SOCIAL-SKILLS TRAINING FOR UNASSERTIVE CHILDREN: A MULTIPLE-BASELINE ANALYSIS1

The effects of social-skills training consisting of instructions, feedback, behavior rehearsal, and modelling were examined in a multiple-baseline analysis in four unassertive children. The treatment was effective in that the behaviors selected for modification changed markedly. The effects of treatment generalized from trained to untrained items (interpersonal situations requiring assertive responding) and gains were maintained at the two- and four-week followup probe sessions. In addition, overall assertiveness in all subjects increased from baseline assessment to the conclusion of treatment and into followup.     

Flooding therapy: Effectiveness,stimulus characteristics,and the value of brief in vivo exposure

Three analogue experiments examined flooding therapy. Experiment 1 showed that flooding was more effective than standardized desensitization in reducing snake phobia. Experiment 2 examined three different modes of presenting the feared stimuli in flooding: taped auditory presentation, pictorial presentation, and a combination of these two. An additional combination group were given a brief in vivo exposure to the feared object immediately after each of three treatment sessions. Both a behavioral test and subjective estimates of fear showed advantages for the combined group that had the in vivo exposure, although it appeared that auditory instructions to imagine interaction with the snake was the best method for presenting the feared stimuli. Experiment 3 compared the auditory imagined method with and without ‘aversive’ or ‘implosive’ scenes, and with either an immediate or a delayed in vivo exposure. The only procedure to produce marked effects was the one that omitted ‘aversive’ scenes and provided immediate post-treatment in vivo exposure.     

The effects of attention-directing training on recognition memory task performance of three-year-old children

Thirty-eight 3-year-old children served as subjects in an investigation of recognition memory in which schematic faces differing only in the orientation of the eyes were employed as stimuli. A pretest was administered to all children, after which the two experimental groups received training in either attention to the distinctive feature of the training stimuli (also schematic faces) by means of a matching task, or in labeling the faces according to how they looked (sleepy, happy, sad, mad) and in using the labels to perform a matching task. After the training session all children were given a posttest on recognition memory of the faces. The verbally trained group obtained significantly higher scores on the posttest than either the feature or control groups. These results indicate that although the children were able to discriminate the faces, evidenced in their ease of performance on the training tasks, they were not able to use this knowledge unless given training in attaching labels to the stimuli, which enabled them to store the information for later use. Results are discussed in light of Gibson's (1969) theory of the developmental interrelations of cognitive processes.     

RELATIVE EFFECTIVENESS OF TEACHER ATTENTION AND THE “GOOD BEHAVIOR GAME” IN MODIFYING DISRUPTIVE CLASSROOM BEHAVIOR1

A variety of behavioral procedures have been employed in recent years to modify disruptive classroom behavior. Such methods have been developed with the belief that curtailing disruptive behavior would strengthen positive classroom performance. In this study, two procedures, the good behavior game and the teacher-attention method, were compared to determine short-run effectiveness. Four teachers (two fourth-grade and two fifth-grade) implemented both methods in their classrooms over a five-week period. Presentation of methods was alternated in a counterbalanced design to control for order effects. Each of the four classrooms consisted of 25 students. A time-sampling procedure was used to record the presence or absence of disruptive behavior within 15-second intervals. Disruptive behavior was defined as any talking-out or out-of-seat behavior without permission. The results indicated that both procedures were effective in modifying disruptive classroom behavior, but that the good behavior game reduced disruptive behavior significantly better than the teacher-attention method. In addition, all teachers preferred the game to the teacher-attention procedure. This reaction seemed related to the effort involved in initiating the two activities. The good behavior game required less effort on the teacher's part. However, use of the game alone raises certain ethical considerations. One such issue involves abuse of peer pressure. Also, there is a possibility that negative rules may tend to promote resentment. Positively stated rules would ameliorate that problem. Another relates to the possibility that some teachers might be carried away by the ease of the game's implementation to the extent that behavior control becomes the primary objective in the classroom. As a result, one might consider use of the game to maximize short-term change, but then phase out this procedure in favor of another method (e.g., teacher attention) for long-run effects.     

Numerical taxonomy of aphasia

Two hundred consecutively seen aphasics, 142 of them with infarcts, were examined by tests of fluency, comprehension, repetition, naming, and information content. The language scores were subjected to a minimum variance clustering algorithm separately for the total and for the infarct groups. The latter generated 10 clusters on a dendrogram. Attribute analysis of each cluster provided a clinically meaningful profile of language performance for these groups. The degree of correlation of most computer generated clusters with clinically recognized groups was high, and the homogeneity of some of the clusters is striking. An exception appears to be “conduction aphasia,” which is bimodally distributed. One of these clusters, with high fluency and low comprehension scores, was renamed “afferent conduction” aphasia, and the other, with lower fluency and higher comprehension, was renamed “efferent conduction” aphasia. The Principal Components Analysis was used to evaluate the discriminatory value of language characteristics, and the Nearest Neighbor Network Analysis was used to evaluate the significance of clustering. The dendrogram for all aphasics showed a less specific and less homogenous six clusters.     

INTERACTIONS BETWEEN TEACHER GUIDANCE AND CONTINGENT ACCESS TO PLAY IN DEVELOPING PREACADEMIC SKILLS OF DEVIANT PRESCHOOL CHILDREN1

Token-mediated access to play and snacks was made contingent on completion of academic tasks in the Baseline Experiment. This contingency produced stable completion rates that were subsequently doubled, and then tripled, for four deviant children in a special preschool. A reversal design demonstrated that the contingency was functional in maintaining the children's rates of task completion. The Guidance Experiment examined the role of a social event, teacher guidance, in the acquisition of task-completion skills, in a multiple-baseline-across-tasks design (with reversals). The analysis demonstrated that teacher guidance was an important supplement to the token-mediated contingency in establishing significant increases in task completions for a second group of three deviant children in the special class. The importance of teacher guidance was related to the difficulty level of the children's tasks.     

Effects of two teacher-presentation rates on off-task behavior, answering correctly, and participation

Off-task behavior, correct answering, and participation during beginning reading instruction were recorded for two low-achieving first-grade children during two different rates of teacher presentation. A slow-rate presentation (A) was compared with a fast-rate presentation (B) in an ABABAB design. In slow-rate presentation, there was a delay between the children's response and introduction of the next task. In fast-rate presentation, there was no delay. A new teacher taught during the final AB phases, which allowed for a brief replication. Both teachers were reminded on a fixed-interval 90-sec schedule throughout all phases of the experiment to praise the subjects, thus preventing a confounding of social praise and rate of teacher presentation. Fast-rate presentation was accompanied by a lower per cent occurrence of off-task behavior for both Subjects 1 and 2. For Subject 1, correct answering and participation were more frequent during all three fast-rate phases. For Subject 2, correct answering and participation were more frequent during the fast-rate phases after the first reversal.     

精神医学中的信息系统控制原理

精神医学是临床医学的一个分枝,是高度复杂的一门科学,站在哲学的角度反思,信息系统控制科学方法渗透于精神医学的历史发展过程和临床工作的资料收集、诊断、治疗等各个环节,以及精神医学的科研工作中,还启迪着我国精神卫生事业的发展方向。     

医疗社会工作：现实意义和发展趋向

医疗社会工作是社会工作专业的重要实务领域之一,在西方发达国家的医疗事业中扮演着不可替代的角色,具有解决患者及其家属问题、处理医患关系,并促进公共卫生政策的改善等多种功能。从我国目前的发展来看,尚处于起步阶段,还有诸多需要努力的方面,包括完善相关政策、提高服务质量、修正教育模式、突出中国特色等。