An evaluation scale of family environment for identification of children at risk of school failure

This study describes the development of the Home Environment Resources Scale, a Brazilian measure for families with children ages 6 to 12 years. The scale measures aspects of support for school achievement, made available to the child at home. A first version of the measure with 11 subscales was administered to 100 mothers or guardians of children with poor school achievement in a clinical setting. Analysis of the items in the first version resulted in a final version comprising 8 subscales with acceptable indices of internal consistency. Two validity studies were conducted. One aimed at verifying to what extent the Home Environment Resources Scale could discriminate the home environment of students referred to a mental health clinic on account of poor school performance. The sample included mothers of 53 referred and 23 nonreferred children. The two groups differed significantly in home resources and on four subscales. The other study assessed the validity, i.e., prediction of the academic outcome of children entering Grade 1. 70 children and their mothers participated. Results indicate that school achievement and social competence at school are mediated by family support.     

Sign tracking in cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis)

Two groups of cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) were used to demonstrate classical conditioning in this species and to determine whether the resulting approach response would be that of sign tracking or goal tracking. For cuttlefish in the paired condition, a flashing light was presented at one end of a long tank followed by food dropped into the center of the tank. For cuttlefish in the unpaired condition, food was dropped into the center of the tank either before or after the flashing-light stimulus. Paired cuttlefish oriented to the light, positioned themselves within striking distance, and occasionally attacked the light. Unpaired cuttlefish showed no reliable response to either stimulus. The results demonstrate that cuttlefish are capable of signal learning and that, under the conditions tested, cuttlefish sign tracked. This study begins a comparative analysis of learning in cuttlefish and offers a possible ecological advantage for sign-tracking behavior.     

Neuropsychological Evaluation of Everyday Memory

The evaluation of everyday memory (EM) was reviewed and reconceptualized. EM has established new objectives of study and the development of new methods to reach these objectives . At the basic level, this approach has already produced important discoveries and the development of new principles about memory and functioning. At the clinical level, this new area of investigation has resulted in evaluating deficits of EM, which is defined as what daily life functions remain impaired after a deficit pathology has occurred. A type of evaluation has evolved that is oriented toward treatment and extremely useful in designing rehabilitation programs for individuals with alterations in memory.     

Authoritarianism-situation interactions in the determination of punitiveness: Engaging authoritarian ideology

An analysis of previously reported authoritarianism-situation interactions in the determination of punitiveness suggested that the extent to which target person characteristics or behaviors engage the important ideological content dimensions of the authoritarianism syndrome is a potent mediator of authoritariansim-punitiveness relationships. Support for this analysis was obtained in a jury decisions task in which high authoritarians recommended more severe punishments than did low authoritarians for a defendant accused of incest (p < .01) but not for a defendant accused of child abuse in the course of disciplining a disobedient son or daughter. It was argued that a thorough understanding of authoritarianism-situation interactions as well as other disposition-situation interactions will be achieved only if dispositional variables receive a degree of scrutiny at least equal to that which has recently been recognized as crucial for situational variables.     

Associative transfer and stimulus selection in classical conditioning of the rabbit's nictitating membrane response to serial compound CSs

Four experiments were conducted to determine whether in conditioning to a serial compound, CS1-CS2-UCS, there are (a) associative mechanisms operating to extend conditioning beyond the bounds of a CS-UCS contiguity gradient and (b) stimulus selection processes acting to attenuate the potency of CS-UCS contiguity. In Experiments 1 and 2, the CS2-UCS interval was held at .35 sec while the CS1-UCS interval was varied across groups from .75 to 2.75 sec. CS1 test trials revealed substantial CR acquisition at all CS1-UCS intervals. Moreover, Experiment 2 indicated that when the contribution of cross-modal generalization from CS2 to CS1 was factored out, there still remained a substantial level of conditioning, which Experiment 3 indicated was attributable to an associative mechanism like higher-order or sensory conditioning. The observation of CR acquisition at CS1-UCS intervals of 4.75, 8.75, and 18.75 sec in Experiment 4 suggested that serial compound training yields conditioning to CSs located well beyond the single CS contiguity gradient for the rabbit's nictitating membrane response. Experiments 1 and 2 also indicated the presence of stimulus selection processes because, at the shorter CS1-UCS intervals (.75 and 1.25 sec), the levels of test-trial responding to CS2 fell below those observed to the less contiguous CS1.     

