Training public-speaking behavior: an experimental analysis and social validation

The effect of an instructional package on public-speaking behaviors was analyzed in two experiments. The instructional package was designed to teach public-speaking trainees to look at the audience, make gestures, and perform a number of speaking behaviors. The results of Experiment I, with a university student serving as the trainee, showed that the percentage of each category of public-speaking target behavior increased only after the instructional package was introduced for that category. The results of Experiment 2, with three low-income paraprofessional staff members of a neighborhood service center serving as trainees, showed that the percentage of target behaviors increased after the instructional package was introduced for the respective trainee. Audience ratings of public-speaking performance were correlated with direct observations of target responses. All trainees showed marked improvements in audience ratings from pretraining to posttraining. This study demonstrated an effective procedure for training public-speaking behaviors.     

Bottlenosed dolphin and human recognition of veridical and degraded video displays of an artificial gestural language

2 bottlenosed dolphins proficient in interpreting gesture language signs viewed veridical and degraded gestures via TV without explicit training. In Exp. 1, dolphins immediately understood most gestures: Performance was high throughout degradations successively obscuring the head, torso, arms, and fingers, though deficits occurred for gestures degraded to a point-light display (PLD) of the signer's hands. In Exp. 2, humans of varying gestural fluency saw the PLD and veridical gestures from Exp. 1. Again, performance declined in the PLD condition. Though the dolphin recognized gestures as accurately as fluent humans, effects of the gesture's formational properties were not identical for humans and dolphin. Results suggest that the dolphin uses a network of semantic and gestural representations, that bottom-up processing predominates when the dolphin's short-term memory is taxed, and that recognition is affected by variables germane to grammatical category, short-term memory, and visual perception.     

Activation and integration of motor components in a short-term priming paradigm

The aim of the present research was to study the processes involved in knowledge emergence. In a short-term priming paradigm, participants had to categorize pictures of objects as either "kitchen objects" or "do-it-yourself tools". The primes and targets represented objects belonging to either the same semantic category or different categories (object category similarity), and their use involved gestures that were either similar or very different (gesture similarity). The condition with a SOA of 100ms revealed additive effects of motor similarity and object category similarity, whereas another condition with a SOA of 300ms showed an interaction between motor and category similarity. These results were interpreted in terms of the activation and integration processes involved in the emergence of mental representations.     

Spoken and gestural production in a naming task by young children with Down syndrome

Lexical production in children with Down syndrome (DS) was investigated by examining spoken naming accuracy and the use of spontaneous gestures in a picture naming task. Fifteen children with DS (range 3.8-8.3 years) were compared to typically developing children (TD), matched for chronological age and developmental age (range 2.6-4.3 years). Relative to TD children, children with DS were less accurate in speech (producing a greater number of unintelligible answers), yet they produced more gestures overall and of these a significantly higher percentage of iconic gestures. Furthermore, the iconic gestures produced by children with DS accompanied by incorrect or no speech often expressed a concept similar to that of the target word, suggesting deeper conceptual knowledge relative to that expressed only in speech.     

Patient inquiry into mental hospitalization: a quantitative analysis.

In this section we have assembled a small collection of data concerned with the issue of whether or not adolescents would profit from reflective inquiry into the closed area of mental health care. We have analyzed, arranged and interpreted the data from our study and conclude it demonstrates that adolescent inpatients did profit substantially from a reflective inquiry into mental health care. The number of subjects involved in this experimental program was small. The subjects of the experimental program were not selected randomly. Moreover, the researcher could not control for a number of intervening variables. For this particular group the intervening variables were many: changes in the subjects' individual treatment program, level of tranquilizing medication, attitude of other staff toward the experimental program, relations with parents or relatives, et cetera. This list covers some of the more important weaknesses of the experimental design. In the account of the experiment we reported the influence of other significant intervening variables as they emerged during the course of the study. Even with these important limitations the total push of the results in the direction of our argument compels us to conclude that it is clearly profitable for adolescent inpatients to reflectively inquire into the closed area of mental health care. Although the data reported here are not of predictive value, we believe they indicate the importance of having adolescent inpatients reflectively examine their social situation.     

A new methodological approach to nonverbal behavior analysis in cultural perspective

The measurement of human behavior is a complex task, both for psychologists and human sciences researchers and with respect to technology, since advanced and sophisticated instruments may have to be implemented to manage the plurality of variables involved. In this article, an observational study is presented in which a quantitative procedure, theexternal variables method (Duncan & Fiske, 1977), was integrated with a structural analysis (Magnusson, 1993, 2000) in order to detect the hidden organization of nonverbal behavior in Italian and Icelandic interactions. To this aim, Theme software was introduced and employed. The results showed that both the frequency and the typology of gestures deeply change as a function of culture. Moreover, a high number of patterns was detected in both Italian and Icelandic interactions: They appeared to be complex sequences in which a huge number of events were constantly happening and recurring. In this domain, Theme software provides a methodological progression from the quantitative to the structural approach.     

