Tested hypotheses that interpretations increase clients' motivation to change and that interpretations identifying causal factors clients can directly control lead to greater client change than interpretations identifying causes clients cannot directly control. Students experiencing problems with procrastination participated. Results generally…

A token reinforcement program at a residential center operates on a point card system which measures daily work quality and attitude, academic involvement, self-maintenance, peer and adult interactions, and self-control in behavior disordered children. Issues in the program's administration, including unresponsiveness and use of daily feedback,…

Two studies investigated the effects of altruistic outcomes on self-control in a modified delay-of-gratification paradigm. Subjects were 120 preschool children in the first study and 34 preschoolers in the second. (Author/CM)

Using speech anxiety as the target behavior, this study compared two self-control desensitization procedures. Speech-anxious community residents (N=42) volunteered for participation in the program and were seen within a group context for a total of seven therapy sessions. No differential effectiveness was found between the two desensitization…

Describes a therapy session with a father and son which began with a game of war and ended with a tea party. Discusses the session in terms of a transformation of angry behavior to responsible and sharing behavior. (RJC)

Discusses interpretations of a key Nietzschean concept, "Selbstuberwindung," translated as "self-overcoming," which challenges the concept of "self-mastery" or "self-control" found in traditional educational thought. Also discussed is Nietzsche's construction of images of self-overcoming individuals,…

Three experiments explored determinants of two-year olds' perseverative errors in a search task. Found that active search, even in the absence of observation, produced perseveration on post-switch trails, but mere observation did not. Results indicated that active search is required to elicit perseveration, which points to failures of response…

Uses a case study to illustrate a solution-focused therapy model with an adolescent with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and his family. Discusses the progress made over time by the adolescent in terms of behavioral self-control. Part of the treatment regimen included a full psychological evaluation and family support to help the…

Discusses research on the role of individual differences in emotionality and regulation in empathy-related responding (sympathy and personal distress). Links sympathy to intense emotionality and high regulation. Empathy-related responding is better predicted by a combination of emotionality and regulation than by either separately. Examples are…

Examined change and consistency in emotionality among children, ages 4 to 12, every 2 years for 8 years. Data revealed that: early individual differences in emotionality and emotion regulation predict similar functioning years later; and that children become more emotionally regulated and less emotionally intense with age. (LBT)

The purpose of this exploratory, phenomenological-hermeneutic study was to explore the experience of non-problem gambling by older adults. Twelve older gamblers were identified as non-problem gamblers using two gambling screens and participated in in-depth interviews about their experience of gambling. Two major themes emerged from the interviews:…

Since friendship and peer relationships are particularly important to teenagers, students with passive aggressive behaviors frequently and intentionally "set up" more aggressive peers to get them to react and to lose control, guaranteeing a behavioral consequence. As a result, the victim of being set up or "manipulated" also ends up being…

Because the rewards of academic performance in college are often delayed, the delay-discounting model of impulsiveness (Ainslie (1975) [Ainslie, G. Specious reward: A behavioral theory of impulsiveness and impulse control. Psychological Bulletin, 82 (4), 463-496] predicts that academic performance should tend to decrease as people place less…

Previous studies of children with in-utero drug exposure (IUDE) raise concerns that decreased head circumference (HC) at birth increases the child's risk for later compromised cognitive functioning. The purpose of this study was to determine if HC at birth and HC growth change are associated with cognitive functioning (IQ) at 36 months of age in…

The ability of a reinforcer to maintain behavior decreases as a hyperbolic function of its delay. This discounted value can help explain impulsivity defined as the choice of an immediate, small reinforcer over a delayed, large reinforcer. Human operant studies using consumable reinforcers such as videos have found impulsivity with delays under 1…