EFFECTS OF REINFORCEMENT HISTORY AND INSTRUCTIONS ON THE PERSISTENCE OF STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

We examined the effects of three reinforcement histories on the persistence of task engagement by 2 fourth-grade students using a partially counterbalanced ABCDBCD design. In each condition, an experimenter made four student contacts during the first 2 min of each session (reinforcement baseline), followed by an 8-min extinction period. The reinforcement history that contained an instructional control component produced the greatest persistence in student engagement. The applied relevance of instructional control is discussed.     

The Effect of Information Format and Performance Pattern on Performance Appraisal Judgments in a Computerized Performance Monitoring Context1

This paper examines how the presentation of computer-monitored performance information affects performance judgments. Two factors were examined: the performance pattern and the information format. In a computer simulation, subjects were responsible for evaluating the performance of a computer-monitored typist. They were assigned to one of three format conditions: a periodic, delayed, or summarized format. The pattern of the typist's performance was also varied: It either improved, worsened, or remained about the same during the simulation. Results indicate that performance pattern affected subjects' ratings of overall performance, performance quality, and performance consistency. Both factors influenced ratings of future performance and recall of specific performance information. Implications of these results for performance appraisals and computerized performance monitoring systems are discussed.     

EFFECTS OF A VOICE OUTPUT COMMUNICATION AID ON INTERACTIONS BETWEEN SUPPORT PERSONNEL AND AN INDIVIDUAL WITH MULTIPLE DISABILITIES

We evaluated a means of increasing staff members' interactions with an individual with multiple disabilities through use of a voice output communication aid (VOCA). When activated, the VOCA allowed the individual to communicate through synthesized speech. Results indicated that staff members interacted with the individual more frequently when she had access to the VOCA, suggesting that VOCAs may represent an alternative to more traditional staff management programs for increasing interactions.     

Division of labor in conversations: Are Fishman's results replicable and generalizable?

Fishman's (1978a) conclusion that women do the bulk of the support work in their conversations with male partners has had widespread appeal. In this article, we present the results of two studies designed to assess the generalizability and replicability of her findings. In Study 1. the get-acquainted conversations of 20 mixed-sex, 10 male same-sex, and 10 female same-sex dyads were analyzed for the support strategies identified by Fishman. No support for a sexual division of labor was found. In Study 2, we analyzed the casual, at-home conversations of 17 intimate male-female couples. Again, we found no evidence that the women used more of the support strategies than their male partners. Rather, our findings suggest that the women may have helped to sustain the conversations with their male partners simply by talking more. The appeal of Fishman's conclusions in the absence of empirical evidence suggests that she has touched on a mythic truth.This article is based on a Master's thesis by the second author (Study 1) and an Honour's thesis by the third author (Study 2) under the supervision of the first author.     

Can skilled performers readily change technique? An example, conventional to wave action breaststroke

There has been a paucity of research that has investigated whether skilled performers of a complex sports skill can readily change their technique. This study was designed to investigate whether swimmers skilled in the conventional breaststroke technique could adjust readily to the wave action technique. Nine masters swimmers with well established and stable movement patterns for the conventional technique were coached in the wave action breaststroke technique. The swimmers were videotaped from the side during maximum speed trials of the conventional breaststroke technique before coaching and the wave action technique after ten 45-minute coaching sessions. The amplitude and phase of the waveforms comprising the vertical displacements of the body parts were determined by Fourier analysis. In response to the coaching, the amplitude of the fundamental frequency of the vertex of the head, shoulders, hips, and knees increased significantly (p < 0.01). The percentage of power contained in the fundamental frequency of the shoulder and hip vertical displacements also increased significantly (p < 0.01). All subjects changed the relative phase of the fundamental frequencies of the vertex, shoulder, and hip vertical displacements. It was concluded that in this complex skill, major changes to the low frequency waveforms comprising the motion were achieved readily.     

“mother is not holding competely respect”: Making social sense of schizophrenic writing

