Evaluation of the rate of problem behavior maintained by different reinforcers across preference assessments

The rates of problem behavior maintained by different reinforcers were evaluated across 3 preference assessment formats (i.e., paired stimulus, multiple-stimulus without replacement, and free operant). The experimenter administered each assessment format 5 times in a random order for 7 children with developmental disabilities whose problem behavior was maintained by attention, tangible items, or escape. Results demonstrated different effects related to the occurrence of problem behavior, suggesting an interaction between function of problem behavior and assessment format. Implications for practitioners are discussed with respect to assessing preferences of individuals with developmental disabilities who exhibit problem behavior.     

The Personality Characteristics of Anglican Clergymen and Clergywomen: The Search for Sex Differences

The aim of this study is to compare the personality profile of Anglican clergymen and clergywomen with the general population profile. Data were provided by 235 clergymen and 54 clergywomen serving in the Church in Wales who completed the short-form Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised. These data demonstrated that the usual sex differences found in the population as a whole were not reproduced among the clergy, since there were no significant differences between clergymen and clergywomen in terms of extraversion, neuroticism, psychoticism and the lie scale. Compared with the population norms, the two key differences were that clergymen recorded significantly lower psychoticism scores (closer to the female norms) and clergywomen recorded significantly lower neuroticism scores (closer to the male norms). The implications of these findings are discussed for the development of the ministry of men and women in the church.     

Religion and Happiness: A Study Among University Students in Turkey

This study tests the hypothesis that higher levels of positive religious affect are associated with higher levels of personal happiness among a sample of 348 students studying at a state university in Turkey who completed the Ok Religious Attitude Scale (Islam), the Oxford Happiness Inventory, and the short-form Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised. The data reported a small but statistically significant association between religiosity and happiness after taking sex and individual differences in personality into account.     

PROBLEM BEHAVIOR DURING PREFERENCE ASSESSMENTS: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS AND PRACTICAL RECOMMENDATIONS

Preferences of 2 children with developmental disabilities, whose functional analyses indicated that their problem behavior was maintained by access to tangible items, were assessed using three formats (i.e., paired stimulus [PS], multiple‐stimulus without replacement [MSWO], and free operant [FO]). The experimenter administered each format five times and compared levels of problem behavior across formats in a multielement design. Both participants exhibited problem behavior in PS and MSWO formats but not in the FO format. Results are discussed in terms of recommendations for practitioners.     

What do dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) understand about hidden objects?

Object permanence, the ability to mentally represent and reason about objects that have disappeared from view, is a fundamental cognitive skill that has been extensively studied in human infants and terrestrial animals, but not in marine animals. A series of four experiments examined this ability in bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus). After being trained on a “find the object” game, dolphins were tested on visible and invisible displacement tasks, and transpositions. In Experiments 1 and 2, dolphins succeeded at visible displacements, but not at invisible displacements or transpositions. Experiment 3 showed that they were able to pass an invisible displacement task in which a person’s hand rather than a container was used as the displacement device. However, follow-up controls suggested they did so by learning local rules rather than via a true representation of the movement of hidden objects. Experiment 4 demonstrated that the dolphins did not rely on such local rules to pass visible displacement tasks. Thus, like many terrestrial animals, dolphins are able to succeed on visible displacement tasks, but seem unable to succeed on tasks requiring the tracking of hidden objects.     

Cognitive effects of hormone therapy in early postmenopausal women

Recent reports suggest that hormone therapy (HT) with estrogen may have a protective effect on the ageing brain and cognitive function. However, clinical evidence regarding the cognitive effects in menopausal women under HT has produced conflicting results. The purpose of the present study was to assess and compare the cognitive effects after 6 months of HT in 30 early postmenopausal women, who were divided into three groups as follows: group I, Therapy conjugated equine estrogen (ET) CEE 0.625 mg/day (n = 10); group II, Estrogen‐Progestin Therapy (EPT), CEE 0.625 mg/day plus, chlormadinone 1 mg/day (n = 10); and group III, the control group, who did not receive treatment (n = 10). The three groups were matched by age and years of education. Exclusion criteria were: central nervous system diseases, severe cardiac disease, and clinical history of cancer and depression. Subjects were tested using a comprehensive battery for the evaluation of attention, memory and executive functions, which was standardized and validated in Spanish‐speaking subjects. The rate of cognitive change was defined by the difference between the measurements at the sixth month minus the baseline score. Mean group differences were assessed with MANOVA, followed by one‐way ANOVA considering statistical significance when p < .05; the alpha significance level .05 was corrected using the Bonferroni procedure. The EPT group showed higher scores than the control group and ET group in the Total Attention Score and in the copy of the Rey‐Osterreith Complex Figure. The ET group showed significantly higher scores than the control group and the EPT group in the subtest of Spatial Backward Span and in the Immediate Face Codification. The short‐term positive effects observed with HT in this sample could be related to the stimulation of brain receptors and/or neurotrophic factors that are still present at this age.     

Further examination of video‐based preference assessments without contingent access

The first purpose of this study was to attempt to replicate previous findings that video‐based preference assessments without access to selected stimuli may accurately predict relative reinforcing efficacy of stimuli. To do this, we conducted a concurrent operant reinforcer assessment in which we evaluated the relative reinforcing value of highly preferred and less preferred items identified in a video‐based preference assessment. The second purpose of this study was to begin to evaluate the potential behavioral mechanisms responsible for the validity of this assessment. To conduct this analysis, we evaluated the relative reinforcing value of those same stimuli depicted in video format and then compared results to results obtained during the reinforcer assessment for tangible stimuli. For all five participants, stimuli identified as highly preferred functioned as reinforcers, and four of five participants, responding during the reinforcer assessment was similar in the presence of tangible stimuli and videos depicting those stimuli.     

Does attitude acquisition in evaluative conditioning without explicit CS-US memory reflect implicit misattribution of affect?

Research that dissociates different types of processes within a given task using a processing tree approach suggests that attitudes may be acquired through evaluative conditioning in the absence of explicit encoding of CS-US pairings in memory. This research distinguishes explicit memory for the CS-US pairings from CS-liking acquired without encoding of CS-US pairs in explicit memory. It has been suggested that the latter effect may be due to an implicit misattribution process that is assumed to operate when US evocativeness is low. In the present research, the latter assumption was supported neither by two high-powered experiments nor by complementary meta-analytic evidence, whereas evocativeness exerted an influence on explicit memory. This pattern of findings is inconsistent with the view that CS-liking acquired without encoding of CS-US pairs in explicit memory reflects an implicit misattribution process at learning. Hence, the underlying learning process is awaiting further empirical scrutiny.     

Focusing on the relation: fewer exemplars facilitate children's initial verb learning and extension

One of the most prominent theories for why children struggle to learn verbs is that verb learning requires the abstraction of relations between an object and its action (Gentner, 2003). Two hypotheses suggest how children extract relations to extend a novel verb: (1) seeing many different exemplars allows children to detect the invariant relation between actions in different contexts (Gentner, 2003), and (2) repetition of fewer exemplars allows children to move beyond the entities involved to extract the relation (Kersten & Smith, 2002). We tested 2 1/2- and 3-year-olds' ability to extend a novel verb after viewing the repetition of one novel actor compared to four different actors performing a novel action. Both ages were better at learning and extending a novel verb to a novel actor when shown only one actor rather than four different actors. These results indicate that during initial verb learning less information is more effective.