Racial bias in behavioral assessment of children's social skills

The social skills of 20 second- and sixth-grade students were assessed by 20 trained raters using the Social Skills Test for Children (SST-C). Rater and child characteristics were examined to determine whether differences in social skills ratings were due to the race of the rater or the race of the children being rated or due to the interactive effects of these characteristics, which would suggest racial bias in the ratings procedure. The results showed that the race of the rater did affect some behavioral observations. Black raters gave higher scores than white raters on four behavioral categories: response latency, appropriate assertion, effective assertion, and smiling. White raters gave higher scores for head position and gestures. The results of this study replicated earlier findings of significant differences in social skills ratings due to the race and age of the child being rated. The results also showed modest racial bias effects in that black and white raters scored black and white children differentially on two behavioral categories: overall skill ratings and smiling. These results suggested that most behavioral categories of the SST-C were not systematically affected by racial bias. However, the most subjective rating, overall skill, did evidence racial bias effects. This finding is consistent with previous data showing that subjective ratings may be most affected by racial bias.     

Factors affecting the social validity of a role-play test of children's social skills

The social validity of a role-play test of children's social skills, the Social Skills Test for Children (SST-C), was evaluated by 63 subjects (33 adults and 30 children) who subjectively judged the quality of three children's role-play performances. The three children were selected as having high, medium, or low social skill based upon their performance on the SST-C. Assessment of the effects of subject characteristics upon judgments of social skill suggested that similarities in age and race between the subjects and the three children tended to diminish perceived differences in social skill among the three children. It was concluded that the social validity of the role-play test was supported only if the persons evaluating social behavior were dissimilar in age and racial characteristics from the persons who were being evaluated.     

Saccades in Neal’s “Square o f Three”

A contact-lens optical lever was used to measure saccades during maintained fixation of an “op art” painting that produces striking perceptual effects. Saccade frequency was not affected, but saccade vector magnitude was slightly, but reliably, larger with the painting than with a control stimulus. The perceptual effects, however, do not depend on saccades because saccades could be suppressed and the perceptual effects remained.     

The extraretinal signal for the visual perception of direction

The dependence of the perception of direction on two kinds of extraretinal signals was measured by asking Ss to indicate the position of a fixation target relative to the subjective straight ahead. Outflow was studied by making such localizations while the fixating eye was loaded by means of weights attached to a suction contact lens. Inflow was studied by making such localizations with brief test flashes to a passively rotated eye while the other eye fixated. Shifts in the perceived direction, of the fixation target were in line with predictions from outflow theory and not influenced by conflicting inflow signals.     

Differential forgetting of prototypes and old instances: Simulation by an exemplar-based classification model

A common finding in studies of classification learning is that ability to classify the prototype of a category declines much less over a retention interval than does the ability to classify the previously seen exemplars themselves. We demonstrate here that this finding does not necessarily indicate the existence, in memory, of a representation of the prototype. MINERVA, a computer-simulation model that encodes memory traces only of presented exemplars, was tested on an appropriate task. Differential forgetting of prototypes and old instances was shown by a version of the model that assumed that (1) classification is based on the exemplar trace most similar to the test stimulus and (2) individual properties are lost from the traces over time in an all-or-none fashion. It is suggested that, in general, the key to the prediction of differential forgetting may be the concomitance of forgetting and generalization.     

TEACHING JOB INDEPENDENCE AND FLEXIBILITY TO MENTALLY RETARDED STUDENTS THROUGH THE USE OF A SELF-CONTROL PACKAGE

We examined mentally retarded individuals' use of picture cues and self-monitoring to initiate a series of tasks of varying type and order. Four severely to moderately retarded high school students participating in a vocational training program were trained to use a picture-cue system. The system consisted of photographs of vocational tasks that were inserted in the assigned order in a photoalbum sheet; self-management was accomplished by marking off each photo after its corresponding task was completed. Students were assigned seven tasks from a pool of 13 each day. Results indicated that the students quickly learned to use the picture-cue system to change tasks throughout their workday without trainer prompts and that performance was maintained as trainer feedback and presence were decreased. At the end of the study, two students who were exposed to novel photographs were able to initiate independently after only minimal training, suggesting that the use of the picture-cue system had become a generalized skill.     

Exploring the mechanism of dishabituation

In this study we explored elicitation and habituation of the orienting reflex (OR) in the context of indifferent and significant stimuli, particularly aiming to clarify the mechanism driving dishabituation. An in-depth analysis of the mechanisms of electrodermal habituation and dishabituation was conducted, focusing on the role of state measures as determinants of the phasic response profile. Twenty-four young adult participants completed an auditory dishabituation task while electrodermal activity was recorded. Participants listened to a series of 10 innocuous tones of the same frequency (standards), followed by a deviant tone of a different frequency, and succeeded by 2-4 tones of the same frequency as the initial 10 stimuli. All stimuli had a random stimulus onset asynchrony of 5-7 s. Participants completed an indifferent condition in which there was no task in relation to the stimuli, and a significant condition where instruction was given to count the stimuli silently; order was counterbalanced between participants. As predicted, both skin conductance responses (SCRs) and skin conductance levels (SCLs) were larger for the significant than the indifferent condition. The initial phasic ORs were dependent on pre-stimulus arousal level, and there were significant decreases in both SCR and SCL over the first 10 standards in both conditions. Phasic response recovery was apparent to the deviant stimulus, and dishabituation to the following standard stimulus; both effects were enhanced in the significant condition. Sensitisation was apparent in SCL following the initial and deviant stimuli, but the extent of this was confounded with incomplete resolution of the preceding phasic OR in the significant condition. In the indifferent condition, dishabituation was independent of deviant-related sensitisation; this could not be tested in the significant condition. These findings suggest that dishabituation is not a process of sensitisation, but rather, a disruption of the habituation process.     

The role of autobiographical memory networks in the experience of negative emotions: how our remembered past elicits our current feelings

The present research examined the role of autobiographical memory networks on negative emotional experiences. Results from 2 studies found support for an active but also discriminant role of autobiographical memories and their related networked memories on negative emotions. In addition, in line with self-determination theory, thwarting of the psychological needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness was found to be the critical component of autobiographical memory affecting negative emotional experiences. Study 1 revealed that need thwarting in a specific autobiographical memory network related to the theme of loss was positively associated with depressive negative emotions, but not with other negative emotions. Study 2 showed within a prospective design a differential predictive validity between 2 autobiographical memory networks (an anger-related vs. a guilt-related memory) on situational anger reactivity with respect to unfair treatment. All of these results held after controlling for neuroticism (Studies 1 and 2), self-control (Study 2), and for the valence (Study 1) and emotions (Study 2) found in the measured autobiographical memory network. These findings highlight the ongoing emotional significance of representations of need thwarting in autobiographical memory networks.     

Effects of location, frequency region, and time course of selective attention on auditory scene analysis

Often, the sound arriving at the ears is a mixture from many different sources, but only 1 is of interest. To assist with selection, the auditory system structures the incoming input into streams, each of which ideally corresponds to a single source. Some authors have argued that this process of streaming is automatic and invariant, but recent evidence suggests it is affected by attention. In Experiments 1 and 2, it is shown that the effect of attention is not a general suppression of streaming on an unattended side of the ascending auditory pathway or in unattended frequency regions. Experiments 3 and 4 investigate the effect on streaming of physical gaps in the sequence and of brief switches in attention away from a sequence. The results demonstrate that after even short gaps or brief switches in attention, streaming is reset. The implications are discussed, and a hierarchical decomposition model is proposed.