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.     

How Do Mothers Help Their Children Sleep at Night? Night‐waking Strategy Use Among Mothers of Preschool‐aged Children

Night‐waking is common among preschool‐aged children. Little is known about night‐time parenting among parents of preschool‐aged children. To explore night‐waking strategy use in a community sample, 203 mothers (M age = 32 years, SD = 5.1; children's M age = 3.4 years, SD = 1.0) completed the Night‐waking Strategy Scale (NSS) and measures of general parenting, agreement with night‐waking strategies, and children's sleep. Children were grouped by age (2‐, 3‐, and 4‐to‐5‐year‐olds). Mothers endorsed using routines most frequently, followed by active comforting and rewards; limit‐setting and punishment were used less often. NSS punishment and routines were significantly associated with parenting (e.g. laxness was correlated with NSS routines, rs = ?.35 to .47, p < .001). Night‐waking strategy use was correlated with agreement with those strategies (e.g. active comforting was correlated with agreement with active comforting rs = .35 to .52, p < .001). Active comforting was correlated with the frequency of children's night‐waking for 2‐ and 3‐year‐olds (rs = .35 and .38, respectively, p < .01). Mothers of preschool‐aged children in the community engage in a range of parenting strategies to manage children's night‐waking. These strategies are largely consistent with general parenting and agreement with night‐waking strategy use. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The discrimination of angry and fearful facial expressions in 7-month-old infants: An event-related potential study

The important ability to discriminate facial expressions of emotion develops early in human ontogeny. In the present study, 7-month-old infants’ event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to angry and fearful emotional expressions were measured. The angry face evoked a larger negative component (Nc) at fronto-central leads between 300 and 600 ms after stimulus onset when compared to the amplitude of the Nc to the fearful face. Furthermore, over posterior channels, the angry expression elicited a N290 that was larger in amplitude and a P400 that was smaller in amplitude than for the fearful expression. This is the first study that shows that the ability of infants to discriminate angry and fearful facial expressions can be measured at the electrophysiological level. These data suggest that 7-month-olds allocated more attentional resources to the angry face as indexed by the Nc. Implications of this result may be that the social signal values were perceived differentially, not merely as “negative”. Furthermore, it is possible that the angry expression might have been more arousing and discomforting for the infant compared with the fearful expression.