Concurrent reinforcement schedules for problem behavior and appropriate behavior: experimental applications of the matching law

This study evaluated how children who exhibited functionally equivalent problem and appropriate behavior allocate responding to experimentally arranged reinforcer rates. Relative reinforcer rates were arranged on concurrent variable-interval schedules and effects on relative response rates were interpreted using the generalized matching equation. Results showed that relative rates of responding approximated relative rates of reinforcement. Finally, interventions for problem behavior were evaluated and differential reinforcement of alternative behavior and extinction procedures were implemented to increase appropriate behavior and decrease problem behavior. Practical considerations for the application of the generalized matching equation specific to severe problem behavior are discussed, including difficulties associated with defining a reinforced response, and obtaining steady state responding in clinical settings.     

Educating for Informed Community Involvement

Service learning, which integrates community service into coursework, provides a pedagogical intervention that can promote the civic growth of students in unique and powerful ways. Research is reviewed that documents the capacity of service learning to meet learning objectives associated with a conceptual framework that focuses on the knowledge, skills, and dispositions of a civic-minded college graduate. The outcomes of service learning should facilitate these students assuming influential roles in helping others become empowered, and thereby are important for enhancing the quality of life in communities. We also review research that focuses on the impact of service learning for community outcomes. Finally, we present implications for teaching community psychology, and recommendations for future research on service learning and community engagement.     

Seeing a singer helps comprehension of the song’s lyrics

When listening to speech, we often benefit when also seeing the speaker’s face. If this advantage is not domain specific for speech, the recognition of sung lyrics should also benefit from seeing the singer’s face. By independently varying the sight and sound of the lyrics, we found a substantial comprehension benefit of seeing a singer. This benefit was robust across participants, lyrics, and repetition of the test materials. This benefit was much larger than the benefit for sung lyrics obtained in previous research, which had not provided the visual information normally present in singing. Given that the comprehension of sung lyrics benefits from seeing the singer, just like speech comprehension benefits from seeing the speaker, both speech and music perception appear to be multisensory processes.     

A New Frontier: Integrating Behavioral and Digital Technology to Promote Health Behavior

Modifiable behavioral risk factors such as cigarette smoking, physical inactivity, and obesity contribute to over 40 % of premature deaths in the USA. Advances in digital and information technology are creating unprecedented opportunities for behavior analysts to assess and modify these risk factors. Technological advances include mobile devices, wearable sensors, biomarker detectors, and real-time access to therapeutic support via information technology. Integrating these advances with behavioral technology in the form of conceptually systematic principles and procedures could usher in a new generation of effective and scalable behavioral interventions targeting health behavior. In this selective review of the literature, we discuss how technological tools can assess and modify a range of antecedents and consequences of healthy and unhealthy behavior. We also describe practical, methodological, and conceptual advantages for behavior analysts that stem from the use of technology to assess and treat health behavior.     

Helping My Patients Find New Spontaneous Ways of Responding Emotionally: A 30-Year Long Journey as a Psychoanalyst

I started my journey as a psychoanalyst with the conviction that I had to provide my patients, through interpretation, with explicit information about their instinctual unconscious that they didn’t have access to. Now I think that through words (often using highly metaphorical, poetic language, with its tone and rhythm), patient and analyst coconstruct new forms of relating, that is to say, new forms of mutual regulation of emotions. The aim of therapeutic change is that patients find new, spontaneous forms of reacting emotionally. This change, from the psychoanalysis of suspicion to the psychoanalysis of the secure base from where new regulating strategies are co-constructed, is parallel to the change in values observed at a social level: central values of industrialized society, such as obedience, authority, discipline, etc., are being replaced by values such as authenticity and respect for one’s uniqueness in electronic societies.     

A constructive replication of client change during psychodynamic treatment in an outpatient setting

We responded to the need for replication in psychotherapy research by extending a prior naturalistic study documenting the effectiveness of long-term psychodynamic treatment. We employed three novel analytic strategies and evaluated their influence on substantive interpretations offered in the prior study. The sample consisted of clients (N = 387; M_age = 31.61; SD = 11.13; 58.9% female; 79.1% Caucasian/White) receiving outpatient treatment at a psychodynamic training clinic. Results replicated the original two-class solutions for social functioning, depression and life satisfaction. Novel to the replication analyses, each trajectory for social functioning and depression exhibited nonlinear change and results advanced research on a theorised mechanism of effective psychodynamic treatment. Results showed that change in experiential avoidance was a possible mechanism between early-treatment change in social functioning and later-treatment changes in depression symptoms and life satisfaction. Clinical implications focus on the influence that initial levels of symptoms and well-being may have on early and later phases of treatment, monitoring progress throughout treatment, and how to promote symptom and well-being improvement.     

The Relationship Between Perceived and Actual Physical Fitness: A Meta-Analysis

The purpose of our study was to meta-analytically estimate the relationship between actual and perceived fitness, and variables that may moderate this relationship (i.e., gender, age, and perceived fitness measure). Computer, hand, and journal literature searches identified 53 potential studies. On review, 28 of these studies met the inclusion criteria of having a perceived and actual (i.e., objective) measure of physical fitness. Using random effects modeling procedures, we found a medium mean effect size of .38 (N = 33 independent effect sizes, p < .001, Fail-Safe N = 4,654). Moderator analyses revealed that younger people had more accurate estimates of their fitness, and standardized perceived fitness measures had significantly larger effect sizes than unstandardized perceived fitness measures. In summary, men and women of all ages accurately perceived their fitness level, with larger effects evidenced for younger people and for studies that used standardized perceived fitness measures. Unfortunately, because most Americans are either low active or sedentary, their perceptions reveal that they are not fit. Research limitations and future directions are discussed.