Go/No-Go Procedure with Compound Stimuli: Effects of Training Structure on the Emergence of Equivalence Classes

The Psychological Record - When the matching-to-sample (MTS) procedure is used, different training structures imply differences in the successive discriminations required in training and test...     

EFFECTS OF SYSTEMATIC,RESPONSE-DEPENDENT FADING AND THINNING PROCEDURES ON THE MAINTENANCE OF CHILD-CHILD INTERACTION

Previous investigations of the social behavior of handicapped preschool children (Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1974, 7 , 583–590; Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1976, 9 , 31–40; Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1977, 10 , 289–298) demonstrated that introduction of adult or peer confederate intervention agents produced substantial increases in levels of positive social behavior emitted by the subjects. In addition, it was observed that changes in rates of positive social behavior emitted by recipients of intervention tactics were accompanied by parallel changes in rates of positive social behavior emitted by interacting peers. However, with one limited exception, sudden removals of arranged intervention procedures were followed by immediate reductions in the levels of positive social behavior emitted by subjects and peers in each study. The current investigation was designed to examine the effects of response-dependent removal of intervention procedures on the positive behavior of three socially withdrawn preschool boys. Interactive effects on the social behavior of classroom peers who did not receive adult prompts and contingent attention events were also examined. A combination of withdrawal of treatment and multiple baseline procedures was employed. The three target subjects received fixed numbers of prompts and contingent attention events during Intervention I and Intervention II, Phase 1 conditions. During Intervention II, Phase 2 conditions, prompts and contingent attention events were reduced on a response-dependent basis for two subjects and on a response-independent basis for the third subject. The results suggest that: (a) the intervention procedures produced marked increases in positive social behavior emitted by each subject; (b) response-dependent fading and thinning, contrasted with response-independent tactics, maintained levels of positive social behavior equivalent to those observed during Intervention I and Intervention II, Phase 1 conditions; (c) changes in positive and negative behaviors emitted by peers paralleled changes in positive and negative behaviors emitted by each subject; and (d) no “spillover” of treatment effects was noted for subjects during periods in which they were not direct recipients of intervention procedures.     

Dimensionality and Measurement Invariance of a Brief Form of the Young Schema Questionnaire for Adolescents

The current work aims to develop and examine the psychometric properties of the Brief form of the Young Schema Questionnaire for Adolescents (B-YSQ-A), so that Early Maladaptive Schemas can be accurately measured in younger populations. Early Maladaptive Schemas are self-defeating core themes underlying maladaptive cognition, affect, and behavior. A community sample of 877 adolescents, aged 12–18 years old, filled out self-report instruments on maladaptive schemas, anger management, and internalizing and externalizing symptoms. The items composing the B-YSQ-A were selected based on statistical and content analyses criteria. Its internal structure, reliability, age- and gender-based invariance, and between-gender mean differences were examined, as well as its relationship with external variables. Results indicated a satisfying fit for the 18 original schema factors through confirmatory factor analysis. These schemas also showed adequate internal consistency and test-retest reliability, with the exception of the entitlement/grandiosity and self-sacrifice schemas. The B-YSQ-A was found to be age and gender invariant. Concerning gender differences, boys scored higher on the entitlement/grandiosity, insufficient self-control/discipline, approval/recognition seeking, unrelenting standards/hyper-criticalness and punitiveness schemas, whereas girls scored higher on the abandonment/instability, mistrust/abuse, and self-sacrifice schemas. Furthermore, evidence was found for construct validity in relation to measures of internalizing and externalizing symptomatology and of anger expression. Findings offer support for the use of the B-YSQ-A with adolescents, both for research and intervention purposes.     

Systemic Barriers to Family Involvement in Transition Planning for Youth with Disabilities: A Qualitative Metasynthesis

Family involvement is particularly important to the postschool success of young adults with disabilities who typically experience fewer education and employment opportunities after leaving high school than their same age peers without disabilities. Despite mandates for family involvement, school-home partnerships remain elusive, particularly for low-income and culturally and linguistically diverse families. This metasynthesis of findings from 22 qualitative studies examines family perceptions of barriers to transition from school to adulthood and involvement in transition planning. This metasynthesis adds to the literature on family involvement in special education by utilizing Bourdeuian social reproduction theory and Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory to frame the discussion and inform recommendations for research and practice that focus on schools and adult service systems rather than deficiencies in families.     

The Role of Functions of Aggression in Associations Between Behavioral Inhibition and Activation and Mental Health Outcomes

While the behavioral acitivation system (BAS) has been most consistently linked to externalizing behaviors, the behavioral inhibition system (BIS) has been more closely related to internalizing outcomes. Proactive and reactive aggression have demonstrated a similar pattern of association, with proactive aggression more closely linked to externalizing behavior and reactive aggression more consistently linked to internalizing symptoms. Despite theoretical links, few studies have examined associations between these constructs. Accordingly, the current study examined associations between the BAS and BIS and proactive and reactive aggression, and the role of proactive and reactive aggression in the link between the BAS and BIS and mental health outcomes. The BAS was associated with both proactive and reactive aggression, while the BIS was uniquely related to reactive aggression. Both proactive and reactive aggression appear to be playing a role in associations between the BAS and indicated mental health outcomes. Implications and future directions are discussed.     

