TEACHING A STUDENT WITH AUTISM TO MAKE VERBAL INITIATIONS: EFFECTS OF A TACTILE PROMPT

This study examined the effects of a tactile prompting device (the Gentle Reminder) as a prompt for a student with autism to make verbal initiations about his play activities. A multiphase multielement design was used to assess the effects of the device in prompting initiations toward an adult in three different play contexts. Follow-up probes were conducted during cooperative learning activities with typically developing peers in the student's regular education class. The results suggest that the device serves as an effective, unobtrusive prompt for verbal initiations during play contexts and during cooperative learning activities.     

Failure to detect changes to people during a real-world interaction

Recent research on change detection has documented surprising failures to detect visual changes occurring between views of a scene, suggesting the possibility that visual representations contain few details. Although these studies convincingly demonstrate change blindness for objects in still images and motion pictures, they may not adequately assess the capacity to represent objects in the real world. Here we examine and reject the possibility that change blindness in previous studies resulted from passive viewing of 2-D displays. In one experiment, an experimenter initiated a conversation with a pedestrian, and during the interaction, he was surreptitiously replaced by a different experimenter. Only half of the pedestrians detected the change. Furthermore, successful detection depended on social group membership; pedestrians from the same social group as the experimenters detected the change but those from a different social group did not. A second experiment further examined the importance of this effect of social group. Provided that the meaning of the scene is unchanged, changes to attended objects can escape detection even when they occur during a natural, real-world interaction. The discussion provides a set of guidelines and suggestions for future research on change blindness.     

Creativity and two modes of associative fluency: Chains and stars1

The relationship between creativity and associative fluency was reexamined in light of a proposed distinction between two modes of associative fluency, chains and stars. Chained associations were defined as a series of responses, each related to the preceding one, and star associations as a series of responses, all of which are focused on the original stimulus word. An analysis of the continuous associations produced orally by 96 university students in response to a single presentation of a stimulus word indicated that they produced associations of both types interchangeably. Chain and star fluency were found to be inversely correlated at a low order, suggesting that they are two distinct associative modes. As expected, chain fluency was highly related to creativity, as measured by a Hebrew version of Mednick's Remote Associates Test while star fluency was unrelated to it. The findings were discussed in terms of Wallach's (1970) notion of attention deployment, and directions for future research were suggested.     

A note on the interpretation of the factor pattern of the California Psychological Inventory

The intercorrelation matrix between the scales of the California Psychological Inventory, given in the manual, was factor analyzed. Three factors were extracted and rotated by varimax. The matrix was rescaled, first normalizing the rows, then standardizing the columns to a mean sum of squares of one. Unity was used as a cut-off point for determination of salient loadings. The first two factors were similar to the results reported in a previous Study by Nichols and Schnell. The third factor was interpreted as an independence-dependence dimension.     

Developmental differences in subjects' associative-learning strategies and performance: Assessing a hypothesis

Fifth-, seventh-, and ninth-grade (11-, 13-, and 15-year-old) subjects were presented with a list of paired associates to learn and were interviewed about the strategies used to learn them. Although a majority of fifth graders reported simply rehearsing the pairs in order to remember them, very few ninth graders relied exclusively on rehearsal. Consistent with a hypothesis advanced by Rohwer (1973), the number of subjects who elaborated some or all of the pairs increased with age. Paired-associate performance increased with age, but the level of paired-associate learning was much more related to the type of strategy reported by the subject than to the age of the subject per se.     

Additional evidence from a paradigm for inferring discriminative processes in children and adults

A previously developed paradigm which incorporates a correlational methodology into an experimental context was used in the present study to specify more definitely the attribute(s) underlying verbal discrimination learning under normal conditions. In the case of fifth- and sixth-grade children, it was found that frequency theory is sufficient to account for performance on the task. However, older subjects were less homogeneously reliant on the frequency attribute. While many older subjects appeared to utilize frequency cues, others adopted strategies that resulted in the utilization of attributes other than frequency.     

MMPI differences among mild and severe insomniacs and good sleepers

Past research has attempted to delineate personality differences between insomniacs and good sleepers but has failed to control for type of insomnia or severity of the disorder. The purpose of this study was to compare MMPI scores of mild and severe sleep onset insomniacs with a control group of noninsomniacs . Results demonstrated that sleep onset insomniacs, regardless of degree of severity, differed significantly from noninsomniacs ; and that mild and severe insomniacs differed from each other on only one MMPI scale.     

The effects of video feedback on running form

Correct running form is important for injury prevention; as such, correct form promotes continued engagement in running as a long-term form of exercise. Researchers have shown video feedback to be an effective strategy to improve athletic form for a variety of sports, but it has not been evaluated in any behavior analytic research as a method for improving running form. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of video feedback to improve running form for regular runners. During baseline, each participant was video recorded while running without any feedback (verbal or video). During intervention, the researcher recorded the participant, then showed them the video and provided feedback on correct or incorrect form, according to a 9-step task analysis. Results show that all three participants achieved 100% correct steps on the task analysis when video feedback was used to maintain their form during follow-up.