Classroom behavior of reflective and impulsive children

Seventy-nine children, nine or eleven years old, classified as reflective or impulsive by the Matching Familiar Figures (MFF) test, were observed in public school classrooms. A total of 15 behavioral categories were selected to capture activities often labeled “reflective” or “impulsive” in the literature. Children were observed in each of three classroom settings—Individual Work, Large Group instruction, and Small Group instruction. Thirty minutes of observational data on each child revealed substantial differences in the behavior of older and younger children and across the three settings. By contrast, there was only a minor difference in the behavior of reflective and impulsive children. These results suggest that the concept of reflection-impulsivity, as operationalized by the MFF, should be limited to tasks that involve response uncertainty, and should not be used to imply differences in the typical classroom behavior of children classified as reflective or impulsive by the MFF.     

Hand Test characteristics of severely behavior handicapped children

The Hand Test was administered to 98 severely behavior handicapped (SBH) children and a matched control group of public school children. The withdrawal score and associated variables, indicative of severe psychopathology, differentiated the two groups. In addition, a qualitative analysis of the SBH protocols tentatively suggested a preponderance of four behavioral types that could be described as the underproductive, perseverative, psychotic and impulsive child. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Sensory Extinction: A procedure for eliminating self-stimulatory behavior in developmentally disabled children

This study was designed to investigate the role of sensory reinforcement in the motivation of self-stimulation. If self-stimulatory behavior is maintained by its sensory consequences, such as the proprioceptive, auditory, or visual stimulation it produces, then such behavior should extinguish when those sensory consequences are not permitted. The present study introduces a new procedure, Sensory Extinction, in which certain sensory consequences are masked or removed, to examine whether self-stimulation is operant behavior maintained by sensory reinforcement. The effectiveness of Sensory Extinction was assessed by a reversal design for each of three autistic children, and the results showed the following. First, self-stimulation reliably extinguished when a certain sensory consequence was removed, then increased when that consequence was permitted. This was replicable within and across children. Second, different Sensory Extinction procedures were required for different self-stimulatory behaviors, since the sensory reinforcers supporting them were idiosyncratic across children. Finally, regarding clinical gains, the data suggest that Sensory Extinction may be a relatively convenient and rapid alternative for the treatment of self-stimulation. The present findings extend the efficacy of extinction as a behavior-modification technique to instances in which the reinforcer is purely sensory. The implications of these results for the treatment of other forms of deviant behavior are discussed.     

A titration procedure for generating escape behavior

In a grid-shock escape paradigm using time-out as reinforcement, both fixed-ratio and variable-interval performances were established directly from a continuous reinforcement schedule with rats and guinea pigs. A procedure was developed that employed a stepwise decrease in reinforcement time for all responses except the terminal response. Acquisition and long-term maintenance data were obtained from Ss trained on this titrated negative-reinforcement procedure.     

A problem-solving model for teaching remedial arithmetic to handicapped young children

An operant problem-solving model was used to assist two handicapped young boys to learn the concept of number. During the initial baseline condition, with intermittent teacher-attention contingencies in a classroom setting, both boys were performing number concept tasks at about the 50% level of accuracy. The situation was changed to a one-to-one, tutor-pupil arrangement, with continuous reinforcement for correct responses. This alteration failed to increase the subjects' accuracy rates. Training was initiated in which the covert part of the response chain was made overt (e.g., attending and counting out loud) so that mediating responses could be monitored and reinforced. Once the subjects were performing at a high degree of accuracy, the reinforcers for the mediating responses were systematically eliminated and only final solution responses were reinforced. Accuracy of problem solutions remained high after training.This research was supported by the U.S. Office of Education, Division of Research, Bureau of Education for the Handicapped, Project No. 23–2030, Grant No. OEG-0-9-232030-0762(032). Linda S. Berner contributed to the execution of the study. Her assistance is greatly appreciated.     

Depression and self-esteem in academically gifted and nongifted children: A comparison study

The present investigation examined depression and self-esteem in a sample of 145 gifted and nongifted fourth and fifth grade children. Self-esteem was assessed by the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory. Depression was measured by Kovacs' Children's Depression Inventory, the Reynolds' Child Depression Scale, and teachers' global ratings of depression. As a group, gifted children did not differ on levels of self-esteem or depression from their nongifted peers. However, when grade and gender differences were examined, it was found that gifted boys tended to report lower levels of self-esteem and more depression than gifted girls. Teachers also judged boys to be more depressed than girls. Furthermore, fifth-graders were rated by teachers to be more depressed than fourth-graders. Overall, this investigation did not find major differences in affective characteristics between gifted and nongifted children.     

A procedure for studying echoic control in verbal behavior

Male and female college students answered standard questions about the women's liberation movement on three occasions. A set of target words was embedded in the questions, with one set used in Sessions 1 and 3, and a synonymous, but different set used in Session 2. The relative frequencies of usage of a given target word were directly related to whether the questions for that session contained the word. The results supported the hypothesis of echoics as proposed in Skinner's theory of verbal behavior.     

