Behavioral Skills Training With Teachers: Booster Training for Improved Maintenance

Behavioral skills training (BST) has been employed within many different populations for the reduction of problem behaviors and acquisition of new skills; however, these changes have not always maintained over time. This study evaluated the effects of a booster training for re-establishing the classroom management proficiencies that teachers had acquired previously, but had declined over a 12-month period. The single-subject experimental results showed the booster training to be effective in re-establishing teacher performance of skills as measured by both analogue role-play and in situ postassessments within the classroom. These findings suggest that a booster training utilizing BST may be an important strategy for maintaining skill performance over time.     

“Never reflected anywhere”: Body image among ethnoracialized gay and bisexual men

A growing body of literature has highlighted the increased prevalence of body image concerns and associations with health outcomes among gay and bisexual men (GBM). Little research, however, has examined the link between body image and social oppression for ethnoracialized GBM. Using an intersectionality lens and qualitative inductive analysis, data were collected through focus groups and interviews with GBM (n = 61) who identify with one of four ethnoracial groups (Black, East/Southeast Asian, South Asian, Latino/Brazilian). Three main themes emerged: (1) body image idealization in gay/bisexual male culture, (2) negotiating a racialized body image, and (3) negotiating the impact of body image on relationship with self and others. The study results highlighted how multiple forms of oppression (e.g., racism, sexism) intersected with one another to impact the body image and overall well-being among ethnoracialized GBM.     

Resurgence as Choice in Context: Treatment duration and on/off alternative reinforcement

Resurgence as Choice (RaC) is a quantitative theory suggesting that an increase in an extinguished target behavior with subsequent extinction of an alternative behavior (i.e., resurgence) is governed by the same processes as choice more generally. We present data from an experiment with rats examining a range of treatment durations with alternative reinforcement plus extinction and demonstrate that increases in treatment duration produce small but reliable decreases in resurgence. Although RaC predicted the relation between target responding and treatment duration, the model failed in other respects. First, contrary to predictions, the present experiment also replicated previous findings that exposure to cycling on/off alternative reinforcement reduces resurgence. Second, RaC did a poor job simultaneously accounting for target and alternative behaviors across conditions. We present a revised model incorporating a role for more local signaling effects of reinforcer deliveries or their absence on response allocation. Such signaling effects are suggested to impact response allocation above and beyond the values of the target and alternative behaviors as longer-term repositories of experience. The new model provides an excellent account of the data and can be viewed as an integration of RaC and a quantitative approximation of some aspects of Context Theory.     

Effects of Salient Multiple Identities on Women's Performance Under Mathematics Stereotype Threat

Previous research on affective extremity and social identity complexity suggested that women's mathematics stereotype threat might be alleviated by reminding individual women of their multiple roles and identities, most of which would presumably be unrelated and thus impervious to negative stereotypes regarding math performance. To test this hypothesis, we primed the relevant stereotype and then asked men and women college students to draw self-concept maps with many or few nodes. When they drew no maps or maps with few nodes, highly math-identified women scored significantly worse than highly math-identified men on a subsequent Graduate Record Examination-like math test, but when they drew maps with many nodes, they scored as well as those men. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.     

Engineering academic performance with selective retrieval: the benefits of implied ability

Research on retrieval fluency suggests that, under different recall constraints, recalling past failures might be as effective as past successes for engineering task performance. In the current study, students recalling three instances of academic success correctly answered more items on a knowledge task than those recalling nine instances. Other students, asked to recall nine instances of failure, answered more items correctly than those recalling three failures and more than those recalling nine successes. This pattern was partially mediated by the assessments of one's ability as compared with other students. The results are interpreted as extending previous research in retrieval fluency by suggesting that the ease of retrieving task‐related instances informs individuals about their comparative ability that, in turn, influences performance.     

