A new processing model for predicting performance on Pascual-Leone's test of M-space

A new model is proposed for explaining children's performance on Pascual-Leone's test of M-space. The model differs from Pascual-Leone's in three regards. (1) It assumes that children do not stop sampling a compound stimulus until every simple stimulus in their field of attention has already been noticed and responded to. (2) It assumes that the probability of sampling different combinations of simple stimuli conforms to the laws of Maxwell-Boltzman statistics rather than Bose-Einstein statistics. (3) It assumes that children's ability to detect all the simple stimuli in a compound stimulus is highly dependent both on the relative saliencies of the simple stimuli and on the length of time for which the compound stimulus is exposed. Using the developmental values of M hypothesized by Pascual-Leone, and standard techniques of computer simulation, the new model is used to generate theoretical performance curves for children at four different age levels and seven different levels of stimulus complexity. It is shown that the predicted performance curves for an exposure time of 5 sec provide a reasonable fit to the data originally reported by Pascual-Leone (1970), and that the predicted performance curves for an exposure time of 10 sec provide a reasonable fit to data obtained more recently by Parkinson (1976). Finally, it is shown that the order of children's responses as well as the number of their responses can be predicted. Two conclusions are drawn. (1) The new processing model offers a viable alternative to the model originally proposed by Pascual-Leone. (2) Regardless of which processing model is employed, the M-values originally postulated by Pascual-Leone are valid.     

SOCIAL VALIDATION: THE EVOLUTION OF STANDARDS OF COMPETENCY FOR TARGET BEHAVIORS

The use of social validation procedures has become widespread in recent years. Although most researchers have used social validation procedures to select target behaviors and to evaluate whether the changes produced by a treatment program should be considered socially useful, little attention has been focused upon using the social validation process to determine the optimal levels for target behaviors. This paper suggests several ways in which social validation procedures can be employed in order to select when and how much to change target behaviors.     

TEACHING JANITORIAL SKILLS TO THE MENTALLY RETARDED: ACQUISITION,GENERALIZATION, AND MAINTENANCE

A task analysis of janitorial skills required for cleaning a restroom was performed. Six subtasks with a total of 181 component responses were identified. Subjects were required to progress through a series of four prompt levels ordered generally from more to less direct assistance for 20 of the most difficult component steps. Another series of four prompts, ordered from less to more direct assistance, was used to teach the other 161 responses. Subjects progressed to the next more intense prompt level contingent on a failure to respond appropriately with less assistance. A multiple baseline across subjects as well as the six subtasks was employed to evaluate the efficacy of the procedures. Six moderately retarded adolescents were trained in their public school. The results show rapid response acquisition, skill generalization to a second restroom, and maintenance of the newly learned behavior. The present research provides evidence of a model for analyzing and training vocational skills to the mentally retarded.     

Affective communication differences between distressed and nondistressed mother-adolescent dyads

An assessment technique of having mothers and young adolescents describe in brief written form what they like and dislike about each other was evaluated. Distressed dyads (N=38) produced responses that were rated significantly more negative (Demanding, Personal Attack, Anger and Hostility, Complaining About Unfairness or Disrespect) and less positive (Good Relationship, Appreciation of Other, Complimentary, and Enjoyment) than nondistressed dyads (N=40). Evidence of reliability was reported. Ratings of the written responses correlated significantly with independently obtained codings of taperecorded interactions, thus offering support for validity of the method.The authors wish to thank Diane Follingstad and Peter Kilmann for their comments on an earlier draft.     

Recovery from aphasia: Spontaneous speech versus language comprehension

Seventy-four aphasic patients, subdivided into four groups (fluent, mixed, nonfluent, and severely nonfluent), were tested three times in the course of 1 year to assess recovery of spontaneous speech and sentence comprehension. Although 12 of the 28 spontaneous speech variables employed showed significant time changes, some of these changes indicated improvement and others deterioration. There was no overall clinical improvement in spontaneous speech in any group. On the sentence comprehension tests, however, all four groups did show considerable, significant improvement. There were no qualitative or quantitative differences among the groups in the course of recovery, despite the fact that the groups differed in the severity of aphasia as well as on the fluency dimension. In certain patients there was also some improvement in spontaneous speech, but this did not in most cases correlate with an improvement in either fluency or sentence comprehension. Possible reasons why receptive abilities improved more than expressive abilities are discussed.     

A family study of memory processes and their relations to cognitive test scores

Members of 118 families (456 individuals) who had been tested on several measures of cognitive ability were retested on the same battery in order to determine test-retest reliability. They then were administered the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale and tests of visual memory, auditory memory, and figure memory, as well as other measures not discussed herein. Intercorrelations of memory tasks were low to moderate. Factor analysis resulted in a four factor solution. The different factors appeared to represent auditory sequential memory (Factor I); visual memory, as measured psychometrically (Factor II); visual memory, as measured experimentally (Factor III); and figure memory (Factor IV). A second order factor analysis yielded two factors, one consisting of basically psychometric measures of memory and the other of measures of memory obtained in the experimental psychological tradition. Memory measures generally showed low to moderate positive correlations with scores on the cognitive test battery. Significant spouse correlations were found for 3 of the 11 measures of memory. Significant midparent-midchild regressions were found for 9 of the 11 memory measures.     

A maximum likelihood approach to the “test of inclusion”

The method of scoring is used to obtain maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters in the White and Clark learning hierarchy validation model. From the estimate of the proportion of the population possessing only the superordinate skill in a pair of hierarchical skills, and its variance, the hypothesis of inclusion is tested. An illustrative example of the procedure is given.This study is based on doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Ottawa. The author is indebted to Martin Cooper, Marvin Boss and Jean-Paul Dionne for their assistance.     

Discriminative vocal conditioning in rhesus monkeys: Evidence for volitional control?

Both emotional and volitional systems are invoked in explaining the control of human vocalizations, but vocal behavior of nonhuman primates is often believed to be totally under emotional control. Monkeys' poor performance on conditioning tasks, especially discriminative conditioning of vocalization (DCV), has been cited as evidence against volitional control. In Experiment 1, rhesus monkeys failed a DCV task in which food was given for vocalizations emitted during an arbitrary visual stimulus, but in Experiment 2, monkeys showed clear discriminative performance when an otherwise comparable shock-avoidance DCV procedure was used. This evidence that monkeys possess some degree of volitional control has implications for the relation between animal vocalizations and the origin of human speech.