The effects of social reinforcement and task difficulty level on the pleasure derived by normal and retarded children from cognitive challenge and mastery

In order to examine several factors influencing the pleasure derived from mastery, 32 normal first-grade children (mean MA = 7.7) and 32 MA-matched familial mentally retarded children were given puzzles representing four difficulty levels. Half of the children were socially reinforced for their successes and half performed in an experimenter-absent condition. There was more smiling among normal than retarded children, in the social reinforcement than in the experimenter-absent condition, and among girls than boys. The condition effect was greater for girls than boys. In the experimenter-absent condition, normal children displayed more pleasure on the difficult than on the easy puzzles, whereas the trend was just the reverse for the retarded children. Large within-sex differences were found for normal girls only, revealing that one subgroup derived more pleasure from the more difficult puzzles whereas another subgroup enjoyed the easier puzzles more. The findings were discussed in terms of the author's refinement of White's model of effectance motivation.     

Determinants of fear over the course of avoidance learning

Most theorists have explained attenuation of fear over the course of avoidance learning by assuming that fear extinguishes with repeated nonreinforced avoidance trials. Experiment 1 replicates the finding that rats trained to a criterion of 27 consecutive avoidance responses (CARs) show less fear during the CS than rats trained to a criterion of 3 or 9 CARs. This attenuation of fear cannot, however, be accounted for by simple Pavlovian fear extinction, because yoked partners receiving the exact same pattern of CSs and USs did not show this attenuation and did not differ from yoked partners receiving only reinforced CS presentations. Experiment 2 found that feedback from the master avoidance learner's response is sufficient to produce this attenuation in yoked animals; “control” per se is not necessary. Several possible explanations are discussed regarding the mechanism underlying this role of feedback in diminishing fear of the CS in the avoidance learning context.     

Developmental change in early representational intelligence: Evidence from spatial classification strategies and related verbal expressions

The procedures 1- to 3-year-old children use to group simple sets of objects are analyzed in an investigation of cognitive change in early representational intelligence. Forty children spontaneously manipulated two-class arrays and participated in two experimental probes of object grouping. Children 1 to 2 years of age group classes by looking for one kind of thing at a time. Consistent with this, they verbally mark single classes. Children from $\text{2}\text{1}\text{2}$ to 3 years old employ spatial grouping procedures that require simultaneous consideration of two classes, and they refer to relations between classes. Advances made during the second year are consistent with other initial signs of representational-symbolic intelligence. The advances in the third year are unaccounted for by traditional cognitive-developmental theories, but they are congruent with late-emerging patterns in natural representational systems such as language, suggesting the presence of broad changes in mental organization shortly after the onset of representational intelligence.     

Career exploration in adulthood

The study described was designed to examine career exploration in the adult years, as seen from the perspective of decision-making behavior. Using conceptual models provided by H. B. Gelatt (Journal of Counseling Psychology, 1962, 9, 240–245) and D. V. Tiedeman (Personnel and Guidance Journal, 1961, 40, 15–21), two research questions were posed: (1) To what extent does exploration occur prior to more terminal career behaviors? and (2) To what extent are exploratory and terminal career decision modes interdependent? These questions were addressed by examining the series of decisions made by 95 subjects over a period of 18 years. The results supported the expectation that decisions made at earlier stages of development are more likely to be of an exploratory nature and that decisions made at later stages are more likely to be of a terminal nature. In addition, support was found for the hypothesis that decision-making strategies at various stages of development are interdependent.     

