Behavior therapy for asthma: a review

The paper reviews 24 case studies and experiments which assess behavior therapy for asthma or some collateral behavior management problem. The reports are examined in terms of treatment population, design, dependent variable, technique, outcome, and follow-up. Methodological and instrumentation suggestions are made for future research.     

An ecological study of the reliability of clinical judgment in executive appraisal

This research was a study of the reliability of clinical judgment findings (multitrait) across three different information sources (psychometric tests, structured interview, and psychometric tests and interview). Subjects (N = 74) were middle and senior executives of Western Canadian technical companies; clinicians (N = 3) were trained and experienced industrial psychologists. The study investigated the similarity of clinical evaluation of personological characteristics (based on an 18-factor multitrait paradigm) across the three different information sources. Subjects were independently rated by a single clinician on 18 criterion factors in each of the three information source categories. Test information source categories required the administration of approximately 12 hrs of standardized psychological assessment questionnaires to each of the 74 subjects. Interview source category involved a 1.5-hr structured interview per subject. Combined condition pooled both test and interview conditions. Generalizability of the findings was maximized by the undertaking of the experiment in a natural situation thus increasing ecological validity. Statistical treatments used were designed to assess the similarity of a clinician's evaluation of a subject based on the different category of information available about that client. Convergence (intrarater reliability) indexes range from a high of .64 to a low of .05. Results indicate a varying degree of convergence of multitrait clinical ratings dependent on clinician and trait being rated. Results are discussed in terms of implications for practitioners involved in executive personnel selection.     

The interpretation of universal affirmative propositions

It is proposed that All F are G is often given a ‘structure-neutral’ interpretation, as All, F, G, lacking a subject-predicate distinction. In the first experiment, children aged 6–7–8, and 11–12, and adults, acted out instructions like “Make a building in which all the yellow blocks are square”. The experiment demonstrated the dominance in children and decline with age of structure-neutral interpretations. In a second experiment, with the same age groups, propositions of the form All F are G, varying as to the factual inclusion relations expressed, were presented as the major premises of syllogistic items. The results indicated the presence of structure-neutral interpretations under some circumstances in adults as well as children, and also demonstrated the existence in all subjects of a ‘pragmatic processing’ mode that becomes less obligatory with age. In pragmatic interpretations, meaning is determined by previously known factual relations between the things which the words represent, rather than by grammatical relations between the words themselves.     

Development of natural language concepts: IV. The relationship between semantic organization and learning

In Experiment 1, 30 subjects at each of three age levels were shown pictures of unfamiliar “animals”. They were told two semantic attributes for each animal (e.g., kind and strong) and were asked to learn these sets so that, when shown a picture, the appropriate attributes could be recalled. The results indicated that the dimensional structure of the attributes had a strong effect on new learning for young children. Incongruent pairs of attributes (e.g., kind and ugly) were difficult to learn compared to congruent (e.g., kind and beautiful) or unrelated (e.g., kind and tall) sets. These results indicate: (a) Attribute structure is a factor in new learning; (b) 6-year-olds tend to organize the verbal labels for attributes into bipolar dimensions, rather than into independent clusters of attributes. The latter findings require reexamination of the meaning of previous word-association data which had been interpreted as indicating that 6-year-olds tend not to organize meanings bipolarly. Experiment 2 showed that the disruptive effects of incongruence on new learning disappears by college age.     

Training children's self-control: A field experiment in self-monitoring and goal-setting in the classroom

A field experiment investigated the effects of training in self-monitoring and goal-setting skills on classroom study behavior and academic achievement among elementary school students in an individualized mathematics program. In the Self-Monitoring Conditions, students were shown a simple system for observing and maintaining daily records of their own study behavior during their math classes; orthogonally, in the Goal-Setting Conditions, students were shown a simple method of setting and recording daily performance goals during their math classes. Exposure to self-monitoring procedures produced significant increases in both appropriate study behavior and in actual achievement in the mathematics program, while exposure to goal-setting procedures had no effect on either study behavior or academic achievement. Nor, contrary to expectation, did exposure to the goal-setting instructions enhance the effectiveness of the self-monitoring system. The implications of these results in terms of implicit and explicit models of self-reinforcement processes were discussed.     

The effect of serving as a model of self-control on subsequent resistance to deviation in children

The effect of having a child serve as a rule-following model for other children on the model's own subsequent rule-following was investigated in a resistance to deviation situation. First- and second-grade boys (age range 73 to 94 months) who were told they would serve as self-controlling models for others and who actually served in this capacity touched prohibited toys less than did boys who were not told they would serve as models. Boys told they were to serve as models but who were prevented from performing deviated at a level between the models and boys given no responsibility. Having children serve as rule-following models for others is suggested as an effective, non-punitive technique to increase their self-control.     

A test of the self-perception explanation of the effects of rewards on intrinsic interest

An experiment was conducted to test the proposition that rewards undermine or enhance intrinsic interest in a task to the extent that individuals interpret their behavior as being motivated by the reward. It was predicted that when subjects were denied the opportunity to develop and confirm this attribution, rewards would not produce an undermining effect, but rather would enhance dispositions and behavior. Subjects were recruited to evaluate a new sugar-free soft drink. Two levels of incentives (reward-no reward), two levels of examination (opportunity-no opportunity), and three levels of outcome (good-neutral-poor) were employed. The results support the prediction that an incentive's effect depends on the examination opportunity. In the examination condition, rewarded subjects attributed their behavior more to external factors than did unrewarded subjects, but gave more negative product evaluations only after tasting it. In the no examination condition, there were no differences in the attributions made by rewarded and unrewarded subjects, and rewarded subjects were more positively disposed toward the product both before and after tasting it. These results are explained as a consequence of two properties of rewards, enhancement through reinforcement and undermining through discounting, and of hypothesis-testing processes.