Preliminary Evaluation of Sleepwise Program for Children With Sleep Disturbance and Developmental Delay

Sleep disturbances are very prevalent in children with developmental delay. Parental-assisted behavioral strategies have been used effectively in school-aged children; however, multimodal treatment for preschool-aged children is lacking. The current study is a preliminary investigation of the effectiveness of a parent group program called Sleepwise designed for young children with developmental delay and incorporating behavioral, communicative, and sensory strategies. Six parents attended three workshop sessions and implemented individualized treatment plans. Initial results revealed significant posttreatment reductions in child sleep disturbances and behavioral problems, with high treatment acceptability ratings by parents. Outcomes were generally maintained at 1-month follow-up.     

Shadow recognition in human infants

Seventy-five children of five different age groups (ranging from 13–18 to 37–42 months of age) were tested using various nonverbal indices for (a) their ability to respond to shadowed information about objects other than themselves, (b) their ability to manipulate their own shadow, and (c) their ability to recognize their own shadow as evidenced by the explicit use of shadowed information about themselves to respond to themselves. The results show that although infants are aware of shadows and show signs of having mastered the concept of shadow permanence at a fairly early age, compelling evidence of shadow self-recognition is developmentally delayed relative to what has been reported for the onset of mirror self-recognition, with most infants failing to show positive evidence prior to 3 years of age. The results are discussed in light of psychological differences that may exist between shadows and mirrors. Prior involvement and/or tutoring by parents about shadows had no effect on the emergence of shadow recognition.     

Incentive theory: IV. Magnitude of reward

Incentive theory is successfully applied to data from experiments in which the amount of food reward is varied. This is accomplished by assuming that incentive value is a negatively accelerated function of reward duration. The interaction of the magnitude of a reward with its delay is confirmed, and the causes and implications of this interaction are discussed.     

米契尔关于满足延宕的研究

满足延宕是非常重要的自我控制行为,本文主要介绍米契尔在这方面的研究,涉及到了满足延宕的研究模式、影响个体做出延宕选择的因素、注意转移和认知表征对延宕过程的影响、儿童关于延宕的元认知发展、早期延宕行为与多年后个体的认知能力、社会应对技能的相关性研究、双重系统结构的理论,并分析了米契尔的研究对当今儿童教育的启示。     

Responding of pigeons under variable-interval schedules of signaled-delayed reinforcement: effects of delay-signal duration.

Two experiments with pigeons examined the relation of the duration of a signal for delay ("delay signal") to rates of key pecking. The first employed a multiple schedule comprised of two components with equal variable-interval 60-s schedules of 27-s delayed food reinforcement. In one component, a short (0.5-s) delay signal, presented immediately following the key peck that began the delay, was increased in duration across phases; in the second component the delay signal initially was equal to the length of the programmed delay (27 s) and was decreased across phases. Response rates prior to delays were an increasing function of delay-signal duration. As the delay signal was decreased in duration, response rates were generally higher than those obtained under identical delay-signal durations as the signal was increased in duration. In Experiment 2 a single variable-interval 60-s schedule of 27-s delayed reinforcement was used. Delay-signal durations were again increased gradually across phases. As in Experiment 1, response rates increased as the delay-signal duration was increased. Following the phase during which the signal lasted the entire delay, shorter delay-signal-duration conditions were introduced abruptly, rather than gradually as in Experiment 1, to determine whether the gradual shortening of the delay signal accounted for the differences observed in response rates under identical delay-signal conditions in Experiment 1. Response rates obtained during the second exposures to the conditions with shorter signals were higher than those observed under identical conditions as the signal duration was increased, as in Experiment 1. In both experiments, rates and patterns of responding during delays varied greatly across subjects and were not systematically related to delay-signal durations. The effects of the delay signal may be related to the signal's role as a discriminative stimulus for adventitiously reinforced intradelay behavior, or the delay signal may have served as a conditioned reinforcer by virtue of the temporal relation between it and presentation of food.     

TEACHING MEMORIZED SPELLING WITH A MICROCOMPUTER: TIME DELAY AND COMPUTER-ASSISTED INSTRUCTION

A computer-assisted instruction program was evaluated that used a constant time-delay procedure to teach 5 students 18 spelling words. In addition to delivering the instructional procedure, the program managed the presentation of training content based on individual student responding and collected instructional data on individual student performance. The procedure was effective at teaching 4 of the 5 students the words, and generalization occurred from the computer-delivered keyboard response format to a teacher-delivered hand-written response format. Maintenance data varied among the students. The study demonstrated the feasibility of using microcomputers to deliver time-delay instruction in special education classrooms and suggested several research questions related to specific features of microcomputer-delivered time-delay instruction.