For the untrained subjects, only attendants achieved a lower approach score than trained therapists. Attendants achieved lower approach scores than other untrained groups for two of the patient types. The results support the need for additional research concerning minimally trained subjects and roles they might assume in mental health settings.…

Affect arousing and energizing properties of positive and negative reinforcing stimuli were investigated. Subjects received positive evaluations (PE), similar attitudes (SA), dissimilar attitudes (DA) or negative evaluations (NE) presented on slides. Pre- and post-slide semantic differentials were filled out by each subject. All subjects then…

Presented children (N=96) aged 8-11 with verbal pain or nonpain stimuli contingent or noncontingent on a target response. Delivered stimuli within an aggressive or nonaggressive setting and with or without affect. Type of setting did not influence the behavior, but stimuli delivered in an affective manner did facilitate responding. (Author/RC)

The ways in which fathers and mothers communicate with and teach their 6-month-old first-born infants were compared. Twenty-two white, middle class mothers and fathers were videotaped interacting with their infants (11 male, 11 female) on 10 tasks. Trained observers coded the parents' interaction with their infants on the following variables:…

Presents nine experimental studies investigating auditory and visual discrimination in very young infants. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for understanding habituation, cross-modal stimulation, receptive language development, and individual differences. Appendices include data on visual fixation duration and information on…

Human performance on verbal and spatial matching tasks was assessed every 15 minutes for eight hours. Significant 90- to 100-minute oscillations were observed for each task. It was also found that increases in performance on one task are accompanied by decreases on the other. (HM)

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of indiscriminate use of counselor reflection, probe, confrontation, and free style on client behavior and client perceptions of counseling. The experiment was conducted at the University of Tennessee with 20 female volunteers from undergraduate education courses serving as subjects and four…

This study examines the influence of maternal predispositions toward sex-appropriate behavior and the mother's response to "feminine" or "masculine" cues in infant behavior. In the investigation, one 6-month-old male infant was presented to 11 mothers who served as subjects. The infant was dressed as either boy (blue clothes) and named Adam, or…

Despite the seminal studies of response differentiation by the method of successive approximation detailed in chapter 8 of "The Behavior of Organisms" (1938), B. F. Skinner never actually shaped an operant response by hand until a memorable incident of startling serendipity on the top floor of a flour mill in Minneapolis in 1943. That occasion…

The purpose of the observational system presented here is to record the behavioral interactions between infant and mother, focusing on the sequential and contextual features of the social communication patterns accessible through direct home observation of mothers and their 3- to 4-month-old infants. The present system of continuous data recording…

This study investigated the response behavior of nine infants, aged 13-15 weeks, to a recurrent pattern of visual and verbal stimuli presented by their own mothers and by female strangers. The infants were presented with the following 2-minute sequence (repeated 3 times): (1) one-half minute of an unknown female leaning over the crib with a…

The purpose of this study was to obtain quantitative nonevaluative data about verbal behavior used by instructor and students in the foreign language classroom. Two beginner and two intermediate German classes were tape-recorded for two weeks, then coded according to patterns. Frequencies of various verbal behavior patterns were analyzed. A…