Background: Research with children shows that theory of mind predicts reading comprehension both concurrently and longitudinally, while research with adults shows increased print-exposure relates to theory of mind understanding. However, until now whether reading and theory of mind have a mutually reinforcing relationship in which they promote one…

It is commonly assumed that memories contribute to value-based decisions. Nevertheless, most theories of value-based decision-making do not account for memory influences on choice. Recently, new interest has emerged in the interactions between these two fundamental processes, mainly using reinforcement-based paradigms. Here, we aimed to study the…

Background: The quality of support provided to people with disability who show challenging behaviour could be influenced by the quality of the behaviour support plans (BSPs) on which staff rely for direction. This study investigated the content validity of the Behaviour Support Plan Quality Evaluation tool (BSP-QEII), originally developed to guide…

Background: Having an objective means of evaluating the quality of behaviour support plans (BSPs) could assist service providers and statutory authorities to monitor and improve the quality of support provided to people with intellectual disability (ID) who exhibit challenging behaviour. The Behaviour Support Plan Quality Evaluation Guide II…

This study tested the notion that an equivalence relation may include a response when differential responses are paired with stimuli presented during training. Eight normal adults learned three kinds of computer mouse movements as differential response topographies (R1, R2, and R3). Next, in matching-to-sample training, one of the response…

This study of 90 adults (aged 55?80) who lost their vision assessed their dispositional optimism, social comparisons, coping strategies, and wellbeing. The findings suggest that optimism and positive social comparisons play an important role in stimulating the motivation to cope adaptively with vision loss and that enhancing optimism and social…

Five adult humans were tested for emergent conditional discriminations under rapid-responding contingencies. During four-comparison matching-to-sample baseline training (AB and AC), limited-hold contingencies for responding to samples and comparisons were gradually restricted to the shortest duration consistent with at least 95% accuracy and no…

Alcoholics were more external in powerful others control orientations, more external in chance control orientations, more hopeless, and more Machiavellianistic than the nonalcoholics. Results support the findings of alcoholics' relative externality in locus of control reinforcement. (Author)

An intellectually handicapped man was studied in a workshop where he was employed to "detip" ear tags. Productive behavior was reinforced on either a variable ratio (VR) schedule or a variable duration (VD) schedule. Results indicated lower time on task and higher detipping rates under the VR schedule. (Author/PB)

Examined antecedents of two components of need for approval (the approach component and the avoidance component) on a longitudinal basis. For females, need for approval was positively related to mothers' withdrawal of love and the avoidance component was negatively related to mothers' encouragement of their daughters to fight back. (Author)

Six experiments investigated the informational value of praise and criticism. Praise after success and neutral feedback after failure led to perceptions that an acting person's ability was viewed as low. Neutral feedback after success and criticism after failure led to perceptions that an acting person's ability was viewed as high. (Author/RD)