Language and reasoning: a study of temporal factors

The paper is concerned with the testing of psycholinguistic hypotheses by the use of deductive reasoning tasks. After reviewing some of the problems of interpretation which have arisen with particular reference to conditional rules, an experiment is presented which measures comprehension and verification latencies in addition to response frequencies in a truth table evaluation task.The experiment tests a psycholinguistic hypothesis concerning the different usage of the logically equivalent forms of sentence: If p then q and p only if q with respect to the temporal order of the events p and q. It is proposed that the former sentence is more natural when the event p precedes the event q in time, and the latter more natural when the opposite temporal relation holds.Although significant support is found for the hypothesis in the analysis of the latency data, it is only distinguished from an alternative explanation by detailed analysis of response frequencies, thus indicating the general usefulness of the paradigm adopted.     

Stability of nonverbal immediacy behaviors

The stability of the immediacy behaviors of approach distance, eye contact, approach orientation, and body lean was examined across two interviews over a 25 min and a 1-week interval. Stability coefficients were similarly high between the sessions for each interval. General support was found for the presence of compensatory relationships between approach distance and eye contact and between approach distance and approach orientation. A bimodal distribution of approach distances, found in both studies, included a substantial intermediate range which was not used by any of the subjects. Evidence from personality data and self-ratings suggested that subjects who remained more distant were more anxious than those who approached closer.     

Evaluation of social competence training in the schools

A social competence program for high risk children is described and evaluated in this paper. Advanced undergraduates majoring in psychology used interpersonal problem-solving techniques to work with 32 maladapting first through third graders who were seen on a small group basis. The intervention program was conducted for 14 weeks. Compared to a control group of 32 children, results indicated that children in the program made siginficantly greater gains in classroom adjustment as rated by teachers. Additionally, socimetric status served as a criterion for evaluating program effectiveness. Results demonstrated that children who participated in the social competence training made significantly greater gains in peer acceptance as measured by a brief sociometric questionnaire than the controls. The implications of these findings and the methodological limitations of the study are discussed.     

Statistical inference in personality research

Statistical significance, by itself, is not a sufficient condition for claiming that a hypothesis has been supported. Constructive replications are considerably more important. Unfortunately, classical (Fisherian) statistics are not easily adapted to sequential research strategies; their focus is the single experiment. For this reason, statistically significant results may be meaningless while a particular sequence of nonsignificant results may be quite important. Advice on how to overcome some limitations of classical statistical procedures is given, along with a compendium of “do's and don't's.”     

Stuttering: Training the therapist

In order to sensitize therapists in training to the dynamics of helping others change, eight members of a graduate seminar in fluency disorders were asked to develop and maintain a program of personal behavioral change for a period of 4 wk. Their reflections on several features of this experience are discussed under the following categories: (1) Selecting the behavior for modification; (2) developing the contract; (3) motivational factors; (4) personal reflections, and (5) implications for working with stutterers.     

Enhancing children's attitudes toward disabled peers using a multi-media intervention

Interventions are being developed to enhance children's attitudes toward disabled peers and thereby facilitate mainstreaming in schools. This study evaluates the impact of Feeling Free, a multi-media program of disability-related films, activities, discussions, and books. Participants were children from 16 classrooms, grades 3 through 6. Two classes at each grade level (N = 8) were randomly assigned to the six-session program and were compared on five outcome measures to the eight remaining classrooms. Treatment children demonstrated increased knowledge about disabilities, more positive perceptions of disabled persons, and greater awareness of appropriate behavioral responses to disabled peers. There were no long-lasting treatment effects on two measures of children's acknowledged willingness to interact with disabled peers, although treatment girls demonstrated short-term gains on one measure. Suggestions are made for increasing program impact and providing services to other participants in the mainstreaming process.     

Imitation in language development: If,when, and why

In order to explore the function of imitation for first language learning, imitative and spontaneous utterances were compared in the naturalistic speech of six children in the course of their development from single-word utterances (when mean length of utterance was essentially 1.0) to the emergence of grammar (when mean length of utterance approached 2.0). The relative extent of imitation, and lexical and grammatical variation in imitative and spontaneous speech were determined. There were inter-subject differences in the extent of imitation, but each child was consistent in the tendency to imitate or not to imitate across time. For those children who imitated, there were both lexical and grammatical differences in imitative and spontaneous speech, and a developmental shift from imitative to spontaneous use of particular words and semantic-syntactic relations between words. The results are discussed as evidence of an active processing of model utterances relative to the contexts in which they occur for information for language learning.