An outcome management program for extending advances in choice research into choice opportunities for supported workers with severe multiple disabilities

We evaluated an outcome management program for increasing choice opportunities provided by 2 job coaches for 5 supported workers with severe multiple disabilities in a community job. The program involved specifying and monitoring behavioral outcomes among workers and staff, training staff, and supportive and corrective feedback. Increased choice provision occurred for both job coaches across a 1-year period. Results indicate how outcome management can help translate advances in choice research into routine practice.     

How I feel: a self-report measure of emotional arousal and regulation for children

This article details the development and preliminary validation of a multidimensional self-report measure of emotion for 8- to 12-year-old children--the How I Feel (HIF). Item generation and selection occurred via 2 pilot administrations (ns = 250 and 378, respectively). Ten experts provided data on content validity. Exploratory factor analysis and subsequent confirmatory factor analysis with samples of 406, 524, 349, and 349 3rd-through 6th-grade children supported a 3-factor model, including the frequency and intensity of (a) positive emotion, (b) negative emotion, and (c) positive and negative emotion control. Results showed moderate longitudinal stability for 120 children over 2 years. Concurrent validity was established. The HIF can be useful in understanding the interplay between arousal and control in social-emotional adjustment in school-age children.     

Perception of /r/ and /l/ in a stop cluster: evidence of cross-modal context effects

Experiments were conducted investigating unimodal and cross-modal phonetic context effects on /r/ and /l/ identifications to test a hypothesis that context effects arise in early auditory speech processing. Experiment 1 demonstrated an influence of a preceding bilabial stop consonant on the acoustic realization of /r/ and /l/ produced within the stop clusters /ibri/ and /ibli/. In Experiment 2, members of an acoustic /iri/ to /ili/ continuum were paired with an acoustic /ibi/. These dichotic tokens were associated with an increase in "l" identification relative to the /iri/ to /ili/ continuum. In Experiment 3, the /iri/ to /ili/ tokens were dubbed onto a video of a talker saying /ibi/. This condition was associated with a reliable perceptual shift relative to an auditory-only condition in which the /iri/ to /ili/ tokens were presented by themselves, ruling out an account of these context effects as arising during early auditory processing.     

How young children spend their time: television and other activities.

Time-use diaries were collected over a 3-year period for 2 cohorts of 2- and 4-year-old children. TV viewing declined with age. Time spent in reading and educational activities increased with age on weekdays but declined on weekends. Time-use patterns were sex-stereotyped, and sex differences increased with age. As individuals' time in educational activities, social interaction, and video games increased, their time watching entertainment TV declined, but time spent playing covaried positively with entertainment TV. Educational TV viewing was not related to time spent in non-TV activities. Maternal education and home environment quality predicted frequent viewing of educational TV programs and infrequent viewing of entertainment TV. The results do not support a simple displacement hypothesis; the relations of TV viewing to other activities depend on the program content, the nature of the competing activity, and the environmental context.     

Recognition Memory for Faces: Reliability and Validity of the Warrington Recognition Memory Test (RMT) in a Neurological Sample

In response to critiques regarding the psychometric limitations of the Warrington Recognition Memory Test for faces (RMT-F), the current study was conducted to examine the test-retest reliability and validity of the measure in a neurological sample. Forty adult outpatients, ages 35–81, were administered the RMT-F as part of their diagnostic exam. A second evaluation was conducted after an average interval of 7 months (range = 2–20 months). Results yielded a Pearson reliability coefficient of 0.81 (p < .001), indicating a clinically satisfactory index of stability. Correlations with other measures were conducted to examine convergent and divergent validity. Results indicate that the facial component of the RMT has adequate reliability for patients with established neurological disease, shows moderate correlations with other measures of complex visuospatial function, and shows no significant correlation with measures of verbal reasoning, visual problem-solving, or verbal fluency. These findings provide additional support for the clinical efficacy of this instrument for use in a diverse neurological patient sample.     

Conduct Disorder in Girls: A Review of the Literature

The study of Conduct Disorder (CD) has primarily been limited to boys. The lack of research resulted from a premise that CD in girls was rare. However, CD in girls is a relatively common psychiatric diagnosis, and appears to be associated with several serious outcomes, such as Antisocial Personality Disorder and early pregnancy. Understanding gender differences in the course and severity of CD may lead to important information about etiology. Empirical studies on precursors, developmental course, risk factors and treatment for CD in girls are reviewed, while highlighting similarities and differences between girls and boys. Generally, CD symptoms in girls are stable. Precursors to CD in girls probably include Oppositional Defiant Disorder and temperamental factors, but also may include certain negative cognitions. What distinguishes CD in girls is the high risk they have to develop comorbid conditions, especially internalizing disorders. Risk factors for CD in girls partly overlap with those known for boys, but some factors appear to be highly salient for girls. Finally, there may be some significant effects of gender on treatment efficacy. Implications of these findings for future etiologic research are discussed.     

A discrimination analysis of training-structure effects on stimulus equivalence outcomes.

Experiments designed to establish stimulus equivalence classes frequently produce differential outcomes that may be attributable to training structure, defined as the order and arrangement of baseline conditional discrimination training trials. Several possible explanations for these differences have been suggested. Here we develop a hypothesis based on an analysis of the simple simultaneous and successive discriminations embedded in conditional discrimination training and testing within each of the training structures that are typically used in stimulus equivalence experiments. Our analysis shows that only the comparison-as-node (many-to-one) structure presents all the simple discriminations in training that are subsequently required for consistently positive outcomes on all tests for the properties of equivalence. The sample-as-node (one-to-many) training structure does not present all the simple discriminations required for positive outcomes on either the symmetry or combined transitivity and symmetry (equivalence) tests. The linear-series training structure presents all the simple discriminations required for consistently positive outcomes on tests for symmetry, but not for symmetry and transitivity combined (equivalence) or transitivity alone. Further, the difference in the number of simple discriminations presented in comparison-as-node training versus the other training structures is larger when the intended class size is greater than three or the number of classes is larger than two. We discuss the relevance of this analysis to interpretations of stimulus equivalence research, as well as some methodological and theoretical implications.     

“Why My Child?”: Parental Attributions for Children's Special Needs1

Although research exists on how attributions for traumatic life events are related to adjustment, little has focused on parents’ attributions for their children's special needs. Parents were interviewed twice over 1 year about their attributions for their children's special needs. We used parents’ open-ended responses during the initial interview to construct a ratings survey for the second interview. Parents of children with Down's syndrome made attributions to genetic fluke, age, and fate/God's will; parents of autistic children made attributions to heredity and environment; parents of developmentally delayed children made attributions to medical problems and stress during pregnancy. Self-blame attributions and attributions to the environment were related to worse adjustment, whereas attributions to fate/God's will were related to better adjustment. Implications for family interventions and physicians are discussed.     

Amount of reward has opposite effects on the discounting of delayed and probabilistic outcomes

Previous research has shown that the value of large future rewards is discounted less steeply than is the value of small future rewards. These experiments extended this line of research to probabilistic rewards. Two experiments replicated the standard findings for delayed rewards but demonstrated that amount has an opposite effect on the discounting of probabilistic rewards. That is, large probabilistic amounts were discounted at the same or higher rates than small amounts. Although amount had opposite effects on the discounting of delayed and probabilistic rewards, nevertheless, the same form of mathematical function accurately described discounting of both types of reward. The findings suggest that fundamentally similar, but not identical, processes are involved in decision making regarding delayed and probabilistic rewards. The implications of these findings for impulsivity and self-control are discussed.