The prairie vole (Microtus ochrogaster), a highly social species, offers a unique opportunity to examine the effects of parent-pup separation in a biparental family system similar to humans. We hypothesized that 1) repeated separation from pups affects parental behavior and emotionality in parents, and 2) neonatal parental separation affects emotional and physiological development in pups, and thus induces altered adult parental, emotional, and social behaviors. During postnatal day (PND) 1-10, pups were removed from their parents for 0, 15, or 360 min and housed either individually or with siblings. Unhandled controls experienced only daily lid opening. Tests for parental responsiveness and emotionality were conducted on PND11 for parents and PND90-92 for their offspring. Emotionality tests included the elevated plus maze, open field, and forced swim tests. Starting at PND150, half of each litter was paired with an opposite-sex vole for 24 hours and tested for partner preference. Additionally, behavioral response to stress was measured in all animals 0, 30, or 60 min after exposure to a forced swim. Generally, the behavior of the parents and adult offspring was influenced by daily handling, the length of the separation, and presence of siblings. Parental behaviors in parents did not differ among groups, while their anxiety- and depression-like behaviors were influenced by pup separation. For the adult offspring, separation treatment altered parental behavior, emotionality, partner preference, and stress response. Our results demonstrated that parent-pup separation affects emotional and social behaviors in prairie vole parents and adult offspring.

Training in independent and age-appropriate leisure activities is part of a comprehensive program of active treatment for developmentally disabled adults. Increased leisure skills have been shown to reduce a variety of problem behaviors, enhance a variety of useful skills, and allow the developmentally disabled to assimilate into more normalized settings. However, the developmentally disabled individual's engagement in leisure activities is often restricted due to such things as their own skill deficits, as well as limited availability of materials. This study investigated the effects of two training methods on the leisure behavior of 16 institutionalized severely and profoundly developmentally disabled adults. It was demonstrated that teaching subjects, not only how to use leisure materials, but to self-initiate leisure activity, resulted in significantly more frequent and sustained independent leisure activity than teaching subjects only how to use leisure materials. Data on subjects' videotaped leisure behaviors were collected during Baseline, six days of sessions over two weeks, where subjects were exposed to, but not prompted to use, six different leisure activities. Overall ranks during Baseline were used to assign subjects to two equal treatment groups. Target subjects were taught to self-initiate leisure with a complete task analysis of the activities. The complete task analysis included the entire functional routine of taking out, using (curriculum skills), and putting away materials. Curriculum Instruction subjects were trained only in the use of the materials. The model for training both groups was based on the Behavior Skills Rating Scale. Training sessions were held on 27 days over six weeks. This was followed by six days of Post-training Observation with conditions identical to Baseline. The significance of the difference between groups' subjects' Post-training rankings were determined using the Mann-Whitney U. All analyses utilized two-tailed tests, with significance set at p (greater then) .05. Overall, Target group subjects ranked significantly higher than CI subjects during Post-training Observation. In addition, they ranked significantly higher in the number of sessions with initiated activity; latency before initiating activity; and sustained leisure activity. There was no significant difference in the supplemental skills of taking out and putting away materials.

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This study hypothesized that college and university basketball coaches who endorse Type A beliefs, have a hostile attitudinal set, an internal attributional style, and express their anger outwardly, are at the greatest risk for cardiovascular disease. Seventy-one head coaches of men's basketball teams from NCAA Division I, II, and III schools completed measures of Type A beliefs, hostility, anger expression, and attributional style. Canonical correlation analyses were performed to assess the relative contribution of each of the psychological measures toward prediction of negative behavior and cardiovascular disease symptomology. A significant multivariate relationship was obtained between measures of Type A beliefs, hostility, stress, and attributional style and measures of negative feelings and actions during contests, but not for measures of health and symptoms of cardiovascular disease. For this sample of coaches, stress was identified as a significant contributor to their negative feelings and actions.

A three-group baseline-treatment case history design was used to compare the effectiveness of positive and corrective verbal feedback for improving the skill of passing for experienced male collegiate volleyball players. Sixteen players were blocked into two skill levels, high and low and then randomly assigned to one of three feedback groups, positive, corrective, or no feedback. The head coach gave feedback to the players during the four sessions they attended. Passing statistics were recorded to determine the effectiveness of the differential feedback on the players' skill of passing. Results show that there was not a significant overall decrease in the performance of the positive feedback group. The corrective group did not increase their passing performance in comparison to that of the other groups. There were mixed results with the high skilled corrective passers slightly declining in performance and the low skilled slightly increasing in their performance.

This study evaluated two methods of conducting staff training. One method was a pyramidal training approach and the other method consisted of an outside consultant training the direct care staff. A group design consisted of two experimental conditions. In the first experimental condition, the supervisors of two community based day programs for developmentally disabled individuals were trained in the principles of applied behavior analysis and feedback techniques. The supervisors then trained their direct care staff in the material they had learned. In the second experimental condition, the direct care staff were trained in the principles of applied behavior analysis by the experimenter. The pyramidal training group was expected to show a quicker increase in the percentage of correct teaching procedures and show a longer maintenance of these skills. The results indicated that pyramidal training was more effective in teaching staff how to use correct teaching procedures with consumers in community settings. Also, the results showed that the pyramidal training group maintained the improvement in their teaching procedure at a 3-month follow up as compared to the direct staff training group. Pyramidal and direct staff training have not been compared directly in previous studies.

Using a multiple baseline design, this study examined the effect of preferred items in increasing medication knowledge among individuals diagnosed with a mental illness. Participants were asked questions regarding their Haldol medication. After baseline, participants received the answers and a pharmacy-generated medication profile. During the Repeated Trials intervention, participants were given only verbal feedback. Those who had not reached criterion after 4 weeks entered the Preferred Trials intervention. In this phase, participants received a high, medium, or low preferred item contingent on the number of correct answers. All participants increased their number of correct answers. Although the effects of a contingent preferred item were mixed, this study showed that information regarding medications can be learned with minimal staff intervention.

Medical advances in the area of pediatric oncology have resulted in significantly increased rates of survivorship among children diagnosed with cancer. Accordingly, there has been increasing emphasis placed on long-term, quality-of-life issues for this population. Many agree that maintaining a typical or normalized lifestyle following diagnosis is important for positive adaptation and functioning during adulthood: many agree that, for children, school attendance is seen as an especially important developmental task. However, little attention has been paid to which variables are related to school absence and attendance following a cancer diagnosis. This study explored the extent to which illness-related and personal/environmental factors affect absence rates among a cohort of long-term survivors of pediatric cancer. Two samples ( n = 3039; n = 307) from the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study, a multi-institutional longitudinal investigation, were subjected to analysis. Findings suggest that: (1) The hypothesized set of illness-related factors do predict membership in either a high or low absence group; (2) Additional medical problems account for a significant proportion of the variance explaining school absence; (3) Several personal/environmental factors predict absence beyond that which is explained by the presence of additional medical problems; and (4) Self-esteem serves as a protective factor in terms of school absence, especially for those children receiving central nervous system treatment. Findings are discussed with regard to future research and recommendations aimed towards supporting school reentry for pediatric cancer patients.