Increasing senior citizen participation in a community-based nutritious meal program

Two experiments were conducted to compare the effects of several prompting and reinforcement procedures on the participation of elderly citizens in a nutritious meal program. Experiment I employed a variation of the multiple-baseline design across three groups of approximately 60 households each. Elderly persons not previously participating in the program were introduced to the following conditions: (1) public service radio announcements for four weeks to advertise the meal program and the availability of free transportation, (2) a home visit that served as a personal invitation and a second prompt for participation, (3) a followup telephone call, and (4) an incentive menu for participation, which was sent through the mail. Results indicated that the home visits and incentives were both effective as recruitment procedures and superior to other conditions; however, incentives proved to be the most cost-effective intervention. Experiment II used a variation of the multi-element design to compare the effects of scheduled activities and incentives in maintaining higher levels of participation by those persons who had attended the meal program at least once in the past, but whose current rate of participation was low. Results showed that activities improved attendance levels somewhat and that incentives substantially increased the number of meal program participants. Data from these experiments thus indicate that relatively inexpensive procedures may be used effectively to increase the extent to which elderly persons make use of potentially beneficial community-based services.     

Behavioral coaching in the development of skills in football, gymnastics, and tennis

A review of the literature indicates that methods of skill acquisition based on the operant paradigm have been scientifically validated with many motor behaviors. However, these procedures have been limited to the use of positive reinforcement for correct performance when applied to the acquisition of complex sports skills in natural settings. To find complementary procedures to enhance skill acquisition, a coaching method involving several behavioral techniques was developed that focused on remediation of errors. This coaching method combined the following components: (1) systematic use of verbal instructions and feedback, (2) positive and negative reinforcement, (3) positive practice, and (4) time out. Three sports, football, gymnastics, and tennis, were selected to determine the effectiveness and generality of this behavioral coaching method. A total of 23 male and female subjects, ranging in age from 11 to 35, was included in this study. Baseline data were first collected for each sport under standard coaching conditions. Next, the behavioral coaching method was evaluated depending on the sport in either a multiple baseline or a reversal design. The behavioral dimensions selected were blocking in football; backward walkovers, front hand springs, and reverse kips in gymnastics; and the forehand, backhand, and serve in tennis. Behavioral coaching was immediately effective in increasing the correct execution of complex skills in all three sports. Gains of up to 10 times the baseline performance were achieved in each sport. In football, behavioral coaching resulted in an increase in correct blocking performance from a baseline average of 5% to 51.3%. Gymnasts' performances increased from baseline averages of 2.7% to 52.6% across the three skills. In tennis, standard coaching produced an average of 6% correct performance which increased dramatically under behavioral coaching to 57% across the three strokes. The success of the behavioral coaching package used here suggests that a technology of behavior may offer additional and complementary strategies to the acquisition of motor skills in the natural environment.     

Seat belt usage: A potential target for applied behavior analysis

Results of 1,579 observations of cars entering or exiting campus parking lots showed direct relationships between seat belt wearing and the intrusiveness of the engineering device designed to induce belt usage, and between device intrusiveness and system defeat. For example, all drivers with working interlocks or unlimited buzzer reminders were wearing a seat belt; but 62% of the systems with interlocks or unlimited buzzers had been defeated, and only 15.9% of the drivers in these cars were wearing a seat belt. The normative data indicated marked ineffectiveness of the negative reinforcement contingencies implied by current seat belt inducement systems; but suggested that unlimited buzzer systems would be the optimal system currently available if contingencies were developed to discourage the disconnection and circumvention of such systems. Positive reinforcement strategies are discussed that would be quite feasible for large-scale promotion of seat belt usage.     

Are there constraints on childhood disfluency?

Analysis of the spontaneous speech of eight stuttering and eight normally fluent children reveals that (a) the location of both stuttering and normal disfluent moments is constrained by sentential constituent structure, and (b) stuttering children experience fluency breakdown with a particular type of constituent (verb phrase) not usually disfluently produced by normals. A view of early stuttering as a sentence planning and integration disorder is present.     

