An adjusted measure of achievement motivation for males and females and effects of future orientation on level of performance

An adjusted measure of achievement motivation was devised with the combined use of the Mehrabian Achievement Scale (Educational and Psychological Measurement, 1968, 28, 493–502) and the Mandler and Sarason (Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1952, 47, 166–173) Test Anxiety Questionnaire. Contingent instructions, in which Ss were told success on a test was necessary to qualify for opportunities to succeed on subsequent tests, were contrasted to performance in equivalent noncontingent situations and relative to adjusted achievement motivation for both male and female subjects. In noncontingent situations Ss were told performance on any one test did not affect their opportunity to take subsequent tests. Support was obtained for the use of the above mentioned scales as a predictor of performance for both sexes but not for the Mehrabian by itself. Both male and female Ss high in achievement motivation consistently scored significantly higher than Ss low in achievement motivation in all conditions. The expected interactions between treatments and motive groups were not found but t tests between extreme motive groups within conditions revealed significant differences in the expected directions. These results do not provide statistically reliable support to the elaborated theory of achievement motivation.     

Reciprocity counseling: A rapid learning-based procedure for marital counseling

Existing marital counseling procedures have not been experimentally evaluated or generally have not been based on an experimentally derived theory. The present study formulated a model of marital discord based on reinforcement theory, developed a marital counseling procedure based on that theory and experimentally evaluated its effectiveness. The model viewed marital discord as the resultant of non-reciprocated reinforcement. The counseling procedures attempted to establish general marital reciprocity of reinforcement by teaching reciprocity in several specific areas of marital unhappiness. The reciprocity procedure was conducted for about 3–4 weeks with 12 couples, after first conducting a catharsis-type counseling as a control procedure. The results showed that the reciprocity procedure increased reported marital happiness, whereas the control procedure did not. Once reciprocity was achieved in a specific problem area, the benefits generalized somewhat to other yet-to-be counseled areas. The increase in marital happiness occurred for each of the specific areas of marital interaction, for 96 per cent of the clients, and was maintained and increased during the available follow-up period. These results indicate that the procedure is an effective, rapid and enduring method of producing marital happiness.     

A review of the observational data-collection and reliability procedures reported in The Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis

The research published in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (1968 to 1975) was surveyed for three basic elements: data-collection methods, reliability procedures, and reliability scores. Three-quarters of the studies reported observational data. Most of these studies' observational methods were variations of event recording, trial scoring, interval recording, or time-sample recording. Almost all studies reported assessment of observer reliability, usually total or point-by-point percentage agreement scores. About half the agreement scores were consistently above 90%. Less than one-quarter of the studies reported that reliability was assessed at least once per condition.     

Auditory processing of relational information by young infants

The ability of 5-month-old infants to process relational information was assessed by means of a habituation-dishabituation paradigm with cardiac deceleration as the response measure. Infants were first habituated to a six-tone pattern and then shifted either to a transposition of the standard pattern or to a control pattern which comprised the elements of the transposed pattern in scrambled order. Dishabituation was not evident in the case of the transposed group but was clearly evident for the control group. These results indicate that infants can process relational information from tonal patterns.     

Actors,observers, and the attribution process: Toward a reconceptualization

Jones and Nisbett hypothesize that actors attribute their actions to situational requirements whereas observers attribute the same actions to personal dispositions. This hypothesis is critically examined and a reconceptualization is proposed. Our conceptual analysis focuses on the attributional consequences of differences between actors and observers in: (a) availability of information about the contemporary and historical determinants of the actor's behavior, and (b) susceptibility to possible motivational distortions and cognitive biases. The relationship between this formulation and Jones and Nisbett's analysis of differences between self-perception and interpersonal perception is discussed.     

Self-reinforcement: An assessment of external influences

Two experiments were carried out in which low- and high-demand characteristics of self-reward were assessed in a multiple-baseline design across subjects. In the first experiment, arithmetic performance of four children was systematically assessed under no-reinforcement, self-reward/low-demand and self-reward/high-demand phases. In the second experiment, the performance of four children on a less meaningful task was assessed under the same conditions employed in Experiment 1. Results indicated that performance rates were relatively stable during the no-reinforcement phase but that these rates dropped markedly during the self-reward/low-demand phase for all eight subjects. Further, increased rates of performance were achieved under the self-reward/high-demand phase for all subjects. Results are discussed in terms of the assessment of the self-reinforcement procedure, current definitions of self-reinforcement, and the need to view self-reinforcement as existing on a continuum of external demand characteristics.This project was supported in whole by a faculty research grant awarded to the first author and completed while the second author was a visiting associate professor at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic.     

Behavioral confirmation in social interaction: From social perception to social reality

A perceiver's actions, although based upon initially erroneous beliefs about a target individual may channel social interaction in ways that cause the behavior of the target to confirm the perceiver's beliefs. To chart this process of behavioral confirmation, we observed successive interactions between one target and two perceivers. In the first interaction, targets who interacted with perceivers who anticipated hostile partners displayed greater behavioral hostility than targets whose perceivers expected nonhostile partners. Only when targets regarded their actions as reflections of personal dispositions did these behavioral differences in hostility persevere into their subsequent interactions with naive perceivers who had no prior knowledge about them. Theoretical implications of the behavioral confirmation construct for social perception processes are discussed.     

The acquisition of abstract letter codes

A modification of Posner's letter-matching paradigm proposed by Beller (1971) was employed to study the development of abstract visual and name codes for letters. Second-, fourth-, and sixth-grade students (ages 8, 10, and 12 years, respectively) were presented in advance one of a pair of to-be-matched letters. Case agreement (upper- and lowercase) between the prime letter and the letter pair was manipulated to differentiate facilitation based on concrete features of the stimulus letter from that based on the letter's abstract visual code. For physical matches second graders showed greater facilitation from same-case primes than from different-case primes, whereas sixth graders benefited equally from both types of prime. For same-name and different conditions, no qualitative developmental differences were revealed as all subjects benefited from letter primes irrespective of case agreement. The acquisition and utilization of abstract visual codes for letters are a later acquisition than name codes, which were clearly operative at the lowest grade level in the present experiment.