Priming family values: How being a parent affects moral evaluations of harmless but offensive acts

In modern liberal societies people are generally reluctant to morally condemn acts that they find personally distasteful so long as those acts are not harmful or unfair to others. However, in providing character education for their children, parents often have to censure harmless but offensive acts. Thus, we hypothesize that the parental role broadens the scope of morality beyond narrow considerations of harm and fairness. To test this idea we asked parents and nonparents to morally evaluate harmless/offensive acts and a control harmful act. We manipulated whether the parental role was primed before they evaluated these acts. Parents and nonparents did not differ in their moral objections to the control act regardless of parental role priming. However, when the parental role was primed parents were more morally opposed to harmless but offensive acts than were nonparents. We discuss the implications of these results for understanding the dynamics of moral judgment and the recruitment of parents into moral reform movements.     

The epistemic implications of engineering rhetoric

The texts (and talk) of engineers take different forms. In this essay, I present and critique several texts written for different purposes and audiences but all intended to convey to the reader the technical details of whatever they are about—whether a textbook passage describing the fundamental behavior of an electrical component, a journal article about a mathematical technique intended for use in design optimization, a memo to co-workers within a firm about a heat transfer analysis of a remotely sited building, or a general introduction to the field of? ergonomics? My aim is to explore how the ways in which engineers describe and document their problems and projects frame what they accept, display and profess as useful knowledge. In this I am particularly interested in how engineers envision the ‘users’ of, or participants in, their productions. Like science, engineering texts are written as if they were timeless and untainted by socio-cultural features. However, a technical treatise is not devoid of metaphor or creative rendering of events; there is always a narrative within which worldly data and instrumental logic is embedded—but it is a story in which the passive voice prevails, history is irrelevant, and the human actor or agent is painted in quantitative parameters fitting the occasion. Whether this rhetoric can be sustained in the face of challenges to traditional ways of doing engineering is an open question.     

Child versus adult psychoanalysis: Two processes or one?

Child analysis continues to be seen as a different technique from adult analysis because children are still involved in a developmental process and because the primary objects continue to play active roles in their lives. This paper argues that this is a false dichotomy. An extended vignette of the analysis of a latency‐aged girl is used to demonstrate that the psychoanalytic process that develops in child analysis is structurally the same as that in adult analysis. Both revolve around the analysis of resistance and transference and use both to promote knowledge of the patient’s mind at work. And both techniques formulate interventions based on the analyst’s appraisal of the patient’s mental organization. It is hoped that stressing the essential commonality of both techniques will promote the development of an overarching theory of psychoanalytic technique.     

A systematic examination of different parameters of presession exposure to tangible stimuli that maintain problem behavior

We examined the effects of three different presession conditions on tangibly maintained problem behavior for 2 students with autism, using individual-participant multielement designs. First, an analogue functional analysis demonstrated that problem behavior was maintained by access to tangible items. Next, topographies of item rejection were identified. Finally, students were exposed to (a) brief access, (b) no access, and (c) satiation to the tangible items prior to tangible sessions. The results demonstrated high levels of problem behavior following the brief-access and no-access presession conditions and low levels of problem behavior following the satiation condition. The findings are discussed in the context of how satiation might best be defined for these sorts of evaluations.     

USE OF LATENCY TO PROBLEM BEHAVIOR TO EVALUATE DEMANDS FOR INCLUSION IN FUNCTIONAL ANALYSES

Few direct‐assessment procedures are designed to identify potential negative reinforcers (e.g., including demands in the escape condition of functional analyses). Two participants were systematically exposed to a series of demands nominated by caregivers as potential negative reinforcers. Sessions ended following the first instance of problem behavior, and a hierarchy of demand aversiveness was created based on the latency to the first problem behavior. Subsequent functional analyses confirmed the predictive value of the hierarchy, with shorter latency demands consistently producing more differentiated functional analysis outcomes.     

FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS AND TREATMENT OF SELF‐INJURY IN A CAPTIVE OLIVE BABOON

Self‐injurious behavior (SIB), such as self‐biting and head banging, has been reported to occur in approximately 10% of captive, individually housed nonhuman primates. Accounts of the etiology of SIB in primates range from ecological to physiological. However, to date, no research has examined the possible influence of social consequences delivered by handlers and keepers in the maintenance of SIB in this population. The current study investigated the effects of social contact as a potentially reinforcing consequence for the SIB displayed by an olive baboon (Papio hamadryas anubis). Results indicated that the behavior was maintained by attention from humans. As treatment, reinforcement was arranged for an appropriate alternative response, resulting in increases in the appropriate alternative behavior and decreases in SIB.     

Children's perception and understanding of (dis)similarities among dynamic bodily/facial expressions of happiness, pleasure, anger, and irritation

The current study examined the abilities of children (6 and 8 years of age) and adults to freely categorize and label dynamic bodily/facial expressions designed to portray happiness, pleasure, anger, irritation, and neutrality and controlled for their level of valence, arousal, intensity, and authenticity. Multidimensional scaling and cluster analyses showed that children (n = 52) and adults (n = 33) structured expressions in systematic and broadly similar ways. Between 6 and 8 years of age, there was a quantitative, but not a qualitative, improvement in labeling. When exposed to rich and dynamic emotional cues, children as young as 6 years can successfully perceive differences between close expressions (e.g., happiness, pleasure), and can categorize them with clear boundaries between them, with the exception of irritation, which had fuzzier borders. Children’s classifications were not reliant on lexical semantic abilities and were consistent with a model of emotion categories based on their degree of valence and arousal.     

Brief experimental analysis of early reading interventions

The purpose of this study was to investigate how brief experimental analyses (BEAs) could be used to identify effective interventions for Kindergartners (2 girls and 2 boys, 5 years and 7-10 months old) with low performance and/or growth slope in letter sound fluency (LSF). Interventions were tested within a multielement design with brief mini-reversals until an intervention yielding at least 20% improvement on a specific subskill measure or a curriculum-based measure of LSF was identified. BEA-identified interventions were implemented one-on-one for 5 to 9 weeks. A multiple-baseline design across participants showed large intervention effects (average adjusted d = 2.4) on general outcome measures, supporting treatment validity of BEAs. Findings extend the BEA literature to younger participants, early reading interventions, and early reading measures.     

TOKEN REINFORCEMENT: A REVIEW AND ANALYSIS

Token reinforcement procedures and concepts are reviewed and discussed in relation to general principles of behavior. The paper is divided into four main parts. Part I reviews and discusses previous research on token systems in relation to common behavioral functions—reinforcement, temporal organization, antecedent stimulus functions, and aversive control—emphasizing both the continuities with other contingencies and the distinctive features of token systems. Part II describes the role of token procedures in the symmetrical law of effect, the view that reinforcers (gains) and punishers (losses) can be measured in conceptually analogous terms. Part III considers the utility of token reinforcement procedures in cross‐species analysis of behavior more generally, showing how token procedures can be used to bridge the methodological gulf separating research with humans from that with other animals. Part IV discusses the relevance of token systems to the field of behavioral economics. Token systems have the potential to significantly advance research and theory in behavioral economics, permitting both a more refined analysis of the costs and benefits underlying standard economic models, and a common currency more akin to human monetary systems. Some implications for applied research and for broader theoretical integration across disciplines will also be considered.     

An investigation of the psychometric evidence of CBM-R passage equivalence: Utility of readability statistics and equating for alternate forms

Claims have been made that grade appropriate curriculum-based measurement of reading (CBM-R) passages are of comparable difficulty and can be used interchangeably to monitor student progress. Empirical evidence to support claims of equivalence has been lacking. This research investigated the basis for making claims of equivalence. The use of readability statistics to justify passage equivalence was found to be lacking. Using a general measurement model for congeneric tests, CBM-R passages were found to measure a single latent factor with a high degree of reliability. However, evidence indicated that the raw scores, words read correctly per minute, across passages did not provide equivalent measurements. Statistical equating was investigated as an approach to overcome the lack of equivalence with promising results.