FURTHER ANALYSIS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SELF-INJURY AND SELF-RESTRAINT

It has been suggested that self-restraint, a phenomenon often correlated with self-injurious behavior (SIB), may be maintained by negative reinforcement in the form of escape from the aversive properties of SIB (e.g., pain). We examined the effects of blocking SIB (and presumably removing any aversive effects) on the self-restraint of a 19-year-old male with severe mental retardation. Consistent with the negative reinforcement hypothesis, blocking SIB resulted in near-zero levels of SIB and moderate reductions in self-restraint.     

Incidental learning in preschool children as a function of level of cognitive analysis

Preschool children's recall and clustering of organized lists of pictures were examined under deliberate instructions to remember or in incidental learning situations. The incidental tasks either required comprehension (categorization, or a rating of pleasantness-unpleasantness) or were formal orienting tasks involving processing in terms of physical features.Explicit instruction to remember and formal incidental instructions did not differ, and both lead to poorer performance than the comprehension activities. Categorization, whether accompanied by explicit instructions to recall, or occurring in the context of a meaningful activity, was no more efficient than categorization in and for itself. With children as with adults, it is the activity of the children which determines depth of processing and subsequent retention, not the intent to remember per se.     

Effects of desalivation on schedule-induced polydipsia in the rat.

The development and magnitude of schedule-induced polydipisa (SIP) were examined in desalivate and control rats in two experiments. In Experiment 1 animals were placed on a noncontingent fixed time (FT) 60-sec schedule for 24 days. Results indicate speeded development but asymptotically lower levels of SIP in desalivate rats compared to controls. Home cage consumption, however, was elevated in desalivate rats. In Experiment 2 schedule length, pellet size, and the percentage of body weight were manipulated. Desalivate rats consumed less fluid during each schedule condition relative to controls, but the pattern of results across schedules was similar to controls. It was concluded that (a) desalivation attenuates SIP; (b) SIP is a learned phenomenon; (c) dry mouth theories of SIP appear inadequate; and (d) the developmental aspect of the SIP phenomenon deserves additional research attention.     

Teaching a picture language to a non-speaking retarded boy

In recent years numerous operant language training programmes have been designed for teaching both receptive and expressive language to autistic and retarded children (e.g. Bricker and Bricker. 1970a; Bricker and Bricker, 1970b; Lovaas, 1968; Sloane et al, 1968). There have been suggestions that the content of such programmes should be to some extent dictated by the findings of psycholinguists, while the methods be designed along behaviour modification lines (Lynch and Bricker, 1972; Miller and Yoder, 1972). Certainly operant programmes have been shown to produce some improvement of language function in autistic and retarded children (Bricker and Bricker. 1970a; Sloane et al, 1968; Lovaas. 1968; Guesset al, 1968); but the problem of whether all retarded children can be taught some language by these means has not been tackled. Psycholinguists, following Chomsky (Chomsky, 1965) maintain that the development of language in children is dependent on the language acquisition device, or LAD. Unfortunately there are no independent means of determining the presence of LAD in a child, so that relating a child's inability to use language to the absence of LAD becomes a circular argument.It frequently seems to be assumed that, provided no perceptual deficits are present, language acquisition is as difficult in one medium as in another. Individuals who are deaf and retarded have been taught sign language with some success (Berger, 1972; Cornforth et al, 1974), and retarded children who are non-speaking have been taught symbolic languages (Bliss symbols in Vanderheiden et al, 1975; Premack symbols in Hollis and Carrier, 1975, and Hodges, 1976). It is unclear, however, whether those learning symbolic languages, but having no gross physical or perceptual handicap, could have learnt sign language or even spoken language with an equivalent method of training. The present study is a report of a retarded boy with unreliable hearing (which ruled out spoken language), who seemed unable to learn (receptive or expressive) sign language after extensive operant training, but who rapidly acquired a limited symbolic “language” using an identical training method. The symbols used were pictorial representations of the objects (cf. Bliss and Premack symbols).     

