Effects of moral reconation therapy upon moral reasoning, life purpose, and recidivism among drug and alcohol offenders

40 incarcerated DWI offenders and 62 drug offenders who were treated with Moral Reconation Therapy were assessed with respect to levels of moral reasoning, their perceived purpose in life, and subsequent recidivism. Analysis showed that, as clients progress in the program, levels of moral reasoning and purpose in life increase significantly. Level of moral reasoning appears to increase with clients' completion of therapeutic steps. Preliminary recidivism data on 103 male and female inmate-clients who have participated in an aftercare program using the therapy appear encouraging.     

Factor analysis and discriminant analysis of psychoeducational report contents

This study evaluated the psychoeducational reports of 205 children who were referred to the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Hospital for evaluation of academic achievement problems. Factor analysis of the report data indentified a medical factor, a school history factor, and a family factor. Following factor analysis, all three factors as well as measures of cognitive functioning and academic achievement were entered into a discriminant analysis in order to determine which variables, if any, helped predict the educational placement finally to be recommended for each child at the end of the individual psychoeducational work-up. Statistical analysis indicated different results for each of four educational placement options, the greatest predictability being associated with regular classroom placement. Across all placements, the variable that allowed for the greatest accuracy in predicting educational programming recommendations was academic achievement, measured as mean achievement score on standardized achievement tests.     

Effects of response variability on the sensitivity of rule-governed behavior

Two experiments examined the relation between response variability and sensitivity to changes in reinforcement contingencies. In Experiment 1, two groups of college students were provided complete instructions regarding a button-pressing task; the instructions stated “press the button 40 times for each point” (exchangeable for money). Two additional groups received incomplete instructions that omitted the pattern of responding required for reinforcement under the same schedule. Sensitivity was tested in one completely instructed and one incompletely instructed group after responding had met a stability criterion, and for the remaining two groups after a short exposure to the original schedule. The three groups of subjects whose responding was completely instructed or who had met the stability criterion showed little variability at the moment of change in the reinforcement schedule. The responding of these three groups also was insensitive to the contingency change. Incompletely instructed short-exposure responding was more variable at the moment of schedule change and was sensitive to the new contingency in four of six cases. In Experiment 2, completely and incompletely instructed responding first met a stability criterion. This was followed by a test that showed no sensitivity to a contingency change. A strategic instruction was then presented that stated variable responding would work best. Five of 6 subjects showed increased variability after this instruction, and all 6 showed sensitivity to contingency change. The findings are discussed from a selectionist perspective that describes response acquisition as a process of variation, selection, and maintenance. From this perspective, sensitivity to contingency changes is described as a function of variables that produce response variability.     

Evaluation of subclinical depression in children using self-, peer-, and teacher-report measures

This study reports on several classification issues utilizing the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI), the Child Behavior Checklist-Teacher Form (CBCL-T), and the Peer Nomination Inventory of Depression (PNID). The first sample contained 752 public school children in grades 5, 6, and 9. A second sample of 142 fifth-graders was included to have an additional PNID comparison group. Results revealed moderate correlations between the CDI and the CBCL-T and PNID. Use of multiple criteria for selecting children as depressed was discussed, and selection rates using multiple measures with either strict or lenient cutoff scores were given. Normative data on the PNID were evaluated, and it was suggested that norms for the PNID may not be generalizable to other samples. Finally, race and gender analyses showed that CDI scores for females were significantly higher than for males, whereas CDI scores for Hispanics were significantly higher than for non-Hispanic whites. However, Omega-squared analyses for these two variables showed this to be of little practical significance.     

The effects of sex and marital/parental status on performance evaluations and attributions

One hundred sixty female and 160 male undergraduates provided performance evaluations and attributions for a poor-performing stimulus employee depicted as male or female, and as either single or married with three preschool-aged children. No significant differences were detected for ratings given by male and female evaluators. The results did however, reveal a significant interaction of employee sex by marital/parental status conveying that of the four employee groups, married mothers were evaluated the most favorably, while single females were the least favorably evaluated. The differential performance evaluations were interpreted by attributional responses indicating that raters perceived external, uncontrollable factors as causes of the married mother's poor performance, while internal, controllable factors were seen as primary reasons for the poor performance of the other employees, particularly the single female's. Implications of the findings were presented.Portions of this paper were presented at the 43rd annual meeting of the Academy of Management, Dallas, Texas, August 1983.     

Ear of input as a determinant of pitch-memory interference

Six experiments to evaluate the effect of presentation ear on pitch-memory interference were conducted using undergraduates as listeners. The task was to compare the pitch of two tones that were separated by an interval that included eight interpolated tones; the interpolated tones were presented either ipsilaterally or contralaterally to the presentation ear of the comparison tones. When the ear of interpolated-tone presentations was blocked, and therefore predictable, ipsilateral interference was greater than contralateral. In contrast, when the interpolated-tone presentation ear was varied randomly from trial to trial, ipsilateral and contralateral interferences were equivalent. These results are analogous to results found in previously reported auditory backward recognition masking (ABRM) experiments and suggest that the ABRM effect may be due, in part, to pitch-memory interference. Implications for theories of auditory processing and memory are discussed.     

Use of small group contingencies and special activity times to manage behavior in a first-grade classroom

Management procedures were succesfully employed to decrease the frequency with which first-grade children left small instructional centers. To decrease the out-of-center behavior, access to a 30-minute special activity time was made available to different groups as a function of everyone's remaining within his group instructional center. One occurrence of out-center behavior resulted in a cost of ten minutes of special activity time for the children in that center. The frequency of out-of-center behaviors quickly decreased from Baseline I to the Modification I condition, increased when the modification condition was removed, and decreased again in Modification II.Observations made on the percent of the children's appropriate social and academic behaviors showed increases during the modification conditions. Also, the time the teacher spent in responding to inappropriate behavior decreased and the time spent in instruction increased during the modification conditions.