A survey os school psychologists'' use of behavior modification procedures

A national survey of behavior modification procedures used by school psychologists is reported. Usable questionnaires were received from 148 (49%) of 300 randomly selected members of the 1982 National Association of School Psychologists directory. Each respondent was asked to indicate the type of exposure, use, and inclusion of data collection procedures for each of 18 commonly used behavioral techniques. Conditional probabilities between type of exposure and use found strong relationships between supervision and subsequent use. The implications for the field of school psychology and future directions for training programs are discussed.     

The Hispanic Treatment Program: Principles of effective psychotherapy

The Hispanic Treatment Program was an inpatient psychotherapy Unit at the Colorado State Hospital that operated from October 1979 to February 1982. Staffed exclusively with personnel of Hispanic heritage, the Program emphasized the use of linguistic and cultural elements, as well as the customs and beliefs characteristic of Hispanic culture. A specialized inpatient treatment unit for Hispanic patients with psychotic (especially, schizophrenia) disturbances, the Program offered a unique opportunity to these patients by providing a variety of psychotherapies conducted in a culturally-sensitive manner. Spanish and English were used in a manner conducive to enhancing the treatment process, with flexibility in use of language.This project was supported by Grant No. ROlMH29016-01A2, awarded by the National Institute of Mental Health, Center for Minority Group Mental Health.The authors acknowledge Gregorio Kort, M.D. and Wayne Smyer, M.A. and other staff for their contributions to the development and success of the Hispanic Treatment Program.Original version of paper was selected for the First Senior Award given by the Psychological Services Center's (NYSCP) Minority Mental Health Award Competition.     

Predicting child behavior problems in maritally violent families

Previous research indicates that children from violent marriages are more likely to suffer from conduct problems and/or anxiety disorders than children from nonviolent, satisfactory marriages. However, knowledge regarding specific factors present in violent marriages relating to child problems is limited. The present study examined the relationships involving interspousal aggression, parent-child aggression, and child behavior problems in a sample of 45 children from maritally violent families. Mothers indicated how often their children witnessed interspousal aggression and were victims of parent-child aggression. Mothers also rated their children's problem behaviors while children reported on their own depressive symptoms. The witnessing of interspousal aggression was highly associated with parental aggression directed toward children. Parent-child aggression related to attention problems, anxiety-withdrawl, motor excess, and conduct problems in children. However, the witnessing of interspousal aggression was not significantly related to child behavior problems. These results are consistent with theoretical predictions linking marital problems to child behavior by virtue of their association with parenting.This research was supported in part by a Grant-in-Aid of Research awarded to the first author by Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society, and NIMH Grant No. MH35340 awarded to the third author. The authors wish to thank Martha Wray and her staff at VIBS for their help throughout this project.     

Physicians and clergy in dialogue

The goals and ends of contemporary medicine are often unclear. An explicit inquiry into the religious dimensions of healing offers an important perspective from which to evaluate the potential capabilities of the medical profession. This paper describes a course in which medical students joined divinity students to explore areas of mutual intellectual, professional, and personal interest. Students and faculty examined in depth three broad areas in which medicine and religion share common ground: concepts of health and illness from the religious perspective, approaches to the understanding of suffering and meaning, and the shared professional stresses of physician and clergy.This paper comes from the Department of Medicine, Beth Israel Hospital, and the Division on Aging and the Program for the Analysis of Clinical Strategies, Harvard Medical School, and the West Roxbury-Brockton Veterans Administration Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Center, Boston.     

Exemplification: The self-presentation of moral character

How do people come to terms with moral self-presentations and disconfirming behaviors? Subjects were exposed to the self-presentation of either an exemplifier (presenting himself as morally virtuous) or a pragmatist (presenting himself as morally adaptable) and then learned whether the self-presenter had or had not cheated for self-serving reasons in an earlier experiment Subjects clearly distinguished between exploitativeness and hypocrisy in their attributions, and considered a cheating exemplifier more hypocritical and self-deluding, but less exploitative and devious than a cheating pragmatist A second experiment manipulated subjects' involvement with the cheating of an exemplifier and a pragmatist by making half of the subjects its victims As in Experiment 1, uninvolved subjects considered the cheating exemplifier more hypocritical and less exploitative than a cheating pragmatist, however, involved subjects (victims) considered a cheating exemplifier more hypocritical but no less exploitative than a cheating pragmatist The results are discussed in terms of strategic self-presentation and the attribution of moral character     

An examination of rapid positioning movements with spatiotemporal constraints

Unidirectional positioning movements with spatiotemporal constraints were examined as a test of impulse-timing theory (Schmidt, 1976; 1980; Wallace, 1981). Movements were examined at the kinematic, kinetic, and neuromuscular levels in three experiments. In the first experiment, displacement was held constant while five different movement times were examined. Both amplitudes and durations of the EMG and the kinetic variables were related to movement time. The results generally support the impulse-timing model. In the second experiment, movements were performed to a target at each of four distances in a constant movement time. EMG and force amplitudes and, unexpectedly, accelerative-force duration were modulated to achieve changes in displacement when movement time was constant. In the third experiment, movement time and displacement were simultaneously varied resulting in four conditions with equal average velocities. The results of this experiment were not as clear and exhibited individual differences. EMG duration did not always vary with changes in movement time. The results of all three experiments could not be adequately accounted for by the impulse-timing model.     

From page to program: Some typographical and temporal variables in radio homilies

Punctuation in 20 radio homilies by four speakers accounted for 76% of pause time and 64% of pause number. Pause duration varied systematically according to punctuation type. Commas accounted for 82% of punctuated positionsnot used for pausing.RRelevance for theories of text unitization is discussed. Both typographical and temporal measures are compared with a similar corpus of German homilies.