TEACHING JOB INTERVIEW SKILLS TO RETARDED CLIENTS

Six retarded adults were taught job application and interview skills including introducing oneself, filling out a standard job application form, answering questions, and asking questions. A combination of instructions, modeling, role playing, and positive and corrective feedback was used across a multiple baseline experimental design. After training, the clients' performance in each area improved substantially over baseline levels. In addition, the newly taught skills appeared to generalize to a different office, application form, and interviewer.     

"Flash for life": Community-based prompting for safety belt promotion

A community-based strategy for promoting safety belt use was field-tested in two adjacent rural communities, one populated by a preponderance of students, faculty, and staff of a major university. The intervention involved the front-seat passenger of a stopped vehicle displaying to the driver of an adjacent, stopped vehicle an 11 x 14 inch flash card that read, "PLEASE BUCKLE UP-I CARE." If the driver buckled up, the "flasher" flipped over the card and displayed the message, "THANK YOU." This flash card was shown to 1,087 unbuckled drivers; 82% of these drivers looked at the flash card and 22% of these complied with the buckle-up request. Compliance was not influenced by the age or gender of the "flasher" (young child vs. college student), nor by the gender of the driver; but significantly more drivers in the university town buckled up following the flash card presentation (25% mean compliance in the college town vs. 14% in the other community). To date, over 2,000 individuals have received a buckle-up flash card for their own use.     

Reinforcer pathology II: Reward magnitude,reward delay,and demand for alcohol collectively relate to college students' alcohol related problems

The reinforcer pathologies model of addiction posits that two characteristic patterns of operant behavior characterize addiction. Specifically, individuals suffering from addiction have elevated levels of behavioral economic demand for their substances of abuse and have an elevated tendency to devalue delayed rewards (reflected in high delay discounting rates). Prior research has demonstrated that these behavioral economic markers are significant predictors of many of college students' alcohol-related problems. Delay discounting, however, is a complex behavioral performance likely undergirded by multiple behavioral processes. Emerging analytical approaches have isolated the role of participants' sensitivity to changes in reinforcer magnitude and changes in reinforcer delay. The current study uses these analytic approaches to compare participants' discounting of money versus alcohol, and to build regression models that leverage these new insights to predict a wider range of college students' alcohol related problems. Using these techniques, we were able to 1) demonstrate that individuals differed in their sensitivity to magnitudes of alcohol versus money, but not sensitivity to delays to those commodities and 2) that we could use our behavioral economic measures to predict a range of students' alcohol related problems.     

Virtual Levels and Role Models: N-Level Structural Equations Model of Reciprocal Ratings Data

A general latent variable modeling framework called n-Level Structural Equations Modeling (NL-SEM) for dependent data-structures is introduced. NL-SEM is applicable to a wide range of complex multilevel data-structures (e.g., cross-classified, switching membership, etc.). Reciprocal dyadic ratings obtained in round-robin design involve complex set of dependencies that cannot be modeled within Multilevel Modeling (MLM) or Structural Equations Modeling (SEM) frameworks. The Social Relations Model (SRM) for round robin data is used as an example to illustrate key aspects of the NL-SEM framework. NL-SEM introduces novel constructs such as ‘virtual levels’ that allows a natural specification of latent variable SRMs. An empirical application of an explanatory SRM for personality using xxM, a software package implementing NL-SEM is presented. Results show that person perceptions are an integral aspect of personality. Methodological implications of NL-SEM for the analyses of an emerging class of contextual- and relational-SEMs are discussed.     

Accounting for Missing Correlation Coefficients in Fixed-Effects MASEM

Meta-analytic structural equation modeling (MASEM) is increasingly applied to advance theories by synthesizing existing findings. MASEM essentially consists of two stages. In Stage 1, a pooled correlation matrix is estimated based on the reported correlation coefficients in the individual studies. In Stage 2, a structural model (such as a path model) is fitted to explain the pooled correlations. Frequently, the individual studies do not provide all the correlation coefficients between the research variables. In this study, we modify the currently optimal MASEM-method to deal with missing correlation coefficients, and compare its performance with existing methods. This study is the first to evaluate the performance of fixed-effects MASEM methods under different levels of missing correlation coefficients. We found that the often used univariate methods performed very poorly, while the multivariate methods performed well overall.     

初中生风险决策表现的认知建模分析:自尊及性别的影响

选取山东省某初中308名学生,采用爱荷华博弈任务,使用“效用-固着”模型对决策包含的动机、认知、反应心理过程进行认知建模分析,探究自尊水平和性别对初中生风险决策表现的影响。结果发现,初中生的风险决策表现不佳,对损失不敏感。在控制年级的影响后,分层回归分析表明:(1)自尊水平和性别对决策的动机过程的影响存在交互作用,男生无论自尊高低对收益都较为关注,女生中高自尊者更加关注收益。(2)决策成绩不存在显著的性别差异,但男生更多选择有着较高损失值的不利选项,而女生更多选择损失频率较低的有利选项。(3)自尊的影响主要体现在动机和认知过程,高自尊水平者在动机过程中更多表现出对损失的规避,在认知过程中更多地考虑维持之前的决策选择。     

Developmental models for children's temperament: alternatives to chronometric polynomial curves

Partridge and Lerner (2007), in a secondary analysis of the New York Longitudinal Study, employed a chronometric polynomial growth curve model to argue that the developmental course of difficult temperament follows a non‐linear trajectory over the first 5 years of life. The free curve slope intercept (FCSI) growth curve model of Meredith and Tisak (1990) is presented as a preferable conceptual alternative because it contains a number of currently popular statistical models, including repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance, factor mean, linear growth, linear factor analysis, and hierarchical linear models as special cases. As such, researchers can compare the fit of each of these models relative to the FCSI model, and, at times, to each other. The present paper conducts a re‐analysis of the data, and establishes that fit of the FCSI model is arguably better than other statistical alternatives. The FCSI model is also used as the basis for identifying subgroups of individuals with their qualitatively distinct growth patterns within a growth mixture modeling framework. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Partial remediation of speaker and listener behaviors in people with severe dementia

We investigated the effects of contingent reinforcement (Intervention 1) and contingent reinforcement with modeling (Intervention 2) on speaker and listener behaviors in 5 people with severe dementia. Intervention 1 generally increased listener behavior; there was no clear effect on tacting, but echoic behavior increased in the one case investigated. Given the weak baseline repertoires of these clients and the paucity of other effective interventions, even the small increases in verbal behaviors found here are important. Further gains may be achieved, for example, if reinforcement opportunity per trial type were to be increased from one to several per day or if participants were trained to echo the listener stimulus in mand compliance tasks.