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.     

Effects of taste quality and intensity on oral perception of viscosity

Oral assessments of viscosity were obtained with the method of magnitude estimation. Subjects judged the viscosity of a series of aqueous solutions thickened to one of six viscosity levels (1–2025 centistokes) with a food-grade gum, sodium carboxymethylcellulose. The solutions contained one of several concentrations of caffeine, citric acid, sodium chloride, or sucrose. The presence of taste substances significantly altered the perception of solution viscosity for only the thickest solutions. Increasing concentrations of citric acid and sodium chloride produced progressive decreases in perceived viscosity, and increasing sucrose concentrations produced small increases in perceived viscosity. Caffeine did not affect judgments of solution viscosity. The most likely explanation for these findings is that subjects detected differences in the Newtonian behavior of the thickened solutions, differences that were produced by the addition of taste substances.     

Lasting effects of early blindness a case study

A young woman, blinded by the development of corneal opacity at the age of 3 years, was given a corneal graft at the age of 27. Though the image-forming powers of the eye were largely restored, the patient showed little recovery of functional vision. Six months after operation she could detect and locate conspicuous objects and had some degree of ambient spatial vision but she could not learn to recognize simple visual patterns. Eventually she reverted to the life of a blind person. Her failure to recover is discussed in terms of the known deleterious effects of restricted early visual experience on the development of the visual cortex in animals.     

The phantom in the phoneme: Invariant cues for stop consonants

The stop consonants /b, d, g, p, t, k/were recorded before/i/,/a/,/u/. The energy spectrum for each stop consonant was removed from its original vowel and spliced onto a different steady-state vowel. Results of a recognition test revealed that consonants were accurately recognized in all cases except when /k/ or/g[ was spliced from/i/to/u/. Further demonstrations suggested that/k/ and /g/ do have invariant characteristics before/i/, /a/, and /u/. These results support the general notion that stop consonants may be recognized before different vowels in normal speech in terms of invariant acoustic features.     

The PDP-8/I as a CAT

A programmed algorithm to compute a weighted ensemble average on a set of output signal realizations is presented. Thus programmed, the PDP-8/I can recover output signals, which are due to periodic input signals, from a noisy system. Arbitrarily, large enhancement of signal-to-noise ratio is attainable. The configuration used is a 4K PDP-8/I with AD08-B analog-to-digital converter.     

Paired comparison scaling of reaction potential in two different experiments on habituation

Thurstone’s method of paired comparisons was employed to obtain scaled values of reaction potential from two completely different experimental situations involving response decrement. The first was one in which the GSR was measured on 10 repeated presentations of a visual stimulus (N= 89). The second involved 80 presentations of ordinary visual scenes; the S looked at each scene as long as he wished before switching to the next (i.e., looking time was measured. N=80). Scaling reaction potential by Thurstone’s method provided a common operational definition for both sets of data and permitted their direct comparison in identical units. Both measures showed substantial decrement in reaction potential across stages, with the GSR scale values dropping steeply from the first to the second trial and. thereafter, following a course of decline similar to the looking time scale values. Tlie correlation of the two sets of scale values was essentially linear and equalled 0.90.