School neuropsychology

There is an increasing interest among school psychologists in the field of neuropsychology as it relates to children in the educational environment. This article attempts to identify those forces which have led to this increased interest as well as to provide a conceptual framework for recognizing this area of specialty within the profession of school psychology. Potential roles related to levels of training and preparation are discussed.     

A moving average model for sequenced reaction-time data

Reaction times are often collected in order to study the durations of hypothesized subprocesses. In many important cases, reaction times are collected for a sequence of tasks in which the processing for one task is a subset of the processing required for the next in the sequence. Data of this sort have been analyzed by multiple-regression methods. Here we propose a more sophisticated moving average model for such data. We show that ordinary multiple-regression methods produce estimates that are consistent, but not efficient, and that the usual R² statistic may provide a misleading impression of goodness of fit. One consequence of the suggested statistical model is that it allows the same quantity of data to be used to fit a psychological model to a larger range of tasks.     

Production of narrative and procedural discourse in aphasia

The study described the abilities of a group of 10 aphasics and 10 normals to produce narrative and procedural discourse. The experimental tasks included telling stories, producing summaries, giving morals to the stories, and producing procedures. The variables examined in the investigation included features of sentential grammars, such as amount of embedding, and features of discourse grammars, such as occurrence of elements of superstructure in narrative. Additionally, raters assessed the content and clarity of the discourses. The results showed that aphasics produced well-structured narrative and procedural discourse. Aphasics' discourse errors differed only in degree, not qualitatively, from those of normals. The language of the aphasics' discourses was reduced in both complexity and amount. It was found that the aphasics had difficulties in producing summaries and giving morals for the stories when compared with the normals. Both the content and clarity of the discourses produced by the aphasics were rated lower than those produced by the normals.     

Children's beliefs about adoption: A developmental study

Attributions about adoption were examined in adopted and nonadopted children between the ages of 6 and 13 years. Results indicated that nonadopted children had a more negative view of adoption than their adopted age-mates, at least during the early to middle childhood years. By 10–11 years, however, no group difference was noted in adoption beliefs. In addition, with increasing age nonadopted children became less negative about adoption whereas adopted children became more negative about adoption. These results are discussed in the context of differential socialization for adopted and nonadopted children. Implications of adoption beliefs for children's adoption adjustment also are raised.     

Effects of listener feedback on the messages of kindergarten children in a referential communication task

A referential communication paradigm was employed with kindergarten children to determine the effects of systematically varied feedback following inadequate message production. Feedback conditions included three levels of verbal specificity presented either alone or in combination with visual feedback. Results indicated that kindergarten children formulated more adequate referential messages when provided with either highly specific verbal feedback or a chance to view the listener's incorrect choice of referent. The differential effectiveness of various types of feedback was discussed in terms of the role of comparison activities in the referential communication process, and implications for the communicative competency of kindergarten children were considered.     

Encoding and decoding of nonverbal behavior through facial expressions

Ten males and ten females served as both senders and receivers of nonverbal expressions in an experiment designed to examine various kinds of sending-receiving relationships. While the overall sending-receiving relationship for five types of expressions combined was positive and nearly statistically significant (.10 > p > .05), the category-specific sending-receiving relationships were near zero in magnitude or slightly negative. Sending-receiving relationships that were category specific and involved same-sex communication attempts only were found to be more negative with some being statistically significant. Females were found to be significantly better receivers but not significantly better senders than males. The results were discussed in terms of recent theoretical notions concerning sending and receiving processes.     

Training school psychologists in neuropsychological assessment: Current practices and trends

Directors of school psychology programs at the Master's, sixth-year and doctoral levels were surveyed as to their program's degree of emphasis in neuropsychological screening and assessment. Despite variability according to program level, directors identified a need for training in these areas. This was particularly evident at the doctoral level, where greater flexibility exists in designing a student's program of studies. The results of this survey support the notion that training in neuropsychological screening and assessment techniques is appropriate in the preparation of specialists in the area of school psychology.     

Development of the Career Exploration Survey (CES)

The development, properties, and uses of the Career Exploration Survey (CES) are described. The CES is intended to (a) facilitate further theory development and empirical research on how exploration affects career decisions, development, and job outcomes, such as job satisfaction, commitment, and turnover; (b) provide a network of variables for investigating the dynamics of the exploration process; and (c) provide a set of criterion measures for examining the effects of personal characteristics and educational treatments on career exploration behaviors and beliefs. The CES is based on a conceptual framework derived from theories of exploration, stress, motivation, and career preference. It consists of seven measures of the career exploration process, three reactions to exploration, and six beliefs about exploration. Dimensionality, reliability, and validity data are presented for four studies comprising 680 observations across 601 individuals.     

Stochastic PERT networks as models of cognition: Derivation of the mean,variance, and distribution of reaction time using Order-of-Processing (OP) diagrams

It is frequently assumed that the mental activity which leads to a given response is made up of separable components or processes. One or more of the processes are assumed to contribute to the time required to respond. Computation of the mean, variance, and distribution of the reaction time is relatively straightforward when all processes are arranged in series or parallel. However, such is not the case when the processes have complex arrangements. A solution to a useful special case of the above problem is proposed. Specifically, it is shown that simple computations yield closed form expressions for the mean, variance, and distribution of reaction time when the processes can be arranged in a stochastic PERT network and when the durations of individual processes are sums of mutually independent, exponentially distributed random variables. The method of solution relies on the construction of an Order-of-Processing (OP) diagram from the original PERT network representation of behavior.