Persuasion Strategies Applied in Psychosocial Rehabilitation

Theoretically one of the most important questions in applied psychology is how people influence and control each other. What theoretical concepts can be used to explain these influences? Learning theory explanations have been popular in psychology, but other alternatives are also possible. In this article, rehabilitation is analysed through interactional persuasion strategies. Six strategies are proposed: coercion, threat, offer, guidance, appeal and appreciation. Each strategy corresponds to a specific atmosphere, and arouses either compatible or incompatible reactions from the target of a specific strategy. In the present model the major component of the persuasion strategy is the choice it provides. Choice depends on the amount of information and sense of personal control it provides. In order to attain specific rehabilitation objectives certain persuasion strategies are applied. Coercion, threat and offer are used for behavioural objectives and guidance; appeal and appreciation for cognitive-experiential objectives. In the last part of the article, various rehabilitation programmes are described by persuasion strategies.     

REVIEW OF ANTECEDENT CONTROL: INNOVATIVE APPROACHES TO BEHAVIORAL SUPPORT,EDITED BY J. LUISELLI AND M. CAMERON

This review identifies antecedent manipulation and the role of establishing operations as primary themes of the book as well as crucial elements in the design of a broadly applicable behavior support technology. The discussion of the book's thematic treatment of these elements highlights the traditional importance of elaborate antecedent interactions within the field of behavior analysis and welcomes researchers' efforts to broaden their credibility and influence through comprehensive and durable applications of behavior support technologies in a variety of natural settings. The reviewers rate the book as representative of the most recent developments and directions within applied behavior support.     

Does Agrammatic Speech Constitute a Regression to Child Language? A Three-Way Comparison between Agrammatic, Child, and Normal Ellipsis

When children are in the process of learning their mother tongue, they show frequent use of nonfinite clauses, even though they produce finite clauses at the same time, thereby demonstrating the availability of the functional domain associated with finiteness. In this study the hypothesis was tested that this behavior results from an overuse of the normal elliptical repertoire that has also been observed in agrammatic aphasia. The purpose of this overuse is prevention of computational overload. In support of the hypothesis it was found that children behaved very similar to aphasics and normal adults with respect to the following parameters: (a) distribution of types of ellipsis, (b) elaboration of ellipses, (c) word order, (d) subject omission, (e) frequency of weak subject pronouns, and (f) verb type (eventivity). The results also support the Jackson/Jakobson regression hypothesis, at least at the grammatical level.     

两岁儿童情绪调节策略与其问题行为

本研究在实验室中对148名2岁儿童在紧张情境中的情绪调节策略进行观察,通过聚类分析,根据儿童情绪调节策略使用的特点将儿童分为积极活动型,中间型和安慰型.同时,父母报告儿童问题行为.结果发现,在外显问题行为上,三组儿童之间的差异不显著,而在内向性问题行为上各类型儿童之间的差异显著,具体来说,安慰型儿童的内隐性问题行为得分显著高于其它类型儿童.     

Brief Report: Young Adult Women Resolving Interpersonal Conflicts

Little is known about the social cognitive development of young adults. Furthermore, existing studies of young adults tend to rely on college-age participants. A study of social cognition during interpersonal conflict was conducted with 100 young adult women (mean age = 25 years). The relationship of contextual variables to conflict-resolution strategy was examined. Strategy coding was done according to Selman's (1980) four-level model of interpersonal negotiation strategies. Of the features of context studied, the nature of the relationship between the participant and the other person (work-based, personal, or impersonal) was related to strategy use. Most strategies used (46%) were low-level unilateral strategies, e.g., giving in to the demands of the other person. Most participants reported conflicts at work. These data, taken with other research on young adults' perceived lack of ability at handling conflicts at work, suggest that constructive conflict management programs may be important for young adult women in the school-to-work transition.     

Coping with rising food costs in a closed economy: feeding behavior and nocturnal hypothermia in pigeons.

The pigeon's response to increasing fixed-ratio schedules in a 24-hr closed economy is marked by changes in feeding behavior during the daily light phase and by changes in body temperature during the dark phase. The time course of these responses to increasing behavioral cost of obtaining food is very different. Feeding is most affected immediately, within the first day of exposure to moderate fixed ratios. The number of times the pigeons produce the food hopper each day decreases, and the rate at which they eat from the food hopper (grams per minute) when it is available increases, as the fixed ratio is raised. Body temperature is affected later, falling to progressively lower resting levels during the dark phase as body weight drops at the higher fixed ratios when food intake is reduced. The changes in feeding and in body temperature that occur as the fixed-ratio schedule increases seem to reduce daily energy expenditures, within the constraints imposed by the experiment. The ascending and descending limbs of the bitonic function obtained when total daily operant responding is plotted as a function of fixed-ratio schedule in the closed economy is possibly related to the occurrence of thermoregulatory strategies for energy conservation. The energetic analysis of performances in the closed economy requires consideration of a variety of energetic strategies available to the species being studied.     

Active and passive memory: States, attitudes, and strategies

Six experiments examined the effect of active and passive processing strategies upon recall of verbal and figural material. The strategies were induced at three levels of instructional specificity, referred to as strategy states, strategy attitudes, and specified strategies. The defining attributes of active strategies were a high degree of task control combined with a high degree of self-involvement, whereas passive strategies were conversely defined by low degrees of task control and self-involvement. The tasks, including free and serial recall lists, text reproduction and reasoning tasks, varied in familiarity. In line with the expectations the results showed active strategies to be superior with moderately familiar tasks, and with reasonably precise strategy instructions. With unspecified strategy instructions, and with highly familiar and highly unfamiliar tasks, less difference between active and passive strategies was obtained. The superiority of active processing was thus found to depend both on type of task and on the specificity level of the strategies induced.     

Facework and Rhetorical Strategies in Intercultural Argumentative Discourse

Intercultural discourse (especially via a lingua franca when interlocutors have a false impression that they are speaking one and the same language) adds a new dimension – facework (the establishment of culture-sensitive politeness strategies) – to the theory and practice of argumentation from a number of perspectives: its specificity as compared to ordinary argumentational discourse, the interpretation of the concept of incommensurability, and the conduct of international negotiations. Politeness systems relevant for different cultures are not unpredictable, but represent linguistically and cognitively a highly generalised universal system which can be adopted by interlocutors and used in practical discourse. Politeness expressions are governed by linguistic components – by language forms of a certain type and by specific discourse patterns. The proper choice of language forms and discourse patterns adds a special dimension to argumentative schemata. The politeness-relevant packaging of discourse adds a zero-step to the normative stages of an argumentative discussion (establishing hierarchical relations as such), and needs permanent alignment of these relations, by using correct language forms and discourse patterns.