Community-based multiple-gate screening of children at risk for conduct disorder

The present study employed a multiple-gate screening procedure to identify children at risk for the development of conduct disorder. Measures of cross-setting disruptive behavior and parent discipline practices were administered in sequential fashion to screen a population of 7,231 children attending suburban elementary schools. Convergent validity of the respective gating measures was confirmed by significant correlations with adjustment constructs. Analyses of covariance performed between positive screens, negative screens, and low-risk comparison children on adjustment constructs at each gate supported the discriminative validity of the gating procedure. Hierarchical regression analyses demonstrated that the gating measures were predictive of diagnostic ratings of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and oppositional defiant disorder that were obtained 18 months following the screening. A stepwise logistic regression analysis indicated that the best predictors of high-risk group membership were variables related to family process, including poor family communication and involvement, poor maternal coping skills, and an external parent locus of control.This study was supported by grant MH-46584 from the National Institute of Mental Health.     

THE TREATMENT OF SEVERE BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS IN SCHOOL SETTINGS USING A TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE MODEL

We evaluated the feasibility of local school personnel conducting functional analysis and reinforcement-based treatment procedures within actual classroom settings. Following an initial in-service workshop on functional assessment and differential reinforcement procedures, on-site technical assistance was provided two to four times per month to local school personnel working in transdisciplinary teams. Overall results suggest that local school personnel were able to implement all procedures adequately with periodic technical assistance. In addition, functional analysis was effective in identifying individual maintaining contingencies, the derived treatments were effective, and the results were maintained throughout the approximate 18 months of this investigation.     

Negative priming effects that are bigger than a breadbox: Attention to distractors does not eliminate negative priming, it enhances it

In a series of experiments, we examined the effect of requiring subjects to attend to distractors in a test of negative priming. This was accomplished by using a referent size-selection task in which subjects were instructed to name the larger animal and to ignore the smaller animal in a word pair. The result was a quadrupling of the standard negative priming effect, suggesting that negative priming not only occurs for attended distractors, it is actually enhanced. We demonstrated that this enhancement of the effect was not due solely to increased latencies in the referent size-selection task, because neither decreasing base response times in other referent size-selection tasks nor increasing base response times in typical color-selection tasks substantially affected the respective negative priming effects. Although these findings can be accommodated within current theories of negative priming, they challenge the basic assumption that the negative priming effect arises because the critical item was ignored or not attended to on the prime trial.     

Using HyperCard and Apple events in a network environment: Collecting data from simultaneous experimental sessions

HyperCard is a useful tool available to teachers and researchers who have access to Macintosh computers. Version 2.1 of HyperCard, in conjunction with the Macintosh Operating System 7, includes some significant new capabilities for users with multiple computers in a network, as is common in many teaching laboratories. This paper describes a HyperCard stack that allows users who wish to run HyperCard-based experiments on several computers simultaneously to conveniently retrieve experimental data from those remote computers onto one program, and to perform several other useful tasks in a computer network.     

Characteristics of High School Girls Choosing Traditional or Pioneer Vocations

The characteristics of high school junior and senior girls who wish to be pioneers, i.e., physicians, mathematicians, or natural scientists, were compared with traditionals, i.e., prospective nurses and elementary teachers. Academic aptitude, achievement, interest, and personality measures differentiated pioneers from traditionals. The implications of this study for counseling high school girls is discussed.     

Interpolation and Amalgamation; Pushing the Limits. Part I

Continuing work initiated by Jónsson, Daigneault, Pigozzi and others; Maksimova proved that a normal modal logic (with a single unary modality) has the Craig interpolation property iff the corresponding class of algebras has the superamalgamation property (cf. [Mak 91], [Mak 79]). The aim of this paper is to extend the latter result to a large class of logics. We will prove that the characterization can be extended to all algebraizable logics containing Boolean fragment and having a certain kind of local deduction property. We also extend this characterization of the interpolation property to arbitrary logics under the condition that their algebraic counterparts are discriminator varieties. We also extend Maksimova's result to normal multi-modal logics with arbitrarily many, not necessarily unary modalities, and to not necessarily normal multi-modal logics with modalities of ranks smaller than 2, too.The problem of extending the above characterization result to no n-normal non-unary modal logics remains open.Related issues of universal algebra and of algebraic logic are discussed, too. In particular we investigate the possibility of extending the characterization of interpolability to arbitrary algebraizable logics.     

Tricking into the Position of the Outcast: A Case Study in the Emergency and Effects of Communist Power

This paper is an experiment in understanding the logic of communism from the perspective of political psychology. In Hungary, communism became a means for transforming the entire psychical make-up of a country in a moment of reduced intensity of consciousness, a transitory or liminal period, produced by the Second World War. In liminal conditions, unconscious impulses are set free that are channeled by the use of archetypical images. As an empirical case study, this paper discusses the speeches of the first post-war Hungarian Communist Party leader, Matyas Rakosi, delivered in the years immediately after the devastations of the war, in an effort to discern the techniques and mechanisms by which the Communist Party managed to capture the allegiance of a large segment of the population. The analysis of these speeches and their effects indicates that communism was not merely a consequence of Soviet occupation, and therefore the withdrawal of the troops did not eliminate the lasting, mostly hidden but still predominant, effects of communism on the countries that were in its grip.     

The relationships among sex-role orientation,cognitive complexity,and tolerance for ambiguity

Two hundred and four female and eighty-seven male college students completed the Schroder and Streufert measure of cognitive complexity, Budner's Intolerance for Ambiguity Scale, and Bem's Sex Role Inventory (BSRI). It was hypothesized that subjects classified as androgynous and as cross-sexed would be more cognitively complex and more tolerant of ambiguity than sex-typed or undifferentiated subjects; and cognitive complexity and intolerance for ambiguity would be negatively correlated. The data indicated that male and female androgynous and cross-sexed subjects were more tolerant of ambiguity than sex-typed subjects and cognitively more complex than undifferentiated subjects. Cross-sexed subjects were more cognitively complex than sex-typed subjects. Cognitive complexity and intolerance for ambiguity were negatively correlated. The BSRI had differential power to predict cognitive complexity depending upon sex of subject.Part of this research was presented at the Forty-Ninth Annual Convention of the Eastern Psychological Association, Washington, D.C., April 1978.Both authors are senior authors; each contributed equally to this work.     

Word-by-word analysis of observer agreement utilizing audio and audiovisual techniques

The purpose of this study was to compare audio and audiovisual techniques of analyzing stuttering behavior using a recently developed index of agreement (Young, 1975). Twenty speech pathologists identified moments of stuttering for ten adult stutterers using both audio and audiovisual methods. Although no statistically significant differences existed between the two conditions, the listeners had more difficulty identifying moments of stuttering during the audio condition when mild stutterers were used.