A COMPARISON OF THREE STRATEGIES FOR TEACHING OBJECT NAMES

Researchers in applied behavior analysis have been charged to provide large-scale demonstrations of the outcomes of evaluations. In this research, three experiments were conducted to examine the relative efficacy of three methods of presenting stimuli in object naming tasks. Stimuli were introduced successively, simultaneously, or using a combination of the two procedures. College adults, mentally retarded children and adolescents, and preschool children were taught to produce the names of five Hebrew letters, English words, or American coins, respectively. Presentation method was a between-subjects treatment in a factorial design. Results from the series of systematic replications were consistent in showing better posttest performance for subjects in the Simultaneous and Combined conditions. Further, follow-up data in Experiment III showed that retention was also superior for subjects trained by the Simultaneous or Combined methods. Although the acquisition criterion was met in fewer trials by subjects in the Successive condition, only several minutes more training time was required by the Simultaneous and Combined conditions. From a cost-effectiveness point of view, either of the latter two techniques should be favored over the Successive procedure for teaching verbal naming skills.     

童年期虐待对网络成瘾的影响:有调节的中介效应

本研究基于有限自制力理论考察童年期虐待对网络成瘾的影响及其作用机制。以1162名大学生为被试,采用童年期虐待量表、自我控制量表、感恩量表和网络成瘾量表进行测试,结果发现：（1）童年期虐待和自我控制、感恩呈显著负相关,与网络成瘾成显著正相关;自我控制与感恩呈显著正相关,与网络成瘾呈显著负相关;感恩与网络成瘾呈显著负相关。（2）自我控制在童年期虐待和网络成瘾之间起中介作用。（3）“童年期虐待→自我控制→网络成瘾”这一中介路径的前半段受到感恩的调节;与高感恩个体相比,童年期虐待对低感恩个体的自我控制的影响更小。感恩不仅不能缓冲童年期虐待对自我控制的负面影响,反而会增强这一过程,提示我们注意积极特质在特定情境下的消极作用。     

The prevalence of declarative and indirect yes/no Questions when children testify in criminal cases of child sexual abuse in the United States

The present study assessed how attorneys questioned children in cases of child sexual abuse in the United States tried between 2005 and 2015. Trial testimonies (N = 134) of 5- to 17-year-olds (M = 12 years old) were coded for the linguistic form of attorneys' questions and children's subsequent responses. Three fourths of all questions were closed ended. Both declarative (statement question; e.g., “And he hit you?”; 21% of questions) and indirect yes/no questions (beginning with an indirect speech act; e.g., “Do you remember X?”; 11% of questions) were common, and produced potentially problematic responses, in comparison with forced-choice and yes/no questions. Declarative questions elicited the highest rates of unelaborative responses whereas indirect yes/no questions elicited the highest rate of nonsubstantive responses. The findings highlight the importance for researchers to better assess children's responses to declarative questions and for prosecuting attorneys to cautiously use declarative and indirect yes/no questions when questioning children.     

The Effects of a Verbal and a Figural Creativity Training on Different Facets of Creative Potential

This study investigated the effects of different types of creativity interventions on different facets of creative potential, also including more school-related creativity demands. In a sample of 77 fourth-graders in the age between 9 and 12 years, we administered a verbal and a figural creativity training, realized in two school lessons over two consecutive days each. As outcome measures, creative potential in both the verbal and the figural domain by means of two well-established divergent thinking tasks was assessed. As additional measures of creative potential, a story completion task and a picture painting task were administered to examine training effects on more school-related types of creative behavior. The verbal training was found to increase both verbal and figural divergent thinking ability, but not creative potential in the story completion and the picture painting task. The figural training yielded significant training effects only regarding the picture painting task. Findings suggest a specific training effect of the figural creativity training, and moreover indicate that the verbal creativity training, rather than stimulating “verbal” creative abilities per se, was more strongly concerned with domain-general creativity processes including ideational fluency, flexibility, and originality that are characteristics of divergent thinking tasks across different domains.     

A demonstration of higher‐order response class development in children

We evaluated a procedure for teaching two children, one typically developing and one with autism, a higher‐order generalized operant response class of unscrambling sight words. The procedures were efficacious in teaching the participants to unscramble words appearing in isolation and in the context of a sentence, with 98% of the presented discriminative stimuli novel to the participants.     

Help-Seeking Behaviors in Non-Offending Caregivers of Abused Children in the Philippines

The help-seeking process among non-offending caregivers (NOCs) of abused children particularly in the non-Western context has yet to be elucidated. The objective of the current study was to investigate what proportion of Filipino NOCs of abused children sought professional support services within 12 months following child abuse disclosure (T1) and at 12 months (T2) follow-up in the Philippines. Two further aims were to investigate NOCs’ preferred service providers and settings and to explore barriers to help-seeking. A comparison group of Filipino parents without an abused child were also recruited to compare preferences and potential barriers to help seeking for child and family problems. A total of 47 NOCs and 70 comparison parents/guardians completed questionnaires, which assessed help-seeking preferences and barriers as well as parental stress. The majority of NOCs reported seeking help, which was perceived to be helpful. Almost two thirds of NOCs indicated preference for in-person counseling relative to the comparison group of parents. The majority of NOCs preferred seeking help from social workers and psychologists. Almost one third of both parental samples reported being judged as an unfit parent as a key barrier to seeking help for family problems. The findings have implications for psychological and allied health service providers in facilitating the adjustment for families of recently abused children.     

Comma N' cents in pricing: The effects of auditory representation encoding on price magnitude perceptions

Numbers and prices can be processed and encoded in three different forms: 1) visual [based on their written form in Arabic numerals (e.g., 72)], 2) verbal [based on spoken word-sounds (e.g., “seventy” and “two”), and 3) analog (based on judgments of relative “size” or amount (e.g., more than 70 but less than 80)]. In this paper, we demonstrate that including commas (e.g., $1599 vs. $1599) and cents (e.g., $1599.85 vs. $1599) in a price's Arabic written form (i.e., how it is perceived visually) can change how the price is encoded and represented verbally in a consumer's memory. In turn, the verbal encoding of a written price can influence assessments of the numerical magnitude of the price. These effects occur because consumers non-consciously perceive that there is a positive relationship between syllabic length and numerical magnitude. Three experiments are presented demonstrating this important effect.     

Parental Marital Quality and Well-Being,Parent-Child Relational Quality,and Chinese Adolescent Adjustment

The linkages between parents’ report of marital quality and parental well-being and children’s report ofparent-child relational quality and adolescent psychological well-being in 378 Chinese families over 2 years were examined. Results revealed that (a) marital quality predicted parental well-being; (b) fathers’ marital quality and well-being predicted parent-child relational quality but mothers’ did not; (c) paternal influence appeared to be stronger than maternal influence on adolescent adjustment; and (d) both direct and indirect paths were found for the linkages between parental marital quality and well-being and adolescent psychological well-being.     

Lenguaje y pensamiento en el desarrollo: Un nuevo modelo teórico

Resumen

Los modelos tradicionales que pretenden explicar las relaciones entre pensamiento y lenguaje no parecen adecuados, al no poder integrar los datos-obtenidos en las numerosas investigaciones realizadas últimamente sobre el tema. Se propone un nuevo modelo más integrador, que se inscribe dentro de la linea interaccionista, pero desarrollándola y matizándola.