Guidelines are furnished for application of psychological theory (including principles of learning, motivation, and reinforcement) in the training room, job or task analysis, formation of learning objectives, and selection of appropriate training techniques and audiovisual aids. The importance of clear communication and a supportive learning…

Operation Pathfinder was a special manpower project designed to retrain behaviors of the disadvantaged and to establish positive motivations to work for a living through application of social reinforcement methodology. The project demonstrated that a positive reinforcing environment and properly structured work situation will provide a means of…

Four experiments were designed to identify socioeconomic differences in preschool locus of control, develop a measurement technique for differentiating between internal and external locus of control in preschoolers, and study the effect of four kinds of preschool programs on locus of control. During the first experiment, the Stephens-Delys…

Communications to college students about the value of their composition are better expressed in words than in letter grades. Research by Sweet and Seidman suggests that free-style, positive comment on student papers produces a markedly improved attitude toward writing. The author's own research reveals that in the presence of positive, free…

For decades, educators have been concerned with the problem of truancy. Accordingly, this report focuses on an absentee improvement program at a rural, lower-middle class, predominantly white elementary school with 722 students that had a history of high truancy, as verified by teachers, the administration, the school counselor, staff, and…

The use of microcomputers to help the learning disabled increase their arithmetic skills is examined. The microcomputer should be used to aid the learning disabled student to practice the concepts taught by the teacher. Computer-aided instruction such as drill and practice may help the learning disabled student because it gives immediate feedback…

Development of cognitive competence and constructive patterns of motivation and behavior in the disadvantaged child are the topics of this paper. Five subjects are explored: (1) the potency of models, (2) social reinforcement, (3) intensive relationships, (4) group forces, and (5) superordinate goals. The first two subjects cover basic processes…

The purposes of this study were: (1) to develop measures of the need for achievement in 4-5-year-old children, and (2) to discover the psychosocial origins of need for achievement. The hypotheses regarding the second purpose were that middle and lower socioeconomic status (SES) mothers of children characterized by high need for achievement would…

The Western Institute for Science and Technology, operating since 1968, has had as its objective taking certain of the most promising of the techniques emerging from educational research, combining them, and testing their validity by implementing them in selected school situations. Vanguard, the instructional model which has emerged from this…

This publication was written for therapists and their supervisors who may want to implement the adolescent community reinforcement approach intervention, which was one of the five interventions tested by the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment's (CSAT's) Cannabis Youth Treatment (CYT) Project. The CYT Project provided funding to support a study…

A significant challenge facing the juvenile justice system is the task of transitioning and reintegrating juveniles from youth corrections facilities back into the community. This challenge, in part, is related to determining whether the referred community programs are effective. This article summarizes the literature on the effectiveness of…

To investigate teaching techniques with trainable mentally retarded children, 29 day classes were visited twice; 100-minute observation periods were recorded on tape at each visit. Eight major areas of teaching methods were found: feeling tone, guidance and reinforcement, individual and group control, involvement of children in lesson, motivation,…

A description is provided of a computer-based simulation of an instructional system which adapts the learning environment to the individual's unique attributes for processing information and for being motivated. The main purposes of the simulation are: 1) to introduce, as attributes for individualizing instruction, information processing variables…

The main text of this report consists of a review and evaluation of job enrichment as an approach to job redesign, with implications for Air Force research and application. In addition, two appendixes are included: the first, a supplemental historical discussion; the second, a ninety-six-item annotated bibliography. Specific objectives are to…

This report discusses several motivational concepts and their relevance to racial differences in intellectual achievement in the United States. One theoretical model of achievement motivation suggests that for Negroes in predominantly white intellectual-academic situations, the value of success is high while the expectancy of success is low,…