The contribution of linguistic factors to attribute inferences and semantic similarity judgements

Two studies are reported which examine the contribution of linguistic factors to attribute inferences and semantic similarity judgements. For this purpose a new method is developed which allows us to examine the contribution of language as a symbolically shared system. The two studies show that a substantial amount of the variance in both attribute inferences and semantic similarity judgements is mediated by socially shared linguistic conventions. The implications of these findings and the methodology for social cognition, and some models of personality and affect are discussed.     

Teaching janitorial skills to autistic adolescents

In the Special Education Clinic at the University of Texas at El Paso, a study was conducted to teach janitorial skills to retarded adolescents with autism. The study was designed to examine the efficacy of using three levels of prompts on three autistic clients' acquisition of 18 response sequences in cleaning a restroom. The restroom cleaning behavior was task analyzed prior to the implementation of the ten training sessions which were conducted once a week for one hour. The results indicated that, as compared to the pretraining competencies, the training was effective in teaching restroom cleaning skills. However, without prompts the skills acquired remained at about a 70% proficiency rate, which appeared to be a plateau under the training situation. Clients were also able to generalize without prompts approximately 83% of the acquired (or 52% of the total) sequences to new and similar restrooms. The study demonstrates that, to a certain degree, autistic adolescents with mental retardation can learn and transfer restroom cleaning skills. More research is needed on ways to increase the fluency of their responses, decrease reliance on physical prompts, and to improve generalization to other vocational settings.     

The relationship between perceived interpersonal competence and self-disclosure in an online context: The moderating role of shyness

The purpose of this study is to examine the reported level of self-disclosure in online communication and understand the relationship between perceived interpersonal competence and self-disclosure in an online context, taking into account the moderating role of shyness. The study sample consists of university students (N = 585). Hierarchical multiple linear regression analyses revealed that, controlling for participants' online media use, shyness moderated the relationship between online self-disclosure and perceived interpersonal competence. Moderation results showed that the relationship between online self-disclosure and perceived interpersonal competence was weaker for individuals with higher levels of shyness, and stronger for those with moderate or low scores on the shyness measure. The study's implications and contributions to the existing literature are discussed.