Like all good social research methods, the interview demands careful planning and intelligent administration. The study director formulates the goals of the study, which serve as the basis for the interview schedule or instrument. The interview schedule decided upon may be standardized or unstandardized. Questions may be closed-ended or…

The Responsive Environments Project is an interdisciplinary approach to the creation of conceptual structures which are sufficiently clarifying to be of genuine help in (1) guiding the construction of formal systems relevant to the behavioral sciences, (2) designing new educational equipment, (3) formulating heuristic principles to guide empirical…

In the attempt to develop means for underemployed workers to increase their level of economic success, 684 south Texans (mostly Mexican Americans) were retrained for aircraft assembly and then relocated in the Dallas vicinity. Some 46 relocated workers were interviewed 1 month after their relocation in order to ascertain adjustment patterns…

Psychological researchers should deal with the concrete stimulus-response principles of learning on which behavior is based, and study behaviors that are representative of real life behaviors. The present research strategy has come from two faulty ideas: first, a concern with underlying, inferred mental processes, rather than with actual tasks or…

This study investigates the effects of teaching decision-making skills on the classroom behavior of middle school problem students. Small groups of students met for 15 weeks with a counselor who adapted the "Deciding" program (College Entrance Examination Board) as the decision-making paradigm. Coppersmith's Self-Esteem Index and…

Confrontation, or aggressive verbal behavior, has been defended as a rhetorical tactic by some communication theorists on five bases: biological, psychological, sociological, rhetorical, and intellectual. Proponents of "rhetorical sensitivity," however, differ from those who would accept confrontation uncritically. Confrontation is not…

The primary thrust of this book is the presentation of two divergent models of man, the explicit and implicit philosophical assumptions which characterize each view, the conditions of learning compatible with each model, and the educational implications of each position. An introductory section considers the two models of man--the phenomenological…

Theoretical and methodological developments in the psychologies have had an effect on the direction of research and training in speech. To continue to benefit from association with the psychologies, speech teachers would do well to familiarize themselves with the philosophy-psychology of the humanistic movement. The humanistic approach proceeds…

In most behavioral science research very little attention is ever given to the probability of committing a Type II error, i.e., the probability of failing to reject a false null hypothesis. Recent publications by Cohen have led to insight on this topic for the fixed-effects analysis of variance and covariance. This paper provides social scientists…

The purpose of this book is to make people who are involved in motivation in one form or another to think twice before trying to tackle a problem in a direct, head-on fashion. Motivating human behavior is a complex task that involves finding the proper channels of motivation and thinking through the reactions of the person who is to be persuaded.…

This paper is designed as an information guide for those persons responsible for rearing human infants from birth to 18 months. The author provides an extensive review of the literature and trends of research in this area noting that the current volumes of knowledge in this area are not yet dependable enough to provide reliable bases for practice.…

Effectance, defined as the child's independent, effective interaction with people and things, is studied through observation of the play of 36 preschool low income black children. The children were observed and filmed in semi-structured play sessions, primarily with family dolls, doll furniture, and small baby bottle. Instruments used were: (1)…

The role of meaning in the learning of verbally presented paired associates (PAs) is described by means of an experiment with a replication. A printed PA list containing six different types of items was presented to Sixth Graders. Four of the item types consisted of sentence-embedded PAs on the study trials, followed by test trial cues varying in…

One of the focal points of this study is the investigation of the relationship between rates and types of imitative responding and responsiveness to social reinforcement (approval). Subjects were 96 children (5 to 6 years old) equally divided according to sex and race (Negro and white). Findings indicate that: (1) it seems tenable to assume that a…

This symposium paper describes 2 experiments in which the principles of observational learning were applied in school settings to the treatment of 2 separate groups of test-anxious junior high school students. The first experiment was designed to test the assumption that the counter-conditioning responses thought to occur in systematic…