Influence of comparison training on children's referential communication.

Assessed whether teaching children to engage in comparison activity improves their referential communication performance. In contrast to previous communication training studies, the training focused on a specifiable unitary skill, employed a teaching procedure with known effectiveness, and controlled for practice and other familiarity effects. Two training experiments with 3rd- and 4th-grade children were conducted. Results from Exp I indicate that 33 trained Ss improved more than 32 control Ss in communication accuracy. Furthermore, gains were maintained at the 1-mo follow-up. Exp II (20 undergraduates; 43 children) examined training effects on message appraisal as well as message production. Results indicate significant training effects on both tasks. Results demonstrate that inadequate comparison processing contributes to children's poor communication performance. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How feedback from a listener affects children's referential communication skills.

Investigated how feedback from a listener helps young children attend to message quality and how such feedback affects speaking and listening skills. 84 kindergartners watched a speaker doll and a listener doll play a communication game in which the speaker was supposed to verbally distinguish one item from among several for the listener. In fact, however, the speaker always gave ambiguous messages. The listener attempted to select the item described by the speaker and either made a correct selection, made an incorrect selection, or asked for more information. Ss then evaluated the adequacy of the speaker's message. One week later they completed a speaking and a listening task. Results indicate that at this age children learn to assess message adequacy through observing listeners flounder with inadequate messages. Only with explicit feedback detailing the nature of the ambiguity, however, do children improve their own speaking and listening skills. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How children learn to listen: The effects of modeling feedback styles on children's performance in referential communication.

48 kindergartners and 48 2nd graders participated as listeners in a referential communication task with an adult speaker. Ss were presented with sets of 4 pictures and asked to choose the referent on the basis of a speaker's message. The messages were either adequate or ambiguous, describing 2 of the 4 possible referents. Ss were instructed to ask questions if they needed more information. Prior to these trials, Ss were exposed to 1 of 3 modeling conditions in which they viewed an adult listener responding to ambiguous messages by asking either general questions, specific questions, or specific questions accompanied by an explanation of the underlying strategy. A 4th group received no modeling. Although each of the modeling groups was successful in increasing the frequency of the modeled question, older Ss benefited more from modeling than younger children. Age differences suggested that the effectiveness of modeling interacted with children's existing cognitive abilities. Auxiliary evidence pointed to the role of information processing in children's abilities to deal with ambiguous communications as listeners. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assessment and training of role-taking and referential communication skills in institutionalized emotionally disturbed children.

Evaluated 125 institutionalized emotionally disturbed 8-15-yr-old children in terms of their role-taking and referential communication skills. On the basis of this screening process, the 48 Ss who performed most poorly on these measures were assigned randomly to 1 of 2 experimental training programs intended to remediate deficits in either role-taking or referential communication skills. As a group these institutionalized Ss were significantly delayed in the acquisition of both role taking and referential communication when compared with samples of their normal age-mates. Pre- and postintervention comparisons indicated that Ss of both experimental groups improved significantly in their role-taking ability. Ss of the communication training program also demonstrated significant improvement in referential communication skills. A 12-mo follow-up showed a trend for improvements in both test measures to be associated with improvements in social adjustment as rated by institutional staff. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the proper interpretation of empirical findings: Strube and Garcia (1981) revisited.

Points out numerous problems in R. P. Vecchio's (see record 1983-21113-001) criticism of the present authors' (see record 1981-30341-001) review of the Fiedler contingency model of leadership effectiveness for biases in selection of studies and interpretation of results. It is again concluded that there is strong empirical support of the Fiedler model. (10 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's referential communication: Components of plans for effective listening.

Investigated the effects of 2 plans on children's listener behavior in a referential communication setting. The design systematically varied the presence and absence of instructions about a plan to engage in comparison activities (comparison plan) and instructions about a plan to request more information if the speaker's message was ambiguous (action plan). 94 elementary school Ss played the role of listener. The speaker was an adult confederate who produced messages of varying informational adequacy. Results show that on an immediate test, Ss who received the action plan asked more questions when the messages were ambiguous and made more correct referent choices than other Ss. These effects persisted on a test administered 2 wks later and were observed both for nameable and abstract stimulus items. No significant effect of the comparison plan was observed. Results suggest that knowing when and how to request additional information is an important listener skill. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of referential communication: Deciding that a message is uninformative.

