The effect of discrimination training on the response rate and response duration of the rat

Response rate (responses per minute) and response duration (time in seconds per press) were recorded in rats shifted from multiple variable-interval variable-interval (mult VI VI) to multiple extinction variable-interval (mult EXT VI). This procedure produced positive contrast (i.e., a decrease in response rate in EXT and an increase in VI) in 11 of 12 rats and, in addition, produced an increase in response duration (i.e., bar holding), which, for the most part, was confined to the EXT component of the mult EXT VI condition. One of the 12 rats showed negative induction (i.e., a decrease in response rate in both the EXT and VI components), and also an increase in response duration in both the EXT and VI components of the mult EXT VI condition. The results indicate that generalization of behavior from the EXT to the VI component can produce negative induction, and that such generalization must be prevented if positive contrast is to occur in the rat.     

The perception of time relations in auditory tempo discrimination

European starlings (Sturnuis vulgaris) were trained to discriminate between pulses of sound presented at rates (tempos), for different birds, of 4/sec and 8/sec or 8/sec and 16/sec in a two-alternative choice task. Once the discrimination was learned, psychometric functions and bisection points were determined for tempos between the standards. Then the starlings were transferred to a new discrimination, which either maintained or changed the relationship between response keys and tempo (relational or nonrelational transfer). The results showed that the starlings generated psychometric functions for tempo with properties much like those found for discrimination of single time intervals. Also, the starlings transferred the tempo discrimination faster under the relational than the nonrelational condition. In general, starlings-like human and other nonhuman animals-perceive temporal structures as invariant over proportional changes in the duration of structural elements.     

两个无脊椎动物实验方法的改进

本对甲壳动物－－鳌虾和软体动物－－河蚌的解剖学实验方法进行了改进，具有独创性，取得了良好的教学效果。     

二胡演奏教学中视唱练耳的重要性

视唱练耳是学习乐器演奏中必不可少的一门课程。对于学习者来说,进行视唱练耳的学习与训练,可以帮助学习者提高对音准、节奏的把握能力,以及对于乐曲表达情感的领悟。本文首先对二胡的特点进行了分析,然后论证了视唱练耳在二胡演奏教学中的应用,最后强调了视唱练耳对于二胡演奏教学的作用。     

The effect of overtraining on a visual discrimination on transfer to a spatial discrimination

Rats were first either trained to criterion or given overtraining on an orientation discrimination and then were given an extradimensional shift to a position discrimination. Overtraining on the visual discrimination facilitated performance on the position discrimination. Implications for mediational theories of discrimination learning were indicated.     

企业培训的评价及效果保证

本文阐述了企业培训过程中培训评价的重要性，指出了评价工作开展具体方法，以及如何保证培训的效果。     

Cost efficacy of two social learning training procedures with withdrawn/isolate children

This investigation compared the cost effectiveness of two approaches—the social learning approach and the social learning approach with reinforcement—to increase the frequency of targeted social skills with socially withdrawn/isolate children. Twelve grade three subjects were selected whose mean score was higher than 2.00 on the social withdrawal subscale of the Walker Problem Behavior Identification Checklist. The frequency of four behaviours—asking questions, giving directions, praising and encouraging, and social other—were observed and compared to the frequency of behavior of an “average” peer. The results indicated that the social learning approach paired with reinforcement for teaching targeted social skills was more cost effective, thus more feasible for classroom application.     

Effects of articulation training on the production of trained and untrained phonemes in conversations and formal tests

The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of articulation training for specific phonemes on the production of phonemes in conversational language samples, the 108 Single Word Articulation Test (Paatsch, 1997), and the Phonetic Level Evaluation (Ling, 1976). Speech production skills of 12 hearing-impaired children were assessed using these evaluation tools pre- and posttraining. A total of six phonemes were selected for each child to be trained during 15-to 20-minute daily sessions throughout an 8-week speech production program. Three phonemes, with a particularly high error rate, were trained at a phonetic level (category 1) while three phonemes, with an intermediate error rate of 40% to 70%, were trained at a phonological level (category 2). Results showed improvements in the percentage of correctly articulated category 1 phonemes and category 2 phonemes. The improvements for category 2 phonemes were larger than for category 1 phonemes for all test materials. It may be that phonological level training is more effective than phonetic level training or that phonemes with an intermediate error rate are easier to train than phonemes with a high error rate. Untrained vowels and consonants also improved slightly after training. Phonological process analysis showed that many of the errors apparent in the trained phonemes also had occurred in the untrained phonemes. This may have resulted in the generalization and carryover of taught speech skills into other aspects of the child's spoken language.     

Effects of auditory perception training on reading achievement

This study investigated the effect of an auditory training programme with backward readers who were also deficient in one or more auditory perceptual subskills. Thirty subjects were randomly assigned to one of three groups. The experimental group received a nine hour taped programme devised by the experimenter and designed to teach the skills of auditory discrimination, memory, analysis and synthesis and auditory-visual integration. The comparison group listened to stories on tape for the same duration as the experimental group, while the third group served as a control merely being tested at the beginning and at the end of the experiment. It was found that although the training programme significantly improved the performance of the experimental group over the other two groups on a total auditory perceptual test, there was no corresponding improvement in reading, on word recognition or comprehension tests. The particular auditory subskills which appeared amenable to training were auditory discrimination (rhyme) and auditory synthesis (blending and closure).     

Fine-grained auditory discrimination and performance on tests of receptive vocabulary and receptive language

This research investigated the relation between children’s performance on two measures of receptive language and children’s auditory discrimination of consonant-vowel sounds having frequency and temporal acoustic differences. The measures of fine-grained auditory discrimination produced significant multiple regression coefficients against both receptive vocabulary (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised) and receptive language (Token Test for Children) scores. Validation analyses conducted by predicting receptive vocabulary and language scores for a new sample of children and relating them to the actual scores led to significant outcomes. It was concluded that fine-grained auditory discrimination is particularly important in the relatively early stages of language learning. The cooperation of the participating children, teachers, principals, and school district administrators is gratefully acknowledged. This research was supported, in part, by a grant from NINCDS (NIH).     

The effect of school inspections on school improvement

This study uses a school-level longitudinal control-group design to examine how teachers and principals of inspected versus uninspected schools perceive school improvement at their schools. During the phasing in of school inspections in the states of Berlin and Brandenburg (Germany), both inspected and uninspected schools were surveyed with respect to school improvement activities over a 1-year period. The main finding is that principals’ and teachers’ perceptions of school quality were highly stable, irrespective of the introduction of school inspections. The results show school inspections had a comparatively low impact on the aspects of school quality measured here.     

Human postdiscrimination gradients: The effects of three-stimulus discrimination training

Young adult subjects were trained in a discrimination involving three pure tones varying in pitch, with two positive stimuli and a negative stimulus located midway between the two. Subjects in the control conditions were trained only with the two positive stimuli. Generalization gradients were bimodal in all cases, but for the control subjects, the modes were at the positive stimulus values, while postdiscrimination gradients were displaced away from the negative stimulus toward the extremes of the continuum. Since, with this procedure, the training and test adaptation levels were the same, the observed displacements are difficult to explain in terms of an adaptation-level account of peak shifts. The observed shifts are more consistent with the conditioning-extinction model which assumes interactions between inhibitory and excitatory gradients. However, overall response rates did not reflect the action of summation processes.