Distinguishing between social reinforcement and social elicitation

The theoretical, procedural, analytic, and interpretive components of Poulson's (1983, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 36, 471–489) study were considered in an effort to clarify the distinction between social reinforcement and social elicitation. Contrary to Poulson's contention, DRO was not, and cannot by definition be, a control for reinforcement. More importantly, the speciestypical, social nature of the infant probably reflects the collaborative influence of elicitation and reinforcement. By carefully unravelling these two interacting processes, future conditioning studies might specially enhance our knowledge of early social development.     

Setting limits on children's behavior: The differential effects of controlling vs. informational styles on intrinsic motivation and creativity

The imposition of external constraints on an activity has frequently been shown to undermine intrinsic motivation. Given that limits must often be set upon peoples' activities, especially in parenting and education, the present study addressed the question of whether limits can be set without undermining intrinsic motivation for the activity being limited. Using cognitive evaluation theory, contrasting limit setting styles of either a controlling or informational nature, or no limits, were placed upon forty-four first- and second-grade children engaged in a painting activity. The intrinsic motivation, enjoyment, creativity, and quality of artistic production were expected to be decreased by controlling limits relative to informational and no-limits, which were not expected to differ from each other. The results provided substantial support for these predictions, suggesting that limits can be set without undermining intrinsic motivation if they are informational in nature. Support was also found for the consensual assessment of creativity method recently developed by Amabile (1982a). Results of the study are discussed along with the general relation between creativity and intrinsic motivation.     

Factors affecting the social validity of a role-play test of children's social skills

The social validity of a role-play test of children's social skills, the Social Skills Test for Children (SST-C), was evaluated by 63 subjects (33 adults and 30 children) who subjectively judged the quality of three children's role-play performances. The three children were selected as having high, medium, or low social skill based upon their performance on the SST-C. Assessment of the effects of subject characteristics upon judgments of social skill suggested that similarities in age and race between the subjects and the three children tended to diminish perceived differences in social skill among the three children. It was concluded that the social validity of the role-play test was supported only if the persons evaluating social behavior were dissimilar in age and racial characteristics from the persons who were being evaluated.     

Social skills: A review of cognitive-behavioral training procedures with children

Thirty-one studies utilizing cognitive-behavioral procedures to train social skills were reviewed. The review was organized around six methodological issues: (a) age of subjects; (b) training procedures; (c) outcome measures; (d) research design; (e) evidence for generalization; and (f) social validation. Suggestions for future applied research are discussed, such as investigations regarding developmental changes in socially skilled behavior, increased use of multiple dependent measures, more intensive programming for generalization, and the establishment of the social importance of the effects of social skills training programs.     

Converging evidence for the functional significance of imagery in problem solving

Two kinds of explanations have been offered for the process by which three-term series problems are solved, one in terms of linguistic principles and the other in terms of visual-spatial imagery. Two experiments are reported in which three different classes of operations are brought to bear on the problem: (1) Manipulation of stimulus attributes (characteristics of problems), (2) manipulation of variables that selectively encourage or inhibit the use of imagery (facilitating instructions; the suppression of visualization by reading), and (3) measurement of relevant individual differences (spatial-reasoning ability). All of the results indicate that imagery plays a functional but not a necessary role in the solution of three-term series problems; it is suggested that imaginal representation is functional because it reduces the load on memory. An adequate explanation of problem-solving will have to address certain general issues, such as the diversity of forms of cognitive representation and differences within and between individuals in the choice of problem-solving strategies.     

Rule-governed imitative verbal behavior as a function of modeling procedures

The present study was designed to investigate the effectiveness of modelling procedures alone and modeling procedures complemented by the appropriate rule statement on the production of plurals. Twenty normal and 20 retarded children were randomly assigned to one of two learning conditions and to either affective or informative social reinforcement.It was necessary for the child to generate and use a rule in the production of his respones since he was unable to directly copy the model's verbal behavior. Normal and retarded children emitted more plurals during the experimental phase when observing a model who complemented his responses by the underlying rule.     

Developmental changes in the effects of presentation media on noun-pair learning

Interpretations of previous research have indicated that there are age-related increases in the efficacy of pictorial media, relative to verbal, for presenting paired-associate items and elaborative prompts to young children. The purposes of the present study were to replicate these phenomenon and to evaluate two hypotheses advanced to account for them: a semantic encoding hypothesis and a verbal decoding hypothesis. To these ends, 14 treatments conditions were partioned into three independent-groups experimental designs. Each of 504 childrens, sampled from nursery, kindergarten, and second-grade populations, learned a list of 20 pairs of familiar objects. The expected developmental increase in the effectiveness of presenting items in a pictorial medium was not replicated. As predicted, however, the results revealed an increase with age in the effect of presenting elaborative prompts pictorially, but the phenomenon was confined to groups where the sex of subject and of experimenter was the same. It was concluded that the verbal decoding hypothesis accomodated the pattern of results better than did the semantic encoding hypothesis. Throughout the sudy, performance was substantially facilitated by elaborative prompts, that is, across age, presentation media, and testing conditions.     

Sex-role traditionalism and fear of success

In the present study 33 adult women completed Horner's measure of fear of success, filled out a questionnaire that tapped sex-role traditionalism and negative attitudes toward the women's liberation movement, and answered questions concerning their political beliefs and educational backgrounds. In line with some of Horner's contentions, it was found that fear of success is more common among nontraditional women — those who favor the women's movement, have more education, and hold liberal or radical political beliefs. Fear of success is not a correlate of traditional femininity but rather a sign of conflict experienced by ambitious, nontraditional women. Implications and further questions are discussed.     

Frequency recognition in temporal interference tasks: A comparison among four psychophysical procedures

The frequency discrimination of a 20-msec test tone was measured for the same subjects in four psychophysical paradigms: a single-interval procedure, a two-alternative forced-choice procedure, a same-different procedure, and a method-of-adjustment procedure. In each paradigm, the 20-msec test tone was preceded or followed by a 500-msec, 800-Hz interfering tone. The interfering tone occurred 50 or 5 msec before the onset of the test tone (forward interference) or 100 or 5 msec after the offset of the test tone (backward interference). In each of the four paradigms and for each of the interference conditions the value of Δf for the test tone was varied symetrically around 800 Hz to obtain an estimate of the frequency discrimination thresholds. In all psychophysical paradigms except for the single-interval procedure, there were small or no significant differences in observers’ frequency discrimination behavior among the interference conditions. The thresholds for Δf from these conditions were approximately the same as those obtained without an interfering tone. In the single-interval task, when the test tone preceded the interfering tone (backward interference) by 5 msec, an increase in the value of Δf required for discrimination over that required in the other conditions was measured. These results suggest that the effect of backward interference on a target tone does depend on psychophysical procedure.