Object individuation in young infants: Further evidence with an event-monitoring paradigm

Recent results indicate that, when tested with an event-monitoring task, 7.5- and 9.5-month-olds give evidence that they can individuate objects in different-objects occlusion events – events in which two distinct objects appear successively on either side of an occluder (Wilcox and Baillargeon, in press). The present research sought to confirm and extend these findings. The experiments examined 7.5- and 4.5-month-olds’ ability to correctly interpret a different-objects (ball-box condition) and a same-object (ball-ball condition) occlusion event. The infants in the ball-box condition saw a test event in which a ball disappeared behind the left edge of a screen; after a pause, a box emerged from behind the screen's right edge. For half of the infants (wide-screen event), the screen was wide and could occlude the ball and box simultaneously; for the other infants (narrow-screen event), the screen was narrow and should not have been able to occlude the ball and box at the same time. The infants in the ball-ball condition saw identical wide- and narrow-screen events except that the ball appeared on both sides of the screen. The infants in the ball-box condition looked reliably longer at the narrow- than at the wide-screen event, whereas those in the ball-ball condition tended to look equally at the events. These results suggest that the ball-box infants (a) were led by the featural differences between the ball and box to view them as distinct objects; (b) judged that the ball and box could both be occluded by the wide but not the narrow screen; and (c) were surprised in the narrow-screen event when this judgment was violated. In contrast, the ball-ball infants (a) assumed, based on the featural similarities of the balls that appeared on either side of the screen, that they were one and the same ball, and (b) realized that the ball could be occluded by either the wide or the narrow screen. These results indicate that, by 4.5 months of age, infants are able to use featural information to correctly interpret different-objects and same-object occlusion events. These findings are discussed in the context of the newly-drawn distinction between event-monitoring and event-mapping paradigms (Wilcox and Baillargeon, in press).     

Teaching young adults with developmental disabilities and visual impairments to use tape-recorded recipes: Acquisition,generalization, and maintenance of cooking skills

Three young adults with developmental disabilities and visual impairments were taught to prepare three different recipes using tape-recorded instructions. Following instruction on each trained recipe, generality probes to untrained recipes were conducted. A multiple baseline across behaviors (recipes) design was used to determine the extent to which each student's preparation of untrained recipes improved as a function of being trained to prepare related recipes by using a self-operated audio prompting system. Results showed that students' cooking skills acquired through instruction on the trained recipes generalized (a) to untrained recipes requiring similar skills (simple generality) and (b) to more complex untrained recipes requiring a combination of skills learned during the instruction of two trained recipes (complex generality).     

Competitive behavior: A manifestation of motivation for ability comparison

Social comparison theory predicts that when the person is uncertain about the level of his ability, he may seek comparison information through competitive behavior. This derivation, however, has never been directly tested. An experiment is reported in which the level of the subject's uncertainty about his competence was manipulated and subsequent measures of his competitive motivation and behavior were obtained. The data indicate that higher levels of uncertainty do lead to higher levels of motivation and competition, but only under conditions that minimize threat to self-esteem.     

AN ANALYSIS OF ERROR-CORRECTION PROCEDURES DURING DISCRIMINATION TRAINING

Mechanisms involved in error-correction procedures during behavioral acquisition were examined. Seven developmentally delayed subjects participated in match-to-sample discrimination training, consisting of three conditions arranged in a multielement design. Correct responses in all conditions were followed by praise and either food or pennies. In the baseline condition (differential reinforcement), an error produced no consequences. In the practice condition, an error was followed by repetition of the trial until a correct response occurred. In the avoidance condition, an error was followed by additional trials consisting of irrelevant stimuli; this condition separated the effects of repeated exposure to the same task from those of negative reinforcement, both of which existed in the practice condition. All 7 subjects made noticeable progress in the baseline condition. However, 5 of the 7 performed better in one of the error-correction conditions: 2 performed better in the practice condition, and 3 performed better in the avoidance condition. These data indicate that error-correction procedures may serve multiple functions and suggest that the practice requirement in this study included both avoidance and stimulus control components. More generally, the data indicate that additional control procedures should be included in acquisition studies to identify the relevant behavioral mechanism(s).     

