Introduction: This paper presents the results of an experiment in using participatory research methods in a classroom among ten students taking an advanced master's level course in library and information science. The project goals were motivated by the course content, an advanced course in research using official government documents. Method: Ten…

This study examined students at two different age levels to determine if those forced into having valid expectations tended to exhibit increased motivation and, by extention, improved performance. Motivation was determined by measuring both student performance and the time spent on the performance task. Eighty students from two grade levels (six…

The research reported in this document was an attempt to replicate the study by Wish, Cautela, and Steffen, and to test the effects of covert reinforcement on overt behavior. The subjects were 50 college students who were presented the task of estimating the diameter of each circle in a series presented by slide projector. Pre- and post-treatment…

Ninety-six male undergraduate students participated in an experiment assessing behavioral aggression and addressing itself to the issue of specific versus general mediation of a hypothesized relationship between sexual arousal and aggression. Differing sources of arousal were experimentally crossed with the alteration of the aggressive cue…

This study addressed three questions: Is there a reinforcing effect of positive covert imagery? Is the Reinforcement Survey Schedule a more effective aid to selection of positive imagery than individual selection of standardized assignment? Do multiple images produce greater conditioning than does a single image? Forty-six subjects were randomly…

This speech reports an experiment on memory and verbal ability. The study notes that in previous research, verbal ability has been found to correlate with sensitivity to order, an important component of intelligence. This relationship may be due largely to the greater word store of high verbal scorers. The author's experimental hypothesis is that…

Locke has concluded that motivational knowledge of results (KR) has no effect on performance if goal is controlled. Previous studies, however, always afforded to No KR groups some KR. In the present study a 2x2 factorial design (KR-No KR; low-high goal) was used. Stringent controls were instituted to eliminate all KR, in the No KR conditions. The…

The purpose of this paper was to examine the following question: What is the relationship between parental interest and control over their adolescent children, and juvenile delinquency? Two hypotheses were tested: (1) fewer adolescents who report greater parental control will report engaging in delinquent behavior than adolescents who report less…

Forth-two subjects were randomly assigned to two empathy training treatments. One treatment, approximating Carkhuff's training method, employed didactic teaching, discrimination training, modeling, experientially-oriented communications practice, and feedback. The second treatment, a cognitive self-instructional modeling approach, included each of…

This speech addressed itself to the variety of achievement motivations that can be critically different for men and women. The author, impressed by the different ways people cognitively define and experience a successful accomplishment, developed a taxonomy of psychological cues which people might use in defining their success. Six varieties of…

An investigation of the efficacy of covert negative reinforcement (Ascher and Cautela, 1972) was replicated. Thirty Ss were randomly assigned to one of three groups. Ss in the experimental group were trained to imagine a noxious scene, then to shift to the image of a ringing bell. During the test phase, the word "bell" was used to reinforce over-…

While a number of studies have documented a variety of attitudinal correlates of the subjective dimension of age, some writers have suggested that, especially at the older end of the life cycle, subjective age is but a surrogate for measures of disadvantaged social status. Specifically, this alternative view is that only the poor or retired or…

Systematic Human Relations Training (SHRT) is predicated on the basic assumption that there are certain core helper-offered conditions that are necessary in a helping relationship, i.e., empathy, respect, warmth, concreteness, genuineness, self-disclosure confrontation, and immediacy. This, however, is only part of the model. The second basic…

This experiment sought to determine if the extinction of anti Afro-American attitudes in Euro-American kindergarten children was possible. Also investigated was whether or not these conditioning procedures were equally effective regardless of the sex of Ss. A total of 37 Euro-American children were randomly selected from kindergarten classes and…

The relative effectiveness of alternative reward structures in strengthening individual task performance was investigated by operationalizing six reward structure treatments--each of which combined one of two levels of differential group rewarding with one of three levels of differential rewarding within groups. Twelve males and twelve females…