Increasing correct participation in an exercise class for adult day care clients

Facilities which provide services to the elderly offer a wide variety of activities to engage their clients. In many cases, however, clients do not participate in these activities, or they do not participate in ways which are likely to provide them with benefits. This study sought to increase meaningful participation in an exercise class by four elderly clients attending an adult day care program; in these four cases, the quality of their participation was seriously inadequate. Participants were praised when they participated correctly in an exercise, verbally prompted if they did not participate, and physically assisted to participate if they did not participate following verbal prompting. To show experimental control over exercise behaviors, a single subject multiple baseline design was used. The results suggest that clients attending facilities such as an adult day care program may be easily recruited to participate correctly in exercise sessions through the use of prompts and social reinforcers. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effect of practice of correct symbol reversals on reading achievement by first-grade children

Practice in correcting symbol reversals had no significant effect on reading achievement of 41 boys and 36 girls in first grade although there were significant gains in reading and reduction in reversal errors by both groups but no significant difference between the groups in gains or errors.     

Increasing response diversity in children with autism

Repetitive and invariant behavior is a diagnostic feature of autism. We implemented a lag reinforcement schedule to increase response diversity for 6 participants with autism aged 6 to 10 years, 4 of whom also received prompting plus additional training. These procedures appeared to increase the variety of building-block structures, demonstrating that an intervention that includes differential reinforcement can increase response diversity for children with an autism spectrum disorder.     

National identifications and attitudes to national ingroups and outgroups amongst children living in the Basque country

This study investigated the development of national identification in children growing up in the Basque Country. The sample consisted of 246 children aged 6, 9, 12 and 15 years old who belonged to three linguistic subgroups: children who spoke only Basque with their parents in their home, children who spoke only Spanish in their home, and children who spoke both Basque and Spanish in their home. It was found that national identifications differed in the three linguistic subgroups. Furthermore, the three subgroups exhibited different evaluations of, and feelings towards, the national ingroup and a number of national outgroups. The positive and affective distinctiveness ascribed to the Basque and Spanish national groups was correlated with the strength of identification with the Basque and Spanish groups, respectively. The attitudes towards national outgroups which were exhibited by these children did not show any changes as a function of age. It is argued that the cognitive‐developmental account of the development of national attitudes is unable to explain the patterns of findings which were obtained, but that social identity theory can explain the correlation between the strength of national identification and the positive and affective distinctiveness which was ascribed to the ingroup. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Continuous information processing in conceptual identifications

Summary This investigation was aimed at the analysis of processes of the conceptual object identification. Three experiments were performed which utilized a response preparation paradigm developed by Miller (1982). The results confirm the psychological validity of a distinction between sensorily and categorially represented concepts proposed formerly by the authors. The process of identification of objects as belonging to sensory concepts was analysed in more detail. The experimental results suggest that it may be a sequential feature matching process which is characterized by continuous information processing. Early in the process the figurative features allowing an identification of an object as belonging to a more general sensory concept are processed. In following processing stages this first conceptual identification is more and more specified by an additional checking of more detailed figurative features. More importantly, the results indicate that the information about the general conceptual identity of an object is not only available early in the identification process but can also be used for the preparation of following processes or processing stages even before the object is fully identified. Possible influences of the early information on the control of the conceptual identification itself and on the selection and control of motor behavior are discussed.We wish to thank the following psychology students at the Humboldt University in Berlin for their help in performing the experiments: Kathrin Hänel, Erika Küchler and Christina Matthé. Furthermore, we wish to thank the two anaonymous reviewers and Johannes Engelkamp for their helpful comments on a first draft of our paper     

Increasing handwashing in young children: A brief review

Personal hygiene is critical for preventing the spread of infection. One important component of personal hygiene is handwashing. This review summarizes research on behavioral strategies to address handwashing in children, offers areas for additional research, and suggests a treatment package to teach handwashing to young children.     

Alienating identifications and the psychoanalytic process1

The transmission of psychic life from one generation to the next can result in unconscious, alienating identifications when the parents have not been able to elaborate a process of mourning for their own childhoods. In this article, the author describes the nature of these identifications, constructed around insufficiently symbolized experiences, as revealed during the psychoanalytic process. These unconscious, alienating identifications raise some arduous technical problems for the psychoanalyst as they lead the patient to carry out complex enactments that erase the normal transference markers. The psychoanalyst may then be tempted to resort to pejorative theoretical concepts, such as the death drive. And yet, unknown to the analysand, the insufficiently symbolized psychic elements contain a potential for transformation that may lead to reconstructions and dis‐alienating interpretations. The author distinguishes between alienating identifications and fantasies of identification when the latter transiently appear during the psychoanalytic process. These identification fantasies symbolically register the emotional experience undergone during the analytic sessions and contribute to the integration of insufficiently symbolized psychic elements. These theoretical considerations are fully illustrated by the clinical report of some analytic sessions.     

Face and voice identifications in showups and lineups

Witnesses were asked to identify a young adult female target to whom they had spoken for 15 seconds five minutes earlier in a naturalistic field setting. Subjects were given a single facial photograph or a single tape-recorded voice of either the target or a highly similar foil, or a target-present or target-absent six-person photo lineup or six-person voice lineup. Identification of the target was superior in the six-person photo lineup than in the one-person photo lineup when choices were corrected for guessing. False identifications of the ‘innocent’ suspect did not differ in one-person and six-person photo lineups. However, the diagnosticity index indicated that witnesses were twice as likely to be more accurate than inaccurate in making a selection with the six-person photo lineup than in the one-person lineup. Performance was poor in both one-person and six-person voice lineups. With the exception of the target-absent one-person photo lineup, no significant correlations were found between confidence and performance.     

Increasing reading comprehension of two hyperactive children: preliminary investigation.

The differential effectiveness of oral and silent reading on comprehension was evaluated for two third-grade children who were hyperactive and who displayed comprehension deficits. Oral reading resulted in significantly fewer comprehension errors than did silent reading. Time to read a story and number of comprehension errors were negatively correlated. Several possible mechanisms involved in the effect of responding orally were discussed.     

Increasing compliance with wearing a medical device in children with autism

Health professionals often recommend the use of medical devices to assess the health, monitor the well-being, or improve the quality of life of their patients. Children with autism may present challenges in these situations as their sensory peculiarities may increase refusals to wear such devices. To address this issue, we systematically replicated prior research by examining the effects of differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO) to increase compliance with wearing a heart rate monitor in 2 children with autism. The intervention increased compliance to 100% for both participants when an edible reinforcer was delivered every 90 s. The results indicate that DRO does not require the implementation of extinction to increase compliance with wearing a medical device. More research is needed to examine whether the reinforcement schedule can be further thinned.