Missing 0 Mean 102.35 Std. Error of Mean .854 Median 103.00 Mode 95 Std. Deviation 12.558 Range 82 Sum 22109 Figure 1: Distribution of IQ Scores We next examine the descriptive statistics for the criterion variable, ADD scores. Tab le 3: ADD-like Behavior Score (Mean of 3) N Valid 216 Missing 0 Mean 52.8480 Std. Error of Mean .71118 Median 53.0000 Mode 51.67 Std. Deviation 10.45221 Range 52.00 Sum 11415.17 Percentiles 10 39.2333 20 42.8000 25