Habit reversal vs. negative practice treatment of nailbiting

A previous study of the habit reversal treatment of nailbiting was extended by using more subjects (97) and a comparison with an alternative method (negative practice). Negative practice reduced nailbiting episodes by about 60% whereas habit reversal reduced nailbiting episodes by about 99% throughout the 5-month follow-up.     

Treatment of obsessive-compulsive patients: The contribution of self-instructional training to the effectiveness of exposure

Fifteen obsessive-compulsive patients were given treatment consisting of ten sessions of gradual exposure in vivo. For half of the patients gradual exposure in vivo was preceded by self-instructional training.Treatment resulted in significant improvement on anxiety and avoidance scales, Leyton Obsessional Inventory, Self-rating Depression Scale and on ratings for anxious mood and depression. Neither the post-test nor the follow-ups 1 month and 6 months later indicated a difference between the effects of the two conditions. Self-instructional training did not enhance the effectiveness of gradual exposure in vivo.     

Infant search tasks reveal early concepts of containment and canonical usage of objects

It is difficult to gain unambiguous evidence on the use of concepts by infants. Many results can be accounted for in terms of action-based strategies. The evidence reported here fulfils the minimal criteria for the operation of working concepts in infants. Search tasks are used with a filled interval which forces memory-search, and the object is hidden in containers which fulfil their customary job or violate it. Infants treat an upright cup as a more reliable location marker than an inverted one. A series of experiments probes the phenomenon. The results indicate that the infants have a working concept of containment which can be triggered by the provision of containers in their canonical orientation. Even “object permanence tasks” lead infants to access their knowledge of the relationships into which things typically enter in the world outside the laboratory.     

Behavioral coaching in the development of skills in football, gymnastics, and tennis

A review of the literature indicates that methods of skill acquisition based on the operant paradigm have been scientifically validated with many motor behaviors. However, these procedures have been limited to the use of positive reinforcement for correct performance when applied to the acquisition of complex sports skills in natural settings. To find complementary procedures to enhance skill acquisition, a coaching method involving several behavioral techniques was developed that focused on remediation of errors. This coaching method combined the following components: (1) systematic use of verbal instructions and feedback, (2) positive and negative reinforcement, (3) positive practice, and (4) time out. Three sports, football, gymnastics, and tennis, were selected to determine the effectiveness and generality of this behavioral coaching method. A total of 23 male and female subjects, ranging in age from 11 to 35, was included in this study. Baseline data were first collected for each sport under standard coaching conditions. Next, the behavioral coaching method was evaluated depending on the sport in either a multiple baseline or a reversal design. The behavioral dimensions selected were blocking in football; backward walkovers, front hand springs, and reverse kips in gymnastics; and the forehand, backhand, and serve in tennis. Behavioral coaching was immediately effective in increasing the correct execution of complex skills in all three sports. Gains of up to 10 times the baseline performance were achieved in each sport. In football, behavioral coaching resulted in an increase in correct blocking performance from a baseline average of 5% to 51.3%. Gymnasts' performances increased from baseline averages of 2.7% to 52.6% across the three skills. In tennis, standard coaching produced an average of 6% correct performance which increased dramatically under behavioral coaching to 57% across the three strokes. The success of the behavioral coaching package used here suggests that a technology of behavior may offer additional and complementary strategies to the acquisition of motor skills in the natural environment.     

Seat belt usage: A potential target for applied behavior analysis

Results of 1,579 observations of cars entering or exiting campus parking lots showed direct relationships between seat belt wearing and the intrusiveness of the engineering device designed to induce belt usage, and between device intrusiveness and system defeat. For example, all drivers with working interlocks or unlimited buzzer reminders were wearing a seat belt; but 62% of the systems with interlocks or unlimited buzzers had been defeated, and only 15.9% of the drivers in these cars were wearing a seat belt. The normative data indicated marked ineffectiveness of the negative reinforcement contingencies implied by current seat belt inducement systems; but suggested that unlimited buzzer systems would be the optimal system currently available if contingencies were developed to discourage the disconnection and circumvention of such systems. Positive reinforcement strategies are discussed that would be quite feasible for large-scale promotion of seat belt usage.     

