Characteristics of dropouts, remainers, and refusers at a psychosocial rehabilitation program for the chronically mentally disabled

Thirty-eight chronically mentally disabled patients who were invited to join a newly established, vocationally oriented, day treatment program in Raleigh, North Carolina, served as subjects. We attempted to determine whether demographic and psychosocial characteristics significantly differed among groups of clients who dropped out of, remained in, or refused membership in this community-support program. A variety of demographic, expectancy, psychological, and psychosocial measures were administered to each subject. Most significant was the finding that the subjects' perceived level of help and support from friends was a significant determinant of the level of program participation. Those subjects who refused to participate (refusers) perceived themselves as receiving proportionately less support than did members of the other two groups (dropouts and remainers).     

A supervision approach for teaching structural/strategic therapy in a limited setting

Many counselors are currently undergoing a Kuhnian paradigm shift from linear models of behavioral problem conceptualization to systemic conceptual models. As a result, it has become incumbent on counselor-educators to introduce the systems concept of family therapy to their students within a framework that renders it meaningful not only intellectually but also practically. This paper presents one way of doing this successfully with master's level counselors-in-training who have no live families on which to practice. An overview of systems approaches to family therapy is presented along with a seven-stage supervision approach for teaching structural/strategic therapy in limited situations where the supervision of live families is not practical or possible.     

The role of observing and attention in establishing stimulus control.

Early theorists (Skinner, Spence) interpreted discrimination learning in terms of the strengthening of the response to one stimulus and its weakening to the other. But this analysis does not account for the increasing independence of the two performances as training continues or for increases in control by dimensions of a stimulus other than the one used in training. Correlation of stimuli with different densities of reinforcement produces an increase in the behavior necessary to observe them, and greater observing of and attending to the relevant stimuli may account for the increase in control by these stimuli. The observing analysis also encompasses errorless training, and the selective nature of observing explains the feature-positive effect and the relatively shallow gradients of generalization generated by negative discriminative stimuli. The effectiveness of the observing analysis in handling these special cases adds to the converging lines of evidence supporting its integrative power and thus its validity.     

Probability and delay of reinforcement as factors in discrete-trial choice.

Pigeons chose between two alternatives that differed in the probability of reinforcement and the delay to reinforcement. A peck on the red key always produced a delay of 5 s and then a possible reinforcer. The probability of reinforcement for responding on this key varied from .05 to 1.0 in different conditions. A response on the green key produced a delay of adjustable duration and then a possible reinforcer, with the probability of reinforcement ranging from .25 to 1.0 in different conditions. The green-key delay was increased or decreased many times per session, depending on a subject's previous choices. The purpose of these adjustments was to estimate an indifference point, or a delay that resulted in a subject's choosing each alternative about equally often. In conditions where the probability of reinforcement was five times higher on the green key, the green-key delay averaged about 12 s at the indifference point. In conditions where the probability of reinforcement was twice as high on the green key, the green-key delay at the indifference point was about 8 s with high probabilities and about 6 s with low probabilities. An analysis based on these results and those from studies on delay of reinforcement suggests that pigeons' choices are relatively insensitive to variations in the probability of reinforcement between .2 and 1.0, but quite sensitive to variations in probability between .2 and 0.     

An infrared system for the detection of a pigeon''s pecks at alphanumeric characters on a TV screen: the dependency of letter detection on the predictability of one letter by another.

Three pigeons pecked at letters of the alphabet and at the symbol "?" displayed on a computer-driven cathode ray screen. A 4 by 4 matrix of infrared emitting and detecting diodes and associated circuitry identified the location of a pigeon''s responses to the screen. Responses at the target letter T were probabilistically reinforced with food whenever T appeared in a string of three letters in the middle of the screen. Responses at the symbol "?" appearing below this string were probabilistically reinforced whenever T did not appear. The letter F anywhere in the three-character string either strongly predicted the occurrence of the target letter T, in two conditions, or predicted its nonoccurrence, in a third. This manipulation of the frequency with which the familiar letter F predicted T was shown to change the function relating probability of a correct peck at the symbol "?" to the number of Fs in the string. This effect may be interpreted as an instance of the phenomenon where an organism''s acquired knowledge changes what it sees.     

Molecular maximizing characterizes choice on Vaughan's (1981) procedure

Pigeons keypecked on a two-key procedure in which their choice ratios during one time period determined the reinforcement rates assigned to each key during the next period (Vaughan, 1981). During each of four phases, which differed in the reinforcement rates they provided for different choice ratios, the duration of these periods was four minutes, duplicating one condition from Vaughan's study. During the other four phases, these periods lasted six seconds. When these periods were long, the results were similar to Vaughan's and appeared compatible with melioration theory. But when these periods were short, the data were consistent with molecular maximizing (see Silberberg & Ziriax, 1982) and were incompatible with melioration, molar maximizing, and matching. In a simulation, stat birds following a molecular-maximizing algorithm responded on the short- and long-period conditions of this experiment. When the time periods lasted four minutes, the results were similar to Vaughan's and to the results of the four-minute conditions of this study; when the time periods lasted six seconds, the choice data were similar to the data from real subjects for the six-second conditions. Thus, a molecular-maximizing response rule generated choice data comparable to those from the short- and long-period conditions of this experiment. These data show that, among extant accounts, choice on the Vaughan procedure is most compatible with molecular maximizing.     

Differential effects of electroconvulsive shock on concurrent spatial memories: "old" memories are impaired while "new" memories are spared

The effects of electroconvulsive shock (ECS) on spatial memory first reported by Shavalia, Dodge, and Beatty (1981, Behavioral and Neural Biology, 31, 261-273) were systematically replicated in two experiments. Rats acquired concurrent spatial memories in two 8-arm radial mazes. Each rat was allowed four choices in Maze 1 and then, after 2 h, four choices in Maze 2. After 2 h each rat was tested for retention in Maze 1 and, after 2 more h, was tested for retention in Maze 2. A single ECS was administered immediately after the fourth choice in Maze 2. Retention (as measured by accuracy of Choices 5-8) was diminished for Maze 1 but not for Maze 2. In the second experiment, the delay between the retention tests was eliminated (thus holding the ECS-Choice 5 interval constant for the two mazes). Once again retention of Maze 1 was impaired and retention of Maze 2 was spared; that finding suggests that ECS does not proactively affect radial-arm maze performance. The results of a third experiment converge on the same conclusion; ECS failed to reduce levels of spontaneous alternation. Therefore, ECS appears to interfere retroactively with relatively old spatial memories and newly established memories appear to be immune to the amnestic effects of ECS. Implications and various explanations are considered.     

Training and Research in Counselling

Formal counselling training in Britain began with the preparation of school counsellors in universities and relied largely upon American models. Early courses were highly didactic but over the last decade practical and experiential aspects have taken precedence. Basic counselling training has now been extended into the preparation of many workers, voluntary and professional. Counselling research also had academic origins, but has broadened to include many different work settings. Much of the published research has been in the form of surveys of counselling services, but some detailed studies of process are noted. There is a need for research to be increased, and the gap between research and practice shortened, if counselling is to demonstrate its relevance to contemporary needs.