THE USE OF CONTINGENT-INTERRUPTED MUSIC IN THE TREATMENT OF DISRUPTIVE BUS-RIDING BEHAVIOR

The present study evaluated the efficacy of using contingent-interrupted music in treating the disruptive bus-riding behavior of an 8-year-old profoundly retarded female. Music was played during each bus ride as long as the subject was sitting appropriately, and interrupted contingent upon each response defined as disruptive bus riding, during an ABCDCDCDA design. A significant reduction in disruptive bus riding occurred with each introduction of contingent-interrupted music. The treatment procedure described in this report was easy to administer, produced rapid treatment gains, and showed virtually no regression during an 8-week follow-up period.     

Stereotyping of sex role in preschoolers in relation to age,family structure,and parental sexism

Forty-eight boys and 48 girls aged between 32 and 64 months were tested for stereotyping of sex role using a toy-preference technique. Scores for overt and covert measures of sexism and awareness of the dimension of sex-role stereotyping were also obtained from both parents of each child, as well as information on the target child's siblings. Analysis indicated the developmental nature of stereotyping of sex role in both boys and girls and the surprising finding that older siblings are much more important in the development of such stereotyping than are sexist parents. The influence of the child upon parental attitudes is also apparent. These findings and their interrelationships are discussed, suggesting new directions for research.The author wishes to thank Ann Barry, Director of the Glen Kindergarten, for her assistance in developing the materials used here and her extensive testing of the children included in this study. My thanks are also due to Professor D. J. Drinkwater and Drs. R. Boyd, S. Phillips, and J. Sweller for their assistance in grading the stereotyped toy illustrations used in testing the children.     

The roles of vibration amplitude and static force

Previous work (Verrillo, 1963, 1968) has shown that when measured as a change in absolute threshold, spatial summation occurs only at vibration frequencies above 40 Hz. The present study measured vibrotactile spatial summation at suprathreshold amplitudes. A matching task was used to investigate the effect of varying contactor size on sensory magnitude at three different vibration frequencies. Unlike the threshold data, increasing contactor size resulted in increases in sensory magnitude at 25 and 40 Hz as well as at 160 Hz. The amount of summation varied directly with amplitude for the two lower frequencies. In a second experiment, the effect of increasing static force, independent of contactor size, was investigated. The results indicated that the spatial summation effects noted in the first experiment may be due to increases in static force and not contactor area. The implications of these results for the concept of spatial summation and for the duplex mechanoreceptor hypothesis are discussed.     

A computer-oriented system for high-speed recording of operant behavior

A method is described by which large quantities of data, generated at high and variable rates from a large number of test boxes, are recorded on a single eight-channel punched paper tape. The data, which include a record of the occurrence time of each event in 1/10-sec units, are in a compact form, suitable for conversion to standard Hollerith punched card codes and for decoding and summarizing by a large digital computer. Experience with the system has demonstrated a high degree of accuracy and reliability, and low operating cost.     

Familiarity decisions for faces presented to the left and right cerebral hemispheres

Right-handed subjects were asked to decide whether or not faces presented briefly in the RVF or in the LVF were familiar (familiar faces were those of famous people). This task avoids the need for extensive semantic processing or temporary storage involved in conventional naming or identification tasks, and thus eliminates the contribution of such factors to any observed asymmetry. The resulting finding of faster reaction times to LVF faces, with no overall visual hemifield difference in error rates, is taken to indicate a right-hemisphere superiority either in the processes used to construct facial representations or in the accessing of face recognition units, or both.     

Applied orienting response research: Some examples

The development of orienting response (OR) theory has not been accompanied by many applications of the concept—most research still appears to be lab-based and “pure,” rather than “applied.” We present some examples from our own work in which the OR perspective has been applied in a wider context. These cover the exploration of processing deficits in autistic children, aspects of the “repression” of anxiety in elite athletes, and the locus of alcohol effects. Such applications of the OR concept in real-life situations seem a logical and, indeed,necessary step in the evolution of this area of psychophysiology. With a Comment by E. N. Sokolov     

Social interaction,social observation,and cognitive development in young children

Eighty first-grade childen were pretested on a variety of conservation tasks. Subjects who were either nonconservers or intermediate conservers were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: social interaction, social observation, and individual control. Subjects in the social interaction condition worked collaboratively on conservation tasks with a same sex partner. Subjects in the social observation condition individually observed pairs of subjects working together and control subjects worked individually on conservation tasks. The purpose of the social observation condition was to control for the effects of task relevant information that was expressed during dyadic interactions. All subjects were individually post-tested on conservation tasks that were the same form but different content than the pretest items. Subjects in the social interaction condition had significantly greater cogntive change scores (post-test less pretest) than subjects in the social observation and control conditions. There were no significant differences between change scores of subjects in the latter two conditions. Also, subjects in the social interaction condition gave significantly more novel explanations for conservation judgments than subjects in the social observation condition. These findings supported a socio-cognitive conflict model of cognitive development in young children.