Systems use to objectify program evaluation,clinical, and management decisions

The utility of the observational assessment systems at different levels — from local clinical to systemwide management — is outlined. An overview is provided of TSBC information applied to individualized problem identification and programming/monitoring, discharge and competency determinations, and both absolute and comparative program evaluation. The utility of SRIC information for prgoramming/monitoring and for staff training and evaluation is outlined in addition to the applied uses of the information of the assessment systems in combination. Once implemented, the continuous data from the systems allow for empirically based self-corrective improvements in the quality of mental health services while automatically providing a basis for legal documentation and accurate cost/effectiveness comparisons of mental health programs.Preparation of this article and the research and development on which the article is based were supported, in part, by Public Health Service Grants MH-15553 and MH-25464 from the National Institute of Mental Health, and by grants from The Joyce Foundation and the Illinois Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities.Presented at the 87th Annual Meetings of the American Psychological Association, New York City, September 1979, as part of a symposium on New assessment systems for residential treatment, management, research, and evaluation.     

COMPARING TREATMENT TACTICS WITH A HYPERACTIVE PRESCHOOL CHILD: STIMULANT MEDICATION AND PROGRAMMED TEACHER INTERVENTION1

Two treatment tactics, food and praise contingent on appropriate play and varying doses of methylphenidate (Ritalin), were evaluated for their effects on a preschool child's activity changes. In addition, other social, verbal, and academic behaviors were monitored to examine possible side effects of the two treatment tactics. Fewer free-play activity changes occurred during contingent reinforcement phases while medication had variable effects: increasing attention to tasks but, at higher doses, decreasing intelligibility of speech and responsiveness to mands. The study outlines a replicable model for comparing medication with alternative behavioral strategies to control hyperactivity and enhance skill development.     

SHORT- AND LONG-TERM EFFECTS OF CONTINGENCY MANAGED INSTRUCTION ON LOW,MEDIUM, AND HIGH GPA STUDENTS1

Undergraduate students had been assigned to a contingency managed course or a conventional lecture course (Du Nann and Fernald, Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1976, 9 , 373–374). Two years later, some 35% (N = 86) of the original classes responded to a letter offering them $2.00 to participate in a study of their educational experiences. These students completed a multiple-choice test on material from the course, and answered questions about activities and attitudes that might have been affected by the experience in Introductory Psychology. In the contingency management course 2 yr past, students were tested each week on a chapter of textbook material with 10-item multiple-choice quizzes. The course employed a modified “Doomsday Contingency”, requiring each student to achieve 80% mastery on one of the four weekly quizzes or drop the course. Quizzes were given in small groups and scored individually, while the student stood near, by an undergraduate proctor assigned to that group. The proctor was asked to show interest in the students' quiz performances, help clear up difficult areas, and develop a friendly working relationship with each student. While many students passed the quiz on the first attempt, others were given individual tutoring, so that no one was in fact forced to drop the course. In addition to the weekly quiz assignment, students in the contingency managed group were asked to attend one lecture each week. While the contingency management course procedures had much in common with PSI (Keller, Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1968, 1 , 79–89), several departures made them unique. First, self-pacing was curtailed because students were required to master one unit per week or drop the course. Second, proctors met with students in small groups, usually giving individual tutoring only to those students who did not pass the quiz on the first attempt. Finally, students were asked to attend one lecture per week. Students in the conventional lecture group were not asked to pass weekly quizzes, but instead attended three 50-min lectures each week. Two of these lectures followed the textbook material closely, while the third, which was also attended by students from the contingency management course, covered material only indirectly related to the text. This partition of lecture content allowed material to be similar across the two instructional groups. Although students in the lecture condition were told they could obtain copies of the quizzes, few of them did so. Course grades were determined by scores on two 45-item multiple-choice hourly exams, each covering half the semester material (each worth 25%), and by a 90-item final exam, which served as a measure of short-term retention. Before analyzing the follow-up data, several characteristics of the returning students were compared to determine the comparability of the sample from the two original classes. Most important, both attrition and the current mean GPAs of students from the two classes were very similar. These considerations, and others, suggested there was no systematic sampling bias to confound comparisons of student performance. A 2 (contingency management versus traditional lecture) by 3 (high, medium, and low GPA) analysis of variance was computed on the course final-exam scores and the follow-up measures. Instructional procedure and GPA interacted on the final exam such that low and medium GPA students performed significantly better under contingency management, but there was no significant effect of instructional procedure with high GPA students. On the 2-yr retention measures, students from the contingency management course performed significantly (p < 0.01) better on items drawn from quizzes used in their original course, and marginally better (p < 0.10) on items drawn from the final exams, but no interactions with GPA appeared. Furthermore, instructional method produced no significant main effects or interaction with how many students became majors or minors in psychology, how many psychology courses were later taken, how many books in psychology were reported to have been read, or on students' evaluation of the interest and importance of psychology.     

Precriterion stationarity in markovian learning models

Two forms of stationarity prior to criterion in absorbing Markov chains are examined. Both forms require that the probability of a particular response on a particular trial before absorption be independent of trial number. The stronger of these forms holds that this is true independent of starting state; the weaker, only for a specified set of starting probabilities. Simple, necessary and sufficient conditions for both forms are developed and applied to several examples.The author would like to thank Charles Lewis for his help in developing this article, and Peter Polson of the University of Colorado and an anonymous referee for several fruitful suggestions made in reviews of earlier versions.     

