While reciprocity has often been cited as an important aspect of conversational and social skills training with chronic mental patients, it has never been exclusively examined in any investigation. The purpose of this study was to use a group multiple baseline-simultaneous replications treatment design across social network functions to evaluate the effectiveness of a reciprocal skills training package to enhance the reciprocal ability of eight chronically mentally ill patients. Videotaped role play situations with a standard confederate were evaluated for the quality of receiving, processing, sending, and molar abilities across three broad categories of social network functions. Generalization probe interactions, "parties", with novel partners were also obtained. Training effects were noted for the subjects across all three social network functions. Mixed results were obtained for generalization. Implications for further investigations and for the utility of reciprocal skills training with chronically institutionalized adults are discussed. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-12, Section: B, page: 6458. / Major Professor: Mark Licht. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1993.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate response to challenge in young children and to determine its concurrent and predictive relationship to children's goal orientation and mother's verbalizations. Participants included 72 four to six year old children. These children were selected from an initial pool of 239 white middle- and upper-middle class children attending private day-care centers and public kindergartens in the Tallahassee area. Data was collected during six individual sessions over the course of one year. The children attempted challenging tasks individually and while interacting with their mothers. Moderate stability was found on the challenge preference measure over the one-year interval lending support to the notion that individual differences in motivational patterns emerge by this young age. The two-week stability was also found to be in the moderate range and less than expected given the moderate one-year stability. The measure of goal orientation was found to have moderate stability over a six-month interval and was related concurrently to challenge preference. Goal orientation, however, was not found to be predictive of future challenge preference. Five mother verbalizations were coded from mother-child interactions and the only negative comments about the child were found to predict future challenge preference in children. This finding was particularly notable given that the item was based on the mere presence or absence of the negative comment and only 24% of the mothers made such a comment. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-06, Section: B, page: 3479. / Major Professor: Janet A. Kistner. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.

This study investigated the effects of music styles on number of lost calls (premature disconnections) to a busy State Abuse Hot Line. / The music that callers listened to when put on hold while waiting for an available counselor, was controlled for a period of ten weeks. The five musical styles used were: classical, popular, music arranged for relaxation, country and jazz. The music was changed every week for five weeks, allowing each musical style to play for one week. / The Newman-Keuls Multiple Comparison Procedure revealed significance between most lost calls during relaxation and jazz music and between relaxation and country music. The results indicated that the average of lost calls was greatest when the relaxation music was on. The lowest number of lost calls occurred when the jazz music played, followed by country, then classical, popular and finally relaxation music. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.) / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 31-01, page: 0024. / Major Professor: Jayne M. Standley. / Thesis (M.M.)--The Florida State University, 1992.

The present study examined the effects of structured music activities versus contingent music listening with verbal prompt for decreasing wandering behavior or off-task body movement while, improving or maintaining cognitive functioning in individuals with probable Alzheimer's disease. Twelve residents of a Nursing Home diagnosed with senile dementia with the possibility of Alzheimer's disease participated in the study. An ABACAB experimental design was implemented. Analyses of variances revealed significant differences in the frequency and total percent of wandering, and the length of stay in sessions for music and nonmusic conditions. An analysis of variance also indicated no significant differences on the pre, mid, and post-test scores of the Mini-Mental State Examination. A statistical analysis of the Scheffe's Test revealed no significant differences between the two music conditions concerning frequency and total percent of wandering, and length of stay in sessions. The results of this study indicate that both structured music activities and contingent music listening with verbal prompt are effective means for reducing wandering with the geriatric population. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 29-04, page: 0571. / Director: Jayne M. Standley. / Thesis (M.M.)--The Florida State University, 1991.

