AN INDEX FOR ASSESSING WEIGHT CHANGE IN CHILDREN: WEIGHT/HEIGHT RATIOS1

Weight and height data from two studies were recomputed, and original data were computed using a Weight Index formula that accounts for the interaction of actual weight/height changes in growing children and compares this ratio with that of normed weight/height ratios for equal-aged children. Recomputing the data of one study showed that the Weight Index is a more sensitive procedure for assessing long-term behavioral treatment of obesity for girls than weight alone. Recomputing the data of a second study showed that the Weight Index formula is consistent for boys and girls and is a more sensitive procedure for assessing long-term effects of a variety of medical treatments for obesity than the Ponderal Index or weight alone. Computation of the data for 17 “normal” children in a preschool class showed a zero Weight Index score before and after a six-month interval elapsed without treatment. The procedure may be useful in assessing ponderosity or anorexia over intervals of six months or more with growing children or difference between actual and normed weight over shorter intervals.     

Involuntary memory and the development of retrieval skills in young children

An incidental memory paradigm was used to study involuntary encoding processes and voluntary retrieval strategies in children's memory. Preschool (mean age: 4 years, 4 months) and kindergarten (mean age: 5 years, 10 months) children sorted pictures according to their color or category membership, and then received either a recall test (Experiment 1) or a recognition test (Experiment 2). Better retention of category- than color-sorted items was observed for kindergarten children in free recall, preschool and kindergarten children in cued recall, and neither group in recognition. These results were interpreted in terms of the retrieval strategies used by children in each of the memory tasks. The importance of distinguishing between voluntary and involuntary memory processes, and between acquisition and retrieval, in studies of depth-of-processing was emphasized. Developmental differences in performance appear to derive primarily from the role of voluntary search strategies in retrieval, rather than from age differences in involuntary encoding processes.     

Tokens for stuttering

Four young stutterers were observed during 10 weekly sessions. Each session was divided into pretreatment, treatment, and posttreatment segments. Redeemable tokens were administered contingent upon stuttering behaviors in the treatment segment of the Experimental condition. In a Parallel Control condition, no tokens were administered during the entire session. The differences between the pretreatment and treatment segments were compared for the two conditions. Three subjects had dramatically fewer stuttering behaviors when tokens were being administered, while the fourth had more stuttering under the same condition. The subject whose stuttering increased had a history of therapy in which voluntary, “faked” stuttering had been called for, and the behaviors that increased were judged to be of this type. The decreases were interpreted as suggesting that the contingent tokens acted to countercondition the aversiveness of the stuttering experience, which reduced the anticipation of stuttering and hence the stuttering itself. The increase was felt to be simple reinforcement. The counterconditioning interpretation was borne out in two clinical applications in which money was presented contingent on stuttering behaviors judged to be aversive to the stutterer, and in which dramatically sudden, but long-lasting, improvement was seen.     

Communicative stress and stuttering frequency during normal,whispered, and articulation-without-phonation speech modes

The effect of communicative stress on the frequency of stuttered syllables in 12 adult stutterers reading six different but equivalent passages using normal voicing, whispering, and articulation-without-phonation speech under a stress and a non-stress condition was studied. Although the frequency of stuttering was significantly greater in the normal voicing mode than in the whispering mode and greater in the whispering mode than in the articulation-without-phonation mode, no differences were found between the stress and the nonstress conditions with respect to stuttering.     

The effect of punishment and reinforcement procedures on a stutterer's factor II avoidance response

The purpose of this clinical experiment was to investigate the manipulability of a Factor II avoidance response (arm movement). The substantive hypothesis under test was that its suppression would be enhanced by repeated punishment sessions. During the first of nine therapy sessions response-contingent negative stimulation was not delivered. In the next five, after a base-rate period, “wrong” was made consequent upon the target response. In each of these sessions the suppression of arm movement was apparent. However, the magnitude of the suppression decreased from session to session. Evidently, the continued use of punishment did not enhance suppression. Because of this finding procedural changes were introduced in the next three therapy sessions. Verbal praise was added as a consequence of increasingly stringent omission criteria and three consecutive units of praise led to time-out from the reportedly fatiguing task of continuous speech. A marked reduction and then complete extinction resulted. Moreover, learning was evidenced since the frequency of arm movement lessened in the base-rate period of each session.     

Neuropsychological significance of phonetically accurate and phonetically inaccurate spelling errors in younger and older retarded spellers

The performances of two groups of retarded spellers (who were equated with respect to the level of deficient performance in spelling, but who differed in the level of phonetic accuracy of their misspellings) at two different age levels were compared to those of normal spellers who had been matched for age and WISC Performance IQ with the retarded spelling groups. The results indicated very marked differences in a number of linguistic skills between the normal spellers and the retarded spellers whose misspellings were characterized by phonetic inaccuracy. The performances of the retarded spellers who produced a preponderance of phonetically accurate misspellings differed markedly from those of the normal spellers only when the task demands involved fairly complex linguistic-cognitive operations. For the most part, the differences among the three groups were in evidence only at the older age level studied.     

Further analysis of stuttering as a phonetic transition defect

This article presents a further analysis of stuttering as a phonetic transition defect. Three types of phonetic transitions are identified. Two of these occur within words and represent sites where stutterings are readily detectable. The third transition involves movement from the end of one word to the beginning of the next. Spectrographic evidence is provided to show that stuttering also occurs at points of transition of this type. The same data are interpreted relative to their implications for stuttering theory, research, and therapy.     

Slow brain potentials in the CNV-paradigm

Slow brain potentials were recorded during the foreperiod of a reaction time task, and the effects of instructions governing the trade-off between speed and accuracy were investigated. One brain potential, a slow negative shift preceding S₂, was largely attenuated under accuracy instructions. It is suggested that this shift is dependent on a motor response and that its amplitude reflects the level of motor preparation. Two other brain potentials, a slow positive and a slow negative wave, seem to depend on the psychological properties of S₁. Enhanced amplitudes were found, when S₁ provides information, besides its warning function.