Infants' attention to patterned stimuli: developmental change from 3 to 12 months of age

To examine the development of look duration as a function of age and stimulus type, 14- to 52-week-old infants were shown static and dynamic versions of faces, Sesame Street material, and achromatic patterns for 20 s of accumulated looking. Heart rate was recorded during looking and parsed into stimulus orienting, sustained attention, and attention termination phases. Infants' peak look durations indicated that prior to 26 weeks there was a linear decrease with age for all stimuli. Older infants' look durations continued to decline for patterns but increased for Sesame Street and faces. Measures of heart rate change during sustained attention and the proportion of time spent in each phase of attention confirmed infants' greater engagement with the more complex stimuli.     

Classically conditioned heart rate and respiratory-motor activity in newborn and neonatal pygmy goats

Classical discrimination conditioning of heart rate (HR) and respiratory-motor (RM) activity was examined in 16 newborn (average age = 1 day) and 8 neonatal (average age = 2 weeks) pygmy goats over 4 days of conditioning involving an electric shock US and auditory CSs. On the 4th day, one-half of the animals in each group received a low to moderate dose of ethanol to test the resistance of the CRs to drug effects. Discriminated conditioning of RM activity but not HR occurred in the newborn group, indicating an absence of close coupling between skeletal-motor activity and HR at this early age. While the newborn group failed to show recognizable HR reactions to the CSs during the 4 days of testing, it did show a long-latency brady-cardia UR beginning at 2 days of age that may have been secondary to baroreceptor reflex actions. The neonatal group displayed conditioning of both HR and RM activity. The similar latencies of the two types of CRs during the CS suggested that they may have been related to each other. However, the fact that the RM CR developed a day before the HR CR, combined with the observation that ethanol modified the HR CR but not the RM CR, supports the view that there was considerable independence between the two types of CRs.     

Job burnout and the school psychologist

School psychologists participating in a workshop on burnout completed Freudenberger's Burnout Questionnaire (1980), identified major job-related stressors, and responded to a list of suggested supervisory, individual, and organizational strategies for prevention. Slightly less than half of the participants appeared on the questionnaire to have burnout problems. Age, years of experience, and sex were not significantly related to the burnout score. Major identified stressors included excessive caseloads, lack of time, and lack of support or appreciation. Reactions to the strategies were positive and hopeful. Implications for training were drawn.     

MARKETING EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMMES TO COMMERCIAL BROADCASTERS

A major investment in educational television programmes by the federal government led the United States Department of Education to seek ways to extend the audience size for these programmes beyond public television by placing them on commercial broadcast stations in America. This article describes the programmes, the marketing organization and strategies used to promote programming to the commercial marketplace, and the successes achieved in persuading commercial broadcasters to accept educational children's programming, particularly programmes aimed at minority audiences.