Training direct service staff in congregate settings to interact with people with severe disabilities: A quick,effective and acceptable program

An area of traditional as well as recent concern in congregate settings for people with severe disabilities is ensuring frequent social interactions between direct service staff and individuals who live in the residences. This study evaluated a program for training staff to interact frequently and positively across clients while in group situations in living units. The program involved a short classroom instructional session encompassing less than 1 h, followed by a maximum of 4 brief on-the-job observations and feedback sessions. Results indicated interaction rates of all 9 participating direct service staff increased above a normative criterion rate while participating in the training program. All staff also increased the proportion of their social interactions with clients that were positive in nature, and 6 of the 9 staff increased their distribution of interactions across clients. The improved interaction performances occurred when staff were provided with immediate on-the-job feedback regarding their performances as well as when provided with delayed feedback. Acceptability measures indicated the training program was well received by staff, although program components also were noted that may have affected staff acceptance differentially. Directions for future research are suggested in regard to further evaluating and increasing staff acceptance of effective training procedures.     

Factors affecting utilization of evaluation findings by direct service staff

Simulated evaluation report abstracts were used to determine whether factors previously identified as enhancing utilization of evaluation findings by policy level decisionmakers and agency directors also enhance utilization by direct service staff. Respondents were 238 direct service staff members in mental health agencies. Dependent variables were perceived usefulness and perceived truthfulness. The predictor variables were relevance of the evaluation, staff participation, quality of research design and specificity of recommendations. All predictor variables except the last were significant but relevance explained almost all the variance. The two dependent variables were highly correlated and virtually could not be distinguished from each other. Rosemary Holland is currently working as a private consultant to mental health agencies for program development and program evaluation. She has extensive experience in the administration and planning of mental health services. Dr. Holland's primary interest is in user-initiated evaluations. She is on leave this year from the social work department of the University of Detroit.     

A PARTICIPATIVE MANAGEMENT APPROACH FOR IMPROVING DIRECT-CARE STAFF PERFORMANCE IN AN INSTITUTIONAL SETTING

The present study evaluated a participative management approach for increasing the frequency of interactions between institutional staff and severely/profoundly retarded residents. The participative management approach involved teaching staff how to use self-monitoring, standard setting, self-evaluation, and self-reinforcement procedures. These procedures were then used by staff with minimal involvement of supervisory personnel. Although supervisors provided feedback and praise to staff for using these self-management behaviors, feedback and praise were never dispensed contingent on staff interactions with residents. Results indicated that during the participative management program there was an increase in staff interactions that were contingent on appropriate resident behavior. The increase in this type of staff interaction was accompanied by an increase in appropriate resident behavior. Follow-up data on both staff and resident behaviors, although showing moderating trends, suggested generally good maintenance of the initial behavior changes. Acceptability data suggested that staff were quite receptive to the program. The advantages of participative management procedures for improving staff performance in residential settings are discussed.     

Do conversational hand gestures communicate?

In 5 experiments, male and female undergraduates viewed gestures and tried to select the words that originally accompanied them; read interpretations of gestures' meanings and tried to select the words that originally had accompanied them; tried to recognize gestures they previously had seen, presented either with or without the accompanying speech; and assigned gestures and the accompanying speech to semantic categories. On all 4 tasks, performance was better than chance but markedly inferior to performance when words were used as stimuli. Judgments of a gesture's semantic category were determined principally by the accompanying speech rather than gestural form. It is concluded that although gestures can convey some information, they are not richly informative, and the information they convey is largely redundant with speech.     

Improving day-treatment services for adults with severe disabilities: a norm-referenced application of outcome management

We evaluated an outcome management program for working with staff to improve the performance of adults with severe disabilities in a congregate day-treatment setting. Initially, observations were conducted of student task involvement and staff distribution of teaching interactions across students in four program sites. Using recent normative data to establish objective goals for student performance, management intervention was warranted in two of the sites. A six-step outcome management program was then implemented in the two sites. The program involved defining desired student and staff outcomes, systematic monitoring of the outcomes, staff training, and supportive and corrective feedback. The outcome management program was accompanied by increases in student on-task behavior and staff distribution of teaching interactions in both sites. The increases brought the levels of on-task behavior above the normative average; on-task behavior was maintained above the baseline average for over 1 year in both sites. These results are discussed in terms of the benefits of relying on normative data for objectively evaluating and improving service delivery systems. Discussion of future research needs focuses on applying the outcome management program to other settings and services for people with disabilities.     

