ESTABLISHING GENERATIVE YES/NO RESPONSES IN DEVELOPMENTALLY DISABLED CHILDREN

We evaluated the effects of two procedures for teaching four developmentally disabled children to respond yes/no appropriately. During baseline, tutoring was conducted in which five known items were individually presented with the question, “Is this a_____?”, followed either by access to requested items or by remedial prompting contingent on responding. When tutoring did not improve performance, instruction was embedded in the regular classroom activities. In this condition, items requested by students were either presented or withheld on the basis of their response to the question, “Do you want ______?”. Increases in correa responding were confirmed by a multiple-baseline design across all four students and were maintained with the introduction of new items. However, generalization to “Is this a_____?” questions did not occur in the tutoring setting until specifically programmed. Subsequently, students also demonstrated appropriate yes/no responding to questions involving actions, possession, and spatial relations.     

A distinction between the effects of sentential speaking rate and semantic congruity on word identification

It is well known that numerous aspects of sentential context can influence the manner in which a word within the sentence is identified. We investigated two such contextual effects, that of the speaking rate of the sentence in which the target word occurs and that of the semantic congruence between the sentence and the target word. We observed that although the two effects are similar on the surface, in that each is realized as a change in the identification of acoustically ambiguous (but not unambiguous) items along a speech series, they are strikingly different in their susceptibility to changes in task demands. Specifically, changes in the task that readily eliminate the semantic congruity effect do not serve to eliminate the rate effect, suggesting that the two effects arise at different stages of analysis. The implications of this finding for models of speech processing are discussed.     

Compliance without pressure: Some further data on the foot-in-the-door technique

A replication of the Freedman and Fraser (1966) “foot-in-the-door” technique was attempted in which subjects were exposed to one of two prior requests and were then asked to comply with a larger request. The results showed that subjects receiving prior requests complied with the larger request significantly more often than did control subjects. The mechanism by which the technique operates was discussed.     

THE GOOD TOOTHBRUSHING GAME: A SCHOOL-BASED DENTAL HYGIENE PROGRAM FOR INCREASING THE TOOTHBRUSHING EFFECTIVENESS OF CHILDREN

There has been a serious lack of experimentally verified, effective dental hygiene programs in the schools. In and of themselves, the instruction-alone programs which comprise children's dental education do not produce proper toothbrushing skills. In the present study, a school-based contingency dental hygiene program designed to increase the effectiveness of children's toothbrushing skills at home was implemented with grade one and two classes. Each class was divided into teams and participated in the “Good Toothbrushing Game.” Each day four children from each team had the cleanliness of their teeth assessed according to the Simplified Oral Hygiene Index (Greene & Vermillion, 1964). The team with the lowest mean oral hygiene score was declared the daily winner. Winning teams received stickers and had their names posted. A multiple baseline across classrooms single-subject group design (Hersen & Barlow, 1976, pp. 228–229) established that the good toothbrushing game greatly increased the effectiveness of children's oral hygiene skills. The treatment terminal level for the grade one scores was 2.0 as compared to a baseline terminal level of 5.0, and for the grade two's was 2.3 compared to 5.7 at the end of baseline. A 9-mo follow-up indicated that these results were maintained. The data strongly suggest that proper implementation of behavioral principles is essential to the success of oral hygiene programs.     

Individual differences in college students' performance on formal operations tasks

Piaget has suggested that the stage of formal operations may be present in all normal adults, albeit in different areas according to aptitudes and professional specialization. Three formal operations tasks (pendulum, political socialization concepts, and literary styles analysis) were chosen to represent the content of problems encountered in three fields of academic specialization (physics, political science, and English). Ten male junior and senior college students in each of the three academic majors were tested on the three tasks. A significant academic major by task interaction was obtained. Results supported the hypothesis that young adults evidence formal level reasoning in accordance with their college majors. Explanations of task-specific formal level performance were considered. Individual differences in formal operations attainment have implications for assessment of adult intelligence.     

Internal structure of voicing categories in early infancy

It is well established that young infants process speech in terms of perceptual categories that closely correspond to the phonetic categories of adult language users. Recently, Kuhl (1991) has provided evidence that this correspondence is not limited to the region of category boundaries: At least by 6–7 months of age, vowel categories of infants, like those of adults, have an internal perceptual structure. In the current experiments, which focused on a consonantal contrast, we found evidence of internally structured categories in even younger infants—3–4 months of age. The implications of these findings for the nature of the infant’s earliest language-universal categories are discussed, as is the role of exposure to the native language in shaping these categories over the course of development.     

