A portable biofeedback device for autonomic responses

The design of a versatile and programmable transducer amplifier device with analogue display for self-monitoring of autonomic responses is described. The design features low cost, portability, and flexibility across direct-current transducer options (e.g., photoplethysmograph or thermistor). The device can be used for the visual or auditory display of continuous blood volume pulse or temperature measures where the relative amplitude or pulse rate is of concern. Auditory or visual biofeedback may be provided via the choice of a stacked bar-graph display or piezoelectric buzzer. A common circuit design to allow programming options for the estimation of heart rate, inter-beat interval, or pulse duration is provided.     

Completeness of instruction and strategy transfer

Three experiments assessed the effects on strategy transfer of supplements to keyword method instruction. One supplement consisted of more comprehensive instructions regarding how, when, why, and where to apply the strategy. A second supplement involved additional practice with the strategy during instruction. The combined effects of more elaborate directions and practice were also examined. With grade-school children, the supplements generally increased transfer of the keyword strategy, but transfer was most successful when training included comprehensive information about the strategy. In contrast, with adults high transfer was obtained regardless of keyword instructional variation. The results are related to other developmental data and are particularly germane to claims that with more complete instruction younger children are capable of intellectual feats carried out by older individuals given minimal prompting.     

Stimulus equivalence and transitive associations: A methodological analysis

When a number of two-stimulus relations are established through training within a set of stimuli, other two-stimulus relations often emerge in the same set without direct training. These, termed "transitive stimulus relations," have been demonstrated with a variety of visual and auditory stimuli. The phenomenon has served as a behavioral model for explaining the emergence of rudimentary comprehension and reading skills, and the development of generative syntactic repertoires. This article considers the range of relations that can arise between a given number of stimuli in a class, the number of directly established two-stimulus relations necessary for the emergence of transitive relations, the forms that training sets of stimuli can take, and the number of transitive two-stimulus relations that can be induced without direct training. The procedures needed to establish and assess transitive stimulus control, the possible interactions between the training and testing procedures, and the constrainst these interactions place upon the analysis of transitive stimulus control are also examined. The present analysis indicates that in a transitivity test, choice among such stimuli may be controlled by (1) the relation between the sample and the positive comparison stimulus (transitive stimulus control), (2) the relation between the sample and the negative comparison stimulus (S- rule control), and (3) possible discriminative properties that may inadvertently be established in the positive and negative comparison stimuli (valence control). Methods are described for distinguishing these three forms of stimulus control.     

A comprehensive dining program for mentally retarded adults

Twenty-six types of behavior (e.g. uses fork in socially appropriate manner, chews food before swallowing) were treated in a course of independence training, using 80 institutionalized retarded adults (40 experimentals and 40 no-treatment controls). The 3-month long training phase incorporated a number of treatment components including in vivo modeling, peer social reinforcement, self-evaluation and monitoring; then a four-month follow-up. A group (i.e. experimentals and controls) by sex, by time, analysis of variance was computed with repeated measures on the last dimension (pre, post, follow-up measures = time). A significant difference was obtained between the experimentals and controls on post-test and follow-up     

两种参照作用下的视觉定位

本实验采用多点视觉定位作业,研究视觉定位中的两种参照对定位成绩的影响。实验采用一些附加线条与三个刺激形成有特征的刺激图和无特征的刺激图,并与没有附加线条的情况进行了比较。有特征的刺激图是指这些附加的线条与刺激点构成一定的特征,如一个字母或图形等;无特征的刺激图指刺激点不能与附加线条构成有规律的特征。结果发现,当有附加线条的图形呈现时,被试的定位误差大于控制组,表现出一级参照对视觉定位的干扰作用,而且在呈现时间为100ms、200ms、300ms时,都是如此。在有特征组内,不同的特征对定位精确性的影响依赖于时间因素。     

