A further examination of project aware: The relationship between teacher behaviors and changes in student behavior

The purpose of the present study was to examine specifically how teacher behaviors influence the effectiveness of a social development program entitled Project AWARE. Thirty-one teachers and two hundred and nine children were included in this study (82 at the primary level and 127 at the intermediate level). Participant teachers were rated in terms of their skill at implementation. For the intermediate grades, those teachers who received the highest skill ratings also tended to report positive changes in their children's behavior over the six months of the study. Those teachers who received the lowest skill ratings tended to report little change in behavior. For the primary grades, similar results were not obtained. Implications of these findings for implementation of classroom programs are discussed.     

The behavioural treatment of sexual inadequacy: A comparative study

Thirty-six couples complaining of sexual difficulties were treated with one of three methods: (1) systematic desensitisation plus counselling. (2) directed practice—based on that of Masters and Johnson—plus counselling. (3) directed practice with minimal contact. Both members of each couple were seen together, but half in each treatment group were treated by a single therapist and half by a therapist pair. Differences in outcome among the groups were not highly significant, but consistent trends were found which suggested that the combination of directed practice and counselling was associated with most change, particularly when two therapists were involved.     

Cognitions related to anxiety: a pilot study of treatment

In general, where anxiety appears to have a specific external focus, such as the situations which are avoided by phobic patients, treatment involving systematic exposure to those situations seems to be effective. This is less appropriate, or even impossible, where anxiety is not dependent on any external circumstance, but is described by the patient as occurring at any time or place, either chronically over long periods, or acutely in the form of ‘panic attacks’. These patients with ‘generalised’ anxiety often describe internal cues for anxiety either in the form of thoughts (e.g. worry over a current problem) or somatic (e.g. chest sensations interpreted as possible heart disease). Beck et al. (1974) has suggested that on interview, all patients diagnosed as suffering from diffuse or generalised anxiety can report specific ideas or other cognitive cues which are associated with anxiety. These usually concern possible traumatic events, such as illness and death, or social rejection. Clearly Beck has in mind the possibility that these cognitions have the effect of inducing anxiety, although even if the validity of the subjective reports were to be accepted, the problem remains of whether the relationship between mood state and cognitions is causal and if so, in which direction it operates. Obviously a causal relationship may also operate in both directions simultaneously, to form a ‘vicious circle’ in which each exacerbates the other. To establish whether there is a sense in which particular cognitions contribute causally to anxious mood, it would be necessary to find a method of manipulating the type or frequency of cognitions thought to be operating in this way.

One obvious possibility is that of ‘thought-stopping’: that is, patients could be taught to identify thoughts which are associated with anxiety and stop them in the usual way (Wolpe, 1973, p. 211) e.g. by' shouting stop, and substituting an alternative thought. The present study was planned as a pilot experiment to determine (i) if appropriate anxiety related cognitions could be elicited from a series of patients with generalised anxiety, (ii) if the reported frequency of such thoughts could be modified by a thought-stopping technique, and (iii) if any changes in thought frequency were associated with improvements in mood.

Clearly there are many ‘non-specific’ features involved in thought-stopping which could also have therapeutic effects on mood. For this reason it was necessary to include an alternative procedure, not directed at reducing thought frequency, but having the same degree of plausibility to patients, and preferably to therapists. The control procedure chosen for this purpose was modelled on desensitisation, in which patients were encouraged to allow the supposedly anxiety-provoking thoughts into their mind and tolerate them, rather than attempt to stop them. In summary, the study employed a relaxation training phase as a base-line, followed by a cross-over design in which the two treatment phases of thought-stopping and ‘cognitive desensitisation’ were given to each patient, in balanced order.     

Infant temperament and performance on the Bayley Scales of Infant Development at 4, 8, and 12 months of age

Infants were assessed with the Rothbart Infant Behavior Questionnaire (an objective measure of infant temperament based on maternal reports) and the complete Bayley Scales of Infant Development (BSID) at 4, 8, and 12 months of age. Activity level was related to BSID performance at each age with babies who obtained higher scores rated as more active. Activity level was also related to the infants' behavior during the test administration at 8 and 12 months. A negative relation was found between smiling and laughter and the mental development index at 8 and 12 months. These data suggest that aspects of infant temperament as assessed by maternal report share a small amount of variance with BSID performance and the amount of shared variance increases with age.     

Differential predictability of females and males

This study examined the existence of sex differences in validity coefficients from a variety of different types of tests. It was found that female validities significantly exceeded male validities by .04 correlational units. When the validities were broken down by predictor categories, no significant differences were observed between males and females on either personality or high school background measures; and female validities exceeded male validities on tests of abstract reasoning, clerical abilities, information, mathematical abilities, verbal abilities, and composite scores from multiple tests. Implications of these findings are discussed.Use of the Michigan State University computing facilities was made possible through support, in part, from the National Science Foundation.