The Continuity Strategy,Human Behavior,and Behavior Analysis

The Psychological Record - In behavior analysis, continuity refers to the assumption of a similarity of behavioral principles or processes between nonhumans and humans, which is often considered to...     

Reflecting on mistakes and learning from experience

Twenty years allow plenty of time to reflect on mistakes and learn from experience. Particular insights include the following:(1) Never be satisfied with one's therapy.(2) There is something new to be learned in every session.(3) Listen to instinct and, whenever possible, share this (gently) with the family.(4) Put the counter-transference back in the family.(5) Give a very high priority to the cohesion and consistency of the parental subsystem.(6) Simple but sound techniques are at least as useful as the complex and esoteric.     

Intelligence, Callous-Unemotional Traits, and Antisocial Behavior

Research has consistently shown that children with severe conduct problems often exhibit intellectual deficits, especially in their verbal abilities. We investigated whether or not this finding only applies to certain subgroups of children with severe conduct problems. In a sample of 117 clinic-referred children between the ages of 6 and 13, we assessed for Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) and Conduct Disorder (CD) symptoms using a structured diagnostic interview with each child's parent and teacher, callous and unemotional traits using parent and teacher ratings, and intellectual functioning using a standard individually administered intelligence test. Children with an ODD or CD diagnosis who did not show callous and unemotional traits showed a deficit on subtests measuring verbal reasoning ability relative to a clinic control group. Children with an ODD or CD diagnosis who also showed callous and unemotional traits did not show a verbal deficit and, in fact, showed a trend toward having weaker nonverbal abilities. These results highlight the importance of recognizing distinct subgroups of children with severe conduct problems when studying potential intellectual deficits in these children.     

Selective attention and the breadth of learning: A developmental study

Nursery school and second-grade subjects were trained on an optional intradimensional/extradimensional shift task with (1) no overtraining, (2) overtraining on the initial problem only, (3) overtraining on the shift problem only, or (4) overtraining on both the initial and the shift problems. Predictions concerning the effects of age and training conditions on the type of solution and the breadth of learning for the shift problem were derived from selective attention theory. However, the results were not consistent with the one-look assumption of such models. Instead, a multiple-look theory in which the breadth of attention varies with task demands seems most tenable.     

A pilot study of women’s affective responses to common and uncommon forms of aerobic exercise

Objective: To test the extent to which participants exposed to an uncommon versus common exercise stimulus would result in more favourable affect at post-task.

Design: Experimental design. Participants (N = 120), American women aged 18–45 years, were randomly assigned to complete 30-min of either the uncommon (HOOP; n = 58) or common (WALK; n = 62) exercise stimulus.

Main outcome measures: Self-reported affect and intentions for future exercise were measured before and after the 30-min exercise bout.

Results: Analyses of covariance were run to compare post-task affect across the HOOP and WALK conditions. At post-task, participants assigned to HOOP reported more positively valenced affect, higher ratings of positive activated affect, lower ratings of negative deactivated affect, and stronger intentions for future aerobic exercise compared to participants assigned to WALK.

Conclusions: Participants who completed an uncommon bout of aerobic exercise (HOOP) reported more favourable affect post-exercise, as well as stronger intentions for future exercise, compared to participants who completed a common bout of aerobic exercise (WALK). Future work using a longitudinal design is needed to understand the relationships between familiarity with an exercise stimulus, affective responses to exercise, motivation for future exercise behaviour and exercise maintenance over time.