A content analysis of the conversational behavior of accepted and rejected children

The present study was designed to assess whether the conversational behavior of children separated into accepted, rejected, and mixed-status dyads differed along the dimensions of listening to, paying attention to, and indicating interest in their dyadic partner. Conversations of 40 third-grade dyads were analyzed as they occurred in a 2- min waiting period and a 4- min conversation period. Seventeen categories of verbal behaviors that indexed these dimensions were used as content codes. Multivariate analyses of variance performed on the observational data yielded significant main effects for status, sex, and experimental condition. Results are interpreted in terms of previous social skills research, and suggestions for future research are offered.     

Work,leisure, and psychological well-being in a sample of young adults

This study of 20 ‘white-collar’ workers aged 20–30 measured motivation, enjoyment and access to various categories of experience in both work and leisure, and examined their relationship with psychological well-being on a number of dimensions. The method used a short questionnaire, psychological scales and the innovatory ‘experience sampling methodology’ (ESM) where respondents answer questions in a diary on the receipt of a signal from a pre-programmed watch or radio pager eight times a day for 1 week. The results show, in line with other studies, that intrinsic motivation in daily life is correlated with happiness but that, not previously reported, when motivation at work is examined both extrinsic motivation and instances where a person had to do the activity but did not wish to be doing something else, i.e. ‘positive motivational change’, are correlated with positive aspects of psychological well-being, while instances where a person wanted to do the activity but wished to be doing something else, i.e. ‘negative motivational change’, correlated with negative aspects. The results also show that enjoyment in both work and leisure correlates with aspects of psychological wellbeing; and that macro ‘flow’ experiences, where high skills and high challenges are perceived as equal, are enjoyable and interesting and come primarily from work. The study also shows that categories of experience considered important for psychological well-being and deemed to come primarily from work can be obtained in leisure. The results are discussed in the context of person—situation interactions and processes, and it is advocated that these should be studied in a variety of samples.     

Algorithmic shaping and misbehavior in the acquisition of token deposit by rats

In two experiments, rats were trained to deposit ball bearings down a hole in the floor, using an algorithmic version of shaping. The experimenter coded responses expected to be precursors of the target response, ball bearing deposit; a computer program reinforced these responses, or not, according to an algorithm that mimicked the processes thought to occur in conventional shaping. In the first experiment, 8 of 10 rats were successfully shaped; in the second, 5 of 5 were successfully shaped, and the median number of sessions required was the same as for a control group trained using conventional shaping. In both experiments, “misbehavior,” that is, excessive handling and chewing of the ball bearings, was observed, and when the algorithmic shaping procedure was used, misbehavior could be shown to occur in spite of reduced reinforcement for the responses involved.     

CLINICAL BEHAVIORAL PHARMACOLOGY: METHODS FOR EVALUATING MEDICATIONS AND CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT

We evaluated methods for comparing the effects of dextroamphetamine (Dexedrine), thioridazine (Mellaril), and contingency management in the control of severe behavior problems. A reversal design was used in which medications were systematically titrated and assessed in unstructured as well as structured settings with three clients. Subsequently, behavioral procedures including timeout, differential reinforcement of other behavior, and visual screening, were used in a multiple-baseline design across settings. The assessment and design methods were useful in comparing the interventions. Dextroamphetamine decreased inappropriate behaviors and improved academic behaviors in one client, but no reliable effects were observed in the other two clients. Thioridazine was variable across clients, settings, behaviors, and dosages. Contingency management produced consistent decreases in inappropriate behaviors and small improvements in academic performance.     

Unprogrammed effects of training high-status peers to interact with severely handicapped children.

We examined the effects of a peer initiation intervention with high- and low-status nonhandicapped students on the behavior of untrained peers toward handicapped students. In the context of a counterbalanced withdrawal design, high- and low-status nonhandicapped students were taught to direct social initiations to eight severely handicapped students during recess activities. The interactions of the high-status students resulted in higher levels of initiations by untrained peers toward the handicapped students than did the interactions of the low-status students. Social response levels were also differentially affected by the status of the peer initiator.     

Concurrent access to two concentrations of orally delivered phencyclidine: effects of feeding conditions.

Two experiments addressed the effects of food satiation and deprivation on oral self-administration of two concurrently available phencyclidine concentrations. In the first experiment, 8 rhesus monkeys self-administered either of two concentrations of phencyclidine ("PCP, angel dust") and water under concurrent fixed-ratio 16 schedules. One concentration was always held constant (0.25 mg/mL) while a series of other phencyclidine concentrations, ranging from 0 (water) to 1.0 mg/mL, was presented in a nonsystematic order. Initially the monkeys were tested while food satiated, and the procedure was then repeated during food deprivation. The monkeys usually selected the higher concentration within the first few minutes of the session, indicating that taste and/or other immediate postingestional effects were important factors. Contrary to a number of previous reports, there were no consistent differences across subjects in the mean number of liquid deliveries or mean drug intake (mg/kg) during food satiation and deprivation. However, for all monkeys the within-session time course of responding during food satiation consistently differed from that during deprivation. A second experiment assessed whether the failure to find consistent differences in drug intake during food satiation and deprivation had been due to the history of concurrent access to different phencyclidine concentrations or to the extended experience with phencyclidine under food-satiation conditions. Six additional monkeys (Group 2) were exposed to the phencyclidine self-administration procedure (during food satiation and deprivation) for the same length of time as the monkeys in Experiment 1 (Group 1), except they received only concurrent access to phencyclidine (0.25 mg/mL) and water. Both groups then received concurrent access to phencyclidine and water during five repeated cycles of food deprivation and satiation. There were also marked individual differences in Group 2: During food satiation, 2 of the monkeys' responding increased, 1 showed no change, and 3 decreased. Examination of a number of historical variables indicated that the greater the percentage of total sessions spent during food satiation with phencyclidine available (before these experiments began), the greater the amounts of phencyclidine consumed during food satiation and the smaller the differences in phencyclidine intake when the two feeding conditions were compared.     

