Psychology Commons^™

A Treatment Package To Improve Academic Performance, Lynn Daniel Larrow

Masters Theses

Six high school students volunteered to participate in a research project to improve their academic grades. Of these six subjects, it was found that subjects with low grade point averages (GPA) were the main beneficiaries of a behavior treatment package consisting of contingency contracting, graphing, and a self-management lecture. In addition, this study demonstrated that a contingency contract, employing a weekly consequence, and graphing can control an academic behavior, note taking. Finally, it was shown that a cost effective treatment package could produce GPA increases comparable to more expensive and time consuming treatments. It is hoped that the findings of …

Effect Of Changing Appointment Making Procedures On Increasing The Number Of Initial Appointments Kept At A Family Planning Agency, Carla A. Jones

Masters Theses

The procedures for making initial client appointments at a family planning clinic were manipulated to increase the number of kept appointments. Receptionists and counselors made appointments on the two appointment forms used. Questions on the appointment sheet varied depending on the age of the caller. The 1,432 women participating in the study were placed into three groups (a) 19 years of age and under (b) 20 to 30 years of age and (c) 31 years of age and over. The results showed that the occupation of the person making the appointment at the agency did not affect the number of …

The Effect Of Operant Conditioning Of Heart Rate On Ambient Skin Conductance And Cognitive Interpretation, Steven Scott Ehlert

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

The Structured Meeting System: A Procedure For Supervising The Completion Of Nonrecurring Tasks, Barbara J. Fulton

Dissertations

Supervision of delegated tasks is often a source of organizational problems, because workers do not complete tasks as efficiently as managers expect. Analysis of the work setting suggests that behaviors of both supervisors and supervisees are governed by overlapping contingencies; different supervisor behaviors probably result in different contingencies for supervisee behavior. The analysis also reveals two categories of tasks: recurring tasks and nonrecurring tasks, with the latter type requiring frequent supervisor attention to assign new tasks and monitor previous ones. Contingencies for nonrecurring tasks were targeted for study in the present research, because of indications by managers that productivity and …

The Effects Of Sex-Role Attitudes On Womens' Self-Actualization And Life Satisfaction, Mary Ann Vigilanti

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of sex-role attitudes on levels on self-actualization and satisfaction with life among a group of randomly selected women. This study also explored the relationships between occupational primacy as defined through paid employment and homemaker on overall life satisfaction, and employment commensurate with education/training and its relationship to self-actualization. This relationship between overall life satisfaction and measures of self-actualization was also investigated.

Data was collected from 264 women of which 236 responses were included for final hypotheses testing. All subjects were women 18 years and older who lived within the City …

The Effects Of Hypnosis And Mastery Imagery On Task Performance, Robert J. Russell

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine the efficacy of combining mastery imagery with hypnosis to facilitate performance on a motor task, and to identify the variables which are responsible for such an effect. Ninety-nine students were pretested on the Pursuit Rotor Task and screened for hypnotic susceptibility. From this screening, 40 high susceptible subjects were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: (1) hypnosis and mastery imagery, (2) hypnosis, (3) mastery imagery (H), and (4) no-treatment control. Ten low susceptible subjects were directly assigned to a second mastery imagery (L) condition which served as a special comparison group. …

Teaching Health-Related Behaviors To Young Children Through Social Skills Training, Mary Louise Stevens

Dissertations

Part I consisted of training four kindergarten subjects to make eye contact, assertive comments and assertive actions in reference to social and health-related situations. Training occurred on a one-to-one basis with an adult female and results were assessed with a multiple baseline design. Skill acquisition and maintenance were assessed by measuring ratio of eye contact to speech duration, assertive content and assertive actions on training scenes. Generalization of social skills was assessed by means of: (1) similar, but untrained scenes, (2) choice tests between products with and without sugar, (3) in vivo tests in the school and home environment, (4) …

The Repeated Acquisition Procedure As A Means Of Analyzing Rule-Governed Behavior, Margaret E. Peterson

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Progressive Cigarette Smoke Dilution Upon Smoking Pattern And Stress Responses In Humans, David M. Keenan

Dissertations

Nine chronic cigarette smokers were exposed to one of three schedules of cigarette smoke dilution. The rate of smoke dilution was held constant, but the time interval for achieving maximum dilution varied from one, two and four weeks.

Establishing Verbal Behavior: The Effects Of Using Establishing Operations And Imitative Prompts To Teach Mands To Two Non-Verbal Elderly Retarded Persons, Terry Steven Bradford

Masters Theses

The present study tested a procedure to establish vocal mands in a 47- year-old non-verbal male with Down's syndrome and manually signed mands in a 64-year-old severely retarded female who was physically incapable of speech. In a multiple baseline design across subjects and settings, subjects were taught to complete four behavioral sequences. An establishing operation was then introduced: an item required to complete each sequence was systematically removed once as a probe for manding. Following this, relevant establishing operations were paired with imitative prompts to train manding missing items. Following mastery of a ll mands during booster training, subjects were …

Effects Of Fixed-Interval And Random-Interval Escape Paradigms On Presession And Postsession Levels Of Corticosterone In The Rat, Duane Dregits

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of A Lottery On Completion Of Medical Records By Physicians, Richard William Beers

