EXPANDING THE IMPACT OF BEHAVIORAL STAFF MANAGEMENT: A LARGE-SCALE,LONG-TERM APPLICATION IN SCHOOLS SERVING SEVERELY HANDICAPPED STUDENTS

Experimental evaluations of behavioral staff management procedures usually have been limited to relatively small-scale demonstration studies. We evaluated a large-scale, long-term application of a staff management program designed to improve the functional utility of educational services for severely handicapped persons. The intervention, involving a brief in-service program followed by supervisory prompts and feedback, was implemented by three principals in four schools involving 21 classrooms. Implementation of the management procedures was consistently accompanied by increases in student involvement in functional educational tasks in each classroom. Further, the improved services continued throughout a 2-year follow-up period. Staff responses to a questionnaire indicated a high degree of staff acceptance of the management program. Results are discussed in terms of expanding the use of behavioral supervisory procedures from experimental demonstrations to actual adoption by existing human service agencies.     

Differential reinforcement of low rates of responding (DRL) to reduce dysfunctional social behaviors of a head injured man

Differential reinforcement of low rates of responding (DRL) is a technique in which a positive reinforcer is delivered at the end of a specific interval if a target behavior has occurred at a criterion rate. Traditionally, it has been used in educational settings to manage classroom behaviors. Recently, therapists have begun to use DRL to reduce the rates of a variety of behaviors in non-educational settings. In this study, DRL was part of a behavioral intervention to reduce dysfunctional verbal and physical behaviors of a head-injured young man. The complete intervention program included DRL, changing criteria, and token reinforcement. Over a period of 15 weeks, the intervention resulted in reductions in behaviors in both categories from high rates to near-zero rates.     

Science and common sense: perspectives from philosophy and science education

Synthese - This paper explores the relation between scientific knowledge and common sense intuitions as a complement to Hoyningen-Huene’s account of systematicity. On one hand,...     

When immediate losses are followed by delayed gains: Additive hyperboloid discounting models

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - Discounting research has tended to focus on one simple situation, choice between an immediate, smaller gain and a larger, delayed gain, that is assumed by many...     

AUDITORY SUCCESSIVE CONDITIONAL DISCRIMINATION AND AUDITORY STIMULUS EQUIVALENCE CLASSES

This paper describes an experimental demonstration of stimulus equivalence classes consisting entirely of auditory stimuli. Stimuli were digitized arbitrary syllables (e.g., “cug,” “vek”) presented via microcomputer. Training and testing were conducted with a two-choice auditory successive conditional discrimination procedure. On each trial, auditory samples and comparisons were presented successively. As each comparison was presented, a response location (a rectangle) appeared on the computer screen. After all stimuli for a trial were presented, subjects selected one of the response locations. Six subjects acquired the conditional discrimination baseline, 4 subjects demonstrated the formation of three-member auditory equivalence classes resulting from sample-S+ relations, and 1 subject demonstrated equivalence classes resulting from sample-S— relations. Four subjects received additional training and subsequently demonstrated expansion of the three-member classes to four members each.     

Imagery,expression, and metaphor

Metaphorical utterances are construed as falling into two broad categories, in one of which are cases amenable to analysis in terms of semantic content, speaker meaning, and satisfaction conditions, and where image-construction is permissible but not mandatory. I call these image-permitting metaphors, and contrast them with image-demanding metaphors (IDM’s) comprising a second category and whose understanding mandates the construction of a mental image. This construction, I suggest, is spontaneous, is not restricted to visual imagery, and its result is typically somatically marked sensu Damasio. IDM’s are characteristically used in service of self-expression, and thereby in the elicitation of empathy. Even so, IDM’s may reasonably provoke banter over the aptness of the imagery they evoke.     

Predatory aggression in lines of wild mice selected for interfemale aggression

Mice descending from lines previously selected for high and low levels of interfemale aggression and from a nonselected control line were exposed to live crickets on two consecutive test days. Latencies both to attack and to eat the cricket were recorded. No line or sex differences in attacking were found, although latency to attack decreased over test days. Control line mice were more likely to engage in the eating of the cricket than either the high or low selected lines, suggesting that the selection procedure may have dissociated attacking and eating components of predatory behavior.