Premenstrual symptoms: the role of irrational thinking.

104 women, between the ages of 18 and 45 years, were surveyed to investigate the relationship between premenstrual symptomatology, as measured by the Modified Menstrual Distress Questionnaire, and irrational thinking, as measured by the General Attitude and Belief Scale. The women who reported greater premenstrual symptomatology also reported significantly higher scores in the "need for comfort" irrationality subscale. This indicated that these women had particular difficulty dealing with hassles and the resulting feelings of tension and irritability in the premenstruum. It was suggested that the absence of significant effects for other rationality-irrationality subscales could be associated with testing at different times during the menstrual cycle. Irrationality, like other conditions (such as anxiety and depression) prevalent in the premenstruum, could change in intensity across phases of the menstrual cycle.     

Using three different types of assessment data for diagnostic purposes.

This study investigated the performance of 38 learning disabled and 16 emotionally impaired children and youth on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children--Revised, Wide Range Achievement Test--Revised, and Minnesota Percepto-Diagnostic Test--Revised. The ages of the children ranged from 8.4 to 16.7 years (M = 12.4, SD = 3.6). The findings suggest that discriminate functional analysis may be useful in the differential diagnosis process. Implications for clinicians are discussed.     

Regular and irregular inflection in the acquisition of German noun plurals.

In this paper we study the acquisition of German noun plurals in relation to the question of how children represent regular and irregular inflection. Pinker and Prince (1992) have demonstrated several dissociations between regular and irregular inflection in the English past tense system. However, in English, the default status of -ed is confounded with its high frequency; therefore inflectional systems other than English past tense formation must be examined. The noun plural system in German is particularly interesting, because most nouns have irregular plurals in German and the regular (default) plural is less frequent than several of the irregular plurals. Thus it is unclear how a language learner determines whether German even has a regular plural, and if so what form it takes. Based on longitudinal data from impaired and unimpaired monolingual German-speaking children, we find a striking, statistically significant correlation: plural affixes that are used in overregularizations, namely -n or -s, are left out within compounds. This correlation shows that even impaired children are sensitive to the distinction between regular and irregular morphology. We propose a linguistic analysis of the correlation in terms of Kiparsky's (1982, 1985) level-ordering model plus an additional ordering condition on affixes: default (regular) affixes cannot serve as input to compounding processes.     

Psychological factors in abortion. A review.

Psychological research is increasingly involved in debates regarding abortion. While recognizing the diversity of ethical and moral issues intertwined with abortion, the American Psychological Association (APA) has focused its involvement on psychological factors, most recently by appointing an expert panel to review the literature on psychological effects. This article notes the history of APA involvement and reports on the panel's conclusions. It presents evidence that abortion is not likely to be followed by severe psychological responses and that psychological aspects can best be understood within a framework of normal stress and coping rather than a model of psychopathology. Correlates of more negative responses following abortion are also discussed.     

TEACHING SAFETY SKILLS TO HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS WITH MODERATE DISABILITIES

Teaching students with disabilities to respond appropriately to potentially dangerous situations is a useful skill that has received little research attention. This investigation taught 3 students with moderate mental retardation to remove and discard broken materials (plates, glasses) safely from (a) a sink containing dishwater, (b) a countertop, and (c) a floor. A 4th student was instructed on the sink task only. A multicomponent treatment package was used to teach the skills. Simulated materials were used initially and were replaced with broken plates and glasses. A multiple probe design was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the treatment package. The results indicated that the treatment package was effective in teaching the skills. Data were collected 1 week and 1 month following the completion of training, and indicated mixed results. No student was injured during any phase of training. Issues pertinent to teaching safety skills to students with moderate disabilities are discussed.     

PROMOTING STIMULUS CONTROL WITH TEXTUAL PROMPTS AND PERFORMANCE FEEDBACK FOR PERSONS WITH MILD DISABILITIES

We assessed whether written task analyses would serve as textual prompts for performing functional tasks by persons with mild disabilities. Several variables that could influence the effectiveness of textual prompts to promote stimulus control were examined across four groups. A consistent finding was that written specific task analyses combined with end-of-trial performance feedback were effective for promoting the acquisition and generalization of several tasks. Performance transferred immediately to natural discriminative stimuli when the written task analyses and feedback were withdrawn for most tasks and participants. For 2 participants, transfer of stimulus control was accomplished by prompt fading, using individualized written task analyses either with or without performance feedback (Group 1). When feedback was not provided, the effectiveness of written specific task analyses was inconsistent across groups. In contrast to the controlling effects of written specific task analyses, written generic task analyses, which specified only major task outcomes, when combined with performance feedback (Group 1) did not control responding. Overall, this research demonstrated the effectiveness of written specific task analyses and performance feedback to promote stimulus control for persons with mild disabilities.     

