Polarizing effects of intergroup comparison

Compared the effects of intergroup and within-group comparison on attitudes differentiating two well-defined student groups. Social work students (n = 48) expressed attitudes either before or after estimating ingroup or outgroup (commerce students) norms. Subjects adopted more extreme attitudes following outgroup comparison, but were unaffected by comparison within the group.     

Within-session meal-size effects on induced drinking.

As a control for the effects of session duration and hunger on the relation between food magnitude and induced drinking, four food-deprived rats were exposed to a variable-time 50-s schedule of food delivery in which the size of each food delivery varied randomly within sessions. Food-related behavior and schedule-induced drinking per opportunity were examined as functions of meal size and postfood time. All rats showed an inverted-U-shaped relation between drinking per opportunity and meal size. This relation was caused by variation in the percentage of intervals that contained drinking and by variation in the number of drinking bouts per interval, rather than by bout duration or by the amount of drinking within those intervals that actually contained drinking. Head-in-feeder time increased linearly with meal size. Schedule-induced drinking was entrained by food delivery in 3 of 4 subjects; the entrainment was due to regulation of the starting time of each drinking bout rather than to regulation of bout duration.     

The influence of similarity between relevant and irrelevant information upon a complex identification task

This experiment sought answers to two questions: (1) Do increases in the similarity between relevant and irrelevant information present in visual stimulus patterns detrimentally influence the performance of a complex identification task, and (2) does the effect of such similarity interact with increasing amounts of irrelevant information? An analysis of the response latencies and errors indicated that identification of the relevant information in the stimulus patterns becomes significantly poorer with increasing similarity between relevant and irrelevant information and with increasing amounts of irrelevancy. The results also showed that the joint effect of similarity and irrelevancy produces a greater performance decrement than that associated with either variable alone. Practice on the task reduced the detrimental effects.     

EXPANDING THE IMPACT OF BEHAVIORAL STAFF MANAGEMENT: A LARGE-SCALE,LONG-TERM APPLICATION IN SCHOOLS SERVING SEVERELY HANDICAPPED STUDENTS

Experimental evaluations of behavioral staff management procedures usually have been limited to relatively small-scale demonstration studies. We evaluated a large-scale, long-term application of a staff management program designed to improve the functional utility of educational services for severely handicapped persons. The intervention, involving a brief in-service program followed by supervisory prompts and feedback, was implemented by three principals in four schools involving 21 classrooms. Implementation of the management procedures was consistently accompanied by increases in student involvement in functional educational tasks in each classroom. Further, the improved services continued throughout a 2-year follow-up period. Staff responses to a questionnaire indicated a high degree of staff acceptance of the management program. Results are discussed in terms of expanding the use of behavioral supervisory procedures from experimental demonstrations to actual adoption by existing human service agencies.     

A Qualitative Exploration of Thriving in Elite Sport

Athletes are often described as thriving in sport; however, extant research on this construct in sport has been divergent. This study aimed to provide the first dedicated exploration of thriving in elite sport performers by considering its characteristics, outcomes, and facilitators. Semistructured interviews (n = 15) were conducted with athletes, coaches, and sport psychology practitioners and were analyzed using applied thematic analysis. Thriving was perceived to comprise a sustained high-level of performance and dimensions of well-being. Furthermore, predominantly positive outcomes of thriving were described, and participants identified a network of personal and contextual enablers that could facilitate thriving.