Implementation of the Sound Partners Reading Program

Eleven first grade and 10 second grade students, all with reading and behavioral difficulties, received one-on-one tutoring using the Sound Partners reading program (Vadasy & Pool, l997). Students received 30 min of tutoring each day for 5 months. Students were assessed on Letter-Word Identification, Passage Comprehension, and Word Attack subtests of the Woodcock-Johnson-Revised (WJ-R): Tests of Achievement. An informal measure (rapid letter naming) was also used. Results indicated that gains of approximately 1 standard deviation (or greater) were noted for subtests of the WJ-R for first-grade students; second graders showed relatively stable performance from pre- to posttest assessments. Similar performance was noted on the informal measure across grades. Program satisfaction data showed that overall the tutors, teachers, and students were pleased with the program. Discussion focuses on the implications for future investigations.     

After-affects: How automatic evaluations influence the interpretation of subsequent, unrelated stimuli

Findings from three experiments suggest that participants’ automatic evaluations of subliminally presented objects influenced how they interpreted subsequent, unrelated objects. Participants defined homographs (Experiment 1), categorized objects and people (Experiment 2), and made person judgments (Experiment 3) that all could be disambiguated in either a positive or negative way. Participants’ responses to the ambiguous targets were evaluatively consistent with their automatic evaluations of preceding, semantically unrelated objects. The findings suggest that one’s automatic evaluations can influence deliberate judgments of subsequent stimuli, even when the only shared dimension between the initially evaluated objects and the judged objects is an evaluative one. The implications of these findings are discussed with regard to possible mechanisms of evaluative priming as well as previous research concerning evaluative priming effects on social judgment.     

Psychodynamic assessment of changes in children with autism under psychoanalytic treatment

In this article the authors report insights into autism developed through their extensive experience of psychoanalytic therapy with children with autism. The fi rst stages of body psychic development are seriously disrupted by this pathology, resulting in primitive anxieties of falling and of being liquefi ed. These anxieties are connected to the fragile development of body ego and of its related spatiotemporal organisation. The changes in children observed by the authors during the therapeutic process lead them to offer a psychodynamic assessment tool, which revolves principally around the development of body ego. After the initial state of 'severe autism', the authors describe three stages: the stage of 'recovery of the skin' (Bick); the established 'symbiotic phase', subdivided into 'vertical then horizontal splitting of the body ego'; and fi nally the stage of 'individuation'. First, the authors describe the principal psychoanalytic approaches to autism and refl ect on the links possible with nonpsychoanalytic work.     

When what you type isn’t what they read: The perseverance of stereotypes and expectancies over e-mail

People form impressions of others by communicating with them, but not all modes of communication transmit information with equal fidelity. E-mail, for instance, is an inherently more limited mode of communication than is voice because of its relative lack of paralinguistic and non-verbal cues. The present research investigated the implication of this distinction for the biasing influence of stereotypes and expectancies. Three experiments demonstrated that racial stereotypes and bogus expectancies influence people’s impressions of a target more strongly over e-mail than voice interactions (Studies 1-3). This occurred despite an experimental design that ensured that the word-for-word content was constant across the two mediums. Follow-up analyses revealed that the effect was due, at least in part, to the greater ambiguity of e-mail versus voice communication (Study 3). Although e-mail affords many benefits, the present research suggests that it may also have some unexpected costs.     

睡眠学习的ERP研究

夜间用脑电监测被试睡眠状态,并反复播放英语单词和中文对译词,第二天用词汇决定任务检查学习效果,并记录ERP,结果发现：（1）与未学过的英—中词对相比,被试对学过的词对中中文词的反应时明显缩短;（2）学过的词对中中文词引发的N600的波幅比未学过的明显降低。以上结果表明睡眠学习效果在内隐记忆测验中明显。另外发现被试几乎不能在播放学过的英语词时说出中文对译词,与未学过的词对相比没有显著差别,提示睡眠学习效果在外显记忆测验中不明显。以上结果表明,在本实验条件下,间接测验比直接测验更敏感。