Investigated whether young children typically attend to the age of the speaker when they lack knowledge of other communicative rules. Two experiments compared how children evaluate 3 types of uninformative messages (ambiguous, incomplete, inconsistent) and whether and why the speaker's age affects the evaluation of each. In Exp I, 22 1st and 22 4th graders played a referential communication game with either a peer or an adult speaker. In Exp II, 22 1st graders played the same referential communication game used in Exp I, but Ss who were interacting with the peer speaker were told that the speaker was very smart and Ss who were interacting with the adult speaker were told that the speaker was very stupid. Overall results indicate that incomplete messages were the easiest to evaluate and inconsistent messages were the most difficult. The evaluation of ambiguous messages was affected by the age of the S and the age of the speaker. Although older Ss attended solely to the quality of the message, 1st graders based their evaluations of ambiguous and inconsistent messages on the age of the speaker. Adult speakers' messages were evaluated more positively than peers' because the young Ss thought the adults were smart and therefore more likely to be good communicators. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stability of formal thought disorder and referential communication disturbances in schizophrenia.

This study examined the degree to which different types of communication disturbances in the speech of 48 schizophrenia patients and 28 controls were variable and state related versus stable and traitlike. Clinically rated formal thought disorder and 5 types of referential disturbance showed substantial stability within participants over time. The sixth type of referential disturbance, the vague reference, was not stable over time. Formal thought disorder was associated with the severity of core psychotic symptoms in patients, whereas referential disturbances showed little or no association with positive or negative symptom severity. Furthermore, changes in psychotic symptoms over time were accompanied by corresponding changes in formal thought disorder but not referential disturbances. These results support the idea that some types of referential disturbances are traitlike and may be reflective of vulnerability as well as manifest illness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Early referential understanding: Infants' ability to recognize referential acts for what they are.

Previous research has documented infants' ability to follow adults' line-of-regard and pointing gestures by 9–22 mo of age, but it has not been clear whether infants appreciate that such cues are a priviledged source of information about word reference. Study 1 demonstrated that this is understood by at least 19–20 mo: Infants used referential cues to guide a new word–object mapping even though this required that they ignore competition from temporal contiguity. In Study 2, the effects observed in Study 1 were not obtained with actions that served to enhance the salience of an object nonreferentially (e.g., manipulating without looking), suggesting that infants appreciate that actions that accompany labeling are not necessarily referential. Taken together, these indicate that language learning is grounded in a relatively rich understanding of cues to reference, at least from late infancy on. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Imagery training and children's prose learning.

Used a pretest-posttest design to examine the effects of passage-illustration training (relative to a reading-practice control procedure) on reading comprehension in 10 3rd and 22 4th graders. Without this imagery training, imagery instructions did not improve performance on either a standardized reading comprehension test or a paraphrase prose recall procedure. After extended training in drawing adequate "comic strips" to illustrate prose passages, performance in a paraphrase recall task improved, but only when explicit imagery instructions were given with the task. The imagery training did not affect the standardized test performance, explicit imagery instructions notwithstanding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Informed Strategies for Learning: A program to improve children's reading awareness and comprehension.

Examined the role of awareness about their own cognitive skills on the learning and development of 87 3rd graders and 83 5th graders. Half of the Ss were given an experimental curriculum—informed strategies for learning (ISL)—designed to increase Ss' awareness and use of effective reading strategies. The remainder of the Ss were used as controls. Results show that Ss who participated in ISL made larger gains than did controls on cloze and error detection tasks. No differences between groups were found on 2 standardized tests of reading comprehension. Findings demonstrate that metacognition can be promoted through direct instruction in classrooms and that increased awareness can lead to better use of reading strategies. (47 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intentional communication by chimpanzees: A cross-sectional study of the use of referential gestures.

This study describes the use of referential gestures with concomitant gaze orienting behavior to both distal food objects and communicative interactants by 115 chimpanzees, ranging from 3 to 56 years of age. Gaze alternation between a banana and an experimenter was significantly associated with vocal and gestural communication. Pointing was the most common gesture elicited; 47 subjects pointed with the whole hand, whereas 6 subjects pointed with index fingers. Thus, communicative pointing is commonly used by laboratory chimpanzees, without explicit training to point, language training, or home rearing. Juveniles exhibited striking decrements in their propensity to communicate with adult male experimenters compared with older chimpanzees. Significantly fewer mother-reared chimpanzees exhibited gaze alternation compared with nursery-reared chimpanzees. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Knowing and telling: Type of rule and level of knowledge about messages in children's use of self-regulative communication training.

23 1st- and 2nd-graders were assigned to 3 training groups: a practice control group, a comparison rule-only group, and a 2-rule group that received training on both a comparison rule and a rule that required the Ss to identify the listener's set of potential nonreferents. Ss were trained on a complex picture message task and tested for generalization of speaker training on another referential task; knowledge about message ambiguity in communication situations was measured pretest. Results show significant training effects on immediate and delayed (10 days later) posttest only for the 2-rule group; some generalization of training was observed for this group to a novel task. Training and generalization effects were correlated with the Ss' initial knowledge about the role of messages in communication. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-control training: The effects of external control on children's resistance to temptation.

