A skills training approach to the reduction of institutional offending

Offenses committed by those held in institutions can have repercussions at several levels: the individual must suffer the consequences of his or her actions; there may be a victim; and valuable staff time is spent adjudicating the outcome. A number of studies have suggested that an adjunct to behavioural training in institutions is a reduction in institutional misbehaviour—a suggestion which the present study sought to capitalize upon in a direct manner. In a borstal for young male law-breakers, referrals of individuals who received above average numbers of discipline reports in the institution were gathered. These people were then offered a place on a training course designed to attempt to modify behaviour towards authority figures, prison officers in particular. The course was carried out in two forms: a ‘Short’ Course of 4 days duration, and a ‘Long” Course spread over 8 weeks. Assessment of the effects of training was made by monitoring levels of discipline reports, and also by the administration of self-report and personality scales. Compared with No-training and Non-referred Controls, no significant changes in the frequency of receiving discipline reports was found following either mode of training. However, a number of changes on the self-report and personality measures suggested some degree of change after training. Implications for the construction of future courses with similar objectives are discussed.     

Children's perceptions of major positive and negative events and factors in single-parent families

A study was designed to tap children's perceptions of the divorce situation as opposed to adults' perceptions of the child's response to the parental divorce. Subjects were 75 boys and 75 girls from mother- and father-headed families. Using an individual structured interview procedure children were encouraged to reconstruct both positive and negative dimensions of their interactions with the custodial parent. Through factor analyses of the contents of interviews four negative and two positive factors involving 20 specific items were identified in the children's perceptual data. Subsequently, chi-square analyses were done to compare differences in girls' and boys' perceptions between and across father- and mother-headed families. Results are discussed in terms of their relationship with the existing literature and their clinical and educational relevance to children, single parents and professionals.     

Occupational values,environments, and levels

The Job Attitude Scale was administered to majors and captains and to upper-middle managers and lower-middle managers of industrial organizations. No significant differences in general intrinsic orientation were found between the majors and the upper-middle managers, or between the captains and the lower-middle managers. The majors and the upper-middle managers were significantly more intrinsically oriented than the captains and the lower-middle managers. The results also showed that the military samples were significantly more concerned with advancement, security, status, and family needs-salarywise-than the civilian samples, while the two civilian groups were significantly more concerned with achievement, supervision, and relations with subordinates than the two military groups. The results were discussed in view of job environment and job level.     

Spatial and ordinal components of form perception and literacy

We suppose that the visual nervous system possesses compensatory rectifying mechanisms by means of which it achieves “constancy” of visual recognition despite variation in physical appearance of the stimulus object. Using geometric rotations, reflections, and other transformations of text as the physical variation, we studied the recognizability of the texts and the influence that practice in reading one type of transformation exerted on the recognition of others. The mathematical structure of the training set was used as a clue to the perceptual mechanisms mediating transfer, isolating perceptual functions involving a geometric transformation and an ordinal operator. The main feature of the theory is its emphasis upon a dialogue or interaction between ongoing problem-solving processes in visual rectification and the sample being recognized. The theory developed is contrasted with other theories of pattern recognition in which concepts such as stimulus generalization, tuned detectors, and preprocessing play major roles. A relation of this theory to problems encountered among disabled readers (“dyslexics”) is also brought out.     

The effects of increasing familiarity on infants' reactions to adult strangers

The influence of the presence and novelty of an adult stranger on the reactions of 12-mo-old infants was investigated. Subjects were placed near their mothers in a room containing a new toy and either the same, a different, or no adult stranger for 8 4-min trials. Results indicated that the Same-Adult Group spent more time near the adult, less time near and touching their mothers, and more time near and touching the toys than the Different-Adult Group. These trends emerged as the trials progressed, and evidenced the Same-Adult Group's growing familiarity with the adult. The No-Adult Group spent less time near or touching their mothers and more time near or touching the toys than the Different-Adult Group, but did not differ from the Same-Adult Group on these responses. The findings suggest that fearful or cautious reactions to adult strangers disappear rapidly as the adult becomes familiar and point to the value of studying the process whereby the infant becomes familiar with new people.     

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.     

The distracting effect of material reward: An alternative explanation for the superior performance of reward groups in probability learning

To determine whether the distraction effect associated with material rewards in discrimination learning can account for the superior performance of reward groups in probability learning, the performance of 144 school children (preschool, second, and fifth grades) on a two-choice successive discrimination task was compared under three reinforcement conditions (material reward, marker, and knowledge of results). The two events in the task had different frequencies of occurrence, as in probability learning, yet they appeared in a constant order to make 100% payoff possible. The subjects in the reward and marker groups learned the task more slowly, and the nonlearners among them used stereotyped alternation patterns to a greater degree than subjects in the knowledge-of-results condition. These findings suggest that a distracting effect of material reward is present in probability learning and may explain the superior performance of reward groups typically found in probability learning studies.     

Covariation and temporal contiguity as principles of causal inference in young children

Four- to seven-year-old children observed a simple physical effect which could be attributed to either a consistent but noncontiguous covariate or a contiguous but inconsistent covariate. When there was a physical rationale for the temporal delay between covariate and effect, children attributed the effect to the consistent but noncontiguous covariate. In the absence of such a rationale, they attributed the effect to the contiguous but inconsistent covariate. It was concluded that neither consistent covariation nor strict temporal contiguity were essential aspects of causal inference for these children.     

Spatial representation by blind and sighted children

Spatial representation by 72 blind and blindfolded sighted children between the ages of 6 and 11 was tested in two experiments by mental rotation of a raised line under conditions of clockwise varied directions.Experiment 1 showed that the two groups were well matched on tactual recognition and scored equally badly on matching displays to their own mentally rotated position.Experiment 2 found the sighted superior in recall tests. There was a highly significant interaction between sighted status and degree of rotation. Degree of rotation affected only the blind. Their scores were significantly lower for rotating to oblique and to the far orthogonal directions than to near orthogonal test positions. On near orthogonals the blind did not differ from the sighted.Age was a main effect, but it did not interact with any other variable. Older blind children whose visual experience dated from before the age of 6 were superior to congenitally blind subjects, but not differentially more so on oblique directions.The results were discussed in relation to hypotheses about the nature of spatial representation and strategies by children whose prior experience derived from vision or from touch and movement.