The behavior-specific attitude "tendency to discriminate" is distinguished from the general tendency toward negative stereotyping (prejudice). Thirteen independent variables are evaluated as predictors of this tendency. Subjects were students in a racially integrated high school in the Pacific Northwest. Among white students, the most significant…

The literature on the behavior effects of videotaped playback reveals that little theoretical formulation has been offered to explain the positive results which have been reported. Two theoretical models are considered in regard to these results. The first, a reinforcement model, suggests that some behaviors are reinforced positively and some…

Research was undertaken to determine what informal education practices lend themselves to the precocity in sensorimotor development noted among Bagandan infants in Uganda, relative to their American white and black counterparts. With the assistance of a Muganda midwife/nurse a prenatal questionnaire was answered by women visiting antenatal clinics…

In a 1973 Smithsonian behavioral science project, observational methods were used to record school group behaviors during docent guided tours in the National Museum of History and Technology. The purpose of this exploratory study was to reveal the natural museum habitat and criterion behaviors of visiting fourth through sixth graders. Children's…

Discussion centered on three sets of factors that may influence the variability observed in "concept identification" (concept formation and discrimination learning) studies: stimulus characteristics, incentives employed, and subject characteristics. Stimulus characteristics are described in terms of the number of dimensions…

This document is the first part of a comprehensive study designed to review existing data about child development and the evaluation data of programs for children in order to propose recommendations for Federal program planning. Two major goals of the work reported in this section (Volume 1 are: (1) to arrive at an adequate definition of…

Research in the field of political communication has traditionally reflected a behavioral approach which has focused largely on the influence of mass communication on the public's political behavior. The role of the individual in selecting, interpreting, and processing political information has received significantly less attention. The…

Four research papers discuss the influence of social cues on children's behavior. Specifically, the focus of this program of research was to systematically investigate the impact of two classes of social cues: (1) implicit or explicit instructional cues inherent in social interactions, and (2) inferred or actual evaluative cues present in…

Two techniques were used to modify an impulsive conceptual tempo on a visual discrimination task. The subjects were 42 first grade white children who had previously been classified as impulsive or near-impulsive on the Matching Familiar Figures Test given to 82 children. These subjects, who had scored above the median on errors and below the…

By addressing the areas of feelings and value judgements the goals of a relationship between behaviorists and teachers can be clarified. The term "behavior modification" elicits negative emotional responses. Perhaps behaviorists should accept responsibility for the negativism and use a term such as Ogden Lindsley's "precision teaching." The term…

This international newsletter, published since 1968, provides cross-cultural and cross-national midi-communications in social psychology. Usually included are: 1) notices of international conferences, institutes, or seminars, 2) a list of new publications, 3) letters to the editor, 4) announcements, and 5) a bibliography of cross-cultural…

Contributions in the first section of this volume are: "Learning to Identify Toy Block Structures" by Patrick Winston; "Beyond the Yellow-Volkswagen Detector and the Grandmother Cell: A General Strategy for the Exploration of Operations in Human Pattern Recognition" by Naomi Weisstein; "Visual Recognition in a Theory of Information Processing" by…

A laboratory experiment, using videotape, was designed to test the self-interest hypothesis, that is, that a subject will increase his effectiveness if he argues in favor of a position that is opposed to his best interests. Four hundred fifty-nine subjects participated in a Solomon Four-Group design for primary data acquisition. Strong opinion…

This study tested two primary hypotheses concerning the effects of mispronunciation on the ratings of source credibility. First, as the number of mispronunciations presented by a speaker increases, audience ratings of source credibility will decrease. Second, the effects hypothesized in the first statement will be stronger for audiences at a more…

The possibility of behavior having important consequences is the focus of this manual with the objective of predicting criminal behavior through the use of an Environmental Deprivation Scale (EDS). The principal analytical method for analysis of the environment is the systematic observation of behavior and the manipulation of environmental…