School psychologists as perceived by school personnel: Support for a consultant model

Questionaires distributed by 12 school psychologists to school personnel with whom they had been consulting for six months were completed and returned by 73 teachers, counselors, and principals. The information provided by the respondents indicated the frequencies with which the school psychologists engaged in consulting and child study activities, the school personnel's evaluations of nine different school psychologist skills, and the preferences of the respondents for the different school psychologist functions in their schools. The data showed that: (1) school psychologists were doing more consulting than evaluations of individual children, (2) school personnel tended to perceive their psychologists as cooperative, knowledgeable, and skillful, though relatively inefficient and undependable, and (3) school personnel preferred consulting activities to psychometric activities. It was concluded that the consultant model had been shown to be operative and that it was more highly valued than the psychometric model by the consumers of psychological services.     

Effects of metronome-conditioned relaxation,metronome-induced relaxation,and progressive muscle relaxation on insomnia

Although several controlled studies have indicated that relaxation can be effectively employed in the treatment of insomnia (Borkovec and Fowles, 1973; Steinmark and Borkovec. 1974; Haynes et al., 1974), the relaxation training procedures thus far utilized have typically necessitated several hours of therapist-client contact. The possibility of a more efficient relaxation procedure for treating insomniacs suggests an attractive alternative to the tense-relax instructions of progressive muscle relaxation (Jacobson, 1938). Brady (1973) has reported that the sound of a metronome set at 60 beats per min is inherently relaxing, and although he has only reported on the effects of the metronome when paired with verbally-induced relaxation (both general suggestions of relaxation and instructions to tense and relax successive muscle groups), he has successfully employed this technique in the treatment of borborygmi (rumbling noises in the abdomen) and essential hypertension (Brady, 1973; Brady, Luborsky and Kron, 1974). If the sound of the metronome alone, which would require minimal therapist-client contact, is sufficient to induce relaxation, the efficiency with which relaxation can be achieved in the treatment of insomnia, as well as other tension-related disorders. may be greatly enhanced.The present study was designed to assess the relaxation-inducing properties of (a) Brady's metronome-conditioned relaxation (metronome plus verbal relaxation instructions), (b) progressive muscle relaxation and (c) metronome-induced relaxation (the sound of a metronome alone) in the treatment of insomnia. In order to provide an evaluation of the effectiveness of relaxation techniques with a broader population than was sampled in previous investigations of this nature, this study included employed adults as well as college students in the subject pool. In addition to its implications for treating insomnia, this study was designed to yield an independent test of the hypothesis that a 60 beat per min metronome sound has the capacity by itself to induce relaxation.     

Rat data which suggest alcoholic beverages should be swallowed during chemical aversion therapy,not just tasted

There were four pretraining procedures: A, in which rats drank sugar water prior to lithium sickness: P. in which sugar water was passed over the tongue prior to lithium sickness: Li, in which no taste experience preceded lithium sickness: NPT. in which the rats were exposed neither to the sugar water nor to lithium sickness. Lithium was then used to produce aversions to some other solution by dividing each of the pretraining groups into four subgroups. The solutions were novel NaCl, novel vinegar, novel alcohol, or familiar alcohol. Regardless of which solution was made aversive. the A pretraining procedure produced the strongest aversions and the Li procedure produced the weakest aversions. In the final phase, the preference for sugar water was tested. The A procedure produced far stronger aversions than the P procedure.     

Understanding sentences with relative clauses

Sentences containing self-embedded relative clauses are generally believed to be difficult to understand because such clauses interrupt the clauses in which they are embedded. However, the experiments that purport to have demonstrated this have confounded the self-embedded or fight-branching location of the relative clauses with their internal structure, comparing self-embedded object relatives with right-branching subject relatives. In order to break this confounding, Experiment I compared the comprehension difficulty of self-embedded and right-branching object relative clauses on two measures of comprehension difficulty. Experiment II made the same self-embedded vs. fight-branching comparison for subject relative clauses. The results of both experiments consistently failed to support the interruption hypothesis.     

Analyzing the random control procedure: Effects of paired and unpaired CSs and USs on autoshaping the chick's key peck with heat reinforcement

A series of five experiments using a total of 264 subjects investigated the effects of paired and unpaired key light (CS) and heat (US) stimuli on autoshaping the chick's key peck. Experiment 1 established that paired presentations of CS and US promoted a more rapid rise in key pecking than did randomly presented CSs and USs and that the specific sequence of stimuli under the random control procedure affected key pecking performance. Experiment 2 used a trace conditioning procedure to determine the role of the CS-US interval on autoshaping and to define empirically unpaired CSs and USs. Key pecking declined as the trace delay interval was increased from 0 to 25 sec; at 25 sec, no conditioning of key pecking occurred. Experiments 3–5 assessed the effects on autoshaped key pecking of (a) number of daily CS-US pairings, (b) added unpaired CS presentations, and (c) added unpaired US presentations, since paired and random control schedules differed in all of these respects. Reduction in the number of CS-US pairings slowed the acquisition of key pecking as did the concurrent addition of nonreinforced CSs and unsignaled USs. These results support theories of association formation that stress the effects of both paired and unpaired CSs and USs.     

Dyadic peer interaction and task orientation in attention-deficit-disordered children

A sequential observational approach was used to compare peer interactions in 10 mixed dyads of ADD-H and non-Add-H boys and 10 dyads of non-ADD-H boys in laboratory cooperative and school classroom task analogue activities. Mixed dyads were found to have a greater frequency of aggression and less joint activity than control dyads in specific situations. No differences were found for measures of functional attention as measured by frequency, duration, and mean duration of task-oriented behavior. Lag sequential analyses revealed two major sequences that differentiated mixed from normal dyads. These were Verbal Reciprocity (a measure of reciprocal verbal interaction) and Retreat (a measure of social withdrawal following aggression).     

Marital conflict,parenting, and toddler conduct problems

The present research examined relationships involving marital conflict, parenting, and toddler conduct problems. Sixty mother-toddler dyads (30 boys and 30 girls) participated as subjects. Mothers completed measures of general marital satisfaction, overt marital conflict, and toddler conduct problems. Maternal parenting and toddler deviance were assessed during a laboratory observation. Marital conflict was positively correlated with observations of toddler deviance and maternal reports of conduct problems. Marital conflict also correlated positively with the frequency of maternal disapproval statements directed toward sons' misbehaviors and was correlated negatively with the ratio of disapproval statements to daughters' misbehaviors. The present results indicate that marital conflict is associated with toddler conduct problems. The results also suggest the importance of examining parenting practices and child characteristics that may mediate the relationship between marital conflict and child behavior problems.This research was supported, in part by a Sigma XI grant to the second author.     

The influence of hardiness on the relationship between stressors and psychosomatic symptomatology

Thirty male and 58 female students responded to questionnaires based on a 9-month period in a prospective study of the impact of hardiness, life events, and hassles on reports of somatic symptoms. The data were analyzed utilizing cross-lagged panel analyses, analyses of variance, and multiple regression analyses. The results suggested that life events, hassles, and symptoms were significantly related in a recursive, mutually interactive manner. Although life events shared a high degree of variance with hassles, hassles consistently contributed above and beyond life events in predicting somatic symptoms. In addition, hardiness tended to have additive and opposite effects to that of stressors in its impact on symptomatology. Finally, and perhaps most important, compared to lower-hardy individuals, those higher in hardiness tended to experience less frequent stressors and to perceive the minor events they did experience as less stressful.