Assessment of In-Basket Performance by Quickly-Scored Methods: Development and Psychometric Evaluation

The present research was aimed primarily at establishing and evaluating an In-Basket exercise and scoring procedures that greatly reduce training and scoring time while retaining adequate reliability and validity. In the first of two studies, an optimal subset of In-Basket items was identified for scoring. Their reliability and concurrent validity were then re-evaluated in a second, cross-validation study. No loss in reliability and little in validity resulted from the scoring-item reduction. In addition, results emerged that shed light on attainable In-Basket reliability and criterion-related validity. Implications for In-Basket use are noted.     

The McCollough effect: Dissociating retinal from spatial coordinates

Three experiments were conducted to dissociate the perceived orientation of a stimulus from its orientation on the retina while inducing the McCollough effect. In the first experiment, the typical contingency between color and retinal orientation was eliminated by having subjects tilt their head 90° for half of the induction trials while the stimuli remained the same. The only relation remaining was that between color and the perceived or spatial orientation, which led to only a small contingent aftereffect. In contrast, when the spatial contingency was eliminated in the second experiment, the aftereffect was as large as when both contingencies were present. Finally, a third experiment determined that part of the small spatial effect obtained in the first experiment could be traced to hidden higher order retinal contingencies. The study suggested that even under optimal conditions the McCollough effect is not concerned with real-world properties of objects or events. Implications for several classes of theories are discussed.     

Behavioural knowledge amongst staffing groups for the care of the intellectually disabled

A multiple choice inventory was used to assess the behavioural knowledge of staff providing services to people with an intellectual disability. The relationships between performance on the inventory and other staff related variables were investigated. Results support previous research and indicate a low level of behavioural knowledge amongst direct care staff. The implications of these results are discussed in relation to staff training and selection.     

Relations between maternal network size and maternal behaviour with five-year-olds across levels of maternal background and child ability

The article examines the relations between mothers' reports of the size of their social support networks and observations of their behaviour with their 5-year-old children in a sample of 281 children entering kindergarten. Results indicate that maternal network size was correlated with mothers' competence in interaction with their children, even after controlling for variance in maternal education and child cognitive ability. Further analyses, when the sample was divided according to demographic or child risk, indicated that the relation between network size and maternal competence interaction was higher in the high-risk groups than in the low-risk groups. The results extend the literature on social support to large, normal samples of school-age children and are discussed in terms of ecological models of development.     

FACILITATING GENERALIZED REQUESTING BEHAVIOR IN BROCA'S APHASIA: AN EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF A GENERALIZATION TRAINING PROCEDURE

The effects of a generalization training procedure on requesting by 4 subjects with chronic Broca's aphasia were examined using a multiple baseline design across behaviors and subjects. Subjects were trained to request information on three topics sequentially. Generalization across topics and persons was assessed in weekly probe sessions consisting of 5-min conversational interactions with trainers and unfamiliar volunteers in a nontreatment setting. Results revealed generalization effects were greatest when trainers, as opposed to unfamiliar volunteers, served as conversational participants. Nevertheless, subjects' requests increased with all conversational participants to a level comparable to a normal comparison group assessed under conditions identical to the experimental probes. Social validation of treatment effects using a subjective evaluation procedure revealed significant improvement on the parameters of talkativeness, inquisitiveness, and conversational success.     

Superstitious Conditioning: A Replication and Extension of Neuringer (1970)

The Psychological Record - After immediate, response-dependent reinforcers were delivered for the first three key pecks made by experimentally naive pigeons, a variable-time schedule of...     

One step behind: Current stereotypes of women,achievement, and work

This paper describes a series of studies that used projective story cues to elicit the stereotypes held by sixth-form students regarding the likely consequences of males' and females' successes in a variety of academic and occupational settings. Four studies are described. In the first a boyfriend and girlfriend are receiving their advanced level results, in the second a couple are meeting for the first time at a party, in the third a married couple are deciding to start a family, and in the fourth, one member of a couple has been offered promotion that involves a move of 200 miles. Within each of these settings the ratio of the male to female success (academic and/or occupational) was systematically varied. The results, which show that this ratio of male to female success has a more significant influence upon the amount of negative imagery expressed toward the females' than the males' success are discussed, as is the predominance in the students' stories of a female character who was willing to give up her career in order to protect her marriage and family, and her husband's career. These are interpreted as illustrating the strong double standard that still exists for males' and females' successes and careers.This research was conducted in partial fulfillment of the degree of D.Phil. at the University of Oxford, and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.     

Interaction of stimulus and contextual information during reading: Identifying words within sentences

In general, studies on the effects of a sentence context on word identification have focused on how context affects the efficiency of processing a single target word, presented separately from the context. Such studies probably would be incapable of measuring contextual facilitation resulting from cascaded or parallel processing of neighboring words within a sentence. To measure these and other types of facilitation, we presented entire phrases and sentences for subjects to read as fast as possible and to monitor for nonwords. Subjects read at rates representative of natural reading. Experiment 1 demonstrated a large contextual facilitation effect on decision time. Experiment 2 showed that facilitation is caused by specific semantic information and, perhaps to a greater degree, by nonpredictive syntactic information. Experiment 3 showed that the amount of facilitation is greater than could be accounted for by separate contributions from autonomous word level and sentence level processes. These results present difficulties for an autonomous model of reading, but are consistent with interactive models, in which the results of ongoing sentential analyses are combined with stimulus information to identify words.     

An error recognition test as a measure of linguistic competence: An example from Welsh

The use of sentence imitation tasks to measure the development of linguistic competence in children is discussed, and the drawbacks of such techniques noted, particularly in the case of adult subjects. A measurement based on results from an error recognition test is proposed. A set of variables from Welsh is described, together with an error recognition test designed around them. The results of the test seem to indicate that linguistic features that may superficially seem equally variable may have different statuses in the competence of speakers. This sort of test is felt to have a part to play in the measurement of linguistic competence.     

Developmental differences in a coincident timing task under speed and time constraints

The present study examines the effects of speed constraints (target velocity) and time constraints (target duration) on performance on a coincident timing task by 5-, 7- and 9-year-old children and adults. The results showed that the young children significantly improved their performance (per cent of hits) and response accuracy CE, |CE| when given longer time to perform the task. The adults were just as successful for both durations. All subjects showed better performance (per cent of hits) with slower targets, however, for the children this effect was only noticeable with targets of long duration. Target duration also revealed development changes in response control and execution, with the younger children producing different response patterns for IRT, MT and IP measures. The developmental differences at this task are discussed in terms of the control mechanisms involved and the use of strategies in responding.