The egocentric bias: Seeing oneself as cause and target of others' behavior

The egocentric bias—the tendency to see oneself as both cause and target of another person's behavior—was examined in the context of a small group interaction. Pairs of subjects plus a confederate conducted a short discussion, their goal being to achieve consensus on a specific topic. The discussion was interrupted by the experimenter when the confederate summarized his/her opinion. It was found that subjects were more likely to see themselves as a cause as well as a target of the confederate's last statement compared to the way they were seen by other group members. Subjects were also more likely to exaggerate the amount of attention they received from the confederate. The overall egocentric bias scores were correlated with subjects' level of self-esteem. Cognitive and motivational processes that may account for this bias were discussed.     

Maintenance and generalization of trained metamnemonic awareness by educable retarded children

The majority of educable retarded children (young group, MA 6; old group, MA 8) required to estimate their memory span was found to be unrealistic estimators. Following training in span estimation the older subjects improved under both explicit and implicit feedback conditions, while younger children only benefited from explicit feedback. Three posttests of the effects of training revealed long-term (1-year) maintenance of training for older subjects but younger subjects showed post-test improvement only on an immediate test. While long-term maintenance was found for older subjects, generalization to similar span-estimation tests was not found. The utility of training metamnemonic knowledge which does not generalize was questioned and alternate training procedures were proposed.     

Children's cued recall: Developmental differences in retrieval operations

Second and fifth grade children were aurally presented a study list containing eight target items plus primacy and recency buffers, followed first by free recall, then by cued recall for items not produced in free recall. Two additional buffer items were used at Grade 5 in an effort to equate the two age groups in free recall of targets. The cues were either of high or of moderate associative strength, and equal for the two age groups. Free recall of targets did not differ with age, suggesting equivalent storage of targets. At Grade 2 the cued recall level matched expectations based on a simple associative account of cuing effects. However, cued recall at Grade 5 was much higher than the normative association values, implicating strategic retrieval operations, the possible nature of which was discussed.     

A beautiful day in the neighborhood: What factors determine the generation effect for simple multiplication problems?

In four experiments, we examined the generation effect for the free recall of simple multiplication answers. Large-product-size problems showed a consistent generation-effect advantage over small-product-size problems, except when each answer was generated twice, via two different sets of operands (Experiment 2). Also, measures of problem-solution time and strategy use accounted for the large-product-size advantage. Across experiments, however, small-product-size problems (but not large-product-size problems) showed considerable variation in the size of their generation effect. We discovered that solving small-product-size problems via direct memory retrieval increased the episodic recall probability of other problems that were near neighbors to the generated answer, and we attribute this result to a spreading activation mechanism in semantic memory. A measure of neighbor activations, combined with RT to solve each problem, accounted for 51% of the observed generation-effect variance.     

Role of the serotonin transporter gene in temperament and character

The biosocial model postulates that personality is comprised of two broad domains: temperament, which is largely due to inherited variations in specific monoamine neurotransmitter systems; and character, which arises from socioculturally learned differences in values, goals, and self-concepts and is the strongest predictor of personality disorders. The model also proposes that serotonin modulates the temperament trait of harm avoidance. We analyzed the association of temperament and character traits with the 5-HTTLPR, an inherited variation that modulates serotonin transporter gene expression, in 634 volunteer subjects. Contrary to theory, the 5-HTTLPR was most strongly associated with the character traits of cooperativeness and self-directedness. Associations with the temperament traits of reward dependence and harm avoidance were weaker and could be attributable largely to cross-correlations with the character traits and demographic variables. Psychometric analysis indicated that the serotonin transporter influences two broad areas of personality, negative affect and social disaffiliation, that are consistent across inventories but are more concisely described by the 5-factor model of personality than by the biosocial model. These results suggest that there is no fundamental mechanistic distinction between character and temperament in regard to the serotonin transporter gene, and that a single neurotransmitter can influence multiple personality traits.