DO INFANTS SHOW GENERALIZED IMITATION OF GESTURES? II. THE EFFECTS OF SKILLS TRAINING AND MULTIPLE EXEMPLAR MATCHING TRAINING

The determinants of generalized imitation of manual gestures were investigated in 1‐ to 2‐year‐old infants. Eleven infants were first trained eight baseline matching relations; then, four novel gestures that the infants did not match in probe trials were selected as target behaviors. Next, in a generalized imitation test in which matching responses to baseline models were intermittently reinforced, but matching responses to target models were not eligible for reinforcement, the infants matched baseline models but not the majority of their target behaviors. To ensure their failure to match the target behaviors was not due to motor constraints, the infants were trained, in a multiple‐baseline procedure, to produce the target responses under stimulus control that did not include an antecedent model of the target behavior. There was no evidence of generalized imitation in subsequent tests. When the infants were next trained to match each target behavior to criterion (tested in extinction) in a multiple‐baseline‐across‐behaviors procedure, only 2 infants continued to match all their targets in subsequent tests; the remaining infants matched only some of them. Seven infants were next given mixed matching training with the target behaviors to criterion (tested in extinction); they subsequently matched these targets without reinforcement when interspersed with trials on which matching responses to baseline models were intermittently reinforced. In repeat tests, administered at 3‐week intervals, these 7 children (and 2 that did not take part in mixed matching training) continued to match most of their target behaviors. The results support a trained matching account, but provide no evidence of generalized imitation, in 1‐ to 2‐year‐old infants.     

Community reforestation in the Philippines: An evaluation of community contracts

Concern over massive losses of tropical forest in the Philippines has led to a reforestation program that includes contracts with local community organizations. Two projects are evaluated with respect to the objectives of the program, which were: to reverse deforestation and environmental degradation; to improve the well-being of communities by increasing income opportunities; and, to ensure a sustainable forest-based economic sector. The evaluation, first undertaken four years into the program, was based on information from a variety of sources, including the local community. The assessment highlights the importance of on-going community participation and identifies significant obstacles to meeting the program’s objectives.     

Source credibility,attitudes, and the recall of past behaviours

The hypothesis that individuals' memory for their past behaviours may be biased toward apparent consistency with their current attitudes was tested by exposing subjects to a message that argued against frequent toothbrushing. Some subjects believed that the source of this message was an expert (high credibility condition), whereas other subjects learned after the message that the speaker was misinformed (low credibility condition). Subjects in the high credibility condition expressed less favourable attitudes toward toothbrushing and reported that they had brushed their teeth less often in the preceding four weeks than did subjects in the low credibility condition. A three-week follow-up showed that the attitudinal difference was still significant but that estimates of past toothbrushing did not differ reliably between the two conditions. The results suggest that when attitudes are very salient, they increase the accessibility of consistent behaviours in memory.     

The role of anxiety in the Career Decision Making of liberal arts students

Liberal arts students (N = 341) completed parallel halves of the A-State portion of the State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-S) before and after completion of either a career-planning questionnaire consisting largely of Harren's Assessment of Career Decision-Making (ACDM) instrument (treatment group) or a set of consumer preference marketing questions (control group). As hypothesized, the treatment group showed an increase in post-test anxiety as compared to pretest responses; level of expressed anxiety in the control group pre- and post-test did not change significantly. Additionally, state anxiety (at both points in time) in the treatment group was found to relate to most of the ACDM measures operationalizing the career-planning model of Harren and his associates, thus confirming that anxiety is both another indicator of student lack of success in the career planning process and a justifiable extension of their model. Anxiety was found to relate more weakly to specific career concerns, suggesting that students are not fully aware of the source(s) of their anxiousness. Further, two key scales from Harren's model (dependent decision-making style and occupational commitment) were found to be related to specific career concerns, indicating that those measures are reftective of actual student concerns in successful career planning. Further research should seek to demonstrate the development of these relationships between career planning and anxiety over time.     

Intervention and sleeper effects: A reply to Clarke and Clarke

The evolution of the concept of “sleeper effects” is traced from the work of C. I. Hovland, A. A. Lumsdaine, and F. D. Sheffield, Experiments on Mass Communication. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1949, to the present time. The concept originally referred to the delayed emergence of attitude change in persuasibility research. It has also been used in developmental investigations, with attendant theoretical problems that have not been fully addressed. These problems are examined, with the recommendation that the social psychologist's sleeper effect should be modified to meet developmental needs and renamed “delayed treatment effects”. Such effects are highly relevant to recent findings from studies of early childhood intervention programs.     

Infants and I scales: Inferring change from the ordinal stimulus selections of infants for configural stimuli

The analysis of I-scale preference orders of 71 infants 2 to 9 months old to four face-like stimuli suggested a common J-scale stimulus ordering for each of the four age groups. Changes in I-scale frequencies were used as a measure of age-related changes in preference orders. Results revealed no change in preference for the age period studied. Together with other data these results suggest an ageinvariant preference for organized face-like forms from at least as early as five weeks through 9 months. This finding is at variance with some theoretical expectations. A Thurstone analysis is provided as a contrast to the J-scale analysis. Assumptions of different data analyses are considered as the basis for varying results reported in the literature.     

Physical Attractiveness,Dangerousness, and the Canadian Criminal Code1

The Canadian Criminal Code contains provisions for labelling certain convicted criminal offenders as Dangerous Offenders. Sentences of indefinite duration are usually imposed on these offenders in place of the fixed sentences that would normally be imposed. The present study examined one potential source of bias in the use of the Dangerous Offender provisions, the physical attractiveness of an offender. Two hundred and eighty-four adults were given information about a hypothetical offender, including a facial photograph and a conviction record. They responded to questions about the dangerousness of the offender, including questions drawn from the Dangerous Offender criteria. Subjects perceived physically unattractive sexual offenders as significantly more likely to fulfill the Dangerous Offender criteria than average-looking and attractive sexual offenders. In particular, unattractive sexual offenders were seen as significantly less likely to restrain their behavior in the future. In light of the fact that there is currently no evidence that physical attractiveness is a valid predictor of sexual offender recidivism, this finding provides grounds to question whether the Dangerous Offender provisions of the Canadian Criminal Code, as they now stand, can be administered impartially.