Increasing Students' Scientific Creativity: The “Learn to Think” Intervention Program

The “Learn to Think” (LTT) Intervention Program was developed for raising thinking abilities of primary and secondary school students. It has been implemented in more than 300 schools, and more than 200,000 students took part in the experiment over a 10‐year span. Several longitudinal intervention studies showed that LTT could promote the development of students' thinking ability, learning motivation, and learning strategy as well as raise academic performance in primary schools. This article describes a study of the influence and the delayed effects of LTT on the scientific creativity of secondary school students. One hundred and seven students were selected from a secondary school, 54 of them participated in the LTT every 2 weeks and the rest had not. The intervention lasted 2 years, and the delayed effect was explored half a year after terminating the intervention. The Scientific Creativity Test for Secondary School Students was used four times from pre‐test to delayed post‐test. The results indicated that the LTT did promote the development of scientific creativity of secondary school students, and the effects on the scientific creativity were not necessarily immediate, but tended to be long‐lasting.     

Separate factor analyses of the McCarthy Scales for groups of black and white children

Factor analyses of the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities (MSCA) were performed on separate groups of black (N = 124) and white (N = 688) children, aged 3.0 to 7.6 years, to assess the comparability of the underlying structures and to evaluate the construct validity of the MSCA for each racial group. Little Jiffy I (principal components) solutions produced four factors for the blacks and three for the whites. Each “white” factor had a coefficient of congruence of .85–.93 with one “black” factor, indicating the close similarity of the solutions. In addition, the factors which emerged for the blacks and whites corresponded to several of the scales constituting the MSCA, offering evidence of the instrument's construct validity for each racial group. The results of the study should enhance the use of the McCarthy Scales for assessing young children of all races.     

Self-evaluation by adolescents in a psychiatric hospital school token program

Nine adolescent boys with a history of high rates of disruptive classroom behavior were selected from a psychiatric hospital school and placed in a remedial reading class after school in which various factors in a token reinforcement program involving self-evaluation were investigated. The effects of self-evaluation, in the form of a rating the students gave themselves about the appropriateness of their classroom behavior, were first assessed. While the students' ratings of their own behavior correlated highly with the teacher's ratings and evaluations made by independent observers, the self-evaluations did not lead to a reduction in disruptive behavior. A token reinforcement program, in which the teacher rated the students' level of appropriate behavior and in which the students traded earned rating points for prizes, clearly led to a reduction of disruptive behavior. When the students were given the opportunity to evaluate their own behavior and to receive rewards in exchange for the evaluation, they returned to their former rates of disruptive behavior.     

Suppression of behavior by timeout punishment when suppression results in loss of positive reinforcement

This investigation, using rats as subjects and punishment by timeout for responses maintained on a ratio schedule, sought to determine whether behavior would be suppressed by timeout punishment when such suppression also reduced reinforcement density or frequency. A series of experiments indicated that timeout punishment suppressed responding, with the degree of suppression increasing as a function of the duration of the timeout period. Suppressive effects were found to decrease as a function of increases in deprivation (body weight) and were eliminated when the punished response also was reinforced. It was concluded that timeout can produce aversive effects even when loss of reinforcement results. An alternative interpretation of the findings, based on the effects of extinction periods and delay of reinforcement on chained behavior, was discussed.     

Facilitation and suppression of human loss-avoidance by signaled, unavoidable loss

A 15-sec stimulus followed by unavoidable monetary loss was presented to human subjects who were avoiding loss on a free-operant schedule. As has been observed in studies where shock is the aversive event, initial reactions to the pre-loss stimulus were transient increases in overall and stimulus rates. Unlike shock studies, continued training produced decreased rates, in the presence of the 15-sec stimulus, which were maintained in two of three subjects. Subsequent observations indicated that lowered rates were a function of the subject's rate of avoidance responding, the duration of the stimulus, and the scheduling of avoidable losses. Increasing the duration of the stimulus eliminated lowered rates in the presence of the stimulus and subsequent exposures to conditions which previously produced lowered rates did not result in recovery of the phenomenon. Introduction of the pre-loss stimulus on an extinction baseline (avoidable losses were omitted), however, reinstituted lowered rates. It is proposed that the pre-loss stimulus assumed discriminative control over low rates because responding in the presence of the stimulus was ineffective in avoiding the unavoidable loss. Recovery from lowered rates is attributed to the occurrence of avoidable losses during the stimulus period, and maintenance of lowered rates on the extinction schedule to the omission of such avoidable losses.     

Reflections on a Community Psychology Setting and the Future of the Field

The 50th anniversary of the Swampscott Conference offers an opportunity to reflect on a community psychology setting, The Consultation Center at Yale, that was formed in response to the 1963 Community Mental Health Act and the 1965 Swampscott Conference. The Center has flourished as a community psychology setting for practice, research, and training for 39 of the 50 years since Swampscott. Its creation and existence over this period offers an opportunity for reflection on the types of settings needed to sustain the field into the future.