FUNCTIONAL COMMUNICATION TRAINING WITH AND WITHOUT EXTINCTION AND PUNISHMENT

Functional communication training has been reported to be a promising treatment for severe behavior problems. In this study, functional communication training alone and combined with extinction and/or punishment was evaluated for 4 clients with severe retardation, behavior problems, and communication deficits. The participants were inpatients on a hospital unit for treatment of severe behavior disorders. They received individualized interventions based on functional assessment that included reinforcement of a communication response with the same function as their destructive behavior. Results showed that for some patients, functional communication training was not sufficient to produce clinically significant reductions in destructive behavior, and the combination of training plus punishment produced the largest and most consistent reductions.     

A maximum likelihood method for latent class regression involving a censored dependent variable

The standard tobit or censored regression model is typically utilized for regression analysis when the dependent variable is censored. This model is generalized by developing a conditional mixture, maximum likelihood method for latent class censored regression. The proposed method simultaneously estimates separate regression functions and subject membership in K latent classes or groups given a censored dependent variable for a cross-section of subjects. Maximum likelihood estimates are obtained using an EM algorithm. The proposed method is illustrated via a consumer psychology application.     

Charting the process of change: A primer on survival analysis

Survival analysis is a powerful and useful technique for understanding qualitative change. This article provides a practical, nontechnical introduction to the use of survival analysis for social scientists. Important issues in using survival analysis are discussed, including research design, data preparation and management, and data analysis. Attendance data from a self-helf organization are used to illustrate common survival analysis tasks such as describing the overall survival and hazard functions, examining covariate effects, and modeling the form of the hazard function over time. An appendix that discusses the strengths and weaknesses of current survival analysis computer programs is included. Editor's note: Edward Seidman served as action editor for this article while serving as Associate Editor for Methodology.I thank William Davidson, Susan Englund, Bruce Rapkin, Kurt Ribisl, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts. The example data presented here were collected with the support of an NIMH grant (MH37390) awarded to Julian Rappaport and Ed Seidman.     

Swedish translations of the Suicide Probability Scale, Perceived Social Support from Friends and Family Scales, and the Scale for Interpersonal Behavior: A reliability analysis

The Suicide Probability Scale (SPS), the Perceived Social Support (PSS) from Friends (PSS-Fr) and Family (PSS-Fa) scales, and the Scale for Interpersonal Behavior (SIB) were translated into Swedish and their reliability was estimated in a university student sample. The reliability coefficients indicated that both subscales and the total scales of the SPS, PSS, and SIB possess highly adequate reliabilities. The intercorrelations among the subscales and between the subscales and the total scales were found to be highly significant. The results of the study supported the use of SPS, PSS-Fr and PSS-Fa, and the SIB as reliable methods for assessing suicide risk, perceived social support from friends and family, and assertive behavior.     

IN VIVO VERSUS SIMULATION TRAINING: AN INTERACTIONAL ANALYSIS OF RANGE AND TYPE OF TRAINING EXEMPLARS

We analyzed the role of the range of variation in training exemplars as a contextual variable influencing the effects of in vivo versus simulation training in producing generalized responding. Four mentally retarded adults received single case instruction, followed by general case instruction, on washing machine and dryer use; one task was taught using actual appliances (in vivo) and the other using simulation. In vivo and simulation training were counterbalanced across the two tasks for the 2 subject pairs, using a within-subjects Latin square design. With both paradigms, more errors were made after single case than after general case instruction during probe sessions with untrained washing machines and dryers. These results suggest that generalization errors were affected by the range of training exemplars and not by the use of simulated versus natural training stimuli. Although both general case simulation and general case in vivo training facilitated generalized performance of laundry skills, an analysis of training time and costs indicated that the former approach was more efficient. The study illustrates a methodology for studying complex interactions and guiding decisions on the optimal use of instructional alternatives.     

Category discrimination by pigeons using five polymorphous features

Eight pigeons were trained to discriminate between sets of color photographs of natural scenes. The scenes differed along five two-valued dimensions (site, weather, camera distance, camera orientation, and camera height), and all combinations of the feature values were used. One value of each dimension was designated as positive, and slides containing three or more positive feature values were members of the positive stimulus set. Thus, each feature had an equal, low, correlation with reinforcement, and all features had zero correlations with each other. Seven of the 8 pigeons learned this discrimination, and their responding came under the control of all five features. Within the positive and negative stimulus sets, response rates were higher to stimuli that contained more positive feature values. Once discrimination had been achieved, reversal training was given using a subset of the slides. In this subset, only a single feature was correlated with reinforcement. All pigeons learned this reversal successfully and generalized it to additional photographs with the same feature content. After reversal, the original reinforcement contingencies were reinstated, and training was continued using all the slides except those that had been used in reversal. Reversal generalized to these slides to some extent. Analysis of the response rates to individual slides showed that, compared with prereversal training, only the feature that had been subjected to reversal contingencies showed a reversed correlation with response rate. The remaining features showed the same correlation with response rate as they had before reversal training. Thus, reversal on some members of a category following category discrimination training led to generalization to stimuli within the category that were not involved in the reversal, but not to features that were not reversed. It is therefore inappropriate to refer to the pigeons as learning a concept.     

Three-term contingency patterns in mother-child verbal interactions during first-language acquisition

Selections from a large longitudinal data set of verbal interactions between a mother and her child are presented. Two sets of three-term contingency sequences that seemed to reflect maternal rewards and corrections were noted. Both the antecedents as well as the immediate consequences of maternal interventions are presented to explore training and learning processes. The observed frequencies of three-step sequences are compared to those expected based upon Markov-chain logic to substantiate the patterning of the interactions. Behavioral conceptualizations of the learning process are supported by these analyses, although their sufficiency is questioned. It is suggested that maternal rewards and corrections should be integrated with perceptual, cognitive, and social learning conceptualizations in a skill-learning approach to explain the complexity of language transmission and acquisition processes.     

Social networks with two sets of actors

Traditional network research analyzes relational ties within a single group of actors: the models presented in this paper involve relational ties exist beteen two distinct sets of actors. Statistical models for traditional networks in which relations are measured within a group simplify when modeling unidirectional relations measured between groups. The traditional paradigm results in a one-mode socionatrix; the network paradigm considered in this paper results in a two-mode socionatrix; A statistical model is presented, illustrated on a sample data set, and compared to its traditional counterpart. Extensions are discussed, including those that model multivariate relations simultaneously, and those that allow for the inclustion of attributes of the individuals in the group.We thank the Editor and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. We are also grateful to George Barnett for allowing us to analyze his data.     

Interpreting canonical correlation analysis through biplots of structure correlations and weights

This paper extends the biplot technique to canonical correlation analysis and redundancy analysis. The plot of structure correlations is shown to the optimal for displaying the pairwise correlations between the variables of the one set and those of the second. The link between multivariate regression and canonical correlation analysis/redundancy analysis is exploited for producing an optimal biplot that displays a matrix of regression coefficients. This plot can be made from the canonical weights of the predictors and the structure correlations of the criterion variables. An example is used to show how the proposed biplots may be interpreted.