Retrograde Enhancement of Human Kinesthetic Memory by Alcohol: Consolidation or Protection against Interference?

Alcohol intake is known to impair memory in animals and humans. However, five studies reported that “medium” (0.05 ml/kg body weight) to “high” (1.0 ml/kg body weight) doses of alcohol improved memory when drunk immediately after initial learning of verbal or visual material. It was proposed that alcohol brought about this retroactive facilitation either through enhanced consolidation of memory traces or by protecting against retroactive interference. The present double blind study compared the performances of an alcohol and a placebo group on a kinesthetic memory task before alcohol or placebo intake and at retest 1 h after consumption. A second experiment was identical to the first except that all subjects carried out two trials on a T maze in the hour between testing and retesting. The alcohol group in the first experiment performed significantly better than the placebo group at retest (p< .05) but this was not the case in the second experiment. Alcohol therefore enhanced performance on the kinesthetic memory task in the first experiment but may not have protected against the moderate interference from the T maze in the second. The low levels of alcohol could have had a stimulant effect on trace consolidation, perhaps via raised blood glucose levels.     

Perceptions of women related to food choice

Male and female subjects (predominately white) provided impression ratings of body shape, personality traits, and total caloric consumption for a female target based on her preference for a low fat or high fat diet. Results showed that meal type significantly affected impression ratings: the target who preferred low fat foods was viewed more favorably than the one who preferred high fat fare. Compared with male subjects, female subjects perceived the target who preferred a high fat diet to be significantly less conscientious. Males were significantly more accurate than females in their caloric estimations of targets' total daily consumption. The results will be discussed in terms of the social pressure on women to restrict not only their weight to acceptable levels, but their food consumption as well.Portions of this paper were presented at the meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association, Providence, Rhode Island, April 14–17, 1994.The authors wish to thank Justina Bradley, Loraina Ghiraldi, and two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments on an earlier version of this paper. Melissa Van Brocklin's help during the data collection was also greatly appreciated.     

Toward a Sustainable Society: Waste Minimization Through Environmentally Conscious Consuming1

The experiment was an educational intervention that promoted and described an ongoing environmental tagging program located in a chain of three local grocery stores. Model Community, a nonprofit community organization, originated the environmental product tagging program that was present throughout the experimental educational intervention and was also responsible for sponsoring educational efforts in the local elementary schools and in the media. Over the period of a year, the experimental intervention was expected to stimulate self-reported environmentally conscious consuming above the level generated by the tagging program alone and above the levels reported by shoppers who did not shop at the experimental stores. Environmentally conscious consuming or precycling implies buying products packaged in recyclable materials, buying least waste packaged (bulk or minimally packaged) products, and buying “safer earth” (nontoxic or alternatives to harsh chemicals) products. Contrary to expectations, there was no significant interaction effect of year (preintervention vs. postintervention) and group (experimental store vs. control group) on self-reported environmentally friendly consuming, implying that the experimental educational intervention did not have an effect. An investigation of the significant main effect of shopping at the environmentally tagged stores showed a significant positive effect on purchasing less toxic products, knowledge about Model Community, and awareness of the environmental tagging program. An examination of more aggressive educational campaigns in future studies is warranted because of more overall positive (although not significant) environmental shopping behaviors reported in 1990, when there was an active education program for Model Community, than in 1991, when the program ceased.     

An assessment of teratology training provided by masters level genetic counseling programs

The increasing demand in the clinical genetics setting for information about teratogen exposures has created a need for genetic counselors to have the capabilities to appropriately address patient concerns. In order to assess how training in teratogen counseling is currently being conducted, the GLaRGG Teratogen Subcommittee surveyed all 17 genetic counseling training programs in North America in September 1993. Information was obtained from training programs about coursework, resources, and clinical training. In addition, each training program was asked to provide information about how their teratogen training needs could better be met. While all programs responded that some information in their coursework applicable to teratogen counseling was provided, there was wide variation in the amount of time devoted to this topic. The programs also greatly differed in the provision of clinical training in teratogen counseling. For both coursework and clinical work, genetic counselors were the main trainers in teratogen counseling. In spite of this, fewer than 25% of training programs have a defined teratogen clinical rotation. Data from the survey are discussed and recommendations presented.