Eliminating nail-biting by the habit reversal procedure

Fingernail-biting is prevalent among children and adults alike. About 43% of children bite their nails during the puberty ages (Wechsler, 1931); 25% of college students are nail-biters (Coleman and McCalley, 1948), and 10% of adults bite their nails (Pennington, 1945).A variety of treatments including negative practice, operant procedures and psychotherapy have been used in treating nail-biting but no single treatment has been generally effective in eliminating nail-biting. Smith (1957) using negative practice reported that 21 of 57 (39%) of his nail-biting clients were cured. 9 improved and 27 (47%) were unimproved. Bucher (1968) reported that 13 of 20 (65%) college students stopped nail-biting by using a self-administered operant shock procedure. However, he reported many relapses after the withdrawal of shock for nail-biting. No evaluation of psychoanalytic treatment for nail-biting appears to have been made.     

Evaluating socioeconomic status bias in the WISC-R

The use of intelligence tests in making special education placement decisions for children has come under repeated scrutiny in recent years. Arguments for and against the use of IQs have centered around the issue of test bias. In California a permanent moratorium on the use of intelligence tests in placing minority group children into classes for the educable retarded has been handed down by the court. One defense proposed by advocates of mental testing has been that the tests are biased against socially and economically disadvantaged groups irrespective of race. According to Clarizio (1978), if a test predicts equally well for two groups it can not legitimately be described as biased. The purpose of this investigation was to evaluate the test bias of the Verbal IQ as measured by the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised in relation to predictions of academic achievement in two different socioeconomic status groups. The results indicated that Verbal IQs are not biased with respect to socioeconomic status. Derived regression equations are presented along with an analysis to inspect the statistical power of the original tests.     

Development and psychometric properties of the Children's Assertive Behavior Scale

The purpose of this paper is to present the psychometric properties and individual items comprising the Children's Assertive Behavior Scale (CABS). The CABS is a behaviorally designed self-report instrument for children which measures general and specific social skills and covers many socially relevant situations which are problematic for children. Acceptable psychometric properties of the 27-item test were obtained in several independent investigations across both geographical regions and grade levels. The CABS showed significant concurrent validity with peer, parent, and teacher measures of social competency. The CABS also discriminated trained versus untrained children participating in social skills versus a placebo discussion group. The instrument is presented, along with recommendations for future applications and research.Both authors share equal responsibility for the development and evaluation of the Children's Assertive Behavior Scale.     

Vocal changes in stutterers and nonstutterers during monotoned speech

For years, reports have circulated that stutterers experience marked decrements in their stuttering when they speak or read in monotone. Wingate has suggested that the ameliorative effects of various novel speaking conditions on stuttering can be attributed to modifications in vocalization induced by such conditions. The present study was conducted to see whether this explanation would extend to monotoned speech as well. Ten teenage and adult stutterers and 10 normal speakers were tested in control and monotone reading conditions. Dependent measures were the frequencies of disfluency and stuttering, fundamental frequency, fundamental frequency standard deviation, vocal SPL, vocal SPL standard deviation, and fluent reading rate. Only within-group statistical comparisons were made, because members of the two groups could not be matched pairwise along critical vocal parameters. The major findings of this study indicated that across the two conditions, both groups significantly reduced their fundamental frequency, fundamental frequency standard deviation, vocal SPL and vocal SPL standard deviation. Only the stutterers exhibited a significant decrement in disfluency and stuttering. The normals did not evince enough disfluency in the control condition for a reduction to occur during monotoning. Neither group effected a reduction in fluent reading rates. These and other findings and interpretations are discussed relative to Wingate's modified vocalization hypothesis.     

Second-order dimensions of the Work Values Inventory (WVI)

An item factor analysis of the 45 items of the Work Values Inventory (WVI) for 445 physically disabled clients produced six second-order dimensions: Stimulating Work, Interpersonal Satisfaction, Economic Security, Responsible Autonomy, Comfortable Existence, and Esthetic Concerns. These second-order factors provide a summary of clients' work motivation at a higher level of generality that is consistent with the WVI primary structure. The six factors are virtually independent of age, education, and intelligence and can be hand-scored by a simple procedure.     

Very long term memory for tacit knowledge

Very long term memory for abstract materials was examined by recalling subjects who had served in a synthetic grammar learning experiment two years earlier. In that study (Reber & Allen, 1978) we differentiated among several cognitive modes of acquisition, their resultant memorial representations, and their associated decision processes. Two years later and without any opportunity for rehearsal or relearning, subjects still retain knowledge of these grammars to a remarkable degree. Although some differences have become blurred with the passage of time, the form and structure of that knowledge and the manner in which it is put to use remain strikingly similar to the original. That is, differences traceable to acquisition mode and conditions of initial training can still be observed. As in the original study, these results are discussed within the general context of a functionalist approach to complex cognitive processes.