An evaluation of outcome variables in the systematic desensitization of test anxiety.

This study investigated the effects of group systematic desensitization and group counseling on anxiety and academic performance. Fifty-four undergraduates who requested help for debilitating test anxiety were randomly assigned to Desensitization. Group Counseling, or No-treatment control groups. Measures of test anxiety, trait anxiety, and academic achievement were obtained for all students' pre- and post-treatment. The Desensitization group showed a significant decrease in test anxiety; the Counseling and No-treatment groups showed no changes in these measures. None of the groups showed any change in trait anxiety or academic achievement. The results provided evidence that systematic desensitization was an effective treatment for reducing test anxiety, but not for improving grades.     

The early history of behavior modification of stuttering: A view from the trenches

The attitudes of 644 employers toward stuttering were studied through the use of a questionnaire which required the respondents to indicate their strenght-of- agreement to seven attitudinal statements concerning stuttering. While rejecting the suggestion that stuttering interferes with job performance, the employers agreed that stuttering decreases employability and interferes with promotion possibilities. It was concluded that although stuttering may not typically interfere with job performance, it is a significant vocationally handicapping problem.     

Learning from negative outcomes in stuttering therapy: II. An epiphany of failures

Proceeding on the premise that learning advances on the feet of failure, a litany of therapeutic failures with stutterers across 3 decades is recounted. The basis for these failures included the assumptions that stuttering is a neurotic symptom; that “lucky fluency” can be maintained permanently; that a fluent drone is preferable to stuttering; that controlled fluency, once established, can be maintained permanently; that a proper task for clinicians is to motivate clients to achieve and preserve fluency; that the clinician has the responsibility for marching clients through their therapeutic paces; and that stuttering is punishing to the stutterer, so it is not preserved by reinforcement. Unfortunately, more has probably been learned about what does not work than what does.     

The stutterer's reaction to the telephone as a speaking situation

A review of the literature indicates that one of the most commonly feared talking situations among stutterers is speaking on the telephone. One hundred-thirty stutterers who feared speaking on the telephone were interviewed regarding their fear of telephone calling and answering, the age at which they began to fear calling and answering, and their fear reactions to eight specific telephone calling situations.Data was analyzed for all subjects, male/female, black/white, and mild/moderate/ severe stuttering groups. Analysis indicated that telephone calling was judged to be more feared than telephone answering with the exception of the black stutterers. Acquisition of fear of the telephone occured earlier for telephone answering than for calling within most subgroups. When general reactions to the eight telephone situations were considered, the black stutterers had the most severe fear reactions while the male and moderate stutterers had the least severe reactions.     

Mechanisms for the cueing phenomenon: The addition of the cueing context to the training memory

A series of three experiments was run to test the hypothesis that when animals are exposed to a cue from prior training, the context in which cueing occurs becomes associated with the training memory. The first experiment demonstrates that when rats are trained to avoid in one context and then are tested in a different context performance is reduced. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrate that this performance deficit can be alleviated by cueing the rats in the test context prior to testing. The data suggested that the improved performance does not seem to result from the association of the cueing context with a fear response. These results are discussed in relation to the context addition hypothesis.     

Relative status and interpersonal presumptuousness

Previous research has shown that, in status-discrepant dyads, the higher-status member's verbal behavior tends to be more presumptuous, that is, to have a higher proportion of utterances that imply a presumption of knowledge of the other, including Advisements, Interpretations, Confirmations, and Reflections as defined by a taxonomy of verbal response modes (VRMs). However, members of these dyads have differed in absolute status in an external social hierarchy as well as in relative status within the dyad. The present study was designed to distinguish relative status from absolute status. Eighteen senior psychology majors each participated in two similar conversations—one with a freshman and one with a professor. Conversations were coded using the VRM system. In freshman-senior dyads, seniors were more presumptuous and in senior-professor dyads, professors were more presumptuous, replicating previous findings. Seniors' presumptuousness was greater toward freshmen than toward professors, supporting the hypothesis that presumptuousness varies with relative status. Absolute status was not highly predictive of presumptuousness; there were no significant differences between seniors with freshmen and professors with seniors or between freshmen with seniors and seniors with professors.     

Event knowledge,elaborative propensity,and the development of learning proficiency

An experimental test was made of two hypotheses formulated to account for age differences across adolescence in the learning of arbitrary associations. One hypothesis ascribes such differences to two factors: the propensity to elaborate coherent relationships among initially disparate items, and accessibility to event knowledge that can form the bases of such relationships. The other hypothesis assumes that propensity remains constant across age, and that development stems entirely from increases in the accessibility of relevant event knowledge. These hypotheses are evaluated with reference to the performance of 11- and 17-year-olds in learning relationships among paired nouns. The results discredited both hypotheses, instigating the formulation of a revised conception of the relationship between knowledge and propensity as developmental determinants.     

A mental-health locus of control scale

The purpose of this study was to develop and seek initial validation of a mental- health locus of control scale. Twenty-six mental-health professionals rated each of the 14 statements of a previously-designed mental-health service request form along a 5-point locus of control scale. Six of the 14 items met the study's criteria for inclusion in the mental-health locus of control scale. Discriminant validity of the scale was provided by a study demonstrating that psychotic patients were more external in their perceived locus of control than were a nonpsychotic patient comparison group. Other validation studies and research are suggested.     

Learned helplessness as a schedule-shift effect

The essentials of learned helplessness theory are described and supporting evidence surveyed. It is shown that two main empirical phenomena are associated with learned helplessness: a low rate of responding in laboratory animals following numerous discrete trials with continuous free relief and in human subjects following continuous nonrelief/reward or traditional extinction. The explanation Seligman and Maier give for these findings is critically analyzed and found to be unsupported at several critical points. The “patchwork” nature of the theory and observations is considered and it is contended that what is new in learned helplessness research is a schedule-shift effect like that observed when extinction follows partial reinforcement. A schedule-shift discrimination theory of “learned helplessness” effects is offered which is closely parallel to a widely accepted explanation of other schedule-shift effects, notably the partial reinforcement extinction effect. Although the behavioral effects of some schedule shifts resemble clinical depression, the latter is a more complex behavioral phenomena than the former which in turn has broader relevance to human behavior than just depression.