Few studies have examined teachers' natural use of praise and reprimand in the absence of training, possibly due to the challenges of live data collection. This study sought to determine the feasibility of using technology to examine teachers' use of praise and reprimand during class-wide and small group instruction in four elementary classrooms.…

Considerable evidence from outside of operant psychology suggests that aversive events exert greater influence over behavior than equal-sized positive-reinforcement events. Operant theory is largely moot on this point, and most operant research is uninformative because of a scaling problem that prevents aversive events and those based on positive…

For many years women have been under-represented in mathematics and related careers. Many women have been successful at the undergraduate level in a mathematics major, yet chose other career paths. In this study seventeen women, all of whom had done well in mathematics and have either graduated with an undergraduate degree in mathematics or had a…

This paper uses feminist work on diaspora and postcolonial theory to examine the ways in which women serial migrants, who as children left the Caribbean to join their parents in the UK, experienced racialised, gendered intersections in the "contact zone" of school. Drawing on narrative accounts from women serial migrants the paper argues…

Binge eating is a serious behavior problem exhibited by individuals diagnosed with binge eating disorder and bulimia nervosa. Binge eating is thought to be maintained by automatic negative reinforcement in the form of relief from negative emotional responding. Current treatments produce only moderate abstinence, perhaps because they do not attempt…

This research examines 480 current event-explanation units using the CAVE technique (Schulman, Castellon, & Seligman, 1989) to note the relationship between positive and negative explanatory style and achievement of prospective early childhood and upper elementary female teachers. This study found a significant positive relationship between…

The relation of mood and stress to binge eating and vomiting in the natural environments of patients with bulimia nervosa (BN) was examined using real-time data collection. Women (n = 131; mean age = 25.3 years) with BN carried a palmtop computer for 2 weeks and completed ratings of positive affect (PA), negative affect (NA), anger/hostility (AH),…

Results of prior studies (e.g. [J. Appl. Behav. Anal. 32 (1999) 285]) showing that participants chose alternative behavior (compliance) over escape-reinforced destructive behavior when this latter response produced escape and the former response produced positive reinforcement may have been due to (a) the value of the positive reinforcer…

Utilizing data derived from a 24 year longitudinal study, the relationship between family of orientation and size of family of procreation was examined for a sample of 915 women who, having been sophomores in rural Pennsylvania schools in 1947, had married once and were living with their husbands at the time of the final interview in 1971.…

The Academic Environment Inventory (AEI), developed to measure students' experience of stressor events and support events in middle or junior high school, was used to study 107 students in a mostly black, low-income urban public school and a comparison group of 49 students in a mostly white, high-income private school. Project students and…

A study found verbal reprimands, delivered contingent upon eating prohibited foods, were sufficient to decease the food stealing of a girl (age 14) with Prader-Willi syndrome. Warning stimuli were then successfully used to help her discriminate between permitted/prohibited foods during sessions in which food stealing was not directly observed.…

Findings showed an interaction between mands (instructional directions) and response type. Only when a mand was given during performance of the sorting task did the frequency of SIB increase. The contingent application of verbal praise had a minor, though systematic, effect in reducing the frequency of SIB. (PHR)