TREATMENT OF CHILD ABUSE: A REVIEW OF THE BEHAVIORAL INTERVENTIONS

The problem of child abuse has become prominent in the past decade; this has led to increased research on its treatment. This paper describes the behavioral treatment approaches that have been used to alleviate abusive parenting practices, and it also discusses current issues and future directions for research in this area.     

10—16岁儿童自我监控学习能力的成分、发展及作用的研究

以２６６名１０—１６岁儿童为被试,研究了中小学儿童自我监控学习能力的构成成分、发展规律以及在学习活动中的作用。结果表明;从学习过程的角度将儿童自我监控学习能力划分为计划性、准备性、意识性、方法性、执行性、反馈性、补救性、总结性等八个方面是合理的;儿童自我监控学习能力各方面的水平随其年龄的增长而不断发展,在１０—１３岁期间发展较慢,在１３—１６岁期间发展较快,不同成分之间的发展具有不平衡性;随着年龄的提高,自我监控学习能力在儿童学习活动中的可能影响作用开始显著地表现出来。     

THE EFFECTS OF SEVERE BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS IN CHILDREN ON THE TEACHING BEHAVIOR OF ADULTS

Applied behavior analysts have focused on how adults can influence the problem behavior of children using a variety of behavior modification strategies. A related question, virtually unexplored, is how the behavior problems of children influence adults. This child-effects concept was explored empirically in a study involving 12 adults who were asked to teach four pairs of children in which one member of the pair exhibited problem behavior and the other typically did not. Results demonstrated that problem children displayed tantrums, aggression, and self-injury contingent on adult instructional attempts but not at other times, whereas nonproblem children showed little or no problem behavior at any time. Importantly, from a child-effects perspective, adults engaged in teaching activities with nonproblem children more often than with problem children. Also, when an adult worked with a problem child, the breadth of instruction was more limited and typically involved those tasks associated with lower rates of behavior problems. The implications of these results are discussed with respect to theories of escape behavior, current assessment practices, and intervention issues related to maintenance. The existence of child effects suggests that problem behavior may be better understood when it is conceptualized as involving a process of reciprocal influence between adult and child.     

幼儿气质与母亲教养方式的选择

采用ＴＴＱ儿童气质问卷、母亲教养方式问卷和访谈法,对３－５岁３２２名幼儿气质及其母亲教养方式进行调查,探求幼儿气质对母亲教养方式的影响,以提高母亲对其子女教养水平和有效性。研究结果表明：幼儿气质是影响母亲教养方式的重要因素,其作用不同。１．容易引发母亲良好的教养方式的积极气质因素,如较高的适应性、积极乐观的心境、较高的注意持久性;２．容易引发母亲不良的教养方式的消极气质因素,如高反应强度、高活动性     

小规模群体开放式与封闭式讨论任务的工作特性比较

１４个小组的大学生共６８人参加两种不同的群体工作,其中７组进行开放式问题的讨论,７组进行封闭式问题的讨论。从工作进程、工作模式和工作特点等方面记录群体工作行为：工作进程各阶段所用时间,发言的针对性,发言的连续性,说明问题的方式和深度,群体的意见分歧与支持行为和表达方式。结果表明：封闭式问题需要更多的时间澄清问题并且更多引用例子来阐述观点;讨论开放式问题多采用归纳推理而封闭式问题多采用演绎推理;无论在哪种问题的讨论中,针对个体的发言都显著多于针对整体的发言,而且人们更多地以非言语的方式而不是口头方式表示赞成。本文对以上结果在电视、电话和计算机辅助会议系统设计中的应用作了进一步讨论     

小学儿童假设检验思维策略的发展

采用自创的“固定样例”程序,利用自行设计的两种不同任务的图形推理材料,研究了小学儿童假设检验策略的发展。550名不同年级的被试参加了本研究：结果发现,在该研究条件下：(1)答案存在多种可能性的任务Ⅰ明显难于答案确定的任务Ⅱ;(2)小学儿童假设检验能力随年级提高而增长,但增长的速度因任务不同而不同;(3)随着年级的提高,小学儿童使用的不成功策略逐步下降,成功策略显著上升,但这也受任务不同的影响;(4)固定样例程序较好地克服了变化样例程序所带来的假设检验研究的缺陷。     

儿童社会观点采择的发展及其与同伴互动关系的研究

采用经过标准化处理的观点采择故事对幼儿园大班和小学二、四、六年级儿童的社会观点采择能力进行测量,利用录像观察技术和同伴评定法分别测定幼儿园大班和小学儿童的同伴社会互动经验,考察儿童社会观点采择的发展及其与同伴互动经验之间的关系。研究发现：（１）幼儿园大班儿童在准确采择他人观点方面还存在较大困难,６－１０岁为儿童社会观点采择能力快速发展的时期,１０岁左右的小学儿童能够根据有关事件信息准确推断他人的观     

