Teaching spontaneous requests to children with autism using a time delay procedure with multi-component toys

Children with autism were taught spontaneous requests through a time delay procedure. Unlike previous research, which usually employed food as the target stimuli to be requested, the present study used toy pieces from multi-component toys. The procedure involved presenting a child with the target stimulus, with the trainer prompting the child by immediately modeling the request response. When the response was imitated without error, prompting was delayed with the time interval gradually being increased over trials. A spontaneous or imitated response was reinforced by giving the child the requested object. As the stimulus/model interval increased, children with autism were expected to initiate the request by themselves prior to the prompt. The efficacy of the time delay procedure was assessed using a multiple baseline across subject design with three Chinese boys with autism. Results showed that the three children acquired a 100% performance within five to nine sessions of training and the skill was maintained at the one-month and three-month followups. Furthermore, the learned response transferred to various conditions when tested across setting, person, toy, and food items. These results suggest that toys, the multi-component ones in particular, served well as reinforcers for language training. Furthermore these findings confirmed the practical utility of the time delay procedure for promoting spontaneous communication skills in children with autism.     

Teaching the Rescorla-Wagner model using STELLA-II

Although the Rescorla-Wagner model is widely taught in learning courses, most textbooks present a simplified version that does not contain all of its parameters. On the basis of Rescorla and Wagner 1972) and the Turbo PASCAL program by Lachnit, Schneider, Lipp, and Kimme! (1988), we created a simulation using STELLA-II, an icon-based program by High Performance Systems, Inc. We argue that this simulation facilitates teaching the complete Rescorla-Wagner model. Using trans-switching (Kimmel & Ray, 1978; Lachnit, 1986; Murrin & Kimmel, 1986) as an example, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the STELLA-II version of the Rescorla-Wagner model as a heuristic tool.     

The Impact of Procedural Justice on Opinions of Public Policy: Solid Waste Management as an Example1

This study assessed the applicability of Tyler and Lind's (1992) relational model of authority to the context of local government policies on solid waste management. Tests of the hypothesized relations proposed by Tyler and Lind, accomplished through structural equation modeling, revealed that our data supported the relations between the various constructs of the model. Perceptions of both process control and relational process were found to be positively related to procedural fairness judgments, while procedural fairness judgments were weakly related to evaluations of government entities. Contrary to our expectations, a similar structural equation model test of an extension of the Tyler and Lind model showed that the model constructs were unrelated to respondents' opinions of public policies. The results also indicated that respondents living in communities with different infrastructures and political climates differed slightly in their perceptions of procedural justice and related constructs, but did not differ in their endorsement of the various solid waste management policies.     

A SUPERVISORY STRATEGY TO IMPROVE WORK PERFORMANCE FOR LOWER FUNCTIONING RETARDED CLIENTS IN A SHELTERED WORKSHOP

A multiple component strategy was investigated for aiding staff responsible for supervising production of lower functioning retarded clients on contract tasks in an institution-based sheltered workshop. The strategy was assessed in a combined multi-element, multiple baseline across groups design with a reversal component. Production performance increased during the production supervisory strategy with all 16 clients, with the range of increase varying from a few percentage points to 150% of baseline production. Both the clients and staff (responsible for conducting the research) preferred working under experimental conditions rather than under baseline conditions which approximated those found in “typical” sheltered workshops.     

Syntactic and semantic processes in aphasic deficits: The availability of prepositions

The availability of a specific category of closed class items (prepositions) was examined in Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia. The role of prepositions was varied (syntactic/semantic) in two tasks: one requiring production of prepositions and the other acceptability judgments. Overall, it was easier to perform the acceptability task than to produce the target item. In the judgment task, Wernicke's aphasics more accurately determined the acceptability of prepositions in their syntactic role than in their semantic role, but Broca's aphasics showed no such difference. In the production task, Wernicke's aphasics again were more likely to produce prepositions which were in a primarily syntactic role. Broca's aphasics, however, failed to produce such syntactically based prepositions. The results suggest that the availability of a given closed class vocabulary form is not merely a function of its class membership but also of its functional role, and this fact serves to distinguish aspects of Broca's and Wernicke's aphasics' deficit.     

