APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS AND STATISTICAL PROCESS CONTROL?

This paper examines Pfadt and Wheeler's (1995) suggestions that the methods of statistical process control (SPC) be incorporated into applied behavior analysis. The research strategies of SPC are examined and compared to those of applied behavior analysis. I argue that the statistical methods that are a part of SPC would likely reduce applied behavior analysts' intimate contacts with the problems with which they deal and would, therefore, likely yield poor treatment and research decisions. Examples of these kinds of results and decisions are drawn from the cases and data Pfadt and Wheeler present. This paper also describes and clarifies many common misconceptions about SPC, including W. Edwards Deming's involvement in its development, its relationship to total quality management, and its confusion with various other methods designed to detect sources of unwanted variability.     

The effect of instruction with relational and item-specific elaborative strategies on young children's organization and free recall

One hundred and sixty second-grade children were assigned on the basis of a free recall pretest to four instruction conditions and were given a series of lists of pictures for free recall. For three groups, the instructions were directed at encoding either (a) list organizational information, (b) item-specific semantic information, or (c) organizational and individual item information, while the fourth group constituted a “No-training” control with standard free recall instructions. The subjects received either related or unrelated lists during the training phase and related or unrelated lists during two post-tests, immediately following and 1 week after training. For both types of lists, instructions emphasizing list organization were more effective than those emphasizing item-specific elaboration. Subjects given individual item elaborative instructions showed levels of recall which were comparable to those of the control subjects. While the combined effect of organizational and individual item processing did not exceed the performance produced by organizational instructions alone, the degree of generalization was greater for subjects processing both kinds of information, especially when subjects received related lists during training.     

Effects of hierarchical organization on children's judgments of distance and direction

The impact of the hierarchical organization of a space on judgments of direction and distance was assessed in two studies using two-dimensional models analogous to those used by A. Stevens and P. Coupe (1978, Cognitive Psychology, 10, 422–437). In each study the models contained two stars and were divided into two parts by a curved boundary line. In the Homogeneous condition the stars were located in the same subsection. In the Congruent condition the leftmost star was in the left subsection and the rightmost star was in the right subsection. In the Incongruent condition the rightmost star was in the left subsection and the leftmost star was in the right subsection. In Experiment 1 first graders, third graders, and college students were required to remember the location of the stars. Results indicated that the first and third graders tended to use the relationship between the subsections as a clue to the relationship between the sites within them, thus extending the results of Stevens and Coupe (1978) to children. In Experiment 2 preschoolers, first, and third graders were asked to judge with the materials directly in front of them, which of the two stars was closer to a site located in one of the subsections. Results indicated that the Incongruent condition led to errors among the preschoolers and first graders but not the third graders, thus indicating that these groups tended to judge as closer the site within the same subsection even though it was really farther away. The results of both studies are discussed as indicative of a tendency among young children to impose organization on information encoded in memory and in relation to increases in metric accuracy, decentration, and efficient scanning which enable them to more accurately evaluate when such organization is and is not appropriate. Implications for behavior in large-scale environments are also discussed, with particular reference to the effect of barriers on perceptions of distance and direction.     

The freezing and unfreezing of lay-inferences: Effects on impressional primacy,ethnic stereotyping,and numerical anchoring

Three experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that primacy effects, ethnic stereotyping, and numerical anchoring all represent “epistemic freezing” in which the lay-knower becomes less aware of plausible alternative hypotheses and/or inconsistent bits of evidence competing with a given judgment. It was hypothesized that epistemic freezing would increase with an increase in time pressure on the lay-knower to make a judgment and decrease with the layknower's fear that his/her judgment will be evaluated and possibly be in error. Accordingly, it was predicted that primacy effects, ethnic stereotyping, and anchoring phenomena would increase in magnitude with an increase in time pressure and decrease in magnitude with an increase in evaluation apprehension. Finally, the time-pressure variations were expected to have greater impact upon “freezing” when the evaluation apprehension is high as opposed to low. All hypotheses were supported in each of the presently executed studies.     

