Teaching peer reinforcement and grocery words: An investigation of observational learning and instructive feedback

A multiple probe across behaviors design, replicated across participants, assessed the effectiveness of constant time delay in teaching appropriate peer reinforcement and grocery words to 3 elementary students with moderate intellectual disabilities. Additionally, pretests and posttests assessed the acquisition of the participants' observational learning (acquisition of peers' grocery words) and instructive feedback (related information supplied by the teacher in the consequent event). Results indicate that the participants learned (a) how to appropriately reinforce peers, (b) to read their grocery words, (c) some of the targeted stimuli of their peers, and (d) much of the instructive feedback that was associated with each of the grocery words. Maintenance data indicate that the participants maintained their target grocery words at high levels of accuracy.     

Comparison of simultaneous prompting with and without error correction in teaching science vocabulary words to high school students with mild disabilities

This study compared the effectiveness and efficiency of simultaneous prompting with and without error correction during daily probe sessions in teaching science vocabulary words. The teacher presented the vocabulary word definitions as instructive feedback during training sessions. Five 16–17 year old students with disabilities participated in an adapted alternating treatments design that evaluated the simultaneous prompting strategy, error correction and instructive feedback. Instruction occurred in a group format using choral responding. The results indicate that (a) all students learned to read the vocabulary words, (b) simultaneous prompting with error correction was slightly more efficient for three of the five subjects in learning the targeted words, and four of the five students made fewer errors in this condition, (c) all students preferred simultaneous prompting with error correction over simultaneous prompting without error correction, (d) words mastered in both conditions generalized equally, (e) there were minimal differences between the two conditions in the collected maintenance data, and (e) students experienced only minimal improvement in their ability to define vocabulary words (instructive feedback). Discussion focuses on issues for further research and implications for instructional practice with simultaneous prompting, error correction and instructive feedback.     

Health, fortune, and moral authority in medicine.

The Christian conviction about Divine Providence encourages a novel account of the moral content of health and authority in the health care context. While health can be understood as the disposition of a living body to be able to proceed in the world well, as a species of freedom it is informed by the particular projects and concerns that Christians hold deepest. This is due to the fact that health acquires content, and thus becomes desirable as a particular type of good, only in relation to judgments about the good life. Aquinas' reflections concerning the good of health and its partial slavery to fortune reveal a Christian past that dwelt on the intrinsic and instrumental good of health. A rich Christian tradition in which health as intrinsically good, a good of the body, is ordained to the interests of right Christian virtue. Each of these factors affects the character of the health to be pursued and the authority of the physician as determining the ends and means of medicine.     

Substance use and violent behavior in adolescence

The relation between substance use and violent behavior in adolescence is reviewed, and each of five competing models of this relation is examined. I begin by presenting background material on adolescent substance use and adolescent violence. I then describe five different models that have been proposed to explain the association between substance use and violent behavior. Next, I review the adolescent literature concerning substance use and violence, noting methodological weaknesses that have plagued this research. I conclude with an evaluation of the five models and suggestions for future research.     

The effects of task demands on the equivalence of visual and auditory representations of periodic numerical data

The equivalence of visual and auditory graphical displays was examined in two experiments. In Experiment 1, multidimensional scaling techniques were applied to paired comparison similarity judgments of both auditory and visual displays of simple periodic wave forms. In Experiment 2, a subset of perceptually similar pairs of wave forms was selected as the stimulus set for an AB-X discrimination task in both auditory and visual modalities. Results suggest much greater apparent visual-auditory equivalence for the similarity rating task than for the more difficult discrimination task, implying that one should consider the demands of the task when deciding whether auditory graphic displays are suitable alternatives to more traditional visual displays.     

The World-Wide Web as a medium for psychoacoustical demonstrations and experiments: Experience and results

The World-Wide Web provides an inviting opportunity to reach large numbers of people, both as an audience for psychoacoustical discussions and demonstrations and as subjects for psychoacoustical experiments. Such use of the Web poses a unique set of challenges. We present the methodologies used to prepare a multimedia primer in auditory perception at McGill University. As well as instructional material, this primer includes acoustical experiments conducted over the Web. We discuss the response and experiences with this site in general and in a particular class situation at Hanover College.     

Signal-processing software for teaching and research in psychoacoustics under UNIX and X-Windows

A package of software is described that generates, analyzes, stores, and displays sampled waveforms. The package is designed for use under UNIX and includes C source code, UNIX manual pages, and tutorial documents. The programs interact via UNIX pipes using an ASCII-text data format, which enables the user to view the data in numerical form as well as through the use of plotting programs. Among many other functions, the programs can do the following: efficiently generate linearphase FIR filters with arbitrary transfer functions; generate impulse responses for rectangular rooms of specified dimensions; convolve waveforms with each other; perform Fourier transformation and inverse Fourier transformation; filter waveforms in the Fourier domain; filter waveforms according to the peripheral frequency selectivity of the human auditory system; cross-correlate waveforms; autocorrelate waveforms; synthesize complex waveforms, including vowel sounds and white noise. The software can read and write a variety of commonly used waveform file formats. The data can be plotted on an X-Window display using thegnuplot software, which has been included in the package. The complete software package is available via anonymous ftp from ftp.ihr.mrc.ac.uk in ~ftp/pub/johncu/wave.tar.Z     

Chronic sorrow: A content analysis of parental differences

Sixty-eight mothers and 64 fathers of children with a neural tube defect responded to a questionnaire about chronic sorrow. Mothers reported a mood state change in very intense category from more pessimistic at time of diagnosis to more optimistic at current time. Fathers, although indicating a mood change in the very intense category to more optimistic, also had more pessimistic responses. Parental similarities and differences were also reported in both times and events that triggered the sorrow response. Categories across times and events were primarily related to health care, school/development concerns and social significance. Clinical and research implications of these findings are discussed.