Feedback has been a widely used procedure in many Performance Management interventions. Despite the popularity of feedback as an intervention, few systematic analyses of the functions and effects of feedback used alone have been conducted. The present study was designed to investigate the potential for feedback to function as an Establishing Operation with regard to tips. Three experiments were conducted. Experiment 1 evaluated the feasibility and impact of providing feedback about tips-per-customer. Experiments 2 and 3 evaluated the impact of feedback about tips-per-customer on sales and service. During Experiment 3 the feedback mechanism was refined in order to better isolate the effects of feedback alone. / The results were mixed. Graphic feedback about tips-per-customer appeared to have an impact on tips-per-customer but not on sales-per-customer. Ancillary measures (customer satisfaction, direct observation of server behaviors, sales of extra items) provided mixed results, thus the relationship between tips earned and these measures remains undetermined. The implications of these findings were discussed, the findings support research that suggest that the use of feedback alone typically results in weak effects. The function of feedback as an Establishing Operation was not ruled out, however further research is needed. Recommendations for further research include the development of more sensitive measures for capturing behavior change as a function of feedback, evaluation of the use of feedback as a training mechanism, and investigation of the use of feedback for facilitating maintenance of behavior change when formal programs are faded out. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-01, Section: B, page: 0554. / Major Professor: Jon S. Bailey. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1994.

The basis for the present research stems from concerns for women who smoke after they deliver their infants. This becomes especially relevant when behaviors that affect the woman's health and the health of her infant are jeopardized. Based on the tenets of Bandura's social-cognitive theory, factors associated with cigarette smoking for this population emerge. Self-efficacy theory, a major component of social-cognitive behavior, supports the contention that self-efficacy is a major component to self-regulation of one's behavior and applicable to smoking cessation for women in the postpartum period. For this study, a cognitive-behavioral model of smoking status was developed in order to examine the role of self-efficacy in the smoking process. Stress and social support, known to be associated with levels of self-efficacy, have been included in the model to understand their relationship to postpartum women and smoking status. Data for this analysis was obtained from a follow-up study of 103 of the 385 eligible women who were one year or more postpartum and who were previously enrolled in a randomized clinical trial known as the Perinatal Education Program (PEP, N = 469). As proposed by the model, results indicate remote from delivery time (12 months or more postpartum), self-efficacy is a mediating factor in the stress smoking relationship. However, social support was not found to moderate self-efficacy and the smoking relationship. As a whole, when comparing women who currently smoke and women who quit or never smoke, higher stress, lower number of supportive individuals, and a partner who smokes were significantly related to a woman's increased likelihood to be a smoker.

This dissertation is a report on the investigation of the vocal behavior of free-living Grey Parrots (Psittacus erithacus) that inhabit the Congo Basin in Central Africa. I observed Grey Parrots in the Central African Republic and Cameroon and made audio recordings of their vocalizations. The results of spectrographic analysis of vocalizations lend support to the assertion that Grey Parrots produce calls that fall into four major acoustical classes--tonal, harmonic, noisy-harmonic, and noisy--and that these call classes may be subdivided into as many as 39 different acoustical types. A reliability study of this classification scheme demonstrated that both clustering of these acoustical types into aggregate categories and the combined method of visual inspection and basic spectrographic measurement enable reliable classification of calls into classes, types and also subtypes. The majority of calls in the observed repertoire belong to pure tonal call class, which may suggest that a large proportion of Grey Parrot calling behavior is adapted for tonal call production. Grey Parrots may also adjust the acoustic characteristics of their calls to better adapt them to their environment and communication needs. Both observations of Grey Parrots and analysis of the acoustic and production characteristics of their calls indicate that Grey Parrots may share functional call types of some New World and Australian parrot species. Some Grey Parrot calling vocal behavior parallels that of captive Grey Parrots in the laboratory. I conclude with an exploration of possible reasons why Grey Parrots possess such a diverse vocal repertoire.

