Pastoral counseling among Chinese churches: a Canadian study

This article reports the results of a survey of Canadian Chinese pastors (N 20) regarding their experiences and attitudes related to pastoral counseling. It identifies common concerns encountered during pastoral counseling, as well as key areas of church concerns. Results of the survey indicate that pastoral counseling may be more important than is currently recognized by Chinese pastors, particularly in key areas of marriage, family life, and general relationship issues. The authors discuss possible implications of the survey relative to training and equipping Chinese pastors to engage more in pastoral counseling as an integral part of their parish ministry.     

Direct and Nondirect Communication of Maternal Beliefs to Adolescents: Adolescent Motivations for Premarital Sexual Activity1

Communication between mothers and adolescents about premarital sexual intercourse was studied in the context of a model of maternal influence on the formation of adolescent beliefs about sexual behavior. Two different forms of maternal influence were explored: (a) direct communication, and (b) indirect transmission of maternal orientations. Respondents were 751 inner-city, African American adolescents (ages 14 to 17) and their mothers. Results indicated that adolescent motivations were related to their sexual behavior, and that maternal beliefs about sex were predictive of those motivations, independent of reports of the amount of communication that had taken place. These data are consistent with a model that underscores multiple mechanisms by which parents influence adolescent sexual behavior over and above direct communication.     

ON THE EFFECTS OF NONCONTINGENT DELIVERY OF DIFFERING MAGNITUDES OF REINFORCEMENT

We conducted a parametric analysis of response suppression associated with different magnitudes of noncontingent reinforcement (NCR). Participants were 5 adults with severe or profound mental retardation who engaged in a manual response that was reinforced on variable-ratio schedules during baseline. Participants were then exposed to NCR via multielement and reversal designs. The fixed-time schedules were kept constant while the magnitude of the reinforcing stimulus was varied across three levels (low, medium, and high). Results showed that high-magnitude NCR schedules produced large and consistent reductions in response rates, medium-magnitude schedules produced less consistent and smaller reductions, and low-magnitude schedules produced little or no effect on responding. These results suggest that (a) NCR affects responding by altering an establishing operation (i.e., attenuating a deprivation state) rather than through extinction, and (b) magnitude of reinforcement is an important variable in determining the effectiveness of NCR.     

USING NUMBER LINE PROCEDURES AND PEER TUTORING TO IMPROVE THE MATHEMATICS COMPUTATION OF LOW-PERFORMING FIRST GRADERS

Recommendations for mathematics instruction frequently include the use of manipulatives as a critical component. There are few experimental analyses of teaching strategies involving the use of manipulatives (e.g., the number line). This investigation used a multiple baseline design across three groups of students to examine the effectiveness of an experimental procedure for improving low-performing children's skills in solving missing addend arithmetic problems using the number line. To address concerns about inadequate time for instruction and insufficient practice in most mathematics instruction, trained peer tutors implemented the procedure. The results suggest that student performance improved when trained tutors taught the students number line procedures and gave them feedback on accuracy. Further, social validation data indicate that the students, their tutors, and their classroom teachers liked the procedures.     

Detecting phonemes and letters in text: Interactions between different types and levels of processes

In six experiments, subjects detected phonemes or letters in text presented auditorily or visually. Experiments 1 and 2 provided support for the hypothesis that a mismatch between the phoneme and letter representations of a target leads to detection errors. In addition, visual word unitization processes were implicated. Experiments 3 and 4 provided support for the hypothesis that the Gestalt goodness of pattern affected detection errors when subjects searched for letters. Experiments 5 and 6 demonstrated that the effects of unitization on the detection of letters in common words were decreased by altering the familiar configuration of the test words. The combined results of all six experiments lead to the conclusion that both visual and phonetic processes influence letter detection, that these processes communicate through a type of cross-checking, and that there are at least two levels of visual (and perhaps of phonetic) processing involved in the letter detection task.     

The effects of delayed reinforcement on free-operant responding

In previous studies of delayed reinforcement, response rate has been found to vary inversely with the response-reinforcer interval. However, in all of these studies the independent variable, response-reinforcer time, was confounded with the number of reinforcers presented in a fixed period of time (reinforcer frequency). In the present study, the frequency of available reinforcers was held constant, while temporal separation between response and reinforcer was independently manipulated. A repeating time cycle, T, was divided into two alternating time periods, t^D and t^Δ. The first response in t^D was reinforced at the end of the prevailing T cycle and extinction prevailed in t^Δ. Two placements for t^D were defined, an early t^D placement in which t^D precedes t^Δ and a late t^D placement in which t^D follows t^Δ. The duration of the early and late t^D was systematically decreased from 30 seconds (i.e., t^D = T) to 0.1 second. Manipulation of t^D placement and duration controlled the temporal separation between response and reinforcement, but it did not affect the frequency of programmed reinforcers, which was 1/T. The results show that early and late t^D placements of equal duration have similar overall effects upon response rate, reinforcer frequency, responses per reinforcer, and obtained response-reinforcer temporal separation. A stepwise regression analysis using log response rate as the dependent variable showed that the obtained delay was a significant first-step variable for six of eight subjects, with obtained reinforcer frequency significant for the remaining two subjects.     

Teaching behavior analysts in an early intensive behavioral intervention setting to conduct a structured mealtime protocol

Children with autism spectrum disorder often display feeding problems, such as consumption of a limited variety of foods. It is also common for these children to be enrolled in early intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI) services for comprehensive treatment. Combined, these factors make it possible that behavior analysts will have a role in a child's clinical care related to feeding. However, given that the etiology of pediatric feeding disorders is complex and multifactorial, clinicians should ensure they have sufficient training and a setting that is appropriate for assessment and treatment. Therefore, we evaluated the effects of behavioral skills training in an EIBI setting to conduct a structured mealtime protocol. Training resulted in increases in procedural integrity, and we replicated these effects for all participants.     

Seeking harmony in Chinese families: A dyadic analysis on Chinese parent‒child relations

Based on Leung, Koch, and Lu’s (2002) dualistic harmony model, we examined the relations of two harmony‐seeking behaviors—harmony enhancement and disintegration avoidance—to family functioning among 177 Hong Kong Chinese adolescent?parent dyads. Structural equation modeling results showed that adolescent‐rated harmony enhancement was positively related to adolescent‐rated family functioning whereas parent‐rated harmony enhancement was positively related to parent‐rated family functioning. Disintegration avoidance, however, was not related to family functioning in the two samples. Furthermore, no significant cross‐path association between harmony‐seeking behaviors and family functioning was identified, meaning that the harmony‐seeking behaviors of adolescents and their parents did not relate to each other’s perception of family functioning. Implications of these findings to our understanding of family in Chinese culture are discussed.