THE GENERALIZATION EFFECTS OF PARENT TRAINING ACROSS STIMULUS SETTINGS

Five parents of nonverbal children were trained in two home settings to modify antecedents and consequences to their children's vocalizations. Generalization effects of the parent training on both the parent's and children's behaviors under different stimulus conditions were investigated using multiple-baseline designs. Increases in parent prompting and reinforcing their children's vocalizations generalized only minimally to a new setting in the home where parent training had not occurred. Child increases in vocalizations produced by the parents in the training settings did generalize to this new setting in the home. There was minimal generalization of child vocalizations to a free-play setting at school. In a formal speech session conducted by a behavior specialist at school, only one child showed definite increases in acquisition rate as a function of the parents starting to train the sound at home.     

EFFECTS OF HIGH-PROBABILITY REQUESTS ON THE SOCIAL INTERACTIONS OF YOUNG CHILDREN WITH SEVERE DISABILITIES

High-probability requests were used to increase social interactions in 3 young boys with severe disabilities who had been identified as severely socially withdrawn. A multiple baseline design across participants was used to evaluate the effects of high-probability request intervention on (a) social initiations, (b) social responses, (c) continued interactions, and (d) performance of high- and low-probability requests. The students were observed in a second setting to examine generalization effects across peers who did not participate in the training sequence and settings. The results demonstrated that the high-probability requests increased the students' responsiveness to low-probability requests to initiate social behavior. Increases were also found in (a) unprompted initiations and extended interactions to the training peers, (b) unprompted initiations and extended interactions to peers who were not involved in the training procedure, and (c) generalized unprompted initiations and interactions in a second nontraining setting. The students maintained increased levels of initiations and interactions after all prompts were removed from both the training and nontraining settings.     

THE CUMULATIVE QUALITY OF CULTURE EXPLAINS HUMAN UNIQUENESS

What explains the unique features of human culture? Culture is not uniquely human, but human culture is uniquely cumulative. Cumulative culture is a product of our collective intelligence and is supported by cognitive processes and learning strategies that enable people to acquire, transform, and transmit information and technologies within and across generations. Technological and social innovations are currently driving unprecedented changes in cultural complexity and diversity. Innovation is a cognitively and socially complex, multistep process that typically requires (cumulative) cultural learning to achieve. I argue that the technological solutions that characterize twenty-first-century innovation can only be explained by understanding both the capacity to learn from and build upon the insights of others and the transmission systems that store the knowledge and technologies of previous generations. Human uniqueness is a product of cumulative cultural learning, transmission, and innovation.     

THE USE OF THE ANALYST AND THE SENSE OF BEING REAL: THE CLINICAL MEANING OF WINNICOTT'S “THE USE OF AN OBJECT”

“The Use of an Object and Relating through Identifications” (1968) represents Donald Winnicott's theoretical and clinical legacy. The author develops this concept from a clinical point of view, through the analysis of a woman with psychotic functioning. He reflects upon the dramatic quality of risks inherent in the processes linked to the use of the object with seriously disturbed patients. He explores different meanings of the analyst's survival, linking it to the analyst's response. The processes of the use of the object—that is, the encounter between the patient's potential destructiveness and the analyst's capacity to respond through his own judicious subjectivity—let the patient experience the analyst's capacity to keep his own subjectivity, authenticity, and creativity alive. It is starting from the traces of this live object that patients gradually form their own personal sense of being real.     

GENERATING HYPOTHESES ABOUT THE FUNCTION OF STUDENT PROBLEM BEHAVIOR BY OBSERVING TEACHER BEHAVIOR

We examined whether, as predicted by research on child effects, we could generate hypotheses about the function of student problem behavior by observing the amount of attention teachers provided to students. In the first phase of the study, we observed the amount of attention teachers distributed among small groups of students who exhibited problem behavior in individual or small-group instructional settings (problem behavior presumably maintained by attention or escape). Based on the amount of attention each student received, we generated hypotheses about the function of his or her problem behavior. In the second phase of the study, we determined the accuracy of these predictions by conducting a brief functional assessment with each student. Results confirmed that, for 14 of the 15 students, we were able to generate accurate hypotheses about the function of their problem behavior. These results suggest the potential efficacy of using the amount of attention teachers distribute among groups of students to generate empirically based hypotheses about the function of student problem behavior maintained by attention and/or escape. These results also illustrate the efficiency of this procedure; by observing teacher behavior, we were able to generate hypotheses about the function of problem behavior for several students at one time.     