A longitudinal analysis of personality structure and adolescent substance use

Within the context of a prospective longitudinal research design, the structure of personality and initial levels of drug use were used to predict, multivariately, later drug use among male and female adolescents. The findings indicated that personality and belief measures of nonconventionality provide a significant increment in the prediction of later drug use beyond a level achieved by knowing initial usage rates. In addition, other personality and belief measures yield further increments in the prediction of subsequent drug use. Developmentally, the results revealed a differentiation of drug use patterns across the year's time, with one pattern primarily reflecting alcohol use, and a second pattern primarily reflecting use of marijuana and ‘hard’ drugs. While both patterns were related to measures of nonconventionality, certain personality features distinguished between them. Emergent use of marijuana and ‘hard’ drugs was related to depression, mistrust and attractiveness, while emergent alcohol use was related to generosity, ambition, agility and cheerfulness. These results were cross-validated in two samples of subjects. Implications of the findings for adolescent psychosocial development are discussed.     

Attention switching is not a fatigable process: methodological comments on Axelrod and Guzy (1972)

Guzy and Axelrod investigated auditory attention switching by means of the click-counting paradigm and concluded that attention switching is a fatigable process. In the present comment it is shown that this conclusion is based on a faulty analysis of the data: The scores subjected to the analysis of variance were transformed such that they were no longer linear combinations of the factorial effects. Reanalyzing the data in the correct way renders perfectly linear conting functions that deviate from theoretical fatigue functions. It is concluded that the attention-switching mechanism is not fatigable.     

Methinks they do protest too much

A serious methodological error was committed by Stephens et al. (1972), the protestations of the present critics notwithstanding. When studying the relationship between two sets of variables, it is clearly wrong to hold chonological age constant in one set and allow it to vary in the other. This error spuriously reduces the correlation between the two sets. A demonstration that the two sets define different first-order factors provides very little information about the degree of relationship present, which must be derived from the intercorrelations of those factors. In the original research, these were also biased by the methodological error. The conclusion of Humphreys and Parsons that Piagetian tasks and intelligence tests could be used interchangeably is reinforced. The hypothesis that the relatively small amount of unique variance in the Piagetian composite is relatively unimportant psychologically can only be discarded on the basis of good empirical research, not debater's arguments.     

Affect and retrieval of personal memories

The relationship of pleasantness and intensity of affect to retrieval of reallife experiences was investigated in three experiments. Subjects reported the first specific personal experience that came to mind for a series of prompt words. Latency of report was regarded as a measure of memory accessibility. The first study compared retrieval time for prompts that sampled affects varying in pleasantness and intensity. Experiments II and III assessed the possible contributions of demand characteristics and implicit inferential processes to retrospective judgments of feelings. Judgments of the intensity of feeling engendered when the events occurred were inversely related to report latency. Results support the conclusion that intensity ratings were reliable indices of memory information rather than inferences or reconstructions mediated by report latency. Other characteristics of recollections such as pleasantness, recency, or relative frequency of the specific affects were not correlated with report latency. Two explanations of the findings are considered: an arousal hypothesis and an extent-of-processing hypothesis. The latter provides the most adequate account and relates the present findings to a more general theory of memory processes. The results are also relevant to investigations of mood-dependent retrieval.This is an expanded version of a paper presented in the Symposium on Naturally Occurring Memories, at the meeting of the American Psychological Association, Toronto, August 1978.     

The new experimental aesthetics—The beginning or the end?

In reference to recent work in aesthetics from a scientific perspective, Berlyne coined the phrase the new experimental aesthetics. Berlyne's contributions to this research area are discussed in terms of the philosophical, theoretical, and methodological issues central to the current literature. The paper concludes with a consideration of the future prospects for experimental aesthetics.This paper was presented at a symposium in honor of Daniel E. Berlyne at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, San Francisco, August 27, 1977. The presentation of this paper was supported by a grant from York University.