ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECTS OF TASK PREFERENCES,TASK DEMANDS,AND ADULT ATTENTION ON CHILD BEHAVIOR IN OUTPATIENT AND CLASSROOM SETTINGS

Two studies were conducted with children who displayed behavior problems to evaluate the effects of task preference, task demands, and adult attention on child behavior. In Study 1, we conducted brief functional analyses in an outpatient clinic to identify variables that facilitated appropriate behavior. For 8 of 10 children, distinct patterns of performance occurred; 3 children displayed improved behavior with changes in task demands, 1 child displayed improved behavior with a preferred task, and 4 children displayed improved behavior with changes in adult attention. In most cases, the children's parents carried out the assessments with adequate procedural integrity. In Study 2, we applied similar assessment methods to a classroom setting over an extended period of time. We identified independent variables controlling appropriate, on-task, and academic behavior for 2 children on two tasks, with slightly different treatment procedures across tasks for both children. In addition, the results of brief functional analyses for both children corresponded to the extended classroom assessments.     

Abortion attitudes, 1984-1987-1988: effects of item order and dimensionality.

The comparability of surveys is often hampered by differences in the item order of presentation. The major focus of the present study was to investigate whether a general item or a specific item at the beginning of the questionnaire would affect the endorsement as well as the scalability of a set of attitude items. By using a quasi-A-B-A experimental design for the six abortion items that appeared in the Edmonton Area Survey for the years 1984, 1987, and 1988, we found that the order of presentation of the items affected dramatically the endorsement of the abortion items. Approval of a general item was considerably higher when asked first than when asked after a specific item. In contrast, it was shown by means of a nonparametric item response theory model (the Mokken scale analysis) that the unidimensionality of the six abortion items was not affected by the manipulations of item order (i.e., the six abortion items measured the same concept in the three surveys). It was concluded that the six items are unidimensional and, therefore, create a single scale to measure the change in abortion attitudes across the three periods.     

Exploring the Meaning and Usefulness of Measures of Subjective Goal Difficulty1

Despite the critical role of the goal difficulty construct in predicting the effects of goals on task performance, the choice of goal difficulty measure(s) has not played a prominent role in goal setting research. The current laboratory study, using 92 college students, examines three operationalizations of the goal difficulty construct: assigned goal level (objective or direct measure), self-referenced goal difficulty perception. and an externally-referenced goal difficulty perception. The results clearly demonstrated that the choice of a goal difficulty measure matters in relation to other constructs in goal setting theory. Furthermore, it was found that the externally-referenced goal difficulty perception measure corresponded best with assigned goal level.     

On Traits and Temperament: General and Specific Factors of Emotional Experience and Their Relation to the Five-Factor Model

In this article we investigate relations between general and specific measures of self-rated affect and markers of Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. Replicating previous research, we found strong and pervasive associations between Neuroticism, its facets, and the various negative affects; and between Extraversion, its facets, and the positive affects. Conscientiousness also had a significant, independent relation with general positive affect, but this effect was entirely due to the specific affect of attentiveness, which was more strongly related to Conscientiousness than Extraversion. Conversely, only the achievement facet of Conscientiousness correlated broadly with the positive affects. Finally, hostility had a strong independent association with (low) Agreeableness. The results for Neuroticism and Extraversion further clarify the temperamental basis of these higher order trait dimensions; whereas those obtained for Agreeableness and Conscientiousness illustrate the importance of examining personality-affect relations at the lower order level.     

Prosodic Effects in Minimal Attachment

This experiment explores the role of prosodic cues in resolving temporary morphosyntactic ambiguities in spoken language comprehension. Using a cross-modal naming task, we find that prosodic cues are as effective as overt lexical cues in controlling how the listener resolves attachment ambiguities. This suggests that prosodic factors can affect the early stages of parsing and interpretation.