Masters Theses

Completion of hospital medical records by physicians is a frequent problem to hospital administrations. A performance based lottery was used to evaluate its effectiveness in reducing the number of medical records which were unfinished and considered delinquent. Thirty-three male physicians were included in this study. Physicians earned or lost lottery chances in weekly drawings for a dinner at a restaurant or gift certificate to a local store. Results show an immediate increase in rate of record completion which declines over the course of the eight week experimental condition. Age of records were inversely correlated to the rate of completion. The …

Effects Of Relative Heterogeneity Of Competence In Peer-Tutoring Dyads, Meredith Dawson Argyropoulos

Masters Theses

Students in a high school English class received simple instructions before and during participation in brief daily reciprocal tutoring sessions. Three levels of competence were established on the basis of spelling scores obtained on a group-administered standardized achievement test. Dyad members were twice unlike-paired and once like-paired in competence during the experiment, producing six competence during the experiment, producing six competency permutations. Differential assignment of instructional units after pretesting assured that scores reflected individual gains rather than individual competence relative to that of the other students. Differences in group means within and across pairing conditions were statistically insignificant, indicating that …

The Role Of Generalization In The Acquisition Of Autoshaping A Replication Procedure, Omar Mangrum

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Self-Protective Behavior: Acquisition And Generalization Of Preschool Children's Responses To Strangers, Pamela K. Kies

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

An Investigation Of Some Effects Of Timeout Using The Repeated Acquisition Design With Children, Anita Lynn Wilson

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

An Evaluation Of A Videotape Discrimination Training Program To Teach One-To-One Training Skills, Norman L. Schultz

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Effects Of Thioridazine (Mellaril) On Titrating Delayed Matching To Sample Performance In Mentally Retarded Adults, Timothy Theodore Wysocki

Dissertations

Four mentally retarded adults participated twice daily in assessments of their performance of a titrating delayed matching to sample discrimination. Trials began with the center of three response panels illuminated by one of three colors. Depression of the center panel terminated the light on the center panel and, following a delay, resulted in the presentation of two comparison colors on the side panels. Pressing the side panel illuminated by the same color which had been presented on the center panel yielded a reinforcer, while incorrect responses produced a brief timeout. The delay between depression of the center response panel and …

Variables Related To The Effectiveness Of Instructions: A Theoretical Analysis Of Experimental Results, Stephen Paul Enge

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Job Enlargement And Job Enrichment - A Meta-Analytic Study, Kenny Benedict Cemane

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Jungian Theory And Social Work Practice, Herman Borenzweig

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Carl Jung's contributions to psychology, psychotherapy, and social science have had little impact upon social wonk practice. Social Work Abstracts to lists only one article where Jungian theory is utilized by social workers. McBroom has recently written an article "The Collective Unconscious as a Unifying Concept in Teaching Human Behavior Cross Culturally:" If only two articles about Jungian psychology have appeared in the social work literature in the last twelve years it seems safe to assume either that the ,Jungian oriented social workers practice their Jung underground and fail to publish on that Jung remains anathema to the profession.

In …

The Translation Of Elementary Principles Of Behavior From English To Persian, Kambiz Alavi

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

A Discrete-Trial Procedure To Measure Preference For Variable-Interval Over Fixed-Interval Schedules Of Food Reinforcement In Pigeons, Robert I. Cobez

Dissertations

A discrete-trial choice procedure was conducted in which pigeons were sequentially exposed to four constant variable-interval schedules against each of which five different fixed-interval schedules were compared. The five fixed-interval comparison values were presented in a descending then ascending sequence for the first three variableinterval standard conditions. The fixed-interval sequence was reversed for the last variable-interval standard condition. The variableinterval standard conditions were 10, 20, 40, and 40 seconds, respectively, and the five fixed-interval comparison steps for each variable-interval standard condition ranged from a maximum of twice the variable-interval standard to continuous reinforcement in five equal steps. There were 50 …

The Relationship Between Selected Demographic Characteristics And Mental Health Board Members' Endorsement Of Community Mental Health Ideology, Kathryn S. Thiel

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Preference Reversal: Effects Of Ratio And Reinforcement Parameters, Kenneth Ray Stephens

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Underutilization Of Temporary Employees As A Determinant Of Turnover, Elizabeth De La Ossa

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Two Training Procedures On The Acquisition And Retention Of A Sight-Word Vocabulary In Remedial Readers, Marilyn Monteiro

Dissertations

A Trial and Error and an Errorless procedure were used to teach phonically-irregular words to remedial readers. Subjects were six elementary-school students enrolled in a tutorial program. The Errorless procedure consisted of the use of an echoic prime, prompting and cumulative review over words mastered while the Trial and Error procedure consisted of the use of corrections for errors. Five subjects both mastered and retained more words with the Errorless procedure. The average percent of words mastered across all subjects was greater for the Errorless procedure (73% versus 43%), as was the average percent of words mastered on the six-week …

A Study Of The Effects Of Changes In Response Requirement On Lever Preference In A Discrete-Trial Choice Procedure, Charles L. Lowe

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

An Analysis Of The Peak S H Ift Explanation O F Response Summation, Jeanne Page

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of Chlorpromazine On Behavior Maintained By An Escape Contingency And Fixed-Time Delivery Of Shock, James P. Cleary

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.