The effect of affirmative action on attributions about minority group members

In the first study subjects were given information about an applicant to graduate school and asked to rate his qualifications. The information experimentally varied (a) whether the school had an affirmative action policy, (b) the ethnicity of the applicant, and (c) whether the applicant was accepted or rejected. Based on Kelley's discussion of the discounting and augmentation principles, it was predicted that the minority applicant would be rated as less qualified when the university was committed to an affirmative action program. The reverse pattern was predicted for the non-minority applicant. The results supported the first prediction but not the second. Experiment 2 was designed to eliminate alternative interpretations of the data and the same results were found. Possible interpretations for the failure of affirmative action in affecting the ratings of nonminority applicants are discussed.     

GENERALIZING ARTICULATION TRAINING WITH TRAINABLE MENTALLY RETARDED SUBJECTS1

A multiple-baseline technique was used to evaluate generalization effects during articulation training with trainable mentally retarded subjects. Four target words were selected for each subject on the basis of whether the subject could articulate the word correctly when it was modelled but could not articulate the word correctly in response to a picture of it. Five different settings were selected for generalization probing and training for each subject. In Setting 1, Experimenter 1 initiated training sequentially on all four target words for each subject. Other experimenters probed for correct articulation generalization in four other settings. Training was initiated in these four other settings sequentially only if correct responding failed to generalize to a setting. Results indicated that it was necessary to initiate training on at least three of the four selected target words in at least one additional setting with an additional trainer before correct responding generalized to untrained settings.     

THE EFFECT OF EXPERIMENTER FACIAL ORIENTATION DURING IMITATION MAINTENANCE1

The training and maintenance of imitative responding has become an important therapeutic process with language-handicapped children, as indicated by Garcia and DeHaven (American Journal of Mental Deficiency, 1974, 79 , 169–178). Typically a training “package” is used, that might entail the use of operant shaping, fading, reinforcement, and punishment techniques designed to increase correct imitation and decrease incorrect responding. Only recently have studies begun to concentrate on the components of these training “packages”. Steinman (Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1970, 3 , 159–167) highlighted the roles played by less conspicuous but functionally important components of these packages. The present study attempted to provide a systematic extension of this work within an applied context. Using subjects who were responding at high levels during an imitation-maintenance procedure, experimenter facial orientation (experimenter's eyes and head oriented towards the subject's face and head), was systematically manipulated for experimentally determined “types” of imitative behavior. Differential responding within these parameters provided an evaluation of facial orientation as a functional component within this training package. Three retarded children participated in the study. Two types of topographically different imitative responses were defined for experimental purposes (“standing” and “sitting”). Each subject progressed through four conditions of the study, which called for the reinforcement of all imitative responses. But during preselected conditions, experimenter facial orientation was removed from the therapeutic package for one of the two topographical types of imitation. Results indicated that imitation of the two topographical types of models was dependent on the presence of experimenter facial orientation within the experimental procedure.     

One-year prediction of cognitive decline following cognitive-stimulation from real-world data

Clinical evidence based on real-world data (RWD) is accumulating exponentially providing larger sample sizes available, which demand novel methods to deal with the enhanced heterogeneity of the data. Here, we used RWD to assess the prediction of cognitive decline in a large heterogeneous sample of participants being enrolled with cognitive stimulation, a phenomenon that is of great interest to clinicians but that is riddled with difficulties and limitations. More precisely, from a multitude of neuropsychological Training Materials (TMs), we asked whether was possible to accurately predict an individual's cognitive decline one year after being tested. In particular, we performed longitudinal modelling of the scores obtained from 215 different tests, grouped into 29 cognitive domains, a total of 124,610 instances from 7902 participants (40% male, 46% female, 14% not indicated), each performing an average of 16 tests. Employing a machine learning approach based on ROC analysis and cross-validation techniques to overcome overfitting, we show that different TMs belonging to several cognitive domains can accurately predict cognitive decline, while other domains perform poorly, suggesting that the ability to predict decline one year later is not specific to any particular domain, but is rather widely distributed across domains. Moreover, when addressing the same problem between individuals with a common diagnosed label, we found that some domains had more accurate classification for conditions such as Parkinson's disease and Down syndrome, whereas they are less accurate for Alzheimer's disease or multiple sclerosis. Future research should combine similar approaches to ours with standard neuropsychological measurements to enhance interpretability and the possibility of generalizing across different cohorts.