人际关系适应特征的情境评价方法研究

本研究运用情境评价法对人际关系适应特征进行了实验研究 ,结果表明 :1以 Schutz提出的人际关系六因素为评价标准 ,采用情境评价法比问卷形式能更有效地揭示人际适应特征 ;2在情境评价中 ,以合作为主的情境设置比以竞争为主的情境设置更利于反映出人际适应特征 ;3情境评价采用定向、组织、交流和问题解决等阶段的过程设计符合情境评价的实际进程 ,有助于分阶段展开被试的行为特征 ,提高情境评价的可控性和准确性。     

青少年结果预期与评价的ERP研究

大脑不断地对环境事件产生预期并将这些预期与实际结果进行比较, 通过对反馈刺激的结果评价以优化后续行为。采用抽奖式赌博任务范式, 操纵得奖的确定性程度, 利用事件相关电位技术(ERP), 研究青少年结果预期与评价的认知和神经电生理过程, 以成人作为对照组进行比较分析。研究结果表明：(1)在反映自动、快速结果评价的FRN上, 无论在高确定性还是在低确定性条件下, 青少年与成人均未表现出显著性差异; (2)组别与确定性程度在P300波幅上表现交互作用显著, 简单效应分析表明, 在高确定性条件下, 青少年组输、赢的P300波幅表现出差异; 而成人组输、赢的P300波幅无显著性差异。青少年对反馈刺激自动的快速结果评价能力已接近成人水平, 而对反馈刺激功能意义评价的控制加工能力还未发展成熟。     

主动性人格与工作绩效：个体-组织匹配的调节作用

本研究的目的：考察主动性人格在中国企业内对工作绩效的预测性及个体-组织匹配在其中的调节作用。方法：研究以三家中国本土企业的253名员工为被试,使用修订过的主动性人格量表。结果：（1）除了大五人格和社会赞许性之外,主动性人格还可以解释工作绩效8．5％的方差变异;（2）整体分析时只有团队导向因素显著,单独分析时高新独资企业中注重细节因素、团队导向因素和结果导向因素有显著的调节作用;民营企业中尊重员工因素有显著的调节作用;国有企业中革新性因素和团队导向因素有显著的调节作用。结论：主动性人格可以有效地预测工作绩效,个体-组织匹配则根据不同的企业组织,不同的因素在主动性人格和工作绩效的关系中起调节作用。关于本研究的贡献与不足以及未来的研究方向都有所讨论。     

群体绩效和团队效能研究的新进展

近几年来 ,在群体和团队方面的研究比较活跃 ,并取得了不少新的进展。本文在近几年的国内外文献的基础上 ,着重讨论几个与群体绩效有关的长期存在的问题 ,主要包括群体构成、凝聚力、激励、领导、群体目标等因素。同时探讨团队与组织之间的内在联系。然后 ,讨论团队效能研究中的几个开放性问题 ,以及将来研究的新动向新趋势。最后 ,对影响团队效能的几个关键的调节因素作一简要的讨论。     

Intraindividual variability in driving simulator parameters of healthy drivers of different ages

Intraindividual variability is a fundamental behavioural characteristic of aging but has been examined to a very limited extent in driving. This study investigated intraindividual variability in driving simulator measures in healthy drivers of different ages using the coefficient of variation (COV) as a variability measure. Participants were healthy volunteers who were regular drivers, who were divided into a “young” group, a “middle-aged” group, and an “old” group. They drove in two environments (rural, 72 drivers; urban, 60 drivers), under conditions of moderate and high traffic load, without and with distraction (conversation). Significant differences in COV were observed in the rural condition for headway distance and lateral position as a function of traffic load, with high traffic (without and with distraction) resulting in increased COV of headway and decreased COV of lateral position. Significant differences in COV were observed in the urban condition for headway distance only, with high traffic (without and with distraction) resulting in increased COV of headway. No age effects were found for any of the driving conditions. The results indicate that traffic load affected headway distance and lateral position in opposite directions in all three age groups: high traffic resulted in increased variability of headway in both rural and urban conditions but in decreased variability of lateral position in the rural conditions compared to moderate traffic irrespective of distraction. The study indicates that driving conditions affect the intraindividual variability of driving measures in selective ways, which may be linked to the extent of automatization of the driving variables and to adaptive changes to traffic condition challenges.     

Olympic coaching excellence: A quantitative study of psychological aspects of Olympic swimming coaches

ObjectivesResearchers investigating the psychological aspects of Olympic coaching have studied coaches as a homogenous group, and the effect of coaches' psychological characteristics on performance-related outcomes remains unclear. The objective of this research, therefore, was to examine whether psychological factors discriminate between world-leading (i.e., Olympic gold medal winning) and world-class (i.e., Olympic non-gold medal winning) coaches.MethodSelf-reported psychometric questionnaires were completed by 36 Olympic coaches who had collectively coached 169 swimmers to win 352 Olympic medals, of which 155 were gold medals. The questionnaires assessed 12 variables within the Big Five personality traits, the dark triad, and emotional intelligence, and the data was analyzed using three one-way multivariate analysis of variance and follow-up univariate F-tests.ResultsThe results showed that the 21 world-leading coaches were significantly more agreeable, had greater perception of emotion, were better at managing their own emotion, and were less Machiavellian and narcissistic than the 15 world-class coaches. The groups of coaches showed no differences in levels of conscientiousness, openness to experience, extraversion, neuroticism, psychopathy, managing other emotion, or utilization of emotion.ConclusionsPsychological factors discriminate between world-leading and world-class coaches. The implications of these differences are discussed for psychology researchers and practitioners operating in Olympic sport.