Communication patterns in pedodontics.

This investigation examined communication patterns between 16 randomly selected senior dental students and their child patients. Interactions were videotaped during a regular treatment appointment and analyzed according to four Practitioner Communication categories and four Child Cooperation categories. Communication categories included Directive Guidance Behavior, Permissive Behavior, Coercive Behavior, and Other Behavior. Child behavior categories included Cooperation, Resistance, Noncooperation, and Other. The probability that a given category of child's behavior would follow a given category of practitioner's behavior was calculated. Results indicated a .85 probability that Directive Guidance would be followed by Cooperation; a .67 probability that Permissiveness would lead to Noncooperation; and a .97 likelihood that Coerciveness would lead to either Noncooperation or Resistance. Practitioners' confidence was also considered; less confident operators account for 95% of the Coercive behaviors, 86% of Permissive behaviors and 87% of Uncooperative behaviors.     

Social facilitation

Video-recording procedures have been used in previous research as a motivational manipulation. The present study investigated the permanent recording of behavior as a manipulation of evaluation apprehension and its effects upon behavioral performance and upon autonomic arousal. Twenty-four subjects (12 males, 12 females) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions formed by completely crossing two levels of audience status (peer or authority) with two levels of behavioral record (non-permanent or permanent). Another 24 subjects were assigned to an external control group to the 2×2 design. Subjects' performance on a hidden-word task and their arousal level (as assessed by the Palmar Sweat Index) were measured. Analyses of variance results showed a significant performance (p<.05) and a significant arousal (p<.05) difference between the behavioral record conditions as predicted. The control group was also found to be significantly (p<.05) different from the experimental groups on the behavioral performance measure. The results were related to previous research findings and interpreted within the context of the evaluation apprehension notion presented within social facilitation research.The author would like to thank Angelia Mellors, Valerie K. Golish, and Judy Cohen for serving as experiments, and Susan L. Doman and Cheryl Primmer for scoring the PSI measures.     

RELATIVE EFFECTIVENESS OF TEACHER ATTENTION AND THE “GOOD BEHAVIOR GAME” IN MODIFYING DISRUPTIVE CLASSROOM BEHAVIOR1

A variety of behavioral procedures have been employed in recent years to modify disruptive classroom behavior. Such methods have been developed with the belief that curtailing disruptive behavior would strengthen positive classroom performance. In this study, two procedures, the good behavior game and the teacher-attention method, were compared to determine short-run effectiveness. Four teachers (two fourth-grade and two fifth-grade) implemented both methods in their classrooms over a five-week period. Presentation of methods was alternated in a counterbalanced design to control for order effects. Each of the four classrooms consisted of 25 students. A time-sampling procedure was used to record the presence or absence of disruptive behavior within 15-second intervals. Disruptive behavior was defined as any talking-out or out-of-seat behavior without permission. The results indicated that both procedures were effective in modifying disruptive classroom behavior, but that the good behavior game reduced disruptive behavior significantly better than the teacher-attention method. In addition, all teachers preferred the game to the teacher-attention procedure. This reaction seemed related to the effort involved in initiating the two activities. The good behavior game required less effort on the teacher's part. However, use of the game alone raises certain ethical considerations. One such issue involves abuse of peer pressure. Also, there is a possibility that negative rules may tend to promote resentment. Positively stated rules would ameliorate that problem. Another relates to the possibility that some teachers might be carried away by the ease of the game's implementation to the extent that behavior control becomes the primary objective in the classroom. As a result, one might consider use of the game to maximize short-term change, but then phase out this procedure in favor of another method (e.g., teacher attention) for long-run effects.     

Components of the laterality effect in letter recognition: Asymmetries in iconic storage

A partial report procedure and a backward masking paradigm were employed to explore lateral asymmetries in components of letter recognition. Stimulus displays were displaced off-centre into the left visual field (LVF) or the right visual field (RVF). Visual field differences in the effect of a delayed backward mask indicated an RVF superiority in the rate of read-out or encoding. Comparison of masked and unmasked full report also yielded estimates of iconic persistence. The persistence of these peripheral displays was surprisingly brief, although it was significantly longer in the LVF (₅₇ ms) than in the RVF (₃₄ ms). Precueing by colour and by location produced a larger partial report advantage in the RVF, reflecting a superiority in selective sampling. With postcueing no partial report effect was obtained at any delay, and this failure was attributed to the briefness of the iconic persistence.