TEACHING SOCIAL LANGUAGE TO MODERATELY HANDICAPPED STUDENTS

Three students with moderate handicaps were taught to initiate and expand on conversational topics. The teaching procedure used stimuli generated from actual conversations with nonhandicapped peers. Generalization was assessed by audiotaping conversations between the handicapped students and their peers in natural school contexts without adult supervision. Results indicated that training generalized to natural contexts. These results were socially validated by undergraduate special education students, who rated tapes of two of the students' conversations during training phases as more socially competent than during baseline. Results are discussed in terms of the evaluation of complex social behavior as multioperant behaviors.     

THE EFFECTS OF A CLASSROOM MANAGER ROLE ON THE SOCIAL INTERACTION PATTERNS AND SOCIAL STATUS OF WITHDRAWN KINDERGARTEN STUDENTS

We examined the effects of assigning a classroom manager's role on the frequency of social interactions and the sociometric standing of three withdrawn kindergarten students. Results showed that when the three socially withdrawn students were placed in the manager's role they substantially increased the frequency of their positive social initiations during free-play time, were the recipients of many more positive and significantly fewer negative social bids from their peers, were rated more favorably by their classmates on a sociometric rating scale, and were selected more frequently as best friends by their peers. In addition, follow-up data suggested partial maintenance of treatment effects when students no longer occupied manager positions.     

GENERALIZATION OF OBJECT NAMING AFTER TRAINING WITH PICTURE CARDS AND WITH OBJECTS

Generalization of four retarded children's object naming responses to stimuli in the natural environment was assessed after training with either objects or pictures of the objects. Generalization was typically greater after training with objects. In a second experiment, half of the stimuli that showed little generalization were retrained by alternating the original training object with an object that belonged to the same stimulus class as the training stimulus. The other half were simply retrained using the object. The alternating procedure resulted in substantial increases in generalization to untrained objects.     

A taxonomy of item response models

A number of models for categorical item response data have been proposed in recent years. The models appear to be quite different. However, they may usefully be organized as members of only three distinct classes, within which the models are distinguished only by assumptions and constraints on their parameters. “Difference models” are appropriate for ordered responses, “divide-by-total” models may be used for either ordered or nominal responses, and “left-side added” models are used for multiple-choice responses with guessing. The details of the taxonomy and the models are described in this paper. The present study was supported in part by two postdoctoral fellowships awarded to Lynne Steinberg: an Educational Testing Service Postdoctoral Fellowship at ETS, Princeton, NJ and an NIMH Individual National Research Service Award at Stanford University, Stanford, CA. Helpful comments by the editor and three anonymous reviewers are gratefully acknowledged.     

The interview for antisocial behavior: Psychometric characteristics and concurrent validity with child psychiatric inpatients

The present study evaluated psychometric features and correlates of the Interview for Antisocial Behavior (IAB), a new measure designed to assess antisocial child behavior. Parents of 264 psychiatric inpatients (ages 6–13 years) completed the measure to evaluate antisocial behavior of their children. The investigation evaluated the relation of IAB scores to clinically derived diagnoses and to aggression and externalizing behaviors, as measured by different raters (parents, teachers), across different settings (home, school, hospital), and with different assessment methods (rating scales, behavioral role-play test). The results indicated that the IAB showed acceptable levels of internal consistency. A priori scores (severity, duration, total antisocial behavior) and factor analytically derived scales (Arguing/Fighting, Covert Antisocial Behaviors, Self-Injury) distinguished children with a DSM III diagnosis of conduct disorder, and scores on the IAB were more consistently related to other measures of aggression and externalizing behavior than to measures of internalizing behavior or overall severity of dysfunction. The implications of the results for use of the measure, particularly in relation to evaluation of the overt-covert dimension of antisocial behavior, are discussed.Completion of this research was facilitated by a Research Scientist Development Award (MH00353) and by grants (MH35408, MH39642) from the National Institute of Mental Health and the Rivendell Foundation.     

A measure of agreement for use with the Holland classification system

A measure of agreement for partially ordered data is suggested that makes use of the k categories with the highest ranks, the ranks of the remaining categories being disregarded. The proposed measure is applied to the Self-Directed Search in order to evaluate its agreement with occupational preference. Other forms of agreement in the Holland classification system can also be assessed by the proposed measure. Examples are congruence and husband-wife and counselor-client agreement.     

Concept learning,memory and transfer of dot pattern categories

In the first experiment, subjects rated the similarity of a sample of pairs of random dot patterns generated from 3 prototypes consisting of either 4, 6, or 9 dots. The results of the experiment tended to confirm the structure imposed on the patterns by the construction method. In the second experiment, subjects learned to classify random patterns generated from 2 prototypes with either short or long interprototype distance and consisting of either 4, 6, or 9 dots in a traditional concept identification task. After acquisition, memory for old and new distortions and the prototype, which was not presented during learning, was assessed. The tendency to call a pattern “new” increased with the distance between the pattern and its prototype. In a subsequent transfer test, all subjects saw patterns of either 4, 6, or 9 dots. Performance was above chance and the transfer from larger to smaller patterns tended to be greater than the transfer from smaller to larger patterns. This is consistent with a process of schema formation based on features common to most exemplars of the category. The results are discussed in relation to several theories of concept learning and schema abstraction.     

Cognitive dissonance as a mechanism in vocational decision processes

This study examined changes in cognitive-dissonance-related variables during the professional training period. Differences in levels and change in satisfaction with career choice, importance of career, certainty of career decision, self-occupational perceptions, general attitude toward career, time since career decision, and past experience were observed when students who left a collegiate professional training program before program completion were compared with those who remained in the program. Data supports the validity of D. Hershenson and R. Roth's (1966, Journal of Counseling Psychology, 13, 368–370) and V. Harren's (1979, Journal of Vocational Behavior, 14, 119–133) theoretical models of vocational decision and the Assessment of Career Decision Making scale.     

Induction into the workplace: The impact of internships

Some form of work experience or internship ranks high on the list of criteria used by recruiters of college graduates for positions as management trainees. While internships are discussed positively by students, faculty, and recruiters, their evaluation has been faulted as being highly subjective and lacking in the use of controls and psychometric sophistication. This study used an Institutional Cycle design to investigate changes occurring after participation in internships with three cohorts of college age students. Changes were noted in both terminal and instrumental values and in work-specific needs. In the former, changes moved the profiles of the students closer to those of campus recruiters. In the latter, changes moved the students' needs in the direction of characteristics of the job, away from environmental characteristics.