The contribution of a structured procedure designed to facilitate the generalization of assertive behavior was examined. Subjects solicited from the community (N=48) were assigned to an assertion training plus generalization instructions (AT Plus), an assertion training only (AT Only), or an attention-placebo control condition. Both behavioral…

The search for syntactical rules which govern nonverbal communication and cues in humans has often been considered a problem separate from determining semantic rules. Departing from such a traditional approach was accomplished by employing the meaning of various nonverbal channels to study their interrelationship. It was proposed that the…

Extensive research has been conducted examining the effects of teacher expectations on student performance, revealing reasonably consistent patterns of differential behavior by teachers toward high and low expectation students. Few theories which integrate isolated research findings into a causal sequence have emerged, however. One such model…

The concept of social role range (SRR) deals with the magnitude of an individual's repertoire of different interpersonal behavior patterns and exhibits the properties of a personality trait. Over a broad range of interpersonal settings, individuals tend to be consistent in the magnitude of their SRR's. A role play technique was devised for…

Although sports are a part of the child's everyday experience, little is known about factors that relate to children's participation in sports, to their perceptions of self-competence in sports, and to the impression by others of the competence. Children (N=110) participating in a Pediatric Sports Medicine Project completed the psychological…

The effects of observational purpose are thought to impact on such diverse processes as categorization, behavior perception, trait ascription, and memory. The role of observational purpose in the categorization of behavior was explored to determine whether differences between trait and goal concepts affect certain information-processing…

Characteristics of the situation in which a fear-arousing communication is received affect the effectiveness of the communication. The influence of situational factors affecting a recipient's interpretation of the arousal induced by communication were investigated with smokers (N=37) who were exposed to a fear-arousing anti-smoking movie. Prior to…

The relationship between self-control and role-taking deficits as exhibited by 37 female institutionalized juvenile delinquents was assessed by Chandler's measure of social egocentrism. Subjects, matched on the basis of their scores on the Matching Familiar Figures (MFF) Test, were randomly assigned to treatment or control groups. The treatment…

People's cognitive maps (images of self, beliefs and values, evaluations of relationships with individuals and groups) determine attitudes and behavior, provide the basis for communication, and determine in part their response to events. The cognitive map of an organization performs the same function for groups. Thirty-five newspaper employees…

Cheating behavior has been found to relate to emotion-attribution explanations. Prior research with second-grade children has indicated that increased self-control occurs in a watching task when the child's emotional response is attributed to internal rather than external actions. In the present study, freshman women (N=221) took a reading…

The process of assertive behavior change of college women who received assertion training (AT) and cognitive restructuring was examined to assess the relative effects of different durations of exposure to cognitive restructuring. Undergraduate and graduate women students (N=27) at a state university volunteered and were screened for AT groups.…

The use of discourse analysis in examining the classroom language interactions between English teachers and their students builds on the basic concepts of language function and language sequence. The four language functions are eliciting, informing, directing, and boundary marking (marking the divisions of discourse units). The three language…

An exploration of writing anxiety suggests that it is a normal form of behavior rather than a pathology, but that it varies in degrees of its dysfunctionality. Excerpts from the log books of college students in a writing anxiety workshop illustrate four broad categories of writing anxiety: procrastination, feeling emotionally distressed, thinking…

Data on 36 autistic, 30 mentally retarded (MR), and 22 normal children (23-65 months old) was collected to develop a method of objective behavioral assessment for diagnosing autism and documenting symptom changes over time. Ss were observed and rated on the Behavior Observation Scale, an instrument which contains 67 objectively defined behaviors…

The relationships between feedback, its source, and the increases or decreases of the behavior associated with it were investigated to apply predictions of the credibility gap regarding the effects of feedback on the acquisition of an individual skill. Subjects (N=45) were randomly assigned to one of five treatment conditions and provided…