A reexamination of body build stereotypes

Using semantic differential and discriminant analysis techniques, the study sought to determine (a) the existence of body build stereotypes, (b) the extent of identification with these stereotypes, and (c) the effect of identification upon the child's self-evaluation. The subjects were 406 children in Grades four to eight from a midwestern community. All subjects were white and had predominantly middle-class backgrounds. Subjects completed the Piers-Harris Children's Self Concept Scale, semantic differential ratings of the Global self-concept, and the body build concepts of “SKINNY GIRL,” “FAT GIRL,” “SKINNY BOY,” and “FAT BOY,” and the situationally specific self-concepts of “MYSELF IN THE CLASSROOM,” “MYSELF AT LUNCH/RECESS,” and “MYSELF WHEN LOOKING IN A MIRROR,” Measures of weight and height were obtained using a standard weighing scale and wall chart. Fat child and skinny child stereotypes were found to be invariant across age and sex groups and did not appear to be gender specific. Actual fatness was found to be generally related to identification with the body build stereotypes, but not strongly so. Low self-esteem was a concomitant of identification with the fat child stereotype. The majority of children identified with the average child in all settings.     

Dissociative effects of flooding on a multivariate assessment of fear reduction and on jump-up avoidance extinction

Two experiments examined the effectiveness of three different amounts of flooding on hastening extinction of a jump-up avoidance response and on reducing fear as assessed by the multivariate fear assessment techniques of D. P. Corriveau and N. F. Smith (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 1978, 107, 145–158). In Experiment 1, a 40-min flooding treatment significantly hastened jump-up avoidance extinction, 10 min of flooding had a marginal effect, and 5 min had no effect. In Experiment 2, flooding treatments of 5, 10, and 40 min duration were all effective in reducing fear of the grid floor as indexed by seven of our nine dependent measures, including approach latency, safety test latency, and amount of time spent on the grids. Flooded subjects that were dumped onto the grid floor once at the start of the fear observation phase were found to show somewhat more fear reduction than were flooded subjects that were simply placed on the ledge at the outset of the fear observation phase and never dumped. These results, i.e., less flooding is required to reduce fear than to hasten avoidance extinction, are contrasted with those of previous experiments indicating that more flooding may be required to reduce fear than to hasten shuttlebox avoidance extinction. Such differences are discussed in the context of SSDR theory.     

Picture-naming in aphasia

The distribution of picture-naming errors for Broca's aphasics (n = 9), Wernicke's aphasics (n = 9), conduction aphasics (n = 9), frontal anomics (n = 7), and posterior anomics (n = 9) was examined to determine the diagnostic power of error types in picture-naming. Negated responses were associated with Broca's aphasia, whole-part errors ("hose" for nozzle) were associated with frontal anomia, and poor phonemic cuing was associated with Wernicke's aphasia. In addition, the relative distribution of the three most prominent naming errors-phonemic errors, semantic errors, and multiword circumlocutions-tended to distinguish the two anomic subgroups from the other aphasia subgroups. Anomic aphasics produced the fewest phonemic errors and the most multiword circumlocutions; this pattern suggests minimal word-production difficulty in anomic aphasia relative to the other aphasia syndromes. Despite such group differences, the overall picture indicates that there is considerable similarity among aphasia syndromes in terms of picture-naming behavior.     

Some neurolinguistic implications of prearticulatory editing in production

This paper argues that a complete model of language production must include a prearticulatory editing component. The function of this component is to monitor planned speech for deviations from the speaker's intention and repair any deviations that are found. It is claimed that adding such an editing component onto a production model fundamentally changes any account of aphasic symptoms using that model. As a case in point it is shown that E. M. Saffran's (1982, British Journal of Psychology, 73, 317-337) argument that agrammatic Broca's aphasia involves a deficit at the functional level of M. F. Garrett's (1975, in G. H. Bower (Ed.). The psychology of learning and motivation, New York: Academic Press) production model is no longer sound when prearticulatory editing processes are considered.     

Operant techniques used in stuttering therapy: A review

This article reviews research concerning the use of operant conditioning in stuttering therapy, and discusses the clinical implications of this literature. In order to be considered for this review, a report had to treat the findings of research specifically designed to use operant conditioning in the manipulation of speech disfluency. This body of experimental literature clearly indicates that operant management techniques can effectively reduce stuttering with punishment of disfluencies producing more notable results than reinforcement of fluent responses. Operant conditioning is an effective means of modifying stuttering behavior and should be more visible in terms of procedures used by speech therapists.