ASSESSMENT OF STIMULUS PREFERENCE AND REINFORCER VALUE WITH PROFOUNDLY RETARDED INDIVIDUALS

We evaluated a procedure for identifying potential reinforcers with profoundly retarded individuals. In Experiment 1, six persons were repeatedly exposed to 16 stimuli, and approach behaviors to each stimulus were used to identify preferred and nonpreferred stimuli. In Experiment 2, we examined the reinforcing properties of preferred and nonpreferred stimuli by delivering them contingently on the occurrence of arbitrarily selected responses. Results revealed that the preferred stimulus conditions typically produced higher rates of responding than did either the baseline or the nonpreferred stimulus conditions, suggesting that the procedure can be used to assess reinforcer value for individuals with limited behavioral repertoires.     

Client Conceptions of Change in Career Development and Career Counseling

This article illustrates the ways in which clients in career counseling think about the types of change in their career lives and about the determinants of change. It is based on an analysis of the interview data of a few adult clients. Two category systems are proposed as representative of the clients' thinking about change in these domains.     

Effects of speaking upon the rate and variability of concurrent finger tapping in children

Tapping rate and variability were measured as 73 normal, right-handed children in Grades 1–4 engaged in speeded unimanual finger tapping with and without concurrent recitation. Speaking reduced the rate of tapping and increased its variability to a greater extent in younger children than in older children. Developmental changes in variability but not rate were attributable to a greater number of lengthy (>500 ms) pauses in the tapping of younger children. Speaking slowed the right hand more than the left, and the degree of this asymmetry was constant across grade levels. The right-hand effect for tapping rate was not attributable to lengthy pauses. In contrast, asymmetric increases in tapping variability occurred only among children in Grade 1 and only when lengthy pauses were included in the data. The results implicate three mechanisms of intertask interference: one involving capacity limitations, a second involving cross-talk between motor control mechanisms for speech and finger movement, respectively, and a third factor involving occasional diversion of attention from tapping to speaking. These mechanisms are discussed in relation to developmental changes in mental capacity.     

Delayed recognition memory for orientation by human infants

The familiarization/novelty preference paradigm was employed to study the effect of a delay (between the end of the familiarization phase and the beginning of the test phase) on discrimination of the orientation of square-wave gratings by 2- and 3-month-old human infants. Three stimulus pairs were studied: horizontal-vertical, non-mirror-image obliques, and mirror-image obliques. The data indicate that the members of the oblique-oblique stimulus pairs are confused in memory to a greater extent than the members of the horizontal-vertical stimulus pair. These findings are consistent with P.C. Bomba's (1984, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 37, 609-636) recent report that infants respond to the orientation of a visual stimulus in a categorical-like manner.     

The effects of sound duration on newborns' head orientation

Two experiments assessed the importance of sound duration for eliciting head orientation responses from newborn infants. In Experiment 1, thirty infants turned with equal frequency toward 20-s continuous rattle sounds and 20-s trains of rattle segments. The duration of the rattle segments--14 and 100 ms (2/s), or 500 ms (1/s)--did not influence the likelihood of turning. Response latencies and durations proved quite similar for all stimuli. In Experiment 2, twenty-four infants heard continuous rattle sounds of four different durations: 1, 5, 10, and 20 s. They turned reliably to all stimulus durations; furthermore, the magnitude and temporal characteristics of head orientation responses did not differ for the four stimulus durations. These results suggest that the newborn's head orientation response may reflect a motor program that is initiated by auditory input and then executed in a similar fashion regardless of further stimulation.     

Sex roles, gender, and fear

Male and female college students classified as masculine, feminine, androgynous, or undifferentiated on the Bem (1974) Sex Role Inventory (N = 199) were given the Wolpe (1969) Fear Inventory. Significant differences in average fear scores were seen between men and women and between the four sex-role categories, with sex role and gender contributing equally to the variability. The argument is raised here that excessive fearfulness or fearlessness might be as much a product of sex-role conditioning as a product of gender.     

Perceived somatotype and stereotypes of physique among Nigerian schoolchildren

The influence of perceived somatotype on stereotypes of behavior associated with body build was investigated among 160 male and 140 female Nigerian children in secondary school. In both groups, the perception of subjects' own physiques and discrepancy between their perceived and preferred physiques significantly explained the variance in the character trait scores attributed to body types. In general, the subjects attributed positive character traits to their perceived somatotypes and undesirable traits to the physiques with which they were dissatisfied. Thus, the perception of somatotype and discrepancy between perceived and preferred physique could significantly differentiate the character traits attributed to body build among male and female children.     

Characteristics of dropouts, remainers, and refusers at a psychosocial rehabilitation program for the chronically mentally disabled

Thirty-eight chronically mentally disabled patients who were invited to join a newly established, vocationally oriented, day treatment program in Raleigh, North Carolina, served as subjects. We attempted to determine whether demographic and psychosocial characteristics significantly differed among groups of clients who dropped out of, remained in, or refused membership in this community-support program. A variety of demographic, expectancy, psychological, and psychosocial measures were administered to each subject. Most significant was the finding that the subjects' perceived level of help and support from friends was a significant determinant of the level of program participation. Those subjects who refused to participate (refusers) perceived themselves as receiving proportionately less support than did members of the other two groups (dropouts and remainers).     

A supervision approach for teaching structural/strategic therapy in a limited setting

Many counselors are currently undergoing a Kuhnian paradigm shift from linear models of behavioral problem conceptualization to systemic conceptual models. As a result, it has become incumbent on counselor-educators to introduce the systems concept of family therapy to their students within a framework that renders it meaningful not only intellectually but also practically. This paper presents one way of doing this successfully with master's level counselors-in-training who have no live families on which to practice. An overview of systems approaches to family therapy is presented along with a seven-stage supervision approach for teaching structural/strategic therapy in limited situations where the supervision of live families is not practical or possible.