Childhood and adult schizophrenia: Some clinical and experimental comparisons

The literature does not provide convincing evidence that childhood schizophrenia starting before age 11 represents the same disease process as adult schizophrenia, with regard to clinical symptomatology, genetic background and course of illness, and childhood schizophrenia seldom appears to involve long term schizophrenic deterioration. Our sample of 31 childhood schizophrenics studied with a battery of a motor conditional reflex tests, an autonomic conditioning test and a word association test did not present symptoms comparable to those seen in a group of adult schizophrenics tested with similar procedures. Supported by grant HDO1095 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.     

THE RIGHT TO EFFECTIVE BEHAVIORAL TREATMENT

We propose that individuals who are recipients or potential recipients of treatment designed to change their behavior have the right to a therapeutic environment, services whose overriding goal is personal welfare, treatment by a competent behavior analyst, programs that teach functional skills, behavioral assessment and ongoing evaluation, and the most effective treatment procedures available.     

The effects of nonverbal cues on gender differences in perceptions of sexual intent

The effects of several nonverbal cues on perceptions of male and female stimulus persons' sexuality were examined. Based on the findings of Abbey (“Sex Differences in Attributions for Friendly Behavior: Do Males Misperceive Females' Friendliness?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1982, 42, 830–838) and other investigators, we hypothesized that in general males would attribute more sexuality to both male and female targets than would females. Furthermore, we hypothesized that males' and females' perceptions of sexual intent would be most divergent in situations in which the nonverbal cues were most ambiguous (e.g., causal touch, moderate interpersonal distance). To test this hypothesis, the effects of three nonverbalcues were examined: interpersonal distance, eye contact, and touch. Males rated female targets as more seductive, sexy, and promiscuous, and expressed more sexual attraction to the opposite-sexed target, than females did for both ambiguous and nonambiguous nonverbal cues. Males' ratings of the male targets' sexuality were higher than females' ratings in two of the three studies. Also, across the three studies both female and male subjects rated the female target higher than the male target on the sexual traits. The implications of these findings for future research are discussed.     

Mothers' speech to their 1-year-old infants in home and laboratory settings

The speech of mothers and their 1-year-old infants was compared in the home and in the laboratory playroom. The home and laboratory settings were similar for measuring the number of actual words that infants spoke and were similar for measuring the complexity of the mother's speech, including the number of different words, the type-token ratio, and the length of the utterances. Infants vocalized at similar rates in the two settings, but mothers spoke at a faster rate in the laboratory playroom. The usefulness of a preliminary warm-up period was supported by the finding that for the second half of the sessions, mothers slowed their rate of speech and increased the complexity of their speech.     

Phonological encoding in the lexical decision task

In lexical decision experiments, subjects have difficulty in responding NO to non-words which are pronounced exactly like English words (e.g. BRANE). This does not necessarily imply that access to a lexical entry ever occurs via a phonological recoding of a visually-presented word. The phonological recoding procedure might be so slow that when the letter string presented is a word, access to its lexical entry via a visual representation is always achieved before phonological recoding is completed. If prelexical phonological recodings are produced by using grapheme-phoneme correspondence rules, such recodings can only occur for words which conform to these rules (regular words), since applications of the rules to words which do not conform to the rules (exception words) produce incorrect phonological representations. In two experiments, it was found that time to achieve lexical access (as measured by YES latency in a lexical decision task) was equivalent for regular words and exception words. It was concluded that access to lexical entries in lexical decision experiments of this sort does not proceed by sometimes or always phonologically recoding visually-presented words.     

The CLIPR remote laboratory microprocessor system: Development and applications

The introduction of microprocessor technology into the centralized experiment automation facilities of CLIPR separates data processing functions and real-time functions. Three examples of real-time intelligent terminals are described. The implementation process, principles, and examples for using microprocessor technology in this way is described in some detail.