The effect of punishment and reinforcement procedures on a stutterer's factor II avoidance response

The purpose of this clinical experiment was to investigate the manipulability of a Factor II avoidance response (arm movement). The substantive hypothesis under test was that its suppression would be enhanced by repeated punishment sessions. During the first of nine therapy sessions response-contingent negative stimulation was not delivered. In the next five, after a base-rate period, “wrong” was made consequent upon the target response. In each of these sessions the suppression of arm movement was apparent. However, the magnitude of the suppression decreased from session to session. Evidently, the continued use of punishment did not enhance suppression. Because of this finding procedural changes were introduced in the next three therapy sessions. Verbal praise was added as a consequence of increasingly stringent omission criteria and three consecutive units of praise led to time-out from the reportedly fatiguing task of continuous speech. A marked reduction and then complete extinction resulted. Moreover, learning was evidenced since the frequency of arm movement lessened in the base-rate period of each session.     

A method for the preparation of audio tapes for dichotic listening research

A simple method for producing audio tapes with temporally synchronized messages is described. The duration and spacing of words can be precisely controlled. This method requires a minimum of elaborate equipment, yet synchronization is very accurate with highly intelligible speech.     

Treatment of obsessive-compulsive patients: The contribution of self-instructional training to the effectiveness of exposure

Fifteen obsessive-compulsive patients were given treatment consisting of ten sessions of gradual exposure in vivo. For half of the patients gradual exposure in vivo was preceded by self-instructional training.Treatment resulted in significant improvement on anxiety and avoidance scales, Leyton Obsessional Inventory, Self-rating Depression Scale and on ratings for anxious mood and depression. Neither the post-test nor the follow-ups 1 month and 6 months later indicated a difference between the effects of the two conditions. Self-instructional training did not enhance the effectiveness of gradual exposure in vivo.     

APPLICATION OF A SOCIAL SKILLS TRAINING PROGRAM IN THE MODIFICATION OF INTERPERSONAL DEFICITS AMONG RETARDED ADULTS: A CLINICAL REPLICATION

Six mentally retarded adults, equally divided into two treatment groups, were provided with individualized social skills training programs. Treatment, evaluated via a multiple-baseline design strategy, was sequentially and cumulatively applied across target behaviors over a four-week intervention period. Behavioral observation probes and social validation measures served as the primary dependent variables. Results indicated that (a) treatment was effective for virtually all behaviors across all subjects, (b) improvements occurred for both training and generalization scenes, and (c) behavioral performance was maintained one month following the termination of treatment.     

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF INTERPERSONAL SKILLS TRAINING ON THE SOCIAL SKILL ACQUISITION OF MODERATELY AND MILDLY RETARDED ADULTS

Sixteen moderately and mildly retarded adults were selected from a group residential facility and randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The experimental group received a 12-session interpersonal skills training program consisting of instruction in the following areas: (1) Introductions and Small Talk, (2) Asking for Help, (3) Differing with Others, and (4) Handling Criticism. The social skills instructional package included verbal instruction, modeling, role playing, feedback, contingent incentives, and homework. As a result of this training program, moderately and mildly retarded adults acquired new social skills as evidenced by performance on a situation role play assessment. These gains generalized to untrained role play situations but did not result in significant group differences when assessed in a more natural setting (i.e., local grocery store).     

The location of superfactors P, E and N within an unexplored personality factor space

Two questionnaires designed by Howarth (HPQ, APF2) whose factor space in unexplored and the EPQ (Eysenck) were jointly scale factored on 79 subjects, under the hypothesis that Eysenck's superfactors of P, E, and N should be represented as major influences in the resultant factor structure. A prinicipal component analysis yielded 7 factors from 24 by the Kaiser-Guttman and Scree Test, these 7 being rotated to a maximum simple structure by the Direct Oblimin procedure. Although failing to satisfy Bargmann's test of simple structure, this solution was accepted as adequate, noting the deficiencies og Bargmann's test and the efficiencies of the rotation method used. Within the 7 factor solution, P, E, and N were seen to be located as factor numbers 2, 3 and 1, respectively. One interesting detail is that a sociability primary loaded with an impulsivity primary on the Extraversion factor contrary to Guilford's (1977) arguments for the independence of these primaries. It is concluded that Eysenck's assertion of the enduring stability and breadth of the PEN factor triad has been upheld.     

Television viewing and the learning of sex-role stereotypes

This study was designed to determine the relationship between the amount of time children spend watching television and their knowledge of adult sex-role stereotypes. Males and females in grades 1, 3, 5, and 7 who were classified as heavy television viewers (25 or more hours per week) or light viewers (10 or less hours per week) both at the time of the study and 15 months previously were administered the Sex Stereotype Measure, an instrument designed to determine children's awareness of stereotyped sex-role perceptions held by adults. Heavy viewers were found to have more stereotyped perceptions than light viewers. A significant interaction effect indicated that among low viewers the perception of male stereotypes steadily declines with increasing age; among heavy viewers, stereotypic responses to male items are maintained with increasing age. No comparable interaction effect was obtained for perception of female stereotypes. The role of interaction with live models in breaking down stereotypic perceptions of males is discussed.A modified version of this paper was presented at the meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Denver, April 1975.     

Rapid processing of the meaning of sentences

It has been shown (Fischler & Bloom, 1979) that sentence contexts facilitate a lexical decision task for words that are highly likely sentence completions and inhibit the decision for words that are semantically anomalous sentence completions. In the present experiment, the sentence contexts were presented 1 word at a time, at rates from 4 to 28 words/sec. The facilitation for words that were likely sentence completions was marginal at the slower rates and absent at higher rates. In contrast, the inhibitory effects of semantic anomaly were apparent at all presentation rates. Several analyses suggested that the sentence contexts were becoming ineffective at the very highest presentation rates, but the high rates at which the sentence contexts still affected word recognition were taken as evidence that semantic information accrues at an early stage of sentence processing. Implications for Posner and Snyder’s (1975) theory of attention and for models of reading were discussed.     

Graphemic analysis underlying literacy

Three experiments are described that studied the role of detailed graphemic analysis upon the ability to read text. College students named letters in various approximations to English, with frequency of individual letters constant. Findings were that later skill at reading varied with the order of approximation to English of the letters that were named, that the spacing of the letter sequences was important to this result, and, finally, that the influence of specific visual practice extended to the typeface on which the naming and reading were carried out. Hence, rather than a letter-by-letter process or its opposite, a wholly semantic analysis, reading is shown to be intimately dependent upon details of visual analysis of patterns or letter sequences.     

Prevalence and constituency of behavioral disturbance taxonomies in the regular school population

The Bristol Social Adjustment Guides (BSAG) are widely employed in research and in the identification of maladjustment in school children. The BSAG provides scores on several indices including five homogeneous behavioral syndromes and one associated grouping. Field experience suggests that maladjusted children frequently manifest problems in more than one syndrome. In order to discover what patterns of syndromic profiles may commonly exist among children, the data for the most recent revision of the BSAG are reanalyzed. The syndrome scores for all 2,527 5- to 15-year-old regular school children in the standardization sample were grouped into similar profile patterns by hierarchical cluster analysis. Sixteen homogeneous syndromic profile types emerged. The resultant profile types were described on the basis of their component behaviors and examined for membership trends by sex and age groups. Multiple syndromic profiles represented 60% of all maladjusted children.The author wishes to thank Dr. Denis H. Stott, former professor of psychology at the University of Guelph, Ontario, for kindly making the Bristol Social Adjustment Guides data available for this study.