Research has demonstrated that a person's attraction to a stranger is influenced by experimental manipulations suggested by general behavior theory. To examine whether a neutral observer, listening to a conversation between two strangers, could be influenced by the manipulation of several learning variables, 80 female undergraduates listened to a…

Although understanding how causal attributions for performance develop is important to attribution theory, little research has been done on this topic. To explore changes in attributions during task performance for both actors and observers, 90 female undergraduates participated in a procedure in which they received either 80 percent or 20 percent…

Patterns of learning by five infants with Down's syndrome (3.5 to 12.5 months old) were studied. The children were visited at home 2 to 3 times per week for periods ranging from 1 to 8 months. Two of the children were reinforced for pulling a string attached around their wrist. Consequences included tape recordings of music or their mother's…

Studies in group homes have shown that behaviors suggestive of a reinforcing relationship with an adult and of adult teaching are inversely related to self-reported delinquency among group home adolescents. Adolescents (N=29) living in natural family settings completed several self-report measures of delinquency and drug use to determine whether…

One hundred twenty-eight observers randomly assigned to 16 treatment conditions in a modified Latin square design, viewed three videotapes of simulated classrooms in which teacher behavior was controlled (paralleling psychophysical procedures) to fit unambiguously into specific categories on ratings of frequency and variety of social…

This study was designed to examine the reinforcing contingencies of parents toward specific child behaviors, and at the same time to try to determine if the sex of the child performing the behavior influences the reaction of the parent. A total of 24 white families with only one child between the ages of 20 and 24 months participated in the study.…

Students enrolled in classes which stressed learning theory and human development served as subjects in an investigation of the predictive power of observation scores compared to more traditional predictors such as grade point average and ACT scores. A stepwise discriminant analysis was employed, using the BMDP7B program on the Sperry 1100 Univac,…

Problems encountered in cross-cultural research are discussed in this report which describes a study of the relationship between social class differences and maternal teaching patterns of 2- and 3-year-old children. The study involved a total of 63 mother-child dyads from middle- and working-class groups in Bristol, England and 34 Kuwaiti…