A COMPARISON OF TWO INTERVENTION ROLES: PEER MONITOR AND POINT EARNER

Two fifth-grade students' high levels of off-task and disruptive behavior decreased rapidly during an intervention in which they were appointed peer monitors or point earners. The children worked in dyads in which one child served as a peer monitor and the other child earned points from his or her monitor for good behavior. Points were accumulated as part of a group contingency. We introduced the two appointments in an independent math period and alternated the appointments across days. The peer monitor and point earner roles, when alternated on an every-other-day basis, were equally effective in reducing the students' inappropriate behavior. Furthermore, their behavior during intervention fell well within the range of inappropriate behavior levels exhibited by classmates. The speed with which both students completed their math problems increased during both appointments. The accuracy of their academic work, however, varied; one student improved slightly and the other student decreased slightly in accuracy.     

Object knowledge and the emergence of language

Infants' spontaneous play with objects was examined for evidence of developments in object knowledge in relation to the emergence of words and the single-word period in language development. Subjects were 7 girls and 7 boys, from different ethnic and economic backgrounds, who were studied longitudinally from 9 months to 26 months of age. Two types of displacements of objects in relation to one another were identified in the children's play: separations and constructions. The development of constructions was associated with the emergence of words, and constructions increased with age while separations decreased. The development of specific constructions, which account for knowledge of the particular properties of objects, was more strongly associated with a vocabulary spurt at the end of the single-word period than with chronological age. Despite the wide variation in the infants' ages when developments in language and play were reached, relations between achievements in the two domains were consistent among them, as confirmed with the Friedman test, p<.001. The results are discussed in terms of the cognitive developments required for play with objects and saying words.     

The development of a child assessment interview for research and clinical use

The Child Assessment Schedule (CAS) was developed to address the need for a standardized child interview that could be used for research and clinical purposes. The CAS has several distinguishing characteristics: (1) Questions and responses are standardized, (2) the format was designed to enhance rapport with the child, and (3) information necessary for DSM III childhood diagnoses is explicitly solicited. The CAS was administered to 32 child outpatients, 18 inpatients, and 37 normal controls. Derived scores were obtained for total psychopathology, 11 content areas, and 9 symptom complexes. Interrater reliability for the total CAS score was quite high. The CAS was able to discriminate among the three groups in total score indicating degree of psychopathology, on 9 of the 11 content areas, and on 8 of the 9 symptom complexes. Significant correlations were found between the CAS and maternal report of child behavior and between the CAS and child selfreport of internal affects. It was concluded that the CAS has adequate reliability and validity, although further research is indicated.     

Performance and activity of hyperactive and normal boys as a function of distraction and reward

Twenty-five hyperactive boys and 25 controls matched for age, social class, and race were compared on three performance tasks (coding, tone discrimination, and connecting dots) in two settings (nondistracting and highly distracting). Control Ss performed significantly better than did hyperactives in all conditions, except during tone discrimination and connecting dots in the nondistracting setting. Distraction decreased performance for both groups on the coding task and for hyperactives on the tone discrimination task, but significantly improved performance for controls on the connecting dots task. Distraction, where detrimental, was not significantly more so for hyperactives than for controls. The effect of reward on coding performance was studied in the distracting condition; reward produced the best performance for both groups, but significant differences between groups were not found.This research was supported in part by U.S. Public Health Service Training Grant (in Biological Sciences) No. MH07081.The participation of the following people in helping to design this research study and collect data is hereby acknowledged: David Bremer, Ted Goltz, Ruth Rosenthal, and Michael Stern.     

The effects of Δ9 THC on cutaneous sensitivity and its relation to personality

Pain threshold/tolerance and vibration perception were studied in a sample of female frequent and infrequent cannabis users. Interactions with personality characteristics were examined using the EPI. Performance on all measures was investigated after oral administration of either 10mgΔ⁹ THC or 20 mg Δ⁹ THC. Results indicated that while the 10mg dosage produced no consistent changes in cutaneous sensory response, the 20 mg dosage was followed by lowering of the vibration threshold. Frequent and infrequent cannabis users differed in their response to the pain stimulus (pain tolerance scores were higher among infrequent users). They also differed with respect to the personality measure (frequent users had lower E, N and L scores). The findings provide experimental support for cannabis users' reports of enhanced sensory awareness consequent to drug intake. The results also show that frequent and infrequent cannabis users differ in pain response and personality characteristics.