Contingent reinforcement of lowered blood-alcohol levels in an outpatient chronic alcoholic

Recently. the proposition that alcohol abuse is an operant behavior and thus functionally related to its consequences has been investigated under experimental conditions. In controlled laboratory settings, in which inpatient chronic alcoholics are allowed access to alcoholic beverages, alcohol consumption has been markedly altered via operant strategies. Monetary rewards (Cohen et al., 1971), the opportunity to participate in an enriched environment (Cohen et al., 1971). and visits to a girlfriend (Bigelow et al., 1973) have been used as reinforcers for decreased drinking.Other investigators (Sulzer, 1965; Miller, 1972: Hunt and Azrin, 1973) have successfully applied similar contingency management techniques to alcoholics in the natural environment. However, failure to control for the influence of extraneous therapeutic variables (e.g., attention-placebo factors, job counseling) together with reliance on self-report measures of drinking behavior seriously limit the conclusiveness of these results. Objective assessment is particularly essential with operant techniques since consequent events must be systematically scheduled upon the occurrence or non-occurrence of drinking. Documentation of drinking in the natural environment is a difficult task since the alcoholic frequently consumes alcohol when he is alone. In lieu of direct observation, blood alcohol concentrations are an obvious means of objective assessment. Such data are most conveniently obtained via breath tests similar to the ones that law enforcement officers utilize to identify intoxicated motorists.The purpose of the present study was to investigate the influence of reinforcement contingencies on lowering blood alcohol concentrations obtained in an alcoholic's natural environment.     

An experimental analysis of generalization in assertive training

Unassertive psychiatric patients matched on age, diagnosis, and self-reported assertiveness were assigned to one of five conditions, with 10 subjects in each group: Test-Retest, Practice-Control, Practice-Control with Generalization Instructions, Modeling and Instructions, Modeling and Instructions with Generalization Instructions. All subjects were videotaped (Pre- and Post-Test) while responding to ten interpersonal situations requiring assertive responses. Following the Pre-test, subjects in the experimental groups received training on five of the ten situations (training scenes). On the remaining five situations subjects received no training (generalization scenes). Results indicated that the Modeling and Instructions groups effected the greatest changes on seven of the eight components for the training scenes but on only five of the eight components for the generalization scenes. No differences were found between either of the two Practice-Control groups and the the Test-Retest group. Although transfer of training effects were obtained on the generalization scenes, these effects were minimal on an independent in vivo test of generalization. Moreover, an instructional set designed to facilitate generalization to different situations was only partially effective.     

Partial reinforcement effects and type of reward

In two experiments 68 rats were trained to bar press or run down a straight runway for food or for water under conditions of either continuous reinforcement or partial reinforcement. In both experiments, there was greater persistence of behavior which had been reinforced with food than with water. In Expt 2, the partial reinforcement extinction effect (PREE) was observed with food reward, but not with water.Within the context of the experimental procedures used, it can be concluded that the rat has mechanisms for developing persistence which are dependent on the specific motivational system involved. This conclusion is related to theories of partial reinforcement effects and to possible biological origins of the mechanisms.     

Closed- and open-class lexical access in agrammatic and fluent aphasics

Bradley, Garrett, and Zurif (Bradley, Computational distinctions of vocabulary type. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, MIT Press; Cambridge, MA, 1978; Biological studies of mental processes, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1980) have suggested that closed-class word access is normally mediated by a different route than the open-class one, and that the loss of this closed-class route might account for agrammatism. However, in an earlier study ( Gordon & Caramazza, Brain and Language, 15, 143–160, 1982) we were not able to confirm a meaningful difference between closed- and open-class word frequency responsiveness of the type Bradley (unpublished dissertation, 1978) had seemed to find in normal subjects. We have now done a direct comparison of closed-class frequency sensitivity in agrammatic and nonagrammatic aphasics, to directly test Bradley and colleagues' hypotheses and to avoid some of the experimental problems with between-class frequency comparisons. We find that closed-class words behave similarly whether or not the subject is agrammatic. Therefore, the differences between agrammatic and nonagrammatic aphasics must arise at a deeper level (or levels) of lexical processing than the one probed by the frequency sensitivity effect.     

Ideogram writing in a disconnection syndrome

A case of disconnection-type agraphia coupled with alexia was reported. The patient showed several asymmetrical manual capacities between the two hands, i.e., dissociated difficulty of Kanji (ideogram) writing between the two hands, left unilateral difficulty of Kana (phonogram) writing, right unilateral dyscopia of letters as well as geometrical figures, and right unilateral difficulty in drawing without a model. Anatomically, lesions involved most of the corpus callosum in its posterior portion including the splenium and the left medial occipital lobe. From these data, a possible liguistic capacity of the right hemisphere was suggested.     

Dichotic speech perception: A comparison between stuttering and nonstuttering children

A stop consonant-vowel dichotic listening task was administered to 90 right- handed boys, 30 in each age group of 5, 7, and 9 yr. Half in each group were stutterers, half nonstutterers. Two and a half times as many stutterers as nonstutterers were found to display either a left-ear advantage (LEA) or no ear advantage (NEA). This finding suggested a greater tendency on the part of stutterers, as opposed to nonstutterers, for reversed or bilateral representation of the auditory speech areas of the brain. In addition, both stutterers and nonstutterers displayed significant developmental increases in the number of times they were able to identify both dichotic speech stimuli, thereby supporting the hypothesis of an age-related increase in children's total information processing capacity. The results are discussed in terms of the differences between stutterers and nonstutterers with respect to the issues of motor representation, cognitive modes, and higher-order linguistic processes.     

Concerning Hunt's new ways of assessing intelligence

Hunt envisions the automation of intelligence testing (Intelligence, 1982, 6, 231–240), but he appears to be overly optimistic. He neglects to mention conceptual and practical difficulties at the interface of measurement and theory that place psychometry not in the dawn of microcomputerization, but rather more nearly in its primordium.     

Critical thinking skills and reflective judgment development: Redefining the aims of higher education

Educators who agree that critical thinking and intellectual development are appropriate aims of higher education do not always agree on what constitutes good thinking. This study examined the relationship between two constructs that attempt to describe that aim: critical thinking as defined by the Watson Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal and a stage model of adolescent and adult intellectual development described as reflective judgment. In a 2 × 4 design, 119 women students at four educational levels were matched on high and low extremes of critical thinking scores and were compared on the basis of their scores on the Reflective Judgment Interview.The results indicate: (a) a significant main effect for educational level: students at higher educational levels achieved higher scores on the reflective judgment measure; (b) a main effect for critical thinking: high critical thinking subjects out-performed low critical thinking subjects on the Reflective Judgment Interview; and (c) while low critical thinking subjects were homogeneously low in reflective judgment levels, high critical thinking subjects had significantly greater variability of Reflective Judgment Interview scores.     

The predictive validity of Holland's construct of consistency

Holland's construct of consistency was studied for its predictive validity of certain measures of vocational stability. A new measure of consistency used was the difference between two plotted vocational choices on the American College Testing Program's Map of College Majors which 1248 subjects expressed while in high school. This consistency index was found to have no relationship with the similarity of the same subjects' beginning and ending college majors, also measured as a distance on the Map of College Majors. Additionally, no relationship was found to exist between the consistency index and number of college major changes, the number of course withdrawals, academic performance, and scholastic aptitude.