AN EVALUATION OF THE RELATIVE EFFICACY OF AND CHILDREN'S PREFERENCES FOR TEACHING STRATEGIES THAT DIFFER IN AMOUNT OF TEACHER DIRECTEDNESS

The manner in which teachers mediate children's learning varies across early childhood classrooms. In this study, we used a multielement design to evaluate the efficacy of three commonly implemented strategies that varied in teacher directedness for teaching color‐ and object‐name relations. Strategy 1 consisted of brief exposure to the target relations followed by an exclusively child‐led play period in which correct responses were praised. Strategy 2 was similar except that teachers prompted the children to vocalize relations and corrected errors via model prompts. Strategy 3 incorporated the same procedures as Strategy 2 except that a brief period of teacher‐initiated trials was arranged; these trials involved the use of prompt delay between questions and prompts, and correct responses resulted in tokens and back‐up activity reinforcers. Children's preferences for the different teaching strategies were also directly assessed. Strategy 3 was most effective in promoting the acquisition and generalization of the color‐ and object‐name relations and was also most preferred by the majority of children, Strategy 1 was the least effective, and Strategy 2 was typically the least preferred. Implications for the design of early educational environments based on evidence‐based values are discussed.     

汉语词汇产生中语义、语音层次之间的交互作用

采用3种方法考察汉语词汇产生中语义激活（词条选择）和音位编码这两个阶段之间的关系。实验一、二分别采用图片命名法和干扰字命名法,发现目标图片（“牛”）的语义相关词（“羊”）的语音信息得到了激活,说明汉语词汇产生中存在多重语音激活,音位编码在词条选择完成之前既已开始。实验三采用语义范畴判断法,考察语音信息的激活是否会向上反馈到词条和语义层次,发现目标图片（“羊”）的同音字（“阳”）不会促进对图片的语义判断。研究表明,多重语音激活与语音激活向词条和语义层次反馈是两个独立的,可以分割的问题。虽然实验一和二的结果符合相互作用理论,实验三的结果符合模块化观点,但就总体而言,本研究更加支持词汇产生中的模块化观点     

心理控制源与自我监控在预测中的交互作用

Rotter的社会学习理论认为“行为是特定情境下期望和强化价值的函数”,本研究假设自我监控作为强化价值的一种测量,在预测对情境压力的反应中,与控制源存在交互作用。结果显示,在问卷描述的四种情境中,控制源x自我监控的交互作用存在(在一种情境中达到统计上的显著水平),具体表现为,控制源对低自我监控者对情境压力的反应的预测,比对高自我监控者的预测更为有效。     

Time-Out Training Without Put-Backs,Spanks, or Restraint: A Brief Report of Deferred Time-Out

We demonstrate the effectiveness of a procedure to increase compliance in young children who are resistant to Time-out (TO). Parents of two boys, 3 and 4 years of age, were unable to enforce TO without resorting to physical guidance and restraint. With deferred TO (DTO), if a child resists TO, caregivers no longer interact with the child or provide the child with tangibles or activities that the child cannot access independently. When the child requests a preferred item or activity from the caregiver that cannot be obtained independently, the child must first serve TO. Once TO is served, the caregiver may fulfill the child's request. Data suggest that DTO reduces the latency between the parental TO command and compliance with TO without put-backs, spanks, or restraint.     

Infants in group care: their interactions with professional caregivers and parents across the second year of life

Seventy children were observed during structured play with their primary professional caregivers and three peers in the child care center and with their primary caregiving parents at home at 15 and 23 months of age. The same structured play tasks were used in the two settings and the quality of the children's interactions with caregivers and parents was rated using the same 7-point scales. As expected, the quality of caregiver–child interactions significantly increased between 15 and 23 months. At 15 months, the quality of caregiver–child interactions was significantly lower than the quality of parent–child interactions, particularly with regard to caregiver supportive presence and respect for the child's autonomy. At 23 months, however, the quality of caregiver–child interactions was no longer lower and in some respects even higher than the quality of parent–child interactions. At both ages, the children expressed more negativity towards their parents than towards their professional caregivers.     

ON BECOMING ABLE TO PLAY: INDIVIDUAL CHILD PSYCHOANALYTIC PSYCHODRAMA AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF SYMBOLIZATION

In this paper, the authors analyze the relevance and transformative potential of individual psychoanalytic psychodrama in the treatment of children with severe impairments in symbolization. Central features of this modality, including promoting the representation of early traumatic experiences, are presented and discussed. Specific features include double‐envelope containment of the co‐therapists’ group and play leader, consequent diffraction of the transference‐determining portrayal, gradual integration, and initial figuration of coexisting split‐off fragments. Drawing on in‐depth clinical material, the authors show how psychodrama tempers the potentially traumatic effects of the encounter with the object, allowing these patients to access the transitional area of play.