Donald K. Routh

Analyzing spoken language into words, syllables, and phonomes: A developmental study

Fifty children aged 3–7 years were asked to repeat spoken sentences and then to divide up these sentences into words, the words into syllables, and the syllables into speech sounds. There was a clear developmental progression in the ability to analyze spoken language in this way. The skills of analyzing sentences into words and words into syllables were highly related. Items requiring analysis of syllables into phonemes were highly correlated with each other and somewhat independent of sentence and word analysis items. The results are related to Gibsons model of reading, in which the acquisition of grapheme-phoneme correspondences is a crucial process.

Standardized Playroom Measures as Indices of Hyperactivity.

A group of 16 children from a normal community population was compared with two groups of 16 children referred for clinical evaluation of hyperactivity. These three groups were matched on age, sex, and race. One of the clinic groups was matched with the community sample on IQ and social class as well, while the children in the other clinic group were mentally retarded and of somewhat lower social class. All children were observed in a standardized playroom for two 15-minute sessions, one under free play instructions and the other under instructions restricting activity and toy-changing behavior. The two groups of children referred for evaluation of hyperactivity had significantly higher playroom activity scores than controls under both instructional conditions and significantly higher toy-change scores under restrictive instructions. Parental ratings of activity were also significantly higher in both clinic groups than in the community group. The mentally retarded clinic sample did not differ from the other clinic sample on any of the measures of activity or toy switching.

A Response-Cost Procedure for Reduction of Impulsive Behavior of Academically Handicapped Children ~

To test the hypothesis that impulsive problem-solving behavior may be due to a childs low concern about response accuracy on the Matching Familiar Figures Test, a procedure was devised which involved punishment of incorrect responses by withdrawal of tokens given before each trial. This Response-cost procedure and the Standard procedure were given in counterbalanced sequence to two groups of 15 children with a mean chronological age of 13.9 and a mean IQ of 71 who were attending special classes because of academic difficulty. Subjects showed significantly longer latency to first response under the Response-cost procedure and also made significantly fewer errors under this procedure when it was the second one administered. When the Response-cost procedure was given first, the subjects tended to carry over their relatively low error rates to the subsequent trials under the standard procedure.

A Developmental Study of the Asymmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex

The asymmetrical tonic neck reflex (atnr) was elicited in 84 normal children aged between three and nine years. The children were positioned on all‐fours and the head was placed first in the mid‐line, then rotated to the right and finally to the left; the positions of the ipsilateral and contralateral elbows were then measured with a goniometer. The atnr was demonstrated in all the children and showed no systematic change with increasing age. When instructed to do so, the children in all age‐groups were able to lessen the amount of reflex movement, but not to eliminate it completely. Some tentative norms for the physical examination of the atnr in children are provided.

Reduction of children's locomotor activity by modeling and the promise of contingent reward.

Sixty children aged 4 and 5 were observed in an open field situation under instructions to stay in one part of a playroom and to play with a single toy of their choice during an initial 15-minute period. They were then placed for 5 minutes in an adjacent observation room and exposed to 1 of 5 different experimental conditions. Subjects in the modeling conditions observed an adult male sitting in one distinctive part of the playroom and playing with Tinker Toys. Subjects in the enriched modeling condition also saw the model receive reward for his subdued behavior and heard him verbalize reasons for his actions. Subjects in nonmodeling conditions merely observed the empty playroom during the 5 minutes. Finally, all subjects were observed in the playroom for a second 15-minute session. Children in the reinforcement conditions were now promised pennies for staying in one part of the room and playing with a single toy of their choice. Both modeling and the promise of contingent reward resulted in a reduction of locomotor activity and a reduction of toy-switching behavior, though the effects of these variables did not combine in an additive way. Enriched modeling had an additional effect on toy-switching behavior only. Males spent more time in the modeled quadrant than did females. The results were interpreted as support for the importance of modeling and reinforcement in childrens compliance with instructions.

Preparing the preschool child for a visit to the dentist

Abstract Two commercial films were evaluated in comparison with a cartoon and no film for preparing preschool children for a dental examination and prophylaxis. The participants in the study were 145 children, who were assigned randomly to the four experimental conditions. The commercial films did not appear to have any significant advantage over control conditions. Older children were significantly better behaved in the dental surgery and took less of the dentists time.

Effects of Paradigmatic Response Training on Children's Word Associations.

Abstract A free association task was given to 30 kindergarten and 30 fifth grade children followed by systematic training in producing paradigmatic associates (response words in the same grammatical form class as the stimulus words). Training involved instructions, prompting, and examples. Candy rewards were given for correct responses. Under all conditions fifth graders produced more paradigmatic responses than did kindergarteners. Training led to a slight increase in paradigmatic responding to verbs and adjectives for both groups, and a slight decrease in noun responses given to noun stimulus words by kindergarteners. The latter result was interpreted as a reduction in the frequency of “primitive” noun responses. The implications of the results for syntactic models of child word association were discussed.

Measuring the ability to express sexual thoughts.

Summary Ratings were obtained from 30 male college students as to the sexual stimulus relevance of a number of pictures from magazines, each depicting a man and a woman. Then a different group of 72 male students were asked to tell stories about the situations depicted in pictures representing 4 levels of rated sexual stimulus relevance. Half were given ambiguous instructions, while the other half were instructed to tell sexy stories. In general, sexier pictures elicited sexier stories, the effect being more marked with ambiguous instructions. Sexy instructions led to sexier stories except at the highest level of stimulus relevance. The results were interpreted within the framework of an abilities conception of personality.

Reversal learning in young children as a function of number of choice-alternatives

Abstract Discrimination learning and reversal problems were given to 128 children aged two and three years in which there were either two, three, six, or nine choice-alternatives per problem. The position of the correct object (either a toy car on the original problem and a ball on the reversal problem or vice versa) was varied randomly among all the possible positions, all other positions being occupied by duplicates of the incorrect object. It was found that two-choice reversal problems were much more difficult than all others. There was also a direct and monotonic relationship between ease of solution and number of choices present during reversal learning. Additional analysis inlicated that position response biases were probably responsible for this effect.