The family practices of service providers for young handicapped children

A survey was distributed to service providers in Connecticut working with newborn to 6-year-old handicapped children to examine the degree to which service activities currently focus on the family. Most service-provision goals elicited by the survey were child-focused clinical goals, but family-focused goals were frequently cited However, 30% reported spending no time with families during a typical week. Published programs or curricula were rarely used. The providers felt they were successfully achieving goals set for families but that they encountered some problems, including a lack of time to work with families. Comparisons were made between those working with children from birth to 3 years of age and those working with children 3 to 6 years of age. Suggestions concerning the implementation of the family-focused agenda were made.     

Effectiveness of DRO tokens in decreasing disruptive behavior in the classroom with five multiply handicapped children

In this study the effectiveness of differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO) with tokens was assessed in the treatment of various topographies of disruptive behavior in the classroom with five children who were multiply handicapped. Prior to implementation of the treatment, reinforcer assessment was conducted to identify items to be used as back-up reinforcers. Data were analyzed using time-series analysis. Results show that DRO tokens were highly effective in decreasing disruptive behavior of all participants. ©1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Behavioral engineering: the reduction of smoking behavior by a conditioning apparatus and procedure

Recent findings from animal conditioning studies have revealed methods of reducing responses to a very low level with a minimum of aversive by-products. These findings were incorporated into the design of a cigarette case that automatically locked itself for a period of time after a cigarette was removed from it. The next cigarette could be taken at the end of the interval, which was signalled by distinctive stimuli. Five heavy smokers were allowed to become accustomed to using the case. Then, the duration for which the case was locked was gradually increased over a period of weeks to about 1 hr. Smoking gradually decreased to the target level of about one-half of a package of cigarettes per day. Control procedures showed that specific features of the apparatus were responsible for the reduction of smoking. The results indicated that this apparatus was sufficiently effective, convenient, and acceptable to smokers to constitute a practical procedure for reducing smoking to the level considered medically safe. The procedure may also have potential for reducing other habit-forming or addictive behaviors.     

Parental assessment of temperament in handicapped children

The New York Longitudinal Study (NYLS) Parent Questionnaire assesses parental report of children's temperament on nine variables: Mood, distractibility, persistence, activity, rhythmicity, adaptability, approach-withdrawal, threshold and intensity. The present research was designed to assess the interrater reliability of this instrument and to provide cross-validation data regarding the nine scales. Questionnaires were validly completed by both parents of 47 children who had previously been evaluated at the Neuropsychology Laboratory of the Louisiana State University Medical Center. For each of the nine temperament variables, the scores obtained by each child when rated by his or her mother was significantly correlated with the score received on that variable when rated by the father. Thus, under the limitation imposed by the research design, it appears that parents are relatively consistent when evaluating the temperamental characteristics of their children. The correlations between each individual item and the factor it loads on were consistently highly significant. The nine temperamental variables are adequately assessed by the items included in the NYLS Questionnaire.     

A procedure for increasing oral reading rate in hard-of-hearing children

This study investigated the effects of systematic training on the oral reading rate of four hard-of-hearing children. In training, systematic increases in pulsing rate of a vibrotactile stimulus were arranged. The children received points, exchangeable for money when their reading rate equalled the pulse rate of the stimulus. The training procedure was effective in increasing the oral reading rate in all children. Generalized increases in reading rate on untrained word lists, sentences, and paragraphs were also observed.     

A revised blocked-trial procedure for establishing arbitrary matching in children

The present study evaluated a modified blocked-trial procedure in the learning of arbitrary matching tasks (A1-B1, A2-B2) by children. The procedure consisted of five steps. In Step 1, the comparisons (B1 and B2) were presented simultaneously with the samples (A1 and A2). The comparisons were presented at fixed locations (B1 left and B2 right), and the samples, A1 and A2, were randomly presented in successive trials. Subjects were reinforced for placing A1 on B1 and A2 on B2. Step 2 was the same except that the locations of B1 and B2 were reversed. Step 3 was the same as Steps 1 and 2 but with reversed B1-B2 locations after every fourth trial. Step 4 was the same as Step 3 except that the B1-B2 locations randomly changed over trials. Step 5 was the same as Step 4 except that subjects were required to point to the B stimuli. The procedure was highly effective—far more so than the traditional blocked-trial procedure.     

A forced-choice adaptive procedure for measuring auditory thresholds in children

A modification of the two-down/one-up tracking procedure was used to estimate thresholds of audibility in 46 children (ages 3 to 6 years) and 10 adults. A two-alternative forced-choice version (26 children, 5 adults) of this method was successful in estimating thresholds of audibility in 5-year-olds, but not in 3- and 4-year-olds. A single-interval version of the procedure was successful in estimating thresholds of audibility for all the children. Measures from the children of between- and within-subjects variability, psychometric functions, and response bias all indicate that the procedure enables one to estimate thresholds that are in close agreement with those obtained from adults and with results of other investigators.