Infant Contingency/Extinction Performance After Observing Partial Reinforcement

Social information gathering by infants 6 and 12 months old was examined as a foundation for later social learning that may be uniquely human. Infant performance on a contingency/extinction task was studied following a caregiver demonstration of the contingency on varied reinforcement schedules. Infants who observed caregivers receive any reinforcing stimulation in pretraining decreased responding over their own acquisition period, possibly because they began to habituate to the reinforcer. In extinction, infants who observed caregivers receive partial reinforcement in pretraining were more persistent in responding than others. This suggested that direct experience with partial reinforcement is not needed for greater persistence in extinction. These studies revealed details of social learning in the 1st year.     

Challenging the Rhetoric of Choice in Maternal Labour‐Force Participation: Preferred Versus Contracted Work Hours

The notion of choice in maternal labour‐force participation (LFP) is a contentious one, with assertions that LFP is a direct result of either personal inclinations, such as employment commitment or external factors, such as historically available opportunities. This article suggests an alternative framework for understanding and testing choice in LFP using preferred versus contracted work hours. It explores these constructs quantitatively in a group of working mothers (N = 275) with dependent children and investigates qualitatively the underlying reasons for discrepant preferred versus contracted work hours in a sub‐sample of these women with under‐school‐aged children (N = 20). The results show that nearly two‐thirds of women working full time would prefer to work part time and the major reasons for not acting on their preferences is because of the nature of the job and the lack of career opportunities available for part‐time employees.     

Employment and the Risk of Domestic Abuse Among Low‐Income Women

This paper uses data from 2 randomized evaluations of welfare‐to‐work programs—the Minnesota Family Investment Program and the National Evaluation of Welfare‐to‐Work Strategies—to estimate the effect of employment on domestic abuse among low‐income single mothers. Unique to our analysis is the application of a 2‐stage least squares method, in which random assignment enables us to control for omitted characteristics that might otherwise confound the association between employment and domestic abuse. We find that increased maternal employment decreases subsequent reports of domestic abuse in both studies. In the Minnesota Family Investment Program—a program with an enhanced income disregard that allowed welfare mothers to keep a portion of their welfare income as earnings rose—an increase in household incomes appears to have contributed to reductions in reports of domestic abuse.     

Factors that influence reading and comprehension of branching instructions in self–administered questionnaires

Summary: In this paper we examine the tendency for branching instructions to be ignored, misread, or otherwise not appropriately followed so that item nonresponse occurs for follow–up questions. The potential influence on branching errors of seven features of question complexity are examined, including high number of question words, high number of answer categories, last categories branch, all categories branch, write–in responses, location at the bottom of a page, and high distance between the answer box and branching instruction. A logistic regression analysis revealed that question complexity had a tendency to increase certain errors, but not others.* A more detailed version of this paper with additional analysis and discussion is available at http://www.sesrc.wsu.edu/dillman/. The opinions expressed here are those of the authors, not necessarily of the institutions where they presently work or the U.S. Census Bureau, which provided financial support for the collection of these data. We would like to thank Aref Dajani and Yves Thibaudeau for their advice on the analysis used in this paper.     

Economic Attitudes and Responses to Siting Hazardous Waste Facilities in Rural Utah1

Abstract The siting of hazardous waste facilities has become a critical problem for the United States. Many western states are plagued with proposals to site such facilities. While the host communities appear to be typical western rural communities, responses to siting hazardous waste facilities vary. Previous research suggests that key variables in predicting responses are the anticipation of economic benefits and the perception of risk. This paper proposes that response to siting hazardous industries in rural Utah is not only a result of these key variables but also residents' perception of the local economy. Results from ethnographic and survey data from three rural communities in Utah indicate that the anticipation of economic benefits and perception of risk were strongly associated with response to a proposal, and that residents of communities with poorer local economies were more likely to support siting a hazardous waste facility locally.     

‘Bad Therapy’ as a Training Technique: An Empirical Analysis

The purpose of the present study was to gather empirical data to examine the usefulness of an intriguing training technique called “bad therapy”. The technique, developed by Lang (1980, 1982), is utilized in a role-play setting for experienced therapists who are having difficulty with specific clients showing little improvement. The therapist is instructed to disregard his or her usual style of treatment, and instead, within a role-play format with a colleague who plays the part of a client, to try an alternative style of treatment. This new treatment, termed “bad therapy”, instructs the therapist to try to make the client worse rather than better. Interestingly, reports from both the role-play therapist and client indicate that the “bad therapy” session was considered more beneficial than the therapist's usual mode of treatment. As well as empirically investigating Lang's assertion, the present study also attempted to look at different perspectives of bad therapy. Is “bad therapy” a directive to be harmful and destructive, or is it a suggestion to be more daring and to take more risks? Subjects were 56 therapists who formed twenty eight pairs of therapist-client dyads. First, each pair conducted a “session” where the therapist performed his or her typical therapy. Then, therapists in one group (N= 11) were given directives to try to make their clients worse rather than better (“destructive” set), while therapists in another group (N=11) were told to say and do things that they wished to, but never dared (“daring” set). Finally, six therapists were told to simply repeat their usual type of therapy (“control” set). Results indicated that clients perceived the destructive and daring groups differently with the daring group being perceived more favourably, yet more authoritarian. Similarly, therapists perceived the daring and control groups more positively than the destructive group. The results are discussed in terms of training techniques and current trends in psychotherapy.     

Assessing clinical progress: A case study of Daryl

In this single case study, the authors conceptually framed their understanding of dissociation and splitting as defensive/adaptive coping mechanisms through which children respond to abusive/neglectful environments and the developmental deficits of abused/neglected children as related to failure in separation/individuation. Case study methodology with a nested experimental research design employed content analysis of process recordings to identify targeted defenses and developmental themes and then to assess therapeutic effectiveness during the first six months of psychodynamic play therapy with Daryl. In-session cliniial progress was assessed through charting changes in defenses and developmental themes, identifying degree of goal achievement, and clinically observing treatment stage progression. Visual analysis of the frequency charts identified a slight cyclical decline in use of splitting and guarding against dissociation and a somewhat uneven increase in the developmental theme of coexistence/integration. While these changes in targeted outcome variables were not statistically significant, the amount of change did exceed the predetermined outcome goals for decreased splitting and increased coexistence but not the goal of decreased guarding against dissociation. Review of the process recordings also identified clear markers of treatment progression through two therapeutic stages in the first six months of long term psychodynamic play therapy and further supported the clinical meaningfulness of the observed changes.     

Nonparametric estimation of discrete hazard functions

A smoothing procedure for discrete time failure data is proposed which allows for the inclusion of covariates. This purely nonparametric method is based on discrete or continuous kernel smoothing techniques that gives a compromise between the data and smoothness. The method may be used as an exploratory tool to uncover the underlying structure or as an alternative to parametric methods when prediction is the primary objective. Confidence intervals are considered and alternative techniques of cross validation based choices of smoothing parameters are investigated.