Variable-interval reinforcement schedule value influences responding following REM sleep deprivation

The effects of rapid-eye movement sleep deprivation (REMSD) in rats were studied in relation to variable-interval (VI) reinforcement schedule value. Initially, lever pressing was maintained on a VI 30-s schedule of food pellet delivery. After a baseline was established, rats were repeatedly exposed to 96 hr of REMSD and control conditions of an equivalent duration. Responding decreased following REMSD but not after exposure to control conditions. Lever pressing was then maintained on a VI 15-s schedule of food pellet delivery and exposure to the REMSD and control conditions was repeated. Under this condition following repeated REMSD exposures, rates of lever pressing became similar to baseline responding. A VI 30-s schedule of food pellet delivery was then reinstated and REMSD and control conditions were repeated. Lever pressing following exposure to the REMSD condition decreased for 3 of 4 rats. Results suggest that VI schedule value influences the effects of REMSD on responding.     

The invalidity of disclaimers about the effects of social feedback on self-esteem

Despite the fact that several theories suggest that people's self-esteem is affected by social approval and disapproval, many individuals steadfastly maintain that how other people regard them has no effect on how they feel about themselves. To examine the validity of these beliefs, two experiments compared the effects of social approval and disapproval on participants who had indicated either that their self-esteem is affected by how other people evaluate them or that their self-esteem is unaffected by interpersonal evaluation. Results of both studies converged to show that approval and disapproval clearly affected the self-esteem of even those individuals who denied that social evaluations affected their feelings about themselves.     

Haptics and projection: drawings by Tracy, a blind adult

Outline drawings in a raised form were made by a blind woman, Tracy, who has been blind from very early in life. Highly practiced in drawing, she reports she is largely self-taught. To invoke matters of projection, she was asked to represent an object with faces slanting away from the observer, a fixed array from different vantage points, and sets of objects in depth. In particular, she drew a cube balanced on a vertex, three objects from different vantage points, receding rows of glasses, and a house. Her drawings included features of parallel and polar projection. Her use of these features may reflect an appreciation of direction from a vantage point, which observers deal with via haptics in everyday tasks. Tracy may have advanced drawing-development skills common to the blind and the sighted.     

Evaluation of an individualized treatment program for adolescent shoplifters

This paper evaluates an individualized treatment program for adolescent shoplifters. Two hundred eighty-six juveniles charged with shoplifting were randomly assigned to treatment and control groups. Treatment contracts included combinations of fines, community service, monetary restitution, written essays, anti-shoplifting videos, apology letters, and individual and/or family counseling. Results revealed that 88% of the treatment group fully completed their treatment contracts. Furthermore, following intervention, the treatment group was rated significantly higher than the control group on personal responsibility and significantly lower on the likelihood of recidivism. Finally, compared to the control group, the treatment group displayed significantly less recidivism over a two-year follow-up period. Regression analyses revealed that several at-risk background variables were significantly associated with less successful treatment outcomes.     

Development of an abstract category representation for the spatial relation between in 6- to 10-month-old infants

Nine experiments examined the formation of an abstract category representation for the spatial relation between by 6- to 10-month-old infants. The experiments determined that 9- to 10-month-olds, but not 6- to 7-month-olds, could form an abstract category representation for between when performing in an object-variation version of the between categorization task. The results also demonstrated that 6- to 7-month-olds could form category representations for between in the object-variation version of the between categorization task but that such representations were specific to the particular objects presented. The evidence confirms that representations for different spatial relations emerge at different points during development, and suggests that each representation undergoes its own period of development from concrete to abstract.     

College students' relationships with grandparents

Literature on the role and attitudes of grandparents is increasing, even as is the number of grandparents. However, data on the attitudes of grandchildren toward their grandparents are spare. This article reports attitudes of 574 college students toward their grandparents. Their geographic closeness to at least one grandparent, and their patterns and motivations for contacting their grandparents are included.     

An investigation of young infants' perceptual representations of speech sounds

The present study examined the ability of newborns and 2-month-olds to detect phonetic differences between syllables. By relying on the modified high-amplitude sucking procedure, which did not permit the infants to use a simple same-different response, the present experiments tapped the perceptual representations of the speech sounds. Infants as young as a few days old displayed some capacity to represent differences in a set of syllables varying in their phonetic composition, although there was no convincing evidence that their representations were structured in terms of phonetic segments. Finally, evidence of developmental changes in speech processing were noted for the first time with infants in this age range. The change noted was a tendency from global toward more specific representations on the part of the older infants.     

FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS AND TREATMENT OF EYE POKING

In four studies we analyzed the eye poking of a youth with profound disabilities. In Study 1, a functional analysis showed that eye poking occurred during the no-attention condition, but not during demand, attention, or recreation conditions. The analysis did not identify socially mediated variables involved in the maintenance of eye poking; rather, eye poking may have been maintained by consequences produced directly by the response. In Study 2 we had the student wear goggles to prevent potential reinforcement from finger—eye contact. The results of Study 2 indicated that eye-poking attempts were reduced when the student wore goggles. We then tested in Study 3 the effects of two alternative topographies of stimulation. Study 3 demonstrated that eye poking was reduced when a video game was provided as a competing source of visual stimulation, and that music was less effective in reducing eye poking. In Study 4, a contingency analysis using the video game was conducted in an attempt to (a) reduce the frequency of eye poking and (b) study whether the video game functioned as a reinforcer. The results of Study 4 demonstrated substantive reductions in the frequency of eye poking, and suggested that the video game served as a reinforcer.     

MICELAB: Spatial processing of mouse movement in Turbo Pascal

Pointing tasks with a mouse are very useful in psychological experiments concerned with a subject’s ability to track a visual object or to move to a target location (e.g., to find a word in text). Such tasks are quite easily performed by subjects, and numerous variables may be obtained from the mouse movement. In this article we describe a set of Turbo Pascal 6.0 units and a program running on the IBM PC family that show how data (x,y coordinates) recorded from a mouse movement can be analyzed to give dispersion, direction, and distance of the movement.     

Which way is upright and normal? Haptic perception of letters above head level

In three experiments, the perception of the apparent orientation of block letters shown in various orientations above the subject’s head in the horizontal plane was examined. A block letter F with its front facing down toward the observer has two crossbars on its right side; the top is the part with the long crossbar, and the base has no bar. The experiments involved changing the locations of these parts with respect to the observer. In Experiment 1, the subjects using touch most often identified a letter as having its left and right sides in a normal orientation if the front of the block letter faced upwards away from the observer, with the bar on the right and the top of the letter farther from the subject than the letter’s base. In Experiment 2, the subjects judging visualuprightness favored positions in which the bars were on the right, the top of the block letter was near them, and the letter’s front faced downwards toward the observer. In Experiment 3, the subjects using touch most often assessed letters as being upright if the top of the letter was the farthest part and the bar was on the right. The results suggest that, when assessing orientation, subjects using touch favored positions that would be reached by a letter moving vertically upwards from table height, but subjects relying on vision favored positions reached by a letter moving in an arc centered on the subject’s head (on the eyes, in particular).