Studied the effects of extent and kind of external control during training on later resistance to temptation. 84 58-75 mo olds were trained not to turn around to look at a toy display. 4 groups heard recordings emphasizing the positive consequences of nontransgression. External control was varied by hearing the verbalizations in the voice of the E or the S and by having the E absent or present during training. 2 control groups for the effects of task-relevant verbalizations heard no recording. Effects of training were tested in a situation where the response to be controlled was turning around to look at a surprise (caged hamster). Presence of a task-relevant controlling response during training significantly increased Ss' self-control, but this effect was also dependent on the E's location during training, with decreased external control (E absent) resulting in better self-control. Sex differences were also obtained, with boys transgressing significantly more quickly than girls. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Megachiropteran bats (pteropus) utilize human referential stimuli to locate hidden food.

Spontaneous point-following behavior has been considered an indicator of advanced social cognition unique to humans. Recently, it has been suggested that a close evolutionary relationship with humans could result in similar social skills in domesticated species. An alternative view is that the mechanism is not genetic domestication alone but instead a combination of phylogenetic and ontogenetic variables. Here we test the necessity of phylogenetic domestication by investigating the point-following behavior of a captive population of nondomesticated megachiropteran bats (Pteropus pumilus, Pteropus rodricensis, Pteropus conspicillatus, Pteropus vampyrus). Three of five subjects were highly successful in following an unfamiliar human's point to a target location, providing the first empirical evidence of cross-species social referencing in bats. The three successful bats were all born in captivity and socialized to humans early in life, whereas unsuccessful bats were wild-born individuals. This study provides evidence that referential point following is not restricted to domesticated animals and indicates that early experience may be important. Megachiropteran bats may prove to be a useful model for studying social behaviors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social skills training to improve alcoholics' vocational interpersonal competency.

Many clients seeking vocational assistance may already possess the necessary job skills for satisfactory employment but need training to develop adequate interpersonal skills for finding and holding a job. In this study, 3 clients admitted to an alcohol abuse treatment program volunteered for social skills training related to difficult on-the-job situations. In a multiple-baseline single-case design across behaviors, modeling alone and modeling plus focused instruction were employed to improve several target behaviors. In general, though modeling was somewhat successful, the addition of focused instructions greatly enhanced treatment effects. Furthermore, these behavioral changes were maintained at a 6-mo follow-up session. (7 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Clinically significant change: Jacobson and Truax (1991) revisited.

The relationship between statistically and clinically significant change has been enigmatic. N. S. Jacobson and P. Truax (1991) have proposed an important step toward rapprochement. However, their suggested index of clinically significant change neglects possible confounding of improvement rate estimates by regression to the mean. An alternative method is described that incorporates an adjustment that minimizes this confounding when statistical regression has been shown to be present. If regression is not present, the Jacobson and Truax method is more appropriate; if regression is present, the Edwards-Nunnally method (D. W. Edwards et al, 1978) is more appropriate. The 2 methods are compared, and the effects of instrument reliability and sample deviance on estimated improvement rates are demonstrated using general well-being test–retest data from a sample of older adult mental health outpatients. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Patient-oriented interventions to improve communication in a medical office visit.

Examined an intervention to improve the patient's contribution to communication in a medical office visit. In Study 1, 53 women awaiting a medical appointment were assigned either to a group that was asked to list 3 questions to ask their physician or to a control group. Ss who listed questions asked more questions in the visit and reported being less anxious. In Study 2, with 49 women, a 3rd group received a message from their physician encouraging question asking. Both experimental groups asked more of the questions they had wished to, had greater feelings of control, and were more satisfied with the visit and with the information they received. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex differences in children's response to training on a visual-spatial test.

In a study with 133 children in Grades 1, 3, and 5, a brief training procedure designed to improve performance on the Children's Embedded Figures Test, a test of visual ability, resulted in significant improvement for girls but not for boys. No sex difference was observed among children receiving this training. The implications for theories of sex differences in visual–spatial ability are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

APA-approved predoctoral internships for doctoral training in clinical and counseling psychology: 1981.

The Committee on Accreditation has approved for doctoral training in professional psychology the internships offered by the agencies listed. The criteria for evaluating these programs can be obtained from the Accreditation Office. Each of the agencies listed has met the same qualitative standards with respect to adequacy of training. The list is alphabetical by agencies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)