Richard L. Blanton

Facial expressions and interpretation of emotion-arousing situations in deaf and hearing children

Deaf and hearing children were given two tasks: (a) sorting faces portraying nine emotions and (b) matching those faces with drawings of appropriate emotion-arousing situations. The deaf children performed as the hearing children did on the first task but did not match the faces to the situations as well as the hearing children. It appeared that the deaf children were unable to analyze and interpret emotion-arousing events adequately. Possible reasons for this finding are presented and discussed in detail.

Oddity performance in preschool children at risk for mental retardation: Transfer and maintenance☆

The oddity performance of five preschool children at risk for mental retardation was facilitated by increasing the number of nonodd elements in a visual array. A combination intrasubject reversal and multiple baseline across subjects design indicated the internal validity of interventions designed to enhance the perceptual salience and consequent stimulus control of the odd stimulus. Results demonstrate that transfer and maintenance of oddity learning can be obtained even with individuals for whom correct oddity responding is uncommon. The typically poor performance of young and developmentally delayed children as compared to nondelayed children on tasks such as the oddity task may be attributable to a lower sensitivity to relational information.

Some possible interference and facilitation effects of pronunciability

The effect of pronunciability on the retention of trigrams was investigated by comparing the recall of high and low pronounceable CVCs by deaf and hearing S s. The hearing S s performed somewhat better on the high Pr items and worse on the low Pr items than the deaf S s, who performed equally on the high and low Pr trigrams. It was concluded that hearing S s are subject to interference effects in attempting to pronounce difficult items which reduces rate of learning.

Retention of trigrams by deaf and hearing subjects as a function of pronunciability

Comparisons were made of the recognition memory of deaf and hearing Ss for two types of nonsense CVCs, one type being high in pronunciability (PR) and the other type being low in PR. Large numbers of deaf and control Ss were studied, and deaf Ss were drawn from two different types of school programs. The dependent measure was the number of items recognized after one trial of each of two 20-word series exposed by slides. The most outstanding feature of the results is an interaction of groups with PR levels. Deaf Ss are superior in overall performance and perform equally well on high PR and low PR items, but hearing Ss perform significantly better on high PR items than on low PR items. Since the strength of PR habits is minimal in the deaf, the results raise some questions about the relations between PR and verbal learning in hearing Ss. It is suggested that PR may inhibit rather than facilitate retention in hearing Ss at some levels of the variable. The superior performance of the deaf, also observed in previous research, remains to be explained.

Verbal conditioning in a psychotherapeutic situation

Abstract Eighteen non-psychotic patients were assigned to three treatment groups. Two groups received conditioning by verbal reinforcement, one for emitting statements expressing feeling, the other for emitting statements without discriminable feeling content. The third group received psychotherapy as usually administered. After an initial operant level session, treatment was administered for nine half-hour sessions, the same therapist being used for all sessions. Recordings of the sessions were scored for number of statements expressing feelings over sessions for all groups. The percentage of feeling statements increased for the group receiving reinforcement for that category, and for the group receiving ordinary psychotherapy. For the group receiving reinforcement for statements without feeling content, the percentage of feeling statements, decreased slightly but the percentage of non-feeling statements did not increase. The subjects did not express awareness of the reinforcement contingency. The results were discussed with regard to their relevance for the theory of psychotherapeutic technique and the problems of awareness of reinforcement and the definition of the response class actually reinforced.

EVALUATIONAL LANGUAGE PROCESSES IN THE DEAF

Locus of Control and Evaluation Scales were administered to 137 deaf Ss at the Tennessee School for the Deaf and to 302 control Ss from the public schools of Williamson County, Tennessee. The results strongly supported the hypothesis that the deaf rely very heavily on others for evaluative judgments as well as behavioral decisions. The data were consistent with the frequently made observation that the deaf adolescent is more immature and dependent both in educational level and social-emotional growth. The problem of the importance of evaluational vocabulary for evaluational judgments was discussed.

Motivational processes and behavioral inhibition in breath holding

Large individual differences in breathing performance have made it difficult to investigate the effects of psychological variables on respiratory parameters. This study uses an experimental approach to investigating the effects of attentional and motivational factors on breath-holding span in humans. The effects of shock threat (negative incentive), monetary reward (positive incentive), and mantra meditation (attentional control) on breath-holding span at functional residual capacity (FRC) were compared. Based on Jeffrey Grays (1975, 1987) theory of behavioral inhibition, it was predicted that shock threat would extend FRC breath holding. Breath holding was increased under the shock threat condition but not under the monetary reward or mantra meditation conditions.

Autoshaping of abnormal children.

Three experimentally naive abnormal children were exposed to a terminal operant contingency, i.e., reinforcement was delivered only if the children pressed a panel during intervals when it was lighted. Despite the absence of both successive approximation and manual shaping, it was found that each child began to respond discriminatively within a small number of trials. These data replicated previous animal studies concerned with the phenomena of autoshaping and signal-controlled responding. It was also found, however, that one type of autoshaping, the classical conditioning procedure, had a powerful suppressive effect on discriminative responding. An experimental analysis that consisted of a combination of intrasubject reversal and multiple baseline designs established the internal validity of the findings. The finding of rapid acquisiton of signalcontrolled responding obtained with the initial procedure is suggested to have practical significance. The disruptive effects of the classical form of autoshaping are discussed in terms of negative behavioral contrast.

Consistency among commonly used procedures for assessment of abnormal children.

Administered the Stanford-Binet and/or its downward extension the Cattell Infant Intelligence Scale to 22 children in a school for severely behaviorally disordered boys and girls. Assessments also were made with the Vineland Social Maturity Scale and with a scale of language development. A subgroup of 17 children were assessed with Rimlands E-2 Scale, which is designed to assess the presence and degree of the condition of autism. Correlations among these commonly used assessment procedures are reported. Findings are discussed with respect to the construct validity of the tests and with respect to practical problems of implementation. Issues that concern the distinctiveness of specific classification dimensions and the heterogeneity of the syndrome of autism also are discussed.

Classification of Abnormal Children: Discrimination Learning Ability'

Large individual differences exist among psychotic and retarded children, and a procedure that would enable classification of discrimination learning ability would be of value. A procedure designed to assess the discrimination learning thresholds of low-functioning children is described. A performance index (PI) that reflects accuracy of discriminative responding, difficulty of the discriminations attained, and learning rate was found to correlate significantly with mental age, intelligence quotient, Vineland Social Age, Vineland Social Quotient, and language functioning, but not with chronological age. The question of the optimal magnitude of correlation between a new measure and existing measures is discussed.