Influence of televised modeling and verbalization on children's delay of gratification

Voluntary delay of gratification in 9-year-old children was assessed 4 weeks prior to, immediately after, and 4 weeks subsequent to exposure to one of four televized films. The modeling group observed an adult female model exemplify high-delay behavior. The persuasion group observed the model verbalize good reasons for waiting. The persuasion-modeling group observed the model exemplify high-delay behavior and verbalize reasons for waiting. Subjects in each of the treatment groups emitted more delay choices on the posttest than control group subjects who observed the model exhibit neutral behavior. The greatest magnitude of change occurred when modeling and persuasive cues were combined. Treatment effects were still in evidence for the modeling and the persuasion-modeling groups after a period of 4 weeks.     

The effects of Familial Sinistrality and preferred hand on dichaptic and dichotic tasks

Processing asymmetries for tactile-spatial and auditory-verbal processing were investigated in two studies using the S. F. Witelson (1974, Cortex, 10, 3–17) dichaptic procedure. Experiment 1 used eight right-handed males in a free recall procedure. More shapes were correctly detected by the left hand but only with a right hand response. In Experiment 2, right and left handers with no Familial Sinistrality (FS) were compared with left handers with various types of FS, looking at pre- and postcued order of report and precuing the response hand. No group showed hand asymmetry with pre- or postcuing for either responding hand. Right handers showed no difference with order of report; however, left handers made fewer correct detections for items to be reported second. There were differences between the Parental FS and the Sibling FS groups both on the dichotic listening and the haptic tasks.     

The effects of semantic integration training on memory for pictograph sentences

The effectiveness of training a semantic integration strategy for recall of pictograph sequences, and the generalization of the strategy to a related oral sentence task were examined in 60 kindergarten prereaders. Semantic integration training consisted of three individual sessions in which the child was instructed to treat the sequence as a sentence and to act out the pictograph sentences using toys in order to facilitate recall. Repetition and no-practice control groups were included. Pictograph sentence memory post-tests immediately following and 2 weeks after training indicated that semantic integration training substantially improved recall for pictograph sequences, an improvement that was unrelated to the child's initial memory performance or subsequent post-training awareness of the strategy. In addition, the training resulted in better performance on a generalization test of oral sentence synthesis. These findings support a strategy-based conceptualization of individual differences in the semantic processing of written materials.     

Defensive burying of aversive fluids in rats: The effects of peripheral anosmia

Three experiments were conducted in order to determine the role of olfactory stimulation in defensive burying of aversive fluids in rats. The results revealed that zinc sulfate-induced anosmia eliminated burying of fluids paired with lithium chloride as well as an inherently aversive solution. This occurred despite the fact that the rats avoided consuming them. These data indicate that defensive burying of aversive fluids is governed by olfactory stimuli and confirms an earlier report, which indicted that burying does not occur in response to aversive gustatory stimuli.     

The effects of empathy and outcome on attribution: An examination of the divergent-perspectives hypothesis

Based on the theoretical ideas of Jones and Nisbett (Jones et al. Attribution: Perceiving the cause of behavior. New York: General Learning Press, 1971), and the recent findings of Regan and Totten (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32, 1975, 850–856), the present study assumed that from an attributional standpoint empathic observers and actors are functionally equivalent. On this basis it was predicted that empathic, relative to nonempathic, observers would make outcome attributions which have been typically found for actors themselves: They would attribute an actor's success to dispositional causes, but an actor's failure to situational causes. After instructions to empathize with the target, or to observe him, subjects watched a videotape of a target male attempting to make a good first impression on a female. Subjects later learned that the target had either succeeded or failed at making a good first impression, and were asked to make causal attributions for his outcome. As predicted, instructions to empathize led to dispositional attributions for success and situational attributions for failure, while standard observation instructions resulted in dispositional causal attributions regardless of outcome. The results were interpreted as supporting the contention that differential information processing may sufficiently account for the effects of outcome on causal attributions.     

Economic deprivation and the quality of parent-child relations: A trickle-down framework

The trickle-down model of economic activity proposes that changes in economic activity permeate downwards from incentives or disincentives to business, which affect business income, investment, employment, and the absolute and relative economic deprivation of the poor. Within an extended trickle-down framework, this paper examines how these effects trickle further downwards to influence the quality of parent-child relations. Two cases are examined. First, deprivation is discussed as it trickles down to affect the parental image conveyed to children, and in turn perceptions od parents are examined as these predict children's problem behavior. Second, deprivation is discussed as it trickles down to affect parents' psychological well-being and child-rearing capabilities, particularly as manifested by the incidence of child abuse and neglect. The evidence to date converges to indicate that children in general are not necessarily aware of or sympathetic to the plight of those under economic strain. Economic deprivation may exacerbate conflict in the family, diminish children's perceptions of parents, and give rise to problem behavior in boys. Evidence also suggests that deprivation may be an antecedent of poor psychological well-being in adults and child abuse. Possibilities for a “bubble up” model of economic activity are explored together with directions for further research.     

