On terms and procedures: Fluency

Fluency is a metaphor for flowing, effortless, well-practiced, and accurate performance. Current practice in fluency building involves increasing the frequency of free-operant performances. Free-operant performance is defined as continuous responding in the presence of discriminative stimuli that are either varied or not varied from response to response. Free-operant performance is also distinguished from discrete-trial performance. Frequency-building procedures are also described, including defining the learning channel and stimulus control topography of a component performance (called a pinpoint), selecting an appropriate timing period, and displaying stimuli so that no performance ceilings occur. During frequency building, frequencies of pinpoints are continuously charted on standard celeration charts. Frequencies are increased to empirically derived performance standards, or aims, that predict retention, endurance, stability, application, and adduction of performance. Frequency is also described as a dimension of performance, not simply its measurement. Frequency building is described as possibly facilitating contingency adduction.     

EVALUATION OF TWO HEALTH EDUCATION STRATEGIES FOR TESTICULAR SELF-EXAMINATION

We evaluated the effects of two health education teaching methods, a pamphlet based on a task-analyzed checklist and two professionally developed films, on the completeness, accuracy, and maintenance of testicular self-examinations (TSE). Subjects (N = 48) were videotaped while performing a TSE after training and at a follow-up visit. Direct observation of the tapes showed that checklist-based training resulted in more complete and longer TSEs (p < .05). Social validation ratings, however, suggested that physicians were unable to discriminate reliably the performances of subjects taught using the two methods. Accuracy of detection of simulated lesions on plastic models was also similar for the two groups. Adherence to TSE recommendations was high during the study, but declined across the follow-up period. Further study is needed to promote adherence to TSE and to document the effects of early detection on morbidity and mortality of testicular cancer.     

The Many Meanings of Religiousness: A Policy-Capturing Approach

ABSTRACT This article reports the results of two policy-capturing studies that investigated individual differences in the meaning of religiousness. Policy capturing requires judges to respond to a large number of hypothetical scenarios or profiles that differ along a number of potentially relevant cues or attributes. Multiple regression analyses are then conducted to ascertain which cues are influencing each judge's responses. For both studies, 100 profiles were developed describing hypothetical individuals who differed on 10 cues thought to influence perceptions of religiousness (e.g., church attendance, doctrinal orthodoxy), and judges rated each profile on a 9-point religiousness scale. Judges in Study 1 were 27 Roman Catholic and Protestant college students. Policy-capturing analyses identified clear individual differences in the cues that afifected judgments of religiousness, and in the self-insight of the students into their personal policies. To test whether these findings reflected the youth or religious maturity of the sample, the study was replicated with a sample of 22 Catholic and Protestant clergy. Similar results were found in Study 2. In both samples, individual policy capturing did a significantly better job of predicting judgments of religiousness than did self-described policies or policies created by averaging across judges. Together these findings underscore the diversity of religious meanings and the need for further idiographic investigations in the psychology of religion.     

When plausibility judgments supersede fact retrieval: The example of the odd-even effect on product verification

In the present study, we examined the conditions that favor the plausibility judgment strategy over the retrieval strategy when we verify some statements. In particular, we examined the effect of odd-even status of numbers on subjects' verification of single-digit arithmetic problems. In Experiment 1, we explored how factors such as problem difficulty and stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) influence this effect in adults. In Experiment 2, we present evidence that this odd-even effect is also present in elementary school children, although it varies with the age of the children, the difficulty of the problems, and the SOA. We argue that the odd-even information is helpful in arithmetic verification tasks with difficult problems early in the verification processes and that the time course of these effects differs across ages. The present results are consistent with the view that the plausibility strategy is preferred over the retrieval strategy at an early stage of processing and with information that is not quickly accessible. Finally, we discuss the implications of the present experiments for understanding of single-digit arithmetic and for understanding the more general issue of how people coordinate use of multiple strategies.     

A comparison of trichotillomania and obsessive-compulsive disorder

The validity of conceptualizing trichotillomania (TCM) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) as separate and distinct diagnoses was examined in a study of 20 patients with each disorder. A comparison of demographic, psychometric, and clinical features between the two groups revealed a number of statistically significant differences. Patients meeting the criteria for OCD scored higher on measures of psychiatric symptomatology including ratings of obsessions and compulsions, depression, interpersonal sensitivity, general anxiety, phobic anxiety, and psychoticism. Patients meeting the criteria for TCM reported an earlier age at onset than those with OCD. Stressors associated with onset were also significantly different between groups. These results support the validity of conceptualizing TCM and OCD as differing behavioral disorders.Portions of this paper were presented at the annual meeting of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America (March 1992) in Dallas, TX, and at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association (May 1992) in Washington, DC.     

Event-specific attributions and daily life events as predictors of depression symptom change

A prospective study was conducted to investigate whether event-specific attributions, either alone or in interaction with daily life events predict depression symptom change, and whether this is affected by systematic variation in intertest intervals. Baseline measures of attributional style, event-specific attributions, life events, and depression were administered to 96 adults enrolled in a cigarette-smoking cessation program who were readministered the event-specific attributions, life events, and depression measures 2, 4, 6, and 8 weeks later. Results indicated that (a) the interaction between event-specific attributions and life events was a better predictor of depression symptom change than were event-specific attributions alone; (b) event-specific attributions and life events demonstrated a tendency to predict depression symptom change over 2 and 4 weeks but not over 6 and 8 weeks; (c) the stability and globality of event-specific attributions was associated with the number of reported life events; and (d) baseline attributional style predicted event-specific attributions 2, 4, 6, and 8 weeks later.     

The impact of parental divorce on the attainment of the developmental tasks of young adulthood

The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of parental divorce on young adult development. One hundred twenty-five participants provided demographic information and completed the PAFS-Q (college version) and the conflict subscale of the Family Environment Scale. Results indicate that parental divorce and family conflict significantly affect developmental task attainment. The interactions between sex and age and family structure (i.e., single-parent or stepfamily) were also significant predictors of post-divorce task attainment. Implications of these results for therapists as well as recommendations for future research are provided.This is a revised version of a paper presented at the annual conference of the American Psychological Association, Los Angles, California, August 1994.     

Take away their hammer: logical and ethical problems in Range and Cotton's "Reports of assent and permission in research with children: illustrations and suggestions

Range and Cotton (1995) showed that many of the articles reviewed in their study did not include a line specifying institutional review board-approved procurement of informed parental permission and child assent for child research. Range and Cotton stated that the absence of the line suggests a lack of sensitivity to permission/assent issues, implied that many authors of the articles did not obtain permission/assent, and said those who did but did not report it were camouflaging those who did not. In this article, the logic of these points is refuted, the ethics of the Range and Cotton study are questioned, and its potential divisiveness is lamented.     

Perceptual Ambiguity, Gender, and Target Intoxication: Assessing the Effects of Factors That Moderate Perceptions of Sexual Harassment

Subjects read a passage which described an interaction between a man and a woman at an office party. The woman was either sober or intoxicated, and eventually the man engaged in 1 of 3 behaviors which involved varying degrees of sexual innuendo and/or aggression: (a) verbal comment, (b) verbal request, and (c) nonverbal physical display. The results indicated that perceptions did not vary as a function of target person's intoxication in the nonverbal-display condition. On the other hand, in the verbal-comment and verbal-request conditions, subjects in the intoxicated-target-person condition perceived the initiator more favorably than subjects in the sober-target-person condition. In addition, they indicated that perceptions did not vary as a function of target-person intoxication level in the nonverbal-display condition. On the other hand, in the verbal-comment and verbal-request conditions, male subjects were more favorable toward the initiator than toward female subjects.