儿童手势及其与学习的关系

手势是在交流或认知过程中产生的、不直接作用于物体的手部运动, 具有具体性和抽象性。其分类主要从手势的来源、手势的内容、手势的意图及手势和言语的匹配性等角度进行划分。不同类型手势在出现时间及发展趋势上存在差异。手势在儿童词汇学习、言语表达、数学问题解决、空间学习及记忆等方面起促进作用, 但对言语理解的影响未得出一致结论。未来可关注不同类型手势与儿童认知发展的关系及对比不同来源手势在各学习领域的优势情况。     

The interrelatedness between infants’ communicative gestures and lexicon size: A longitudinal study

Research has shown a close relationship between gestures and language development. In this study, we investigate the cross-lagged relationships between different types of gestures and two lexicon dimensions: number of words produced and comprehended. Information about gestures and lexical development was collected from 48 typically developing infants when these were aged 0;9, 1;0 and 1;3. The European Portuguese version of the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Gestures (PT CDI:WG) was used. The results indicated that the total number of actions and gestures and the number of early gestures produced at 0;9 and at 1;0 year predicted the number of words comprehended three months later. Actions and gestures’ predictive power of the number of words produced was limited to the 0;9–1;0 year interval. The opposite relationship was not found: word comprehension and production did not predict action and gestures three months later. These results highlight the importance of non-verbal communicative behavior in language development.     

Retention performance as a function of the distinctiveness of memory traces and retention task

Summary In the acquisition phase of an incidental learning paradigm, words that are exemplars of categories were judged as to whether or not they belonged to a specified category. This was followed by a forced choice recognition task. The effects of three variables were studied: a) whether the acquisition task called for a positive or a negative response; b) the number of exemplar words per category; and c) whether distractor items in the recognition test came from the same category as the target words or from other categories. The results showed that recognition errors were influenced by all three variables. Unlike the variables a) and c) which showed significant main effects, the effect of number of exemplars per category was significant only for the same category distractor condition. In this condition more exemplars per category led to more recognition errors. The results are explained by assuming that retention performance is determined by two factors. The first factor is the distinctiveness of the memory traces. This is supposed to be a joint product of task-specific encoding and stimulus characteristics. The second factor is the distinctive similarity between the retrieval information and the stored memory traces. Although the results show some sublte effects that are not easy to explain, it is argued that this model offers a good account of the general findings.     

A note on temporal relations between language and gestures

The initiation of the spontaneous gestures of Wernicke's aphasics was analyzed in relation to shifts in semantic content between the syntactic boundaries of main clauses and embedded clauses. Gestures proved more likely to arise at the initial boundaries of embedded clauses when these were semantically discontinuous with the main clause than when these were semantically related to the main clause. Spontaneous gestures may signal underlying shifts in semantic intention, thereby reflecting the difficulties encountered by Wernicke's aphasics in maintaining a coherent stream of thought across syntactic boundaries.     

Do pointing gestures by infants provoke comments from adults?

In the field of developmental psychology, there is speculation that pointing gestures by infants are good precursors of infant language acquisition, and some researchers have found correlations between these pointing gestures and some indices of language acquisition. Infants’ pointing gestures are presumably related to language acquisition because they provoke verbal responses from adults. To test this, seven boys and six girls were observed during free play time in a nursery classroom, and post-pointing and matched-control data were collected. Comparison between these data confirmed that the nursery staff spoke to infants at a significantly earlier stage in post-pointing sequences, compared with control sequences, indicating that pointing gestures elicit verbal responses from adult caregivers.     

An experimental investigation of the automatic/voluntary dissociation in limb apraxia

The ability of apraxic patients to perform gestures in everyday life is a controversial issue. In this paper, we aimed to evaluate the automatic/voluntary dissociation (AVD) in four patients affected by clinically relevant limb apraxia. For this purpose, we sampled different kinds of gestures belonging to patients' motor repertoire and then assessed their production in a testing session. Our experimental procedure consisted of two steps: in the first phase, we recorded gestures produced by patients in two natural conditions; in the second phase, we assessed production of correctly produced tool-actions, and of spontaneous non tool-actions and meaningless conversational (cohesive and beats) gestures under different modalities. AVD was observed for all types of gestures, albeit to different degree in single patients. The present findings demonstrate that the context provides strong bottom-up cues for the retrieval of motor patterns, while artificial testing conditions impose an additional cognitive load.     

The Appreciation of Humor in Captioned Cartoons

Humor appreciation for captioned cartoons was studied as a function of cartoon category and eight predictor variables: complexity, difficulty, fit, depth, visual humor, artwork, vulgarity, and originality. Preference and funniness proved to be virtually identical as criterion variables and were combined as appreciation for further analysis. A nonmetric factor analysis of appreciation ratings yielded four dimensions: (a) Sexual, (b) Incongruity, (c) Social Issues, and (d) Marriage-Family. Sexual and Marriage-Family were the most appreciated categories, Social Issues the least appreciated. Fit and originality were the only predictor variables with significant relationships to appreciation independent of the category effect. Cartoons judged to have the most originality and the best fit between drawing and caption were most appreciated. The results suggest that the kinds of cognitive processes involved in cartoon-humor appreciation are very similar to those involved in environmental preference.