Mothers' beliefs about listening: Implications for children's comprehension and conceptions of listening

Forty-four mothers offered their beliefs about listening and methods for encouraging listening in their 3- to 5-year-old children. Children's comprehension performance and conceptions of listening were also obtained. Mother perceived themselves as the primary agent responsible for children's development of basic listening competencies, such as figuring out the main point of what someone said to them, not interrupting others, and asking a question of the speaker when confused. Children who had strong comprehension skills had mothers who believed that listening is a complex set of activities, emphasized their own responsibility in ensuring that their children develop basic listening competencies, stressed comprehension processes and question asking in their conceptions of listening and in their techniques for enhancing children's listening, and began reading to their children at an early age.     

Retrieval processes in perceptual recognition and cued recall: The influence of category size

The purpose of these experiments was to determine whether nonsemantic category size and other variables would influence perceptual recognition as they influence cued recall. Procedures developed by Jacoby and his associates were replicated with words belonging to either small or large nonsemantic categories and with recognition tested under bright-target/patterned-mask conditions. The results indicated that words belonging to larger nonsemantic sets were more difficult to identify. This finding and the results of other manipulations are discussed in relation to the interactive activation model and to the proposal that perceptual recognition performance is dependent on a retrieval process similar to that involved in recall prompted by nonsemantic cues.     

Guilt assessment after retracted voluntary and coerced-compliant confessions in combination with exculpatory or ambiguous evidence

We investigated how voluntary confessions, coerced-compliant confessions, and no-confessions influenced guilt assessments in combination with other exculpatory or ambiguous evidence. In three experiments (total N = 808), participants studied case information and provided guilt assessments. As expected, in Experiment 1 and 2a, (i) voluntary confessions to protect a family member elicited stronger guilt attributions than no-confessions and (ii) ambiguous evidence led to stronger guilt attributions than exculpatory evidence. In Experiment 2b, voluntary confessions to protect a group-member (but not to protect a family-member) elicited stronger guilt attributions than no-confessions. Exculpatory eyewitness evidence elicited stronger guilt attributions than exculpatory DNA evidence and participants assigned more weight to exculpatory DNA than eyewitness evidence. Participants were able to discount coerced-compliant confessions when they received information about the interrogations (Experiments 2a/b), but did not consistently consider risk factors for (voluntary) false confessions outside the interrogation room when assessing guilt.     

Stories of Life Transition: Subjective Well-Being and Ego Development in Parents of Children with Down Syndrome

Eighty-seven parents of children with Down Syndrome (DS; 63 women, 24 men) wrote narratives about finding out that their child had DS and completed questionnaire measures of subjective well-being (SWB) and stress-related growth and completed the Sentence Completion Test as a measure of ego development. Forty-two of these individuals participated in a follow-up 2 years later. Foreshadowing and happy endings in the stories were related to heightened SWB at both time periods. Evidence of accommodative change—actively experiencing a paradigmatic shift—was related to stress-related growth and ego development at both time periods. A high sense of closure and accommodation in the stories was associated with the highest levels of stress-related growth. Implications for research on well-being and personal growth are discussed.     

Introducing SYPRENE: An International Practice Research Network for Strategic and Systemic Therapists and Researchers

SYPRENE, a new international Systemic Practice Research Network (PRN), has been established to fill the gap in practice-based research on the effectiveness and efficiency of strategic therapies. This article presents the rationale for the creation of SYPRENE and describes data collection methods, and the encoding system implemented within this PRN. More developments are expected in the recruitment of practitioners, the types of data collected, findings, and the implementation of SYPRENE in supervision, trainings, and professional schools.