TEACHING JOB INDEPENDENCE AND FLEXIBILITY TO MENTALLY RETARDED STUDENTS THROUGH THE USE OF A SELF-CONTROL PACKAGE

We examined mentally retarded individuals' use of picture cues and self-monitoring to initiate a series of tasks of varying type and order. Four severely to moderately retarded high school students participating in a vocational training program were trained to use a picture-cue system. The system consisted of photographs of vocational tasks that were inserted in the assigned order in a photoalbum sheet; self-management was accomplished by marking off each photo after its corresponding task was completed. Students were assigned seven tasks from a pool of 13 each day. Results indicated that the students quickly learned to use the picture-cue system to change tasks throughout their workday without trainer prompts and that performance was maintained as trainer feedback and presence were decreased. At the end of the study, two students who were exposed to novel photographs were able to initiate independently after only minimal training, suggesting that the use of the picture-cue system had become a generalized skill.     

Formation of associations of colored and flavored food with induced sickness in five avian species

Domestic ducks, geese, pigeons, quail, and chickens were given colored, flavored, or colored and flavored food and then injected with lithium chloride. Each species showed learning of color and taste aversions. Flavor facilitated the formation of color aversions in ducks, geese, and pigeons but not in quail or chickens. Color interfered with the formation of flavor aversions in quail and chickens but not in the other three species. These findings indicate that all birds can probably associate both colored and flavored food with induced sickness and that colored food is more easily associated with induced sickness than is colored water. Moreover, these findings suggest that the capacity to associate colored and flavored food with induced sickness and the interaction between color and flavor in food vary between species. Birds, such as quail and chickens, that eat relatively tasteless food rely more on color than on flavor cues when forming learned food aversions. Birds that can select their food on the basis of taste, such as ducks and geese, rely more on flavor than on color when forming aversions to food. Birds, such as pigeons, that are initially raised on tasty food before switching to predominantly tasteless food show tendencies that are similar to those of ducks and geese.     

The Edinburgh Masker: A clinical analog study

This article will describe the effects of instructions and practice on the vocal intensities of normal speakers and stutterers while reading in the presence of masking moise generated by the Edinburgh Masker. Both the normal speakers and the stutterers reacted in similar ways: They increased vocal intensity with the introduction of the noise, reduced vocal intensity in the presence of the noise, given instructions and practice, but failed to reduce vocal intensity to pre-noise reference levels. While these results are hardly reflective of long-term change in clinical behavior, a recommendation is made for a reexamination of the role of the increased vocal intensity as at least one factor, of perhaps many, responsible for whatever the long-term clinical effectiveness of the Masker.     

Individual differences in sensation seeking and attentional ability

Evidence is provided that high scores on the Zuckerman Sensation Seeking Scale are associated in the normal population with good focused-attention performance and poor distributed-attention performance. Focused-attention performance is assessed as the ability to select relevant information while ignoring irrelevant information, and distributed-attention performance is assessed as the ability to carry out concurrently two independent complex tasks. It is hypothesized that the observed disposition of attentional performance reflects differential patterns of arousal in individuals with high and low Sensation Seeking scores.     

Congressional review of national problems in drug abuse and its control

The addition of a psychologist to its staff provided the United States House of Representatives Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control with an opportunity to add survey technology to its traditional oversight information gathering armamentarium. Surveys of state and local drug abuse program managers, law enforcement and prosecutorial officials, state attorneys general, and members of congress itself provided the Select Committee with information that supplemented that obtained by hearings and congressionally sponsored conferences. Answers to different questions in the different surveys were in general agreement with each other and with information obtained through hearings, providing a rough measure of the reliability and utility of the technique for oversight purposes. Survey results were incorporated in committee reports and are credited with providing information necessary to sustain the Select Committee's recommendations for drug abuse and control to the Congress.     

Spatial configurations: Erikson reexamined

In a 1951 study, Erik Erikson reported differences in preadolescents' play constructions. He claimed that his findings reflected differences between males and females in their experience and perception of space. The present study replicated but also expanded the original design. In order to control for possible sex bias of materials, a constructed scene using only blocks was added to Erikson's original design. The results failed to replicate Erikson's findings. In fact, in the construction of scenes from blocks, more females than males built erected structures; this was true across all ages. These findings are in direct contrast to Erikson's results, and they lead to the conclusion that the materials provided, not innate anatomical sex differences, account for the resulting spatial configurations.The research reported here was part of the first author's dissertation. The authors gratefully acknowledge the cooperation of Holy Innocents Episcopal School and Georgia State University.     

Memory-enhancing characteristics of client-recalled important events in cognitive and experiential therapy: Integrating cognitive experimental and therapeutic psychology

In an attempt to encourage further integrative theorizing and experimental work across cognitive and therapeutic psychology, characteristics of therapeutic events that might contribute to their ‘memorableness’ were examined. Scales that rate five ‘information processing’ characteristics of therapeutic events were employed to score such characteristics of 55 client-identified important and 55 matched control events taken from actual therapeutic sessions of both cognitive and experiential psychotherapies. Results indicated that scales scoring the ‘depth’, ‘elaborateness’, and ‘conclusion-orientation’ of therapeutic dialogue during the events examined tended to discriminate reliably and as predicted between client-identified important and control events, particularly when ratings of therapist talking turns were examined. Limited support also was found for a second prediction based on Paivio's (1986) dual coding theory of memory concerning different patterns of results for cognitive versus experiential therapeutic events. Suggestions are offered for further research on human memory for specific events in therapeutic and other areas of applied psychology.