The on-line voyeur: Promises and pitfalls of observing electronic interaction

Studies that compare objective data on communication activity to data provided in verbal reports have indicated that verbal report data are not as accurate as one might hope. Researchers of communication have used verbal reports as their primary source of data because it presents a cheap and easy way to collect the data. This paper presents an easy alternative involving the study ofelectronic communication: a method that allows the collection of objective information on electronic communication, thus avoiding the problems associated with self-reports. The paper reviews the available literature on the accuracy of self-reports of communication, presents the instrument used to collect the objective electronic communication data, and discusses some of the difficulties and limitations encountered in implementing a study using the instrument.     

CO-WORKER IMPLEMENTED JOB TRAINING: THE USE OF COINCIDENTAL TRAINING AND QUALITY-CONTROL CHECKING ON THE FOOD PREPARATION SKILLS OF TRAINEES WITH MENTAL RETARDATION

In two studies, co-workers of persons with disabilities were taught to use coincidental training procedures while completing their own jobs. In Study 1, the effects of coincidental training on the salad-making skills of 3 trainees with mild and moderate mental retardation were evaluated. Coincidental training by co-workers resulted in improved accuracy of the salad-making skills of the trainees. In Study 2, trainees were also coincidentally taught to make quality-control checks of their salads. An alternating treatments and multiple baseline design indicated that the trainees more readily acquired the skills when taught to check the correctness of their work.     

Interfacing Apple and IBM computers for the analysis of clinical biofeedback

This paper demonstrates a method of transferring research data from a remote clinic to a large university mainframe for data manipulation and statistical analysis. Data collected by an Apple //e computer were transferred to an IBM 3031 mainframe by sending data files to an IBM PC by telephone modem or by direct hardwire connection to the PC. The IMB PC performed data-formatting routines and then uploaded the files to the mainframe for storage. Advantages and disadvantages of sending data over telephone lines via a modem are discussed.     

Interactive braille output for blind computer users

Blind readers were tested using two methods of reading text displayed by an Apple microcomputer. The first method employed an Optacon system, a device that displays tactile representations of single characters, and the second used an interactive single electronic braille cell that displayed grade 1 braille characters. The results demonstrated no difference in accuracy or reading speed between these two methods. Thus, the serial presentation of braille characters at a single position appears to be a viable method of information transfer between computers and braille readers.     

Single-subject statistical analysis of computer-assisted biofeedback

Single-subject statistics were used to analyze physiological data [electromyographic (EMG) temperature] recorded from two patients receiving computer-assisted biofeedback treatment in a clinic. When the data were analyzed by an ANOVA method or a regression technique, the results demonstrated that both patients learned to significantly reduce EMG levels. The rationale of using single-subject statistics is discussed, and the applicability of the statistical technique to the clinic population is illustrated.     

Development of organization in recall: A stages-of-learning analysis

An experiment is reported in which the effects of taxonomic organization on 7-year-old and 11-year-old children's free and cued recall of two- and four-category lists were examined. The data were analyzed using a stages-of-learning model that simultaneously delivers estimates of the impact of these manipulations on storage and retrieval components of recall. The results indicated that for the Grade 2 children providing a category label at the time of recall primarily enhanced storage whereas increasing the number of categories primarily enhanced retrieval. For Grade 6 children, on the other hand, the use of category labels to cue recall primarily enhanced retrieval, whereas increasing the number of categories affected both storage and retrieval in free recall, but only retrieval in cued recall. In addition, while older children were superior to younger children at both storing and retrieving information, age differences at retrieval were generally larger than those at storage.     

Children's affective,behavioral, and cognitive responses to social comparison

Relative outcomes in social commerce with peers are potent determinants of cognitions and behavior in young children. Although there has been considerable attention given to the behavioral consequences of social comparisons following the receipt of rewards, there has been less concern with cognitive or affective consequences. Additionally, little is known about the accrued effects of multiple social comparison experiences that may be consistent or inconsistent with one another. In the present study, young children received a constant level of reward but the amount they saw a peer receive was varied. There were two sequences of reward distribution, and in a given sequence children received either the same number of rewards as the peer (=), more (+), or fewer (?). In a 3 × 3 factorial design all possible combinations occurred. A negative inequality in reward distribution, no matter where it fell in a sequence, made children sad and inclined children to distribute fewer rewards to peers. When a sequence contained an initial experience of positive inequality, children decreased subsequent levels of self-reward. Experiencing a comparison that revealed a negative inequality in reward distribution also disrupted children's accuracy in appraising the overall distribution of rewards: even when an initial negative inequality was completely offset by an equivalent experience of positive inequality, children inaccurately concluded that they had received fewer rewards than their peers.     

Gender roles,biological sex,and predisposition to conflict management

The Bem Sex-Role Inventory and the Communication-Conflict Instrument were administered to 182 husbands and wives. Results suggest that gender-role classification is a more significant discriminator of communication behavior than is biological sex. Androgynous spouses, more than feminine though not significantly more so than masculine spouses, reported themselves to be the most disposed to handle conflict constructively. On the subscales of the conflict instrument, androgynous persons had significantly more positive feelings scores than either masculine or feminine persons, plus higher task energy and desire-for-control scores than feminine persons. Similarly, masculine persons reported a significantly greater predisposition to manage conflict constructively than did feminine persons, having higher task energy and desire-for-control scores. Undifferentiated persons reported the lowest scores for conflict management.     

Understanding and solving arithmetic word problems: A computer simulation

In this paper, I describe a computer program, WORDPRO, which simulates the psychological processes involved when third-grade children understand and solve simple arithmetic word problems. Both the implementation of the program and its performance on a set of sample problems are presented. WORDPRO is a useful research tool in that it demonstrates the sufficiency of the theory upon which it is based, assists in communicating that theory to other researchers, and provides a sources of empirical predictions for experimental tests of the theory.