A delivery system for the treatment of primary enuresis

To illustrate how to deliver underutilized psychological treatments, a comprehensive, low-cost treatment for primary enuresis was developed consisting of bell-and-pad training, cleanliness training, retention control, and overlearning. Sixty primary enuretic children and their parents attended 1-hour group training sessions and implemented treatment in the home. Each case required 15 minutes of professional time, and net cost to each family was $50. Forty-eight (81%) achieved initial arrest of bedwetting and only 11 (24%) relapsed at 1-year follow-up. Significant association between relapse and prior treatment failure with imipramine was noted. The outcome was found to compare favorably with previous treatments that required more professional time.     

The development of procedural knowledge: An alternative explanation for chronometric trends of mental arithmetic

In a review of the Chronometrie literature, M. H. Ashcraft (Developmental Review, 1982, 2, 213–236) concluded that the development of number fact efficiency is due to a shift from relying on procedural knowledge such as counting to relying on declarative knowledge (a stored network of facts). This model assumes that all procedural processes are slow or remain slow, which is probably not the case. An alternative account posits that the key change in number fact efficiency involves a shift from slow counting procedures to principled procedural knowledge. As rules, heuristics, and principles become more familiar and interconnected, their use, for example, in producing the number facts becomes more automatic. The use of such procedural knowledge would be cognitively more economical than storing individual facts in long-term memory. Finally, existing Chronometric data can readily be interpreted in terms of this alternative model.     

Interactionism, idiographics, and the social psychological invasion of personality

The present paper discusses three recent developments in the field of Personality: (1) an infusion of social psychologists, (2) a proliferation of interactionist models, (3) the development of methodological strategies combining nomothetic and idiographic approaches. Advantages and disadvantages of these developments are discussed, and three problems associated with them are addressed: (1) an overemphasis on phenomenology, (2) an overemphasis on idiosyncracy, and (3) an unsatisfactory level of theory development. It is concluded that the present developments have had a stimulating effect on the field but they need to be integrated with the traditional personological goals of: (1) developing taxonomy of individuals (as well as a taxonomy of interactions) and (2) developing a more satisfactory theory of the whole organism within which to embed our minitheories. We recommend that such a theory attempt to incorporate the insights of the social learning and social cognition approaches with the recent and exciting developments in evolutionary theory.     

A new OS/8 SKED

A new SKED run-time system and compiler have been designed for use under the OS8 operating system. OS8 is a set of programs designed by DEC for the PDP8 computer with 8K or more core memory locations and a mass-storage device (disk, or DEC-tape). The advantages of OS8 include operator convenience, device independent input-output, standard file formats, and convenient program chaining as well as a set of standard data analysis programs. The new compiler, OSCOMP, differs from the previous version in two ways. The first new feature is the ability to process named input and output files on any OS8 compatible peripheral. The second feature is the utilization of 8K of core, permitting compilation of longer state tables than could be processed with the earlier version. Furthermore, with a disk as the OS8 peripheral, the compilation process is essentially instantaneous, for state tables previously requiring from 3–30 min with paper tape devices. The new run-time system, OSRTS8, contains a variety of new features. The most important improvements are the abilities to record data on the OS8 peripheral as well as to read state tables stored as files on the mass-storage device. Other new features include chaining of state tables, automatic start, automatic output file specification, and capability for as many as 12 simultaneous stations.     

An evaluation of methods for behavioral investigations of teleost audition

Auditory thresholds have been determined for the goldfish by six groups of workers and the data in the experiments varied by as much as 20–30 dB. In order to isolate the basis for this variability, auditory thresholds were determined using conditioned suppression of respiration and method of limits. These thresholds were very similar to those obtained with avoidance conditioning and a tracking method for threshold determination. Acoustic procedures were kept constant in the two series of experiments, and it appears that wide variation in auditory thresholds for goldfish shown in different experiments is due to acoustic conditions in the experiments.     

A PDP-11/45 program for playing n-person characteristic function games

NPER II is an on-line PDP-11/45 computer program for studying bargaining and coalition formation processes within the framework of n-person games in characteristic function form. The extensive vocabulary of the program and its mode of operation are presented nontechnically, followed by an examination of a protocol from a sample four-person game. Improvements over a previous version of the program and applications to other experimental paradigms investigating coalition formation and bargaining are discussed in the last two sections of the paper.     

Life goals and plan determinants reported by black and white high school seniors

Black secondary school seniors were compared with their white peers on motivational patterns in posthigh school plans and life goals. Subjects, all members of the 1970 graduating class in a small urban high school, included 34 black males, 32 black females, 119 white males and 157 white females. The investigation replicated a pilot study of the 1969 class. Variables included eight reported determinants of posthigh school plans and 29 categories of the Vocational Sentence Completion Blank. Significant differences as a function of sex were more frequent than those attributable to race.