Resurgence and alternative‐reinforcer magnitude

Resurgence is defined as an increase in the frequency of a previously reinforced target response when an alternative source of reinforcement is suspended. Despite an extensive body of research examining factors that affect resurgence, the effects of alternative‐reinforcer magnitude have not been examined. Thus, the present experiments aimed to fill this gap in the literature. In Experiment 1, rats pressed levers for single‐pellet reinforcers during Phase 1. In Phase 2, target‐lever pressing was extinguished, and alternative‐lever pressing produced either five‐pellet, one‐pellet, or no alternative reinforcement. In Phase 3, alternative reinforcement was suspended to test for resurgence. Five‐pellet alternative reinforcement produced faster elimination and greater resurgence of target‐lever pressing than one‐pellet alternative reinforcement. In Experiment 2, effects of decreasing alternative‐reinforcer magnitude on resurgence were examined. Rats pressed levers and pulled chains for six‐pellet reinforcers during Phases 1 and 2, respectively. In Phase 3, alternative reinforcement was decreased to three pellets for one group, one pellet for a second group, and suspended altogether for a third group. Shifting from six‐pellet to one‐pellet alternative reinforcement produced as much resurgence as suspending alternative reinforcement altogether, while shifting from six pellets to three pellets did not produce resurgence. These results suggest that alternative‐reinforcer magnitude has effects on elimination and resurgence of target behavior that are similar to those of alternative‐reinforcer rate. Thus, both suppression of target behavior during alternative reinforcement and resurgence when conditions of alternative reinforcement are altered may be related to variables that affect the value of the alternative‐reinforcement source.     

Effects of attitude action identification on congruence between attitudes and behavioral intentions toward social groups

Attitude Representation Theory (ART) holds that attitude-relevant responses are informed by mental representations of the attitude object, which include the individual's actions toward that object. Action Identification Theory (AIT) holds that the same action can be identified at multiple levels. Individuals who identify their actions at lower levels have less flexibility in how they perform the action, and thus enact the action less consistently. An integration of ART and AIT suggested that individuals who spontaneously (Experiment 1) or through manipulation (Experiments 2 and 3) identify their attitude-relevant actions toward a social group at lower levels might display less attitude-intention congruence than would individuals who identify their attitude-relevant actions at higher levels. ART and AIT are discussed as having links with each other and with other theories of attitude and judgment processes.     

The relationship between mindfulness and self-promoting illusions

It was hypothesized that people who are mindful will exhibit less self-enhancing illusions than those who are less mindful, based on the nature of mindfulness and Zen Buddhist philosophy. Self-enhancing illusions were measured using the Self Attributes Questionnaire, and mindfulness was measured using the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale among a sample of 151 students. Contrary to predictions, results revealed a positive correlation between mindfulness and self-enhancing illusions. Possible reasons for this seeming contradiction are discussed.     

The bad taste of social ostracism: The effects of exclusion on the eating behaviors of African-American women

African-American women experience disproportionately higher rates of obesity than do Caucasian women. The stress African-American women encounter from experiences of discrimination may influence their eating behaviours, which could contribute to weight gain. Emotional eating theory suggests some people increase their intake of high-calorie foods to cope with stressful experiences. We investigated the effects of social exclusion by other African-American women or by Caucasian women for African-American women’s distress and food consumption using a laboratory paradigm. As hypothesised, there were main effects of ostracism and interactions between ostracism and race, although not all of the interactions took the expected form. As hypothesised, African-American women ate more potato crisps after being excluded by Caucasians than by African-Americans. Unexpectedly, African-American women who were excluded by other African-American women self-reported more emotional distress than did African-American women excluded by Caucasian women. These findings suggest that ostracism by both in-group and out-group members are disturbing, although people may respond to in-group and out-group exclusion in different ways. Directions for future research are suggested that could elucidate the circumstances under which different emotional and behavioural coping responses are employed.     

What was yours is (for now) mine: Prior user knowledge reduces product satisfaction but can improve experiential satisfaction in access-based consumption

With the rise of the sharing economy, more consumers than ever are thinking about products not in terms of ownership, but in terms of access necessary to facilitate experiences. In this paper, we build on prior literature, which distinguished product from experiential satisfaction to explore the role that knowledge of a prior user plays in shaping these two types of satisfaction in access-based consumption experiences. Across three studies, we demonstrate that product and experiential satisfaction can be affected differently when consumers are provided with information about previous users of products. We find that information about the previous user of a product consistently negatively impacts product satisfaction. However, we find that when the previous user has positive and experientially relevant traits, experiential satisfaction is increased. When the information about the previous user is negative or experientially irrelevant, experiential satisfaction is decreased. In cases in which we find a positive effect of prior user information on experiential satisfaction, we find it is mediated by transfer of the previous user's traits and that the effectiveness of this mechanism depends on the relevance of traits and the stability of the self-concept of the consumer.