This paper provides a phenomenological account of the writing of a young woman diagnosed with schizophrenia. The method of interpretation is to put ourselves in the place of the author drawing upon a combination of sympathy, reason, common-sense, experience, and “an intersubjective world, common to us all” (Schutz, 1945: 536). The result is the recognition of the person as also capable of putting herself in the place of others so as to understand their behavior. This “role-taking success” identifies the limits of the current sociological understanding of insanity's significance in social interaction as an instance of “role-taking failure” (Rosenberg, 1992). The very appearance of a piece of writing often permits one to recognize the presence of schizophrenia. The use of space may be quite bizarre. The varying margins betray the writer's changing mood. The letter may start at the bottom or side of the paper or very close to the top .... Capital letters and all letters are employed without any apparent rules, the former even in the middle of a word. (Bleuler, 1950: 159) What we want to understand is not something hidden behind the text, but something disclosed in front of it. (Ricoeur, 1971: 557) Why do we need an art of guessing? Why do we have to “construe” the meaning? Not only — as I tried to say a few years ago — because language is metaphorical and because the double meaning of metaphorical language requires an art of deciphering which tends to unfold the several layers of meaning.... [But also] because [a text] is not a mere sequence of sentences, all on an equal footing and separately understandable. A text is a whole, a totality. (Ricoeur, 1971: 548)     

Socialization influences of collegiate female athletes: A tale of two decades

Over the past decade, sport participation opportunities for females have increased dramatically. The purposes of this study were to compare perceptions of encouragement and support from socializing agents for: (a) female collegiate volleyball players competing during the 1979 and 1989 seasons, and (b) female collegiate athletes and female and male nonathletes. Female athletes (n= 345), female nonathletes (n= 128), and male nonathletes (n= 88) completed a questionnaire to assess significant others' influence on sport involvement during childhood, adolescence, and college years. Results indicated that interest and encouragement by parents, older siblings, and friends significantly increased for female athletes over the past 10 years during one or more developmental period. Discriminant analyses revealed that female athletes perceived stronger influences from mother, siblings, friends, and coaches than did male and female nonathletes. These results demonstrate that female athletes received greater social support than their peers a decade earlier, and these influences were significantly different than male and female nonathletes. This study was supported by a grant awarded to the first author by the Center for the Study of Women in Society, University of Oregon, Eugene.     

Use of a computer-controlled firearms training simulator in perception response time experiments

This paper describes the use of a custom-configured computer-controlled firearms training simulator to measure perception response (reaction) time (RT) to a stimulus in which the degree of threat presented is a manipulable variable across trials. The computer records the number of frames of videotape traversed between the point of presentation of the threat in the video stimulus and the point at which the subject responds by drawing the firearm. For the purposes of data analysis, these frame-count measures are converted to RT measurements. Example data are presented that capture perception RT at both thedraw-stimulus and thefire-stimulus points in situations for which either only one threat or more than one threat exists. Other elements, such as degree of threat and accuracy of response, provide additional data.     

Discrimination of auditory temporal patterns

Two same-different discrimination experiments were performed for click patterns having a total duration of about 4 sec and interclick intervals ofn × 250 msec, withn a random integer. In Experiment 1, the influence of the physical click group structure on discrimination performance was investigated. In Experiment 2, the effect of the strength of an induced internal clock on discrimination performance was measured. Performance was poor if the group structure of clicks was maintained during a change in click pattern and also if the induced infernal clack strength was low. The performance of about 70% of the subjects improved significantly if either a change in click grouping structure occurred or a strong internal clock could be induced. These results cannot be accounted for with simple models based an single-interval duration discrimination or between-pattern correlation statistics.     

Relevant implication and the case for a weaker logic

We collect together some misgivings about the logic R of relevant inplication, and then give support to a weak entailment logic DJ^d. The misgivings centre on some recent negative results concerning R, the conceptual vacuousness of relevant implication, and the treatment of classical logic. We then rectify this situation by introducing an entailment logic based on meaning containment, rather than meaning connection, which has a better relationship with classical logic. Soundness and completeness results are proved for DJ^d with respect to a content semantics, which embraces the concept of meaning containment.Dedicated to Robert K. Meyer on the occasion of his 60th birthdayThis paper was presented to the Australasian Association for Logic Conference, A.N.U., Canberra, in July, 1992. This Conference commemorated the 60th birthday of Robert K. Meyer, in recognition of the enormous contribution he has made to Logic, especially to Relevant Logic, and of the general lift he has given to the field in his adopted country, Australia. This paper owes its inspiration to Robert Meyer's Farewell to Entailment [37] and his earlier Why I am not a Relevantist [35]. This paper also owes a great deal to Richard Sylvan who has consistently supported weaker relevant logics at a time when stronger relevant logics were in vogue (see especially [47], Chapter 3). In writing this paper, I have also benefited from conversations with Nuel Belnap, Michael Dunn, Kit Fine and Alasdair Urquhart during a period of study leave in 1991. I also thank Robert Meyer, Michael Dunn, Martin Bunder and John Slaney for useful comments on my conference paper. I would also like to thank the referees of this Journal for their helpful comments, which led me to make substantial improvements to this paper.