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the association between twenty conflict-based, communication patterns and the level of occurrence (categorical variable) and frequency (continuous variable) of male physical aggression towards female partners. Participants were 280 male volunteers drawn from a community preventative health clinic (n = 236) and from a domestic violence monitoring program for misdemeanor domestic violence offenses (n = 44). Males reported on nine verbally aggressive, five avoidance/withdraw, and six problem-solving/cooperation communication patterns for both self and partner. The communication patterns included mutual verbal aggression, unilateral verbal aggression, threaten/back down, blame/defend, pressure/resist, mutual avoidance, unilateral avoidance, demand/withdraw, mutual problem-solving, unilateral problem-solving, and net constructive communication (i.e., mutual problem-solving minus mutual verbal aggression). Four groups were formed based upon the occurrence of physically aggressive acts during the last twelve months: (a) completely nonviolent, (b) nonviolent toward partner but violent toward others, (c) 1-5 instances of violence toward partner, and (d) 6 or more instances of violence toward partner. Relationship distress was also examined as a moderator and as distress-nonviolence contrasted with violence. Primary findings were that 19 of 20 communication patterns were significantly associated with low and/or high frequency of physical aggression in comparison to nonviolence. Verbally aggressive patterns contributed most (33%), problem-solving/cooperation patterns contributed the second most (27%), and avoidance/withdraw patterns contributing the least (13%) to explaining differences in the level of occurrence of physical aggression. The seven strongest communication patterns indicated that physically aggressive relationships had more mutual verbal aggression, more male and female unilateral aggression, more male threaten/partner back down, less net constructive communication, less mutual problem-solving, and more male demand/partner withdraw than their nonviolent counterparts. Relationship distress was not found to moderate the relationships between any of the twenty communication patterns and physical aggression. Furthermore, only five patterns were found to be more characteristic of physically aggressive relationships than distressed, nonviolent relationships (the above seven patterns excluding problem-solving and demand/withdraw); the other fifteen were equally characteristic of either physical aggression or distress-nonviolence.

This study investigated the effects of ecological information/education on perceptual evaluations of a sample of woodland sites in Midwestern USA. A computer-administered perceptual survey presented digital video images of 45 sites, ranging from relatively open savannah to dense woodland, to separate groups of college students who provided ratings of either perceived scenic beauty or acceptability (of environmental policy outcomes). Subjects in the education condition were first presented with a brief verbal and pictorial message emphasizing the history and the biological/ecological benefits of either savannah ecosystems (emphasizing the importance of "openness and open areas") or woodland ecosystems (emphasizing the importance of "protective cover and maintaining tree density"). Subjects in the non-education conditions received only general information about environmental and ecological management on public lands in the Midwest. Subjects in all conditions exhibited strong and internally consistent aesthetic and policy preferences across the 45 sites presented. There were consistently strong positive correlations between scenic beauty and policy acceptance ratings. In spite of the education manipulations intended to foster differential preferences for more open sites (savannah education) versus more dense sites (woodland education) correlations were uniformly strong and positive between savannah and woodland instructed groups, as well as between education and non-education groups for both scenic beauty and policy acceptability ratings. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Apolipoprotein E-knockout (apoEKO) mice were characterized behaviorally to evaluate the impact of apolipoprotein E deficiency on spatial learning and memory function at different ages. Wild type and knockout mice were tested in two tasks assessing spatial memory function, Morris water maze (MWM) and Radial arm maze (RAM). Both young and aged apoEKO mice backcrossed six generations displayed deficits in the MWM. However, young and aged 10th generation apoEKO mice did not display any deficits in the MWM or the RAM when spatial cues that could be used to solve these tasks were provided. Removal of spatial cues after training had occurred also did not result in an impairment. In contrast, apoEKO mice were impaired when spatial cues were removed from the beginning of training. This result suggests that these mice are less able to utilize non-spatial cues to solve these tasks. The impairments observed in the MWM and RAM were not the result of impaired reference memory function, but rather appeared to arise from a dysfunction in working memory. Additional tests assessing sensorimotor gating function (Prepulse inhibition), and emotionality (the Open field, the Elevated plus maze) suggested that these cognitive deficits did not arise from alterations in sensorimotor gating function or emotionality, as both young and aged apoEKO mice performed at levels similar to those observed in their aged C57BL/6J control groups.