Parental and Child Characteristics Predicting Asian immigrants’ Feeding Practices

To explore parenting style, child effortful control, parenting stress, and their associations with maternal use of pressure to eat among Asian U.S. immigrant families with preschoolers. One hundred and nine Asian immigrant mothers with 3-to-5-year-old children in Maryland, United States rated their authoritative and authoritarian parenting styles, frequency of pressuring their child to eat, perceived parenting stress, and child’s effortful control. Two proposed moderated mediation models were tested using conditional process modeling. Effortful control mediated the association between authoritative parenting style and pressure to eat practices, αβ?=??0.07, p?<?0.05, and the association between authoritarian style and pressure to eat, αβ?=?0.12, p?<?0.05. Moreover, parenting stress moderated the association between child effortful control and maternal pressure to eat in the authoritarian style model, but not in the authoritative style model. Specifically, higher effortful control was associated with less use of pressure to eat at low and mean levels of parenting stress. Our findings revealed potential mechanisms underlying the associations between parenting styles and controlling feeding practices. Importantly, information learned from the present study may guide transdisciplinary efforts to design and implement culturally sensitive and family-based interventions targeting Asian immigrants’ wellbeing and obesity in the United States.

     

Neighborhood Risk and Interpersonal Support as Predictors of Parents’ Sense of Community

Parents’ sense of community (SOC) may ease the impact of neighborhood risk on children’s outcomes, but not all parents feel part of a trusted community. In this study, we examined whether parents’ ratings of neighborhood risk and interpersonal support were related to their SOC, and whether interpersonal support moderated the relationship between neighborhood risk and parents’ SOC. Participants included 161 parents (M?=?40.25 years; 92.3% female) of minor children who were enrolled in youth mentoring programs. Results indicated that greater interpersonal support and less neighborhood risk was associated with parents’ SOC. Post-hoc analyses showed that living in a neighborhood with gangs and illegal drugs, but not residential instability or living in public housing, was a salient risk factor for lower SOC. Contrary to our prediction, interpersonal support did not moderate the link between neighborhood risk and parents’ SOC. These findings may inform interventions designed to bolster parents’ connectedness to community and ability to promote children’s positive development.

     

Predictors to Happiness in Primary Students: Positive Relationships or Academic Achievement

This study aimed to examine the role of positive relationships and academic achievement in predicting student well-being, i.e. subjective happiness. This study employed a longitudinal design with two waves of data collection on a sample of 786 primary school students in Hong Kong. Students completed questionnaires on parent-child relationship, teacher-student relationship, peer relationship, academic achievement, and happiness at the beginning and end of the school year. Path analysis was used for data analysis. The results indicated that Time 1 parent-child relationship and peer relationship were associated with Time 2 academic achievement, after controlling for Time 1 academic achievement. However, only Time 1 parent-child relationship was predictive of Time 2 happiness. Time 2 academic achievement was a mediator between Time 1 parent-child relationship and peer relationship and Time 2 happiness. Furthermore, girls reported higher levels of academic achievement when they perceived better peer relationship than did boys, and girls were happier when they had higher levels of academic achievement than were boys. The results suggested the need to put in place strategies to enhance parent-child relationship, peer relationship, and a harmonious classroom.

     

Continuum between Relational and Therapeutic Models of Self-help in Mental Health: A Qualitative Approach

Self-help groups are generally described as “group[s] composed of individuals who meet on a regular basis to help one another cope with a life problem” (APA, 2019). Yet, it is challenging to find a univocal definition of self-help groups. Scholars usually use different labels to highlight various features of self-help groups, suggesting the need for further inquiry regarding commonalities and differences. The level of professional involvement is one of the most disputed factors influencing whether a group is considered to belong to the “self-help family.” The present qualitative study aimed to understand how professional support in Tuscany, Italy can influence the organizational choices of these groups (place for meetings, admission criteria, timing, etc.), as well as the personal beliefs of members. The study included 17 self-help groups. During 13 focus groups meetings, 92 participants were interviewed; then, we individually interviewed 19 facilitators and six additional key informants from mental health settings. We used a grounded theory approach, and we discussed the emerging models with participants at a public event. Results show the emergence of two theoretical models to define self-help groups, not to be interpreted as mutually exclusive. The “relational model” refers to self-help groups whose main feature is to guarantee the acquisition of specific skills (social comparison skills, active listening, and empathy), while the “therapeutic model” seems to represent a kind of assimilation of other types of interventions.