The Cultural Divide and Changing Beliefs about Gender in the United States, 1974–2010

The present paper examines claims of a growing cultural divide in the United States. We analyze social change in beliefs about gender over a period of 36 years (from 1974 to 2010) in the United States using data from the nationally representative General Social Survey (GSS). We find evidence of growing gender egalitarianism until the mid-1990s, with a reversal between 1996 and 2000, and a decline in state differences in beliefs about gender over time in our decomposition analysis and multilevel models. Although we find significant differences in gender beliefs among states in the 1970s based on their voting record on the Equal Rights Amendment and based on patterns of family formation and family life associated with the Second Demographic Transition, these differences among states decreased or disappeared entirely by the early years of the twenty-first century. We highlight the implications of our findings for the ongoing public and academic debate surrounding growing cultural differences among states.     

Symbouki: a meta‐analysis on the emergence of sound symbolism in early language acquisition

Adults and toddlers systematically associate pseudowords such as “bouba” and “kiki” with round and spiky shapes, respectively, a sound symbolic phenomenon known as the “bouba‐kiki effect”. To date, whether this sound symbolic effect is a property of the infant brain present at birth or is a learned aspect of language perception remains unknown. Yet, solving this question is fundamental for our understanding of early language acquisition. Indeed, an early sensitivity to such sound symbolic associations could provide a powerful mechanism for language learning, playing a bootstrapping role in the establishment of novel sound–meaning associations. The aim of the present meta‐analysis (SymBouKi) is to provide a quantitative overview of the emergence of the bouba‐kiki effect in infancy and early childhood. It allows a high‐powered assessment of the true sound symbolic effect size by pooling over the entire set of 11 extant studies (six published, five unpublished), entailing data from 425 participants between 4 and 38 months of age. The quantitative data provide statistical support for a moderate, but significant, sound symbolic effect. Further analysis found a greater sensitivity to sound symbolism for bouba‐type pseudowords (i.e., round sound‐shape correspondences) than for kiki‐type pseudowords (i.e., spiky sound‐shape correspondences). For the kiki‐type pseudowords, the effect emerged with age. Such discrepancy challenges the view that sensitivity to sound symbolism is an innate language mechanism rooted in an exuberant interconnected brain. We propose alternative hypotheses where both innate and learned mechanisms are at play in the emergence of sensitivity to sound symbolic relationships.     

Procura-PALavras (P-PAL): A Web-based interface for a new European Portuguese lexical database

In this article, we present Procura-PALavras (P-PAL), a Web-based interface for a new European Portuguese (EP) lexical database. Based on a contemporary printed corpus of over 227 million words, P-PAL provides a broad range of word attributes and statistics, including several measures of word frequency (e.g., raw counts, per-million word frequency, logarithmic Zipf scale), morpho-syntactic information (e.g., parts of speech [PoSs], grammatical gender and number, dominant PoS, and frequency and relative frequency of the dominant PoS), as well as several lexical and sublexical orthographic (e.g., number of letters; consonant–vowel orthographic structure; density and frequency of orthographic neighbors; orthographic Levenshtein distance; orthographic uniqueness point; orthographic syllabification; and trigram, bigram, and letter type and token frequencies), and phonological measures (e.g., pronunciation, number of phonemes, stress, density and frequency of phonological neighbors, transposed and phonographic neighbors, syllabification, and biphone and phone type and token frequencies) for ~53,000 lemmatized and ~208,000 nonlemmatized EP word forms. To obtain these metrics, researchers can choose between two word queries in the application: (i) analyze words previously selected for specific attributes and/or lexical and sublexical characteristics, or (ii) generate word lists that meet word requirements defined by the user in the menu of analyses. For the measures it provides and the flexibility it allows, P-PAL will be a key resource to support research in all cognitive areas that use EP verbal stimuli. P-PAL is freely available at http://p-pal.di.uminho.pt/tools.     

Conceptualizing psychopathic traits from an evolutionary-based perspective: An empirical study in a community sample of boys and girls

Although psychopathy has historically been associated with a lack of emotion, recent research has suggested that psychopathy may represent a tendency to externalize the experience of unpleasant emotions, including shame, which could be seen as an adaptive strategy within an evolutionary framework. However, more empirical research is needed to build on this argument. This study tested a novel evolutionary-based model involving pathways associating the impact of harsh rearing experiences (warmth and safeness experiences and traumatic shameful experiences) with psychopathic traits as well as the indirect effects of external shame and shame coping strategies in this association. This study also tested the invariance of this model across gender. A youth community sample (N = 703; 58.9% girls) completed self-report questionnaires on the impact of harsh rearing experiences, external shame, shame coping strategies, and psychopathic traits. The results suggested that the impact of harsh rearing experiences was directly and indirectly (through external shame and shame coping strategies) associated with psychopathic traits. The model partially explained the endorsement of psychopathic traits in boys and girls, although gender differences were found in some of the pathways. These findings offer support for conceptualizing psychopathic traits as an adaptive strategy to cope with the impact of harsh rearing experiences, opening new perspectives for prevention and treatment.