The rapid-smoking technique: Some physiological effects

The effects of rapid smoking on the blood pressure, pulse rate and cardiac functioning of 58 smokers (30 women and 28 men) are reported. All subjects were healthy volunteers, 45 were under 40 yr of age, the remaining 13 between 40 and 50 yr. They received between 6 and 12 rapid smoking sessions. It was found that, in both the under and over 40 age groups, blood pressure levels and pulse rates increased significantly following rapid smoking sessions. There were, however, significant decreases between sessions and no evidence of a cumulative effect of successive rapid smoking sessions. Some qualitative changes in cardiac functioning were observed, namely the appearance of T wave flattening and S-T depression. None of the changes were considered to be of sufficient magnitude to necessitate exclusion from the programme, but confirm the need to monitor closely the physiological functioning of persons undergoing rapid smoking.     

Age,and midcareer crisis: An empirical study of academics

This study develops an empirical basis for examining the midcareer crisis/ transition period of academic staff surveyed by questionnaire in four Australian Universities and Colleges. A total of 672 usable returns were obtained, representing a response rate of 52% of the academic staff. Principal components and factor analysis were used to establish latent social-role variables. Analysis of variance and covariance was applied using the latent social-role variables as dependent variables and occupational attributes such as age, sex, etc., as independent variables. The variable age was isolated from the larger study in this paper to illustrate empirically a midcareer crisis period for the population studied which is consistent with the general literature on midcareer crisis/transition.     

Psychoactive drug effects in a hyperactive child: A case study analysis of behavior change and teacher attention

The effects of methylphenidate on the behavior and teacher interactions of a 9-year-old hyperactive female were analyzed. Observations of the subject's task-related and disruptive behaviors and of interactions between the subject and her classroom teacher were made when the subject received the active drug and an inert placebo. Teacher's ratings of the subject's classroom behavior and measures of her academic performance were also obtained. Results showed that when the subject was receiving methylphenidate she engaged in task-related activities a greater percent of the time, had a higher percent of teacher interactions that were instructional in quality, and received lower behavior ratings by the teacher than when she was receiving a placebo. The results suggest that the use of medication may enable the hyperactive child to profit both behaviorally and academically.     

An examination of disciplinary procedures with children

In Experiment I the effect of the contingent application of negative attention (a verbal reprimand plus a brief period in which the authority person glares intently at the child) and repeated commands on the noncompliant behavior of children was examined. Thirty-two mother-child pairs served as subjects. The results indicated that negative attention decreased noncompliance whereas repeated commands did not. In Experiment II the effectiveness of negative attention, isolation, ignoring, and a combination of procedures (the alternate use of isolation, ignoring, and negative attention with the same subject) in reducing noncompliance and maintaining it at a low level during a recovery period was examined. Twenty-eight mother-child pairs served as subjects. The results indicated that each of the four disciplinary procedures reduced noncompliance. However, negative attention was associated with less off-task behavior than the isolation and combination procedures when discipline was being imposed and a lower level of noncompliance than ignoring during recovery, whereas the combination condiiton was the only procedure that maintained noncompliance during recovery at the treatment level.     

Artifact and Barber's model of hypnosis: A logical-empirical analysis

Two studies examined the relevance of artifact to Barber's model of hypnosis. Study I analyzed subjects' perceptions of instructions employed by the paradigm and demonstrated strong social pressure in the model's task motivational set not present in its standard set of hypnotic induction instructions. Study II coped with the artifact by applying the standard methodology of the model but employing a set of modified hypnotic instructions equivalent in constraint to the task motivational set. Results for 88 subjects indicated a possible behavioral consequence of the artifact variable involving an interaction between type of instruction and ease of hypnotic test item; individual differences in suggestibility also appeared to discriminate conditions with respect to the artifact in question. Collectively, results indicate that the major inference drawn from the paradigm regarding the expendability of the concept of trance should be accepted with caution.     

The effect of training procedures on the overlearning reversal effect in young children

The performance of 80 preschool children on a reversal problem was studied as a function of amount of training and type of training procedure used during acquisition and reversal. In the extinction phase of reversal learning, subjects given a correction procedure during the reversal problem made fewer perseverative errors than subjects given noncorrection. In the reversal midplateau phase of reversal learning, overtraining facilitated reversal learning for subjects receiving noncorrection during the acquistion problem, but not for subjects receiving correction. A shift in training procedure between acquisition and reversal increased the number of subjects who reached criterion immediately after perseveration. Since these results are difficult to explain in terms of traditional learning theories, an alternative response-switching strategy explanation was proposed.     

Poison-enhanced neophobia: Effects of CS-UCSUCS-CS procedures and long-delay training

Experiment 1 (n = 110 male rats) showed that pairing sucrose with toxicosis under forward or backward conditioning procedures yielded reliable poison-enhanced neophobia toward casein hydrolysate. Forward procedures produced reliably greater and more persistent enhancement of neophobia. Experiment 2 (n = 160 male rats) showed that interpolating 10 min, or 1, 4, 8, or 12 hr between sucrose and toxicosis yielded reliable aversion effects to sucrose and poison-enhanced neophobia to casein at each interval except 8 and 12 hr. Generally speaking, the effects of training interval were similar for conditioned aversion and enhanced neophobia but conditioned aversion effects were more enduring.