Teacher acquisition of functional analysis methodology

The current study examined methods for training teachers to use functional analysis methods. Teachers first received written and verbal instructions detailing attention and demand conditions. They then received training that included modeling, rehearsal, and performance feedback. Finally, probes were taken during ongoing class instruction. Results indicate that teachers acquired the skills and used them in classroom settings.     

Lexical, morphological, and syntactic aspects of verb production in agrammatic aphasics

Agrammatic aphasics do not exhibit a normal pattern of verb production; their spontaneous speech is said to lack verbs, and the verbs that are produced lack inflection. The current article focuses on the lexical, morphological, and syntactic aspects of verbs in spontaneous speech of a group of Dutch agrammatic speakers. Dutch is a so-called verb-second language in which the finite verb in the matrix clause is in the second position and nonfinite verbs are in the final position. The analysis shows that agrammatic speakers are sensitive to this relation; they virtually never produce finite verbs in the final clause position or nonfinite verbs in the second position. Nevertheless, they produce significantly fewer finite clauses than do non-brain-damaged speakers. The diversity of the lexical verbs in spontaneous speech is also lower than in non-brain-damaged speakers, but this is due to less variation in the finite lexical verbs. Hence, it is suggested that the problems with verbs in Dutch agrammatic spontaneous speech are restricted to finite lexical verbs. In an experiment, it was evaluated whether these problems with finite lexical verbs are caused by a morphological deficit or a syntactic deficit. The data show that a syntactic deficit is more likely; Dutch agrammatic speakers produce finite verbs in the base-generated position (i.e., in the embedded clause) significantly better than finite verbs that have been moved to the second position (i.e., in the matrix clause). From these data, the authors conclude that in Dutch, a verb-second language, agrammatic aphasics demonstrate specific problems with moved finite verbs, although they are perfectly aware of the relation between verb position and verb finiteness. This syntactic problem affects not only the proportion of finite verbs but also the diversity of the verbs and, hence, communicative contents.     

Contrasting the ironic monitoring and motivational explanations of postsuppressional rebound

Suppressing a thought often results in postsuppressional rebound, that is, a subsequent increase in the incidence of the suppressed thought. The present study was dcsigned to distinguish between two explanations of rebound: Wegner's 1994 ironic monitoring theory and Liberman and Forster's 2000 motivational account. Participants (99 Deakin University students) first suppressed, then expressed, thoughts of a white bear. In some conditions, a delay--presented as occurring either intentionally or unintentionally--between suppression and expression was introduced. In other conditions, participants concurrently completed a memory task and were encouraged to antribute the difficulty of suppression either to this task or to the requirement of suppression. An intentional delay, but not an unintentional delay, reduced rebound, while attributing difficulty to the suppression requirement was associated with greater rebound than was attributing it to the memory task. The results are interpreted as supporting Liberman and Forster's motivational account of rebound.     

The role of the left hemisphere in motor control of touch: a functional magnetic resonance imaging analysis

Previous research using a simple finger-touching task has shown greater blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) activation volume in the motor cortex of the right hemisphere for contralateral finger touching compared to ipsilateral finger touching, but no significant contralateral advantage for the left hemisphere. Such equal involvement of the left hemisphere for both contralateral and ipsilateral finger touching suggests a special role of the left hemisphere for finger touching. In contrast, we found a contralateral advantage in the motor cortex of both hemispheres in a majority of participants (14/16) when consistently activated BOLD volumes were examined. However, participants who did not show a clear contralateral advantage for the left hemisphere did show activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG; Broca's Area) and in the left insular cortex, which suggests that verbally mediated sequencing of finger movements can account for our less frequent result.     

Patterns of Coping Among Persons with HIV Infection: Configurations, Correlates, and Change

This study examines coping in response to HIV infection, using longitudinal data from a nationally representative sample (n = 2,864) of HIV-infected persons. We investigated configurations of coping responses, the correlates of configuration membership, the stability of coping configurations, and the relationship of coping to emotional well-being. Four coping configurations emerged from cluster analyses: relatively frequent use of blame-withdrawal coping, frequent use of distancing, frequent active-approach coping, and infrequent use of all three coping strategies (passive copers). Passive copers had few symptoms, high levels of physical functioning, and high emotional well-being; blame-withdrawal copers had the opposite pattern. Of those completing a second interview 1 year after baseline, 46% had the same coping configuration. Increases in the number of HIV-related symptoms raised the probability of blame-withdrawal coping at follow-up, whereas decreases raised the probability of passive coping. Infrequent use of coping responses at baseline was related to greater emotional well-being 1 year later. This result, in conjunction with the high levels of emotional well-being in the passive cluster, suggests that high levels of distress can induce blame-withdrawal coping whereas coping efforts are minimal when social support and emotional well-being are high. Results highlight issues in ascertaining the causal direction between coping and psychological outcomes, as well as in specifying the nature of stressful situations with which people are coping.     

Influence of test anxiety on measurement of intelligence

In this study a measurement model for a test anxiety questionnaire was investigated in a sample of 207 Dutch students in the first grade of junior secondary vocational education. The results of a confirmatory factor analysis showed that a model for test anxiety with three factors for worry, emotionality, and lack of self-confidence is associated with a significantly better fit than a model comprised of only the first two factors. The relations of the three test anxiety factors to scores on intelligence tests for measuring verbal ability, reasoning, and spatial ability were examined. The results indicated that test anxiety appears to be transitory: the negative relation between test anxiety and test performance promptly fades away. Finally, we examined whether a distinction can be made between highly test anxious students with low performance due to worrisome thoughts (interference hypothesis) or low ability (deficit hypothesis). Results do not support the deficit hypothesis because the scores of all highly test anxious students increased in a less stressful situation.     

Object scrambling in Dutch Broca's aphasia

This study focuses on the production of sentences in which objects have been moved without a change in the order of the thematic roles. In Dutch, the basic word order is subject-adverb-object-verb. The object can be moved over the adverb; this is called object scrambling. The difference between the two word orders is pragmatic in nature: in the basic word order the focus is on the object, in the scrambled order, the focus is on the adverb. The aim of the present study is to evaluate if production of constructions with moved objects is impaired in Broca's aphasia and if so, whether that is for syntactic or pragmatic reasons. The results show that for individuals with Broca's aphasia, sentences with the scrambled word order are more difficult to produce than sentences with the basic word order, even if the scrambled order results in a pragmatically more acceptable sentence. This falsifies several theories of production in Broca's aphasia and shows an interesting parallel to the performance on comprehension tasks.     

AN ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL SKILLS GENERALIZATION IN TWO NATURAL SETTINGS

The interactional behavior of two groups of elderly mentally retarded residents of a community facility was measured in two generalization situations before, during, and after one group received social skills training. The training group received social skills training within a game format, whereas the contrast group simply played a game with no emphasis on interactional behavior. Results suggested that generalization to natural interactional situations may be delayed following training and that it is more likely in some situations (i.e., with trained peers) than others (i.e., in the presence of untrained peers).