THE ROLE OF REFERENTIAL SPEECH IN SIGN LEARNING BY MENTALLY RETARDED CHILDREN: A COMPARISON OF TOTAL COMMUNICATION AND SIGN-ALONE TRAINING

We conducted two experiments to assess the role of referential speech during sign training in which the spoken words corresponding to signs were receptively known to the participants. An alternating treatments design was used to compare sign acquisition across two teaching conditions in which referents were presented either with or without the corresponding verbal label. During the first experiment, signs were taught concurrently; during the second experiment, signs within each of the respective conditions were taught in a serial fashion. In both experiments, signs taught by total communication were acquired faster than those taught by sign-alone training.     

A comparison of the disturbingness of behaviors related to learning disability and emotional disturbance

Behaviors thought to be characteristic of emotional disturbance or learning disabilities were investigated through ratings of teachers with regard to the relative disturbingness of the behaviors. Obtained differences suggested that behaviors characteristic of emotional disturbance were rated as more disturbing than those of learning disabilities; differences within sets of characteristic behaviors were also indicated. Results are discussed with regard to implications for teacher expectancies and labeling research.     

Should Global Conservation Initiatives Prioritize Phylogenetic Diversity?

Philosophia - Some recent conservation proposals – including the Zoological Society of London’s (ZSL) EDGE of Existence programme – have focused on the value of protecting species...     

Volume 18 – List of contents,Author index,and List of reviewers, 2012

Negative acknowledgement is an impression management technique that uses the admission of an unfavourable quality to mitigate a negative response. Although the technique has been clearly demonstrated, the underlying process is not well understood. The current research identifies a key mediator and moderator while also demonstrating that the effect extends beyond the specific acknowledged domain to the overall evaluation of a target object. The results of study 1 indicate that negative acknowledgement works through mitigating negatively valenced cognitive responses. People who are presented with a negative acknowledgement are less likely to counterargue when forming an evaluation. The results of study 2 reveal that individual differences in need for structure impact the effectiveness of the technique. People who are high in need for structure are more susceptible to the effect presumably because of their desire for easy-to-use information that aids the formation and maintenance of simple knowledge structures.     

Object color affects identification and repetition priming

We investigated the influence of color on the identification of both non-studied and studied objects. Participants studied black and white and color photos of common objects and memory was assessed with an identification test. Consistent with our meta-analysis of prior research, we found that objects were easier to identify from color than from black and white photos. We also found substantial priming in all conditions, and study-to-test changes in an object's color reduced the magnitude of priming. Color-specific priming effects were large for color-complex objects, but minimal for color-simple objects. The pattern and magnitude of priming effects was not influenced either by the extent to which an object always appears in the same color (i.e., whether a color is symptomatic of an object) or by the object's origin (natural versus fabricated). We discuss the implications of our findings for theoretical accounts of object perception and repetition priming.     

Measurement of individual differences: lessons from memory assessment in research and clinical practice

An examination of test manuals and published research indicates that widely used memory tests (e.g., Verbal Paired Associates and Word List tests of the Wechsler Memory Scale, Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, and California Verbal Learning Test) are afflicted by severe ceiling effects. In the present study, the true extent of memory ability in healthy young adults was tested by giving 208 college undergraduates verbal paired-associate and verbal learning tests of various lengths; the findings demonstrate that healthy adults can remember much more than is suggested by the normative data for the memory tests just mentioned. The findings highlight the adverse effects of low ceilings in memory assessment and underscore the severe consequences of ceiling effects on score distributions, means, standard deviations, and all variability-dependent indices, such as reliability, validity, and correlations with other tests. The article discusses the optimal test lengths for verbal paired-associate and verbal list-learning tests, shows how to identify ceiling-afflicted data in published research, and explains how proper attention to this phenomenon can improve future research and clinical practice.     

NAMING,THE FORMATION OF STIMULUS CLASSES,AND APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS

The methods used in Sidman's original studies on equivalence classes provide a framework for analyzing functional verbal behavior. Sidman and others have shown how teaching receptive, name-referent matching may produce rudimentary oral reading and word comprehension skills. Eikeseth and Smith (1992) have extended these findings by showing that children with autism may acquire equivalence classes after learning to supply a common oral name to each stimulus in a potential class. A stimulus class analysis suggests ways to examine (a) the problem of programming generalization from teaching situations to other environments, (b) the expansion of the repertoires that occur in those settings, and (c) the use of naming to facilitate these forms of generalization. Such research will help to clarify and extend Horne and Lowe's recent (1996) account of the role of verbal behavior in the formation of stimulus classes.     

Innovation in Guidance: A Mobile Counseling Center

A mobile counseling center staffed by 4 counselors serves high schools in 4 counties of southern Indiana. The operation of the center is designed to enrich, supplement, and improve the quality of counseling services for secondary students of the area. The mobile center also serves as a model to stimulate the development of exemplary and innovative guidance services in regular school programs.     

Distress in spouses of chronic pain patients

This paper critiques the research on distress in spouses of chronic pain patients and includes a review of two studies of spouses conducted at the Miriam Hospital Chronic Pain Research Unit. The clinical implications of this research are discussed and case material is presented to illustrate the role of spouse distress in the treatment of patients with chronic pain. Future directions for research in this area are recommended.The research conducted at the Miriam Hospital Chronic Pain Research Unit was supported by the Alcohol, Drug and Mental Health Administration of the National Institute of Mental Health, Small Grants Program, Grant No. 1 R03 MH39257001A1.