Relationships between adolescent drug use and parental drug behaviors

The present study examined some previously reported relationships between drug use by adolescents and perceived attitudes and behaviors of their parents. An anonymous questionnaire was administered to the student body of an inner-city secondary school for difficult students. Relationships between parental use of drugs and adolescent use of the same drugs were moderate and roughly equivalent across drugs. However, parental use of marijuana was strongly related to the adolescent's use of other, harder drugs such as opiates, cocaine, amphetamines, and barbiturates. This finding is explained within the framework of Kandel's postulated stages of drug initiation. It points to a need for further study of parental influences, which may be increasingly problematic as more individuals who have grown up in our marijuana-accepting society become parents of adolescents.     

The locus of intersensory facilitation of reaction time

When an imperative visual stimulus is paired with an auditory (accessory) stimulus, RT is generally faster than with the imperative stimulus alone. Three experiments using additive-factors logic tested an energy-summation view of the accessory, where effects are due to increased rate of information build-up in sensory stages, and a preparation-enhancement view which holds that the accessory serves an alerting function. Experiment 1 found no interaction between the accessory presence and (visual) stimulus brightness, suggesting no role of the accessory in stimulus identification. Experiment 2 found no interaction between accessory presence and spatial S-R compatibility, arguing that the accessory operated in stage(s) other than response selection. Experiment 3 produced an interaction between the accessory and movement complexity, arguing for accessory effects in a response-programming stage. The data generally favored preparation-enhancement, and offered no support for an energy-summation view.     

Attentional strategies and the visual control of discrete movements

The relationship between the availability of visual information and attention demands during the production of a discrete motor act was examined. Subjects were required to move a linear slide a distance of 15 cm in both 150 and 600 msec conditions under three light manipulations, viz., light always on; light always terminated as movement began; or, subject was unsure as to whether light would stay on or terminate. A simple key press by the index finger of the opposite hand to a tone was used as a secondary task and a measure of attention demands. The light manipulation influenced attention demands on the rapid 150 msec movement such that more attention was demanded when the subject knew the light would terminate. No such attentional strategy differences were found with the slow 600 msec movement. These findings suggest that task constraints in the form of kinematic criteria, together with the perceived availability of visual information, contribute to determining attentional strategy in movement production.     

Developmental analysis of the effects of reward on selected Wechsler subscales

The authors recently proposed that adverse effects of material rewards on Wechsler subscale performance may be the result of a reward-produced developmental regression. The present study further explores that idea through an attempt to replicate earlier findings with adults and to extend the inquiry to children. Selected Wechsler subscales were administered to 32 subjects at each of three ages (5, 10, and 18 years) under either reward or nonreward conditions. Subscales were chosen to represent both algorithmic and heuristic types of tasks. Reward and nonreward groups (8 males and 8 females per group at each age) were matched initially on age and ability. For adults, consistent with earlier findings, reward had an adverse effect on performance on the heuristic subscales and tended to facilitate performance on the algorithmic subscales. However, rewards generally had no effect at the fourth-grade level and had a reverse effect at the nursery school level, i.e., rewards facilitated heuristic and hampered algorithmic performance. These findings appear to be more consistent with an explanation based on developmental regression than on any available alternative mechanism.     

Self-reported assessment practices of school psychologists: Implications for training and practice

This study reports the results of an investigation of the assessment views and practices of school psychologists in the United States. Results of the investigation indicated that respondents are predominantly behavioral and cognitive behavioral in orientation; spend most of their professional time in the public schools; and engage in a great deal of assessment. Behavioral assessment and projective testing occupies the greatest amount of their social-emotional assessment time. Behavioral interviewing is the most used behavioral technique, followed by behavioral observation, which is reportedly used by approximately one third of the respondents with from 41% to 100% of clients. Although most of the respondents report a preference for continuing to do approximately the same amount of the various social-emotional assessment activities as they are presently doing, very high percentages of respondents indicate that their use of behavioral assessment strategies would increase with development of published instrumentation, normative standards, and standardized out-of-setting behavioral procedures.     

An evaluation of the yellow brick road test through a full prediction-performance comparison matrix

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the predictive validity of the Yellow Brick Road Test (YBRT) relative to performance in reading as measured by the Metropolitan Achievement Test (MAT). A full prediction-performance comparison matrix was employed to compare three different cutoff scores for the YBRT for the identification of “at-risk” children. Four hundred and fourteen kindergarten-aged children were administered the YBRT, 214 of whom were followed to the end of second grade. It was concluded that the YBRT is a moderately valid instrument for predicting the level of reading achievement in a population with a different average performance level from the normative sample. However, the results of this study failed to support the utility of the test author's suggested use of a score of 120 as the cutoff score. Finally, it is recommended that a prediction-performance comparison study be considered standard methodology for the evaluation of the validity and efficiency of screening instruments.     

Transfer of matching-to-figure samples in the pigeon

Three pigeons were trained on a modified six-key matching-to-sample procedure. The third peck on the figure-sample key (which presented a bird, hand, face, beetle, rabbit, fish, flower, or red hue, as the sample) lighted only one comparison key. Every three additional pecks on the sample lighted another comparison key, up to a maximum of five keys. Pecks on keys of matching figures produced grain. Pecks on nonmatching keys (mismatches) turned off all lights on the comparison keys and repeated the trial. Three figures were used during acquisition. The birds learned to peck each sample until the matching comparison stimulus appeared on one of three comparison stimulus keys, and then to peck that key. Later, five novel stimuli, employed as both sample and comparison stimuli, and two additional matching keys were added. Each bird showed matching transfer to the novel samples. The data suggest that the birds may have learned the concept of figure matching rather than a series of two-component chains or discrete five-key discriminations.     

Temporal control by signals of interval duration within variable-interval schedules

Rats' lever pressing produced sucrose reinforcers on a variable-interval schedule where, in different conditions, the duration of a stimulus presented immediately after reinforcement was either correlated or uncorrelated with the duration of the current interreinforcement interval. Under the baseline schedule, in which no stimulus was presented, the minimum interreinforcement interval was 8 s and the mean postreinforcement pause of each subject approximated this value. Response rates increased slowly over the first 10 to 15 s and then remained roughly constant throughout the remainder of the interval. In both the correlated and uncorrelated conditions, the added stimulus resulted in the postreinforcement pauses lengthening to values in excess of the duration of the preceding stimulus. This resulted in a poststimulus pause which was, in most cases, roughly constant irrespective of the duration of the preceding stimulus, or of the reinforcement contingencies prevailing immediately after stimulus offset. Local response-rate patterns in the uncorrelated conditions were similar to those obtained under the baseline schedule in which no stimulus was presented. However, in the correlated condition local response rates increased across the remainder of the interreinforcer interval. Further, the rate of acceleration was inversely related to the duration of the preceding stimulus. These results show that a correlation between stimulus duration and the ensuing time to reinforcement can control behavior—a type of temporal control not previously reported.