Analysis of Live Modeling Plus Prompting and Video Modeling for Teaching Imitation to Children with Autism

Previous researchers have demonstrated that training in imitation can significantly improve the learning capabilities of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and that children within this population show a preference for video presentations. Video‐based instruction has been used to teach a variety of behaviors to individuals with ASD. However, only a small number of studies have examined the use of video modeling to teach initial imitation. Furthermore, there are limited and conflicting data on the effectiveness of a video modeling procedure that does not incorporate prompting when used to teach imitation to young children with ASD. Thus, the purpose of this study was to evaluate a video‐modeling‐alone procedure and a live‐modeling‐with‐prompting procedure for teaching imitation to young children with ASD. The results suggest that the live modeling with prompting procedure was more effective, and implications related to this finding are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Religious Beliefs,Religious Contexts,and Perceived Interactions with Ex-Offenders

Religious institutions can provide a means of support and resources for many people, particularly, individuals who have criminal histories, specifically parolees, sex offenders, and insanity acquittees. When these individuals are released into the community, they often face difficulties in acquiring shelter, work, and social support. Out of their own volition or as a result of faith-based prison programs, they might turn to religious institutions for help reintegrating into the community. However, whether congregation members are more or less accepting of these individuals is unaddressed in the current literature. Two studies assess the relationship between religious beliefs, religious contexts, legal attitudes, and perceived social interactions with parolees, sex offenders, and insanity acquittees. Results suggest that religious beliefs, legal attitudes, and religious contexts play an important role in individuals’ perceived interactions with these individuals. Religious contexts, specifically, might facilitate more positive social interactions with parolees. Implications are discussed.     

Watch what you type: The role of visual feedback from the screen and hands in skilled typewriting

Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics - Skilled typing is controlled by two hierarchically structured processing loops (Logan & Crump, 2011): The outer loop, which produces words,...     

Out with the old, in with the new: More valid measures of switch cost and retrieval time in the task span procedure

Two experiments provided new measures of switch cost and retrieval time in the task span procedure. In Experiment 1, subjects were given lists of six task names to remember, followed by six targets on which to perform the tasks named in the list. The lists contained alternations and repetitions, and switch costs were estimated by comparing reaction time (RT) on alternation and repetition trials. The experiment also included memory span and single task conditions, so switch costs could be estimated by subtracting the sum of the RT in those conditions from the task span RT, as in the original report (Logan, 2004). The data suggested that the original measure of switch cost was invalid and that the new measure was preferable. In Experiment 2, subjects performed each task on the list twice. Retrieval was required on the first but not on the second trial in each pair. Retrieval time was estimated by comparing the RT on trials that required retrieval with trials that did not require retrieval. This measure was more valid than the RT in the memory span condition of Experiment 1, which was used in the original report.     

Sex differences in stress generation: an examination of sociotropy/autonomy, stress, and depressive symptoms

Hammen (1991) proposed that both individual characteristics and depressive symptomatology may explain the stress generation process, in which individuals contribute, in part, to a more stressful environment for themselves. Nonetheless, research has not teased apart the impact of vulnerability factors and depressive symptomatology on this process. Ninety-nine college students, selected to be variable on personality vulnerabilities of sociotropy and autonomy, were followed for 6 weeks. Weekly depressive symptoms and stressful life events that were likely caused in part by the individual (dependent stress) were assessed. Multilevel modeling results indicated that prior-week depressive symptoms significantly predicted current-week dependent interpersonal stress levels. A significant sex-by-sociotropy effect emerged such that being female and scoring high on sociotropy predicted higher levels of dependent interpersonal stress. This interpersonal stress generation effect for women partially mediated the relationship between sociotropy and depressive symptoms.     

Testing the semantic differential as a model of task processes with the implicit association test

In this study, we examined the hypothesis that semantic judgment tasks share overlapping processes if they require processing on common dimensions but not if they require processing on orthogonal dimensions in semantic space (Osgood, Suci, & Tannenbaum, 1957). We tested the hypothesis with the implicit association test (IATl Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) in three experiments. Consistent with the hypothesis, IAT effects (costs in reaction time because of incompatible response mapping between associated judgment tasks) occurred consistently when judgment tasks tapped into common semantic dimensions, whereas no IAT effect appeared when judgment tasks entailed processing on orthogonal semantic dimensions.     

Are correlated streams of information necessary for implicit sequence learning?

We investigated whether the existence of correlated streams of information is necessary for incidental sequence learning to occur. We ran three separate experiments with a total of 201 undergraduate students. Each experiment had at least one condition with two streams of sequenced information that were correlated. The correlations differed in terms of the kind of responses that were required, the kind of tasks and stimuli, the on-screen locations at which they occurred and how they were combined. Only in conditions with correlated sequences was implicit sequence learning found. Our results suggest that the presence of correlated streams of information may be the main pre-requisite for implicit sequence learning.     

School profiles of at-risk student concentration: Differential growth in oral reading fluency

The present study provides a data-driven approach to identifying groups of schools based on the concentration of at-risk students the school serves. The percentage of English language learners, minority students, and students eligible for free or reduced priced lunch were used as indicators in a latent profile analysis of 569 schools. The goal of the present study was to determine whether school-level average student reading performance varied as a function of the groups identified in the latent profile analysis. To do so, groups extracted by the latent profile analysis were used as school-level predictors of growth in oral reading fluency, which was modeled at the within-student level of a three-level hierarchical growth curve model. Oral reading fluency was measured at four points during the year in a large cross-sectional sample of first-, second-, and third-grade students. Results indicated that schools were able to be classified into four distinct groups based on their concentrations and types of at-risk students. Further, in all three grades, there were significant differences between the four identified groups observed in average reading fluency scores at the beginning of the year, the end of the year, and growth during the year indicating that groups based on school-concentration of at-risk students were significantly related to average student achievement in reading ability.