Personality research and psychophysiology: General considerations

A general discussion of psychophysiological methods in relationship to personality research is presented for the investigator without an extensive knowledge of psychophysiology. The paper is organized in four sections: (a) advantages inherent in the use of psychophysiological measures (e.g., continuous measurement, sensitivity to sublimal responses); (b) psychophysiological constructs that are particularly well suited to personality research (e.g., different kinds of physiological arousal, normal/pathological distinctions, perceptual states); (c) how to choose a set of psychophysiological measures and special considerations involved with their use (e.g., obstrusiveness, context and timing of measurement, costs, and capabilities); and (d) whether or not to “psychophysiologize” personality research. Within each section, illustrative applications of psychophysiology to personality research are described.     

The Vocational Exploration Group and minority youth: An experimental outcome study

This study was designed to investigate experimentally the effectiveness of the Vocational Exploration Group in assisting students to become more aware of the world of work and its relevance for them. Sixty male, Mexican-American, junior high students were randomly assigned to one of three groups: (1) Vocational Exploration Group, (2) VEG without interaction, or (3) Control. Upon completion of treatments subjects were post-tested with an instrument designed to assess knowledge of factors such as differing functions of jobs, interests and skills needed in different jobs and satisfactions available from work. Analyses revealed no statistically significant differences (a = .05) among groups.     

Transfer of a response controlling stimulus duration across discrimination problems

In the acquisition phase, pigeons learned to peck at a changeover key to shorten the duration of S? but not of S+ presented on the food key in a discrimination problem. In the transfer phase, the significance of S+ and S? was changed through extinction of both, equal reinforcement, or discrimination reversal, while the changeover key was not available. Transfer tests then showed appropriate modification of the changeover response. Similar transfer was demonstrated across orthogonal stimulus dimensions. Further analytic studies showed that this transfer of the changeover response did not depend upon mediation due to differential response rates to the food key. This research strategy enriches the study of the “second learning process” by providing an indicator of stimulus control in all phases of the procedure. Direct transfer between different problems also indicates that discriminative stimuli, although physically dissimilar, have the same “psychological value” for the subject.     

Immediate and delayed reinforcers for flavor preferences in rats

When rats received, on alternate days, one flavored saccharin solution for 5 min and a differently-flavored saccharin solution for 60 min, they showed no consistent preference between the flavors. On the other hand, when they received one flavor in a concentrated saccharin solution and a different flavor in a dilute one, they preferred the first flavor in tests with saccharin concentration held constant; also, rats learned to prefer a flavor immediately followed by a concentrated saccharin solution to one followed by nothing. They showed no consistent preference, however, between a flavor followed 30 min later by a concentrated saccharin solution and one followed by nothing; but they learned to prefer a flavor followed 30 min later by a dextrose solution to one followed by nothing. In other words, consummatory responding did not reinforce flavor preference, sweet taste did so with immediate but not delayed reinforcement, and nutrition did so even with delayed reinforcement.     

Reinforcement from the sucking environment and subsequent modification of sucking behavior in the human neonate

The reinforcing aspects of sucking behavior in 36 human newborns was examined in a limited instrumental conditioning paradigm where sucking was both operant and reinforcer. During training, response density (rate based on sucking opportunity time) and latency were measures of two components of nonnutritive sucking, contingent negative pressure suction, and incidental jaw movement. The strategy for determining the reinforcing aspects of sucking involved comparisons of three types of sucking stimuli as reinforcers. The nature of modified operant sucking was investigated during extinction by examining number of sucks per burst, number of bursts emitted, and interburst interval time. The feedback from sucking which acted as reinforcement was concluded to be response density. Sucking was modified by changes in pausing behavior, including response latency and pauses between bursts of sucks. The number of sucks per burst also showed a significant change under certain conditioning arrangements.     

Expectation theories of decision making for duplex gambles

Complete tests of subjectively expected utility (SEU), subjectively expected value (SEV), expected utility (EU) and expected value (EV) theories were made for duplex gambles without measuring subjective probability or subjective utility. All gambles were hypothetical and offered on booklets. The duplex gambles consisted of winning gambles, which offered a chance to win a certain amount of money or to break even; and losing gambles, which offered a chance to lose a certain amount of money or break even.The results indicated that SEU, SEV and EU theories could not account for the strategies of 33%, 53% and 86% of the Ss respectively in the losing form of gambles, while EV theory accounted for 78% of the behavior of Ss.In the winning form of gambles, SEU, SEV and EU theory held for 77%, 65%, and 54% of the Ss respectively, while EV theory held for only 40% of the Ss. Suggestions for further research were made.