Behavioral contrast in fixed-interval components: effects of extinction-component duration.

Seven albino rats were exposed to a multiple schedule of reinforcement in which the two components (fixed interval and extinction) alternated such that a presentation of the extinction component followed each fixed-interval reinforcement. In baseline sessions, the duration of the extinction component was constant and always one-third of the fixed-interval value. Probe sessions contained a probe segment in which the duration of the extinction component was increased; the response rate in fixed-interval components during the probe segment was compared with the response rate in the segments preceding and following the probe. The effect of increasing the duration of the extinction component was studied under three values of fixed interval: 30 s, 120 s, and 18 s, in three successive conditions. Response rate within fixed intervals was a direct function of duration of the extinction component. Pausing at the beginning of the fixed interval decreased as extinction duration increased. These effects were larger and more consistent for the shorter fixed-interval values (18 s and 30 s). These results indicate a functional relation between relative component duration and responding. For the component providing more frequent reinforcement, this could be stated as an inverse relationship between relative component duration and response rate. This relation is similar to findings regarding the ratio of trial and intertrial duration in Pavlovian conditioning procedures, and suggests that behavioral contrast may be related to Pavlovian contingencies underlying the multiple schedule.     

Maternal and infant touching behaviours during perturbed interactions: Associations with maternal depressive symptomatology and infant crying

Touch is an important means through which mothers and infants co-regulate during periods of stress or perturbation. The present study examined the synchrony of maternal and infant touching behaviours among 41 mother-infant dyads, some of whom were deemed at-risk due to maternal depressive symptomatology. Mothers and their 4-month-old infants participated in the Still-Face (maternal emotional unavailability; SF) and Separation (maternal physical unavailability; SP) procedures. Infant crying was examined across procedures and investigated as a brief period of perturbation. Results revealed that mothers and infants displayed a positive pattern of tactile synchrony (coordinated, analogous changes in touch) during infant crying episodes. However, dyads in the high depression group displayed significantly less affectionate touch during instances of infant crying. Furthermore, more depressive symptoms were associated with less maternal and infant touch and lower rates of infant crying. This group of dyads may be less expressive via touch, be less affected by disruptions in their interactions, have impaired regulatory abilities, or simply require minimal amounts of touch to mutually regulate following social stressors and during brief perturbation periods. These findings enrich our limited knowledge about the dynamic interplay of maternal and infant touch and inform preventative intervention programs for at-risk groups.     

Unit price as a useful metric in analyzing effects of reinforcer magnitude.

In this paper, we applied the behavioral-economic concept of unit price to the study of reinforcer magnitude in an attempt to provide a consistent account of the effects of reinforcer magnitude on behavior. Recent research in the experimental analysis of behavior and in behavioral pharmacology suggests that reinforcer magnitude interacts with the schedule of reinforcement to determine response rate and total consumption. The utility of the unit-price concept thus stems from its ability to quantify this interaction as a cost-benefit ratio (i.e., unit price = characteristics of the schedule of reinforcement divided by magnitude of reinforcement). Research employing the unit-price concept has shown that as unit price increases, a positively decelerating function exists for consumption (i.e., a function with an increasingly negative slope, when plotted on log coordinates) and a bitonic function exists for response rate. Based on these findings, the present analysis applied the unit-price concept to those studies of reinforcer magnitude and drug self-administration that examined the effects of reinforcer magnitude on response rate using simple schedules of reinforcement (e.g., fixed-ratio schedule). This resulted in three findings: (a) Reinforcer-magnitude manipulations and schedule manipulations interact in a manner that can be quantified in terms of unit price as benefit and cost factors, respectively; (b) different reinforcer-magnitude manipulations are functionally interchangeable as benefit factors in the unit-price ratio; and (c) these conclusions appear warranted despite the differences in reinforcers (food or drug), species (dogs, monkeys, or rats), and schedules (interval or ratio), and despite the fact that these studies were not designed for a unit-price analysis. In methodological terms, these results provide further evidence that employing the unit-price concept is a parsimonious method for examining the effects of reinforcer magnitude. In theoretical terms, these results suggest that a single process may underlie the effect of combined reinforcer-magnitude and schedule manipulations.