Factors in the referral of children for behavioral treatment: A comparison of mothers of clinic-referred deviant,clinic-referred non-deviant and non-c

The purpose of this study was to compare a non-clinic sample of mothers and children to two groups of clinic-referred children and their mothers. The two clinic-referred groups differed from one another in that the selection criterion for one group of children (Clinic Deviant) was that they were significantly more deviant and non-compliant than the non-clinic group whereas the selection criterion for the second group of children (Clinic Non-deviant) was that they did not differ significantly from the non-clinic group on deviant and non-compliant behavior. Home observations by independent observers and parent questionnaires examining parental adjustment and parental perceptions of child adjustment were completed. The results indicated that both clinic groups perceived their children as more maladjusted than parents in the non-clinic groups perceived their children. Parents of the children in the Clinic Non-deviant group were significantly more depressed than those in the remaining two groups, whereas parents in the Clinic Deviant group issued more vague, interrupted commands than those in the Clinic Non-deviant group. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

Anxiety,feedback, and self-reference in face recognition

During an incidental learning phase, high and low test-anxious subjects made judgments about people in facial photographs, comparing the person to either themselves (self-reference) or absolute (nonself) standards with regard to intelligence or dependability. On a subsequent unannounced recognition test, feedback emphasized either correct or incorrect responses. Low-anxiety subjects benefited somewhat from both types of feedback, relative to no feedback, whereas anxious subjects were not affected by error-oriented feedback and somewhat hindered by success-oriented feedback. There was no evidence for a relationship between anxiety and self-reference, and no evidence for facilitation from self-reference relative to nonself processing. The results are discussed in terms of Zajonc's (1980) analysis of the role of affect in memory and test-anxiety theories of self-monitoring.The authors would like to acknowledge helpful comments on an earlier draft by several people, especially Matt Marler and Theresa Whitelock.     

The effects of distributed training on retention of operant conditioning in human infants

Long-term retention of operant footkicking acquired in the mobile conjugate reinforcement paradigm was assessed as a function of the distribution of training time. In the first study, 3-month-old infants were trained for either one 18-min session or for two 9-min or three 6-min sessions separated by 24-hr intervals. All infants exhibited retention during a test administered immediately after training, but only those trained in a single session continued to perform the conditioned response during cued-recall tests 7 or 14 days later. Infants trained in three sessions showed no evidence of remembering the contingency even after a week. A warm-up decrement, seen in the day-to-day performance of infants in the distributed conditions, was eliminated in the second study by the interpolation of a nonreinforcement period at the outset of daily sessions. This procedure also enhanced long-term retention such that infants trained in three 6-min session now remembered the contingency for 14 days and did not differ from infants who had received a single 18-min session. Whether distributed training facilitates or impairs long-term retention appears to depend on the opportunity for infants to acquire a sufficient number (or kind) of effective retrieval cues during original learning.     

Personality characteristics of the users of corporal punishment in the schools

The Rokeach Dogmatism Scale and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire were correlated with educator-reported use of corporal punishment. Respondents were from a medium-size school system in Tennessee. Results indicated that closed-mindedness, as measured by the Rokeach scale, and Neuroticism, as measured by the Eysenck Scale, were highly correlated with reported use of corporal punishment. Of the remaining two dimensions of personality measured by the Eysenck questionnaire, Extraversion was found to be moderately correlated with reported use of corporal punishment while Psychoticism showed no significant relationship. A significant negative correlation was found between years of experience in teaching and use of corporal punishment. Frequency of physical punishment used on an educator when he/she was in grades K-12 was positively correlated with reported use of corporal punishment. Heavy users of corporal punishment tended to be relatively inexperienced, close-minded, neurotic, and impulsive as compared to their peers who did not use corporal punishment.     

A comparison of the Bem Sex-Role Inventory and the Heilbrun Masculinity and Femininity Scales

This study compares two instruments which have recently been devised to measure sex-role identification, Heilbrun's Masculinity and Femininity Scales and the Bem Sex-Role Inventory. Correlations between the masculine and feminine scales of these instruments were significant for male but not female subjects; intrascale comparisons found no relationship between the Bem scales but moderate correlations between the Heilbrun scales for male subjects. There was agreement between the two measures in classifying approximately 47% of the subjects into one of the four sex-role categories. Misclassification occurred primarily on categories which have been found to show considerable overlap in personality characteristics.