Evaluation of a coaching strategy to reduce swimming stroke errors with beginning age-group swimmers

A coaching strategy to decrease errors in swimming strokes with swimmers who had not improved under "standard" coaching procedures was investigated using a multiple baseline design across subjects and swimming strokes. The procedure resulted in a large decrease in errors on swimming strokes during sessions in a training pool. Stimulus generalization of improved performance to normal practice conditions in the regular pool was observed with all but one swimmer. This improvement was maintained during two maintenance phases lasting approximately 2 weeks, as well as under standard coaching conditions during at least a 2-week follow-up. For two swimmers, error rates on one of the strokes showed a gradual increase between the third and fifth week of follow-up, but brief remedial prompting sessions immediately corrected their performance. Some beneficial response generalization to other components of the stroke being trained was observed, but no improvements were found on untrained strokes. The error correction package did not disrupt practice, require excessive amounts of the coach's time, or necessitate the use of cumbersome apparatus. In addition, the coach and the swimmers considered the procedures to be effective, and expressed their willingness to participate in them again in the future.     

Feedback interventions and driving speed: A parametric and comparative analysis

Five experiments were conducted to assess the effects of several variables on the efficacy of feedback in reducing driving speed. Experiment 1 systematically varied the criterion used to define speeding, and results showed that the use of a lenient criterion (20 km/hr over the speed limit), which allowed for the posting of high percentages of drivers not speeding, was more effective in reducing speeding than the use of a stringent criterion (10 km/hr over the speed limit). In Experiment 2 an analysis revealed that posting feedback reduced speeding on a limited access highway and the effects persisted to some degree up to 6 km. Experiments 3 and 4 compared the effectiveness of an unmanned parked police vehicle (Experiment 3) and a police air patrol speeding program (Experiment 4) with the feedback sign and determined whether the presence of either of these enforcement variables could potentiate the efficacy of the sign. The results of both experiments demonstrated that although the two enforcement programs initially produced larger effects than the feedback sign, the magnitude of their effect attenuated over time. Experiment 5 compared the effectiveness of a traditional enforcement program with a warning program which included handing out a flier providing feedback on the number and types of accidents occuring on the road during the past year. This experiment demonstrated that the warning program produced a marked reduction in speeding and the traditional enforcement program did not. Furthermore, the warning program and a feedback sign together produced an even greater reduction in speeding than either alone.     

Some values guiding community research and action

The dual purposes of applied research-contributing to understanding and improvement-are only partially served by method systems that encourage studying (with increasing precision) a narrow range of questions of modest societal importance. To optimize contributions to challenging societal problems, a field's cherished standards should be adapted to support more adventuresome forms of community research and action. This paper outlines 10 values for community research and action, based on insights from the fields of behavioral and community psychology. These values-reflect the goals and challenges of establishing collaborative relationships with research participants, determining research goals and methods, designing and disseminating interventions, communicating research findings, and advocating for community change. Critical challenges are outlined, and implications for the field and its clients are discussed.     

A stochastic multidimensional scaling procedure for the empirical determination of convex indifference curves for preference/choice analysis

The vast majority of existing multidimensional scaling (MDS) procedures devised for the analysis of paired comparison preference/choice judgments are typically based on either scalar product (i.e., vector) or unfolding (i.e., ideal-point) models. Such methods tend to ignore many of the essential components of microeconomic theory including convex indifference curves, constrained utility maximization, demand functions, et cetera. This paper presents a new stochastic MDS procedure called MICROSCALE that attempts to operationalize many of these traditional microeconomic concepts. First, we briefly review several existing MDS models that operate on paired comparisons data, noting the particular nature of the utility functions implied by each class of models. These utility assumptions are then directly contrasted to those of microeconomic theory. The new maximum likelihood based procedure, MICROSCALE, is presented, as well as the technical details of the estimation procedure. The results of a Monte Carlo analysis investigating the performance of the algorithm as a number of model, data, and error factors are experimentally manipulated are provided. Finally, an illustration in consumer psychology concerning a convenience sample of thirty consumers providing paired comparisons judgments for some fourteen brands of over-the-counter analgesics is discussed.