Some uses of simulation in an in-service counselling training programme

In an in-service, pre-professional training programme offered in Gwent, a variety of simulation techniques are used to promote an understanding of the core facilitative conditions of counselling and to enable participants to experience their importance in counselling situations. In this paper, eight specific simulation techniques are described in terms of their objectives and procedures. The advantages and disadvantages of each technique are explored. Teaching and ethical issues raised through the use of such simulations in training programmes at this level are also discussed.     

An economical dispenser to improve control of food reinforcement in the rat

A hopper dispenser designed for the study of food reinforcement in rats is described. By using ordinary rat chow, it significantly reduces the cost of reinforcing rats with food. By preventing stockpiling, it also guarantees control of the accessibility, as well as the presentation of food.     

A study of some conditions relating to the retarded adult's stereotyped responding in a binary-choice task

This study was a longitudinal one that examined the effects of certain conditions on alternation and perseveration in a binary-choice task. The conditions manipulated included: (1) lapse of time (stability of the pattern), (2) stimulus dissimilarity, (3) spatial location of the two alternatives, (4) time-out (time away from the task), (5) delay between responses, and (6) differential reinforcement of the two choices. Eight mentally retarded adults, identified as “pure” alternaters or perseveraters, served as subjects. Perseveration was “disrupted” only by differential reinforcement. Alternation was affected by all experimental manipulations with the exception of stimulus dissimilarity.     

Pictorial interference with geometric shapes and achromatic shades

In two experiments, subjects were required to match printed names with subsequently displayed achromatic shades or geoinetric shapes. The presence of incongruent shades or shapes at the time of word display substantially slowed the RT for performing the match. This pictorial interference (interference due to a visual, nonlingalistic attributel was substantially attenuated, however, as the delay between the word display and shapes or shades to be matched was increased beyond 100 msec. These findings illnstrate the occurrence of a transitory automatic pathway activation from an irrelevant pictorial attribute, which may be contrasted with the verbal interference effects typically observed in Stroop-naming tasks. In both our tasks and the Stroop task, selectiwe attention fails when a stimulus must be transformed to another form of encoding in the presence of a competing stimulns which is already close to that form.     

Response coding in recall of colours by monkeys

Two monkeys learned a recall task with colours as the samples and spatial discriminanda at the retention test. The relationship between the sample colours and the retention test discriminanda was such that it was possible to distinguish between errors that were related to the visual similarity of the sample colours and those that were related to the similarity of the recall responses. When errors were induced by lengthening the delay between sample and retention test, they were related to the similarity of the recall responses. But in a comparable recognition memory task with colours, performance was related to the visual similarity of the colours. These results imply that the monkeys recognised the colours directly from a visual trace but recalled them indirectly from a response-coded trace.     

Grade Expectations as a Function of Sex, Academic Discipline, and Sex of Instructor

Twelve hundred and fifty college students starting introductory courses in thirteen academic disciplines were asked to predict their grade in the course. Results showed that overall, males predicted higher grades for themselves than did females (p <.001). This held true for entering freshmen as well as for those with previous college experience. The phenomena was noted in 26 of 37 classes tested, including 7 of 9 in the natural sciences, 11 of 13 in the social sciences, but only 8 of 15 in the humanities. Sex of the instructor was irrelevant, raising the question of whether female instructors as role models have the positive effect upon women students that has been claimed. The differences found were slight, but persistent. Both sexes predicted very high grades. The data suggest that sex differences in prediction were not based on a female sense of incompetence, but upon a greater willingness among males to make highly positive predictions.