The use of a self-control package to enhance temporal generality of a parent training program

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effectiveness of a self-control package in enhancing temporal generality of a parent training program. Sixteen mothers and their clinic-referred noncompliant children were assigned to either a parent training alone group, or a parent training plus self-control group. All mother-child dyads were treated individually by teaching the mother to reward compliance and other prosocial behavior, and to use time-out for noncompliance. In addition, mothers who also received self-control training learned to self-monitor their use of their new parenting skills and to reinforce themselves for use of the skill during a 2 month follow-up period. Assessment consisted of four home observations by independent observers prior to treatment, after treatment, and at a 2 month follow-up. The data indicated that the children in the parent training plus self-control group were significantly more compliant and less deviant at the 2 month follow-up than the children in the parent training alone group. Parental behavior did not differ between the two groups at the follow-up.     

Stimulus control of free-operant avoidance: The contribution of response rate and incentive relations between multiple-schedule components

The associations formed in the components of a multiple schedule can be classified as (1) stimulus-response (S-R) associations and (2) stimulus-reinforcer (S-S^R) associations. The present experiments sought to determine the individual contribution of these S-R and S-S^R associations to stimulus control by manipulating them independently. Responses postponed shocks by 25 sec in the presence of a tone alone and a light alone in all experiments. The contingencies programmed in the absence of both tone and light established a reference for the S-R and S-S^R associations in tone and in light. All four possible combinations of signalling response increase or decrease together with incentive increase or decrease were studied. Although the influence of the contingencies operating in the absence of tone and light was difficult to detect from response rates in tone or light, presenting tone and light together revealed clear effects. Response rates in tone and light together relative to those in either alone depended upon the contingency operating in the absence of tone and light. Stimulus-response and stimulus-reinforcer associations appeared to counteract each other when in opposition and combine together to enhance each other when in agreement. This suggested that the associations of a stimulus to response and to incentive combine algebraically in determining stimulus control. An algebraic analysis in terms of the S-R and S-S^R associations conditioned to the stimulus elements comprising the training and test stimuli accounted for the observed patterns of data.     

Augmenting Visual Search Performance With Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS)

Military personnel endure rigorous and demanding man-hours designated to monitoring and locating targets in tasks such as cyber defense and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) operators. These tasks are monotonous and repetitive, which can result in vigilance decrement. The objective of the study was to implement a form of noninvasive brain stimulation known as transcranial DC stimulation (tDCS) over the left frontal eye field (LFEF) region of the scalp to improve cognitive performance. The participants received anodal and cathodal stimulation of 2 mA for 30 min as well as placebo stimulation on 3 separate days while performing the task. The findings suggest that anodal and cathodal stimulation significantly improves detection accuracy. Also, a correlation was detected between percent of eye closure (PERCLOS) and blinking frequency in relation to stimulation condition. Our data suggest that tDCS over the LFEF would be a beneficial countermeasure to mitigate the vigilance decrement and improve visual search performance.     

Vocational maturity of Arab and American high school students

The vocational maturity of Arab and American ninth- and eleventh-grade students were compared. Arab students were found to have lower maturity scores than American students. Eleventh graders of both nationalities were more vocationally mature than ninth graders. The possibility that the overall difference found between Arab and American students can be attributed to cultural differences was supported by the response trend of discriminating items as revealed by an item analysis.     

Selective processing in encoding and memory: an analysis of resource allocation by kindergarten children.

This study investigated the extent to which kindergarten children (mean age 5.8 years) allocate their processing resources selectively to the relevant components of a visual array. On each trial the child was presented with an array containing either one, two, or four items, and a verbal cue designating either one, two, or four of these items as relevant. For different groups of children the cue occurred either before or after the stimulus array, in order to investigate the stages of processing at which kindergarteners are able to initiate selection. The results indicated that kindergarteners are able to exert considerable control over the allocation of resources during the initial perceptual processing of a visual stimulus, but they have only limited ability to initiate such selective allocation in memory, after initial encoding has taken place.     

Response discriminative and reinforcement factors in stimulus control of performance on multiple and chained schedules of reinforcement

Discriminative control of the response rates of two groups of rats was equated by training them to cease bar pressing in light-out no-tone ( + ) and to respond during tone and light. Multiple-schedule subjects received food at the same rate for responding during tone or light as for nonresponding in + . For the chained-schedule subjects responding in tone or light only produced + where food was received for nonresponding. In extinction tests multiple-schedule subjects emitted approximately twice the responses to tone-plus-light as to tone or light presented individually (additive summation). The rats trained on the chained schedule, in which the tone and light each controlled substantial response rates but were never paired with food, showed no summation when the tone and light were presented together. The results indicate that discriminative control of response rates and reinforcement differences between schedule components determine stimulus control.