Attraction and delay of gratification

The present study examined the degree to which differential attraction to the prizes could explain children's decisions in a delay of gratification situation. After rating the attractiveness of prizes, each child responded to four delay choice situations. While significant effects were obtained on only one choice pair, the results generalized to the other choices: nondelayers consistently perceived less discrepancy in attraction between the immediate and delayed rewards than did delayers. In general, the smaller discrepancy among nondelayers was due to a greater attraction to the immediate prize. As predicted, these results held only for “inconsistent” children and not for children who consistently delayed or did not delay across all four choices. The implications of this finding for trait-situation explanations of delay are discussed. While it was predicted that differential attraction would explain previously reported SES differences in delay tendencies, middle and lower SES children responded similarly, both in level of attraction to the prizes and actual delay behavior.     

Research activities of doctoral school psychologists

A survey was sent to doctoral school psychologists to determine their research productivity and topical interests. Approximately two thirds of 147 respondents indicated doing some research during 1974–1975. Studies dealing with topics of assessment and program evaluation were most prevalent. Only about one in five studies was actually published and most of these were in nonprestigious periodicals. Academic school psychologists were more likely to do research and publish than were applied school psychologists. Academic and applied psychologists did not differ in terms of numbers of unpublished written or oral research reports. The correspondence of these results with prior data on school psychology research was noted and suggestions to increase the circulation of research findings are presented.     

Concurrent performances: reinforcement by different doses of intravenous cocaine in rhesus monkeys

Different doses of intravenous cocaine reinforced the lever pressing of rhesus monkeys under two-lever concurrent or concurrent-chain schedules. Under the concurrent procedure, responding produced drug reinforcers arranged according to independent variable-interval 1-min schedules. Under the concurrent-chain procedure, responding in the variable-interval link led to one of two mutually exclusive, equal-valued, fixed-ratio links; completion of the ratio produced a drug reinforcer. Under both procedures, responding on one lever produced a constant dose of 0.05 or 0.1 mg/kg/injection, while on the other lever, dose was systematically varied within a range of 0.013 to 0.8 mg/kg/injection. Preference, indicated by relative response frequency on the variable-dose lever during the variable-interval link, was always for the larger of the doses. Relative response frequencies on the variable-dose lever roughly matched relative drug intake (mg/kg of drug obtained on variable lever divided by mg/kg of drug obtained on both levers). For many dose comparisons, responding occurred and reinforcers were obtained almost exclusively on the preferred lever. Overall variable-interval rates generally were lower than with other reinforcers, and these low rates, under the experimental conditions, may have occasioned the exclusive preferences.     

Impact of mothers' life style on adolescent gender-role socialization

The perceptions and attitudes of 365 eighth-grade girls were surveyed to examine the direct and indirect impact of mothers' life style on adolescents' gender-role development. Among the hypotheses investigated were the following: (1) mothers' activity outside the home enhances her status and increases the likelihood of diminished gender-role differentiation in the family and (2) status and parental role differentiation explain a greater proportion of the variance in the gender-role socialization variables than maternal life style. Multiple regression analyses were carried out to determine which combination of life style and intervening variables would best predict gender-role responses. Collectively, the results indicated only modest relationships between maternal characteristics and girls' gender-role socialization. The appropriateness of this model for future research is discussed.Data reported here are from a study conducted while the senior author was a Charles Phelps Taft Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cincinnati.     

Behavioral correlates of the Hyperactivity Factor of the Conners Teacher Questionnaire

The present study assesses whether ratings on the Conners Teacher Questionnaire, Hyperactivity Factor, corresponded to observed behavioral and attitudinal differences in hyperactive and nonhyperactive males. Boys in the present study were rated on the questionnaire and then observed in a free-play situation. The boys' scores on the Teacher Questionnaire were later compared with their activity level, judgments about their behavior, and interview questions about their experience in the study. Several of these measures were found to correlate significantly with the Teacher Questionnaire scores, suggesting that it successfully taps observable dimensions of hyperactivity in novel situations.This project was part of the dissertation of the first author, Department of Psychology, The American University.     

Comparison of stimulus control and reinforcement control effects on imitative behavior

An attempt was made to evaluate reinforcement and stimulus control of imitative and non-imitative behavior. The imitative response required the subject to duplicate the experimenter's response by matching blocks that varied in color. The factor designed to evaluate stimulus control was fading, a procedure that systematically varies the differences between the imitative and non-imitative stimuli. The topography and duration of the non-imitative stimuli were faded in. The factors designed to evaluate reinforcement control were differential reinforcement of non-imitative behavior and time out from positive reinforcement. The results showed stimulus control of non-imitation to be more important than reinforcement control, and that reinforcing events were not sufficient to control non-imitation; while the arrangement of stimulus events was sufficient to control non-imitation. These results were related to studies providing evidence for the processes of discrimination and generalization.     

Phonetic recoding and reading difficulty in beginning readers

The results of a recent study (Liberman, Shankweiler, Liberman, Fowler, & Fischer, 1977) suggest that good beginning readers are more affected than poor readers by the phonetic characteristics of visually presented items in a recall task. The good readers made significantly more recall errors on strings of letters with rhyming letter names than on nonrhyming sequences; in contrast, the poor readers made roughly equal numbers of errors on the rhyming and nonrhyming letter strings. The purpose of the present study was to determine whether the interaction between reading ability and phonetic similarity is solely determined by different rehearsal strategies of the two groups. Accordingly, good and poor readers were tested on rhyming and nonrhyming words using a recognition memory paradigm that minimized the opportunity for rehearsal. Performance of the good readers was more affected by phonetic similarity than that of the poor readers, in agreement with the earlier study. The present findings support the hypothesis that good and poor readers do differ in their ability to access a phonetic representation.     

The ministry of counseling

Conclusion Somewhere in religion there is the awareness of and reach toward a divine agency beyond the purely human, whether the divine activity is conceived to be found in Holy Scripture, or a divinely guided Church, or in the stilling of creaturely thoughts in a Friends meeting. All religion asks of psychotherapy is that God be given a chance to will and to do of his good pleasure in us. Religion may fearlessly ally itself with a therapeutic spirit in which the role of man is the humble one of providing the field of action for the Holy Spirit. The therapist is a Christ-bearer, as we are all called to be Christ-bearers in our measure, confirming the intimation of the Spirit that we are sons of God and capable of growing into his image from glory to glory.     

Experiences extended across time: Evaluation of moments and episodes

Intuitions relating to outcomes extended over time are examined. Utility integration is proposed as a normative rule for the evaluation of extended episodes. In Experiment 1, subjects explicitly compared aversive experiences of varying durations. By several measures, disutility was a marginally decreasing function of episode duration, even for experiences that were thought to become increasingly aversive. This pattern is a qualitative violation of the integration rule. In Experiment 2, subjects made global evaluations of a hypothetical person's aversive experiences, on the basis of a series of subjective ratings of discomfort made at periodic intervals. The results showed an extreme sensitivity to improving or deteriorating trend and a striking neglect of duration. The final moments of an extended episode appear to exert a strong influence on the overall judgment. This leads to violations of monotonicity when adding some moments of moderate pain reduces judgments of global aversiveness.