COVARIATION WITHIN FUNCTIONAL RESPONSE CLASSES: IMPLICATIONS FOR TREATMENT OF SEVERE PROBLEM BEHAVIOR

Two studies examined the effects of a reductive treatment versus instruction-based treatments on the generalized reduction of problem behaviors. Each study involved a detailed analysis of multiple problem behaviors performed by school-aged youth with severe intellectual disabilities. The analysis examined the contrasting effects of one of two different positive intervention procedures (teaching a positive alternative behavior or providing additional teacher assistance during instruction) versus blocking and/or verbally reprimanding a problem behavior. The focus of each analysis was on the covariation of multiple problem behaviors within functional response classes. Results of the investigation indicated that when only one member of the response class was blocked, a collateral increase was observed in one or more different problem behaviors from the same response class. Alternatively, when 1 participant was taught a functionally equivalent mand response, all problem behaviors in the response class were reduced. Problem behaviors also were reduced for the remaining participant by presenting antecedent teacher assistance. Implications of the research extend to analysis of covariation within response classes and to procedures that result in generalized reduction of problem behaviors within a response class.     

AN ANALYSIS OF MAINTENANCE FOLLOWING FUNCTIONAL COMMUNICATION TRAINING

The multiple and long-term effects of functional communication training relative to a common reductive procedure (time-out from positive reinforcement) were evaluated. Twelve children participated in a functional analysis of their challenging behaviors (Study 1), which implicated adult attention as a maintaining variable. The children were then matched for chronological age, mental age, and language age and assigned to two groups. One group received functional communication training as an intervention for their challenging behavior, and the second group received time-out as a contrast. Both interventions were initially successful (Study 2), but durable results were achieved only with the group that received functional communication training across different stimulus conditions (Study 3). Students whose challenging behaviors were previously reduced with time-out resumed these behaviors in the presence of naive teachers unaware of the children's intervention history. The value of teaching communicative responses to promote maintenance is discussed as it relates to the concept of functional equivalence.     

Perceptual restoration of a "missing" speech sound: auditory induction or illusion?

This study investigated whether the apparent completeness of the acoustic speech signal during phonemic restoration derives from a process of auditory induction (Warren, 1984) or segregation, or whether it is an auditory illusion that accompanies the completion of an abstract phonological representation. Specifically, five experiments tested the prediction of the auditory induction (segregation) hypothesis that active perceptual restoration of an [s] noise that has been replaced with an extraneous noise would use up a portion of that noise's high-frequency energy and consequently change the perceived pitch (timbre, brightness) of the extraneous noise. Listeners were required to compare the pitch of a target noise, which replaced a fricative noise in a sentence, with that of a probe noise preceding or following the speech. In the first two experiments, a significant tendency was found in favor of the auditory induction hypothesis, although the effect was small and may have been caused by variations in acoustic context. In the following three experiments, a larger variety of stimuli were used and context was controlled more carefully; this yielded negative results. Phoneme identification responses collected in the same experiments, as well as informal observations about the quality of the restored phoneme, suggested that restoration of a fricative phone distinct from the extraneous noise did not occur; rather, the spectrum of the extraneous noise itself influenced phoneme identification. These results suggest that the apparent auditory restoration which accompanies phonemic restoration is illusory, and that the schema-guided process of phoneme restoration does not interact with auditory processing.     

Categorical time production: evidence for discrete timing in motor control.

Subjects performed a repetitive manual tapping task, attempting to match a given rate of auditory stimulus pulses, first with the pulses audible (synchronization) and then with the pulses turned off (continuation). In different sessions, the interstimulus interval (ISI) was selected from the range 175 to 825 msec in steps of 25 msec, with different ISI values presented in a random order. Across this range of ISI conditions, interresponse intervals (IRIs) exhibited alternating positive bias (too slow) and negative bias (too fast). We interpret this pattern of bias in terms of a discrete, or categorical, timing mechanism in motor timing. Categorical time production can be viewed as extending our conception of the timekeeper in Wing's (Wing & Kristofferson, 1973a, 1973b) two-process model of motor timing and may be related to the system of multiple clocks proposed by Kristofferson (1980) to explain a categorical pattern of variability measures in duration discrimination.