A) Provide an Informal Analysis of the Following Passage; or

question 58

Essay

A) Provide an informal analysis of the following passage; or
B) in analyzing the passage, do the following:
a. Identify the causal hypothesis at issue.
b. Identify what kind of study it is.
c. Describe the control and experimental groups.
d. State the difference in effect (or cause) between control and experimental groups.
e. Identify any problems in either the study or the report of it, including but not necessarily limited to uncontrolled variables.
f. State the conclusion you think is warranted by the report.
Tiffany Field, a psychologist at the University of Miami Medical School, believes that it is good for premature babies to be given short sessions of body stroking and limb movement. She and her fellow researchers studied forty premature babies in a transitional-care nursery. Although the infants were stable enough to be released from the intensive care unit and none needed extra oxygen or intravenous feedings, they had required an average of twenty days of intensive care, and the heaviest among them was under four pounds. Their average age at birth was thirty-one weeks. Half the group was randomly chosen to receive standardized touch and movement stimulation for three fifteen-minute periods per day over ten consecutive weekdays. Treated infants averaged a 47 percent greater weight gain per day, even though they had the same number of feedings and the same level of calorie intake as did the control babies. The stimulated group also was awake and physically active a greater percentage of the time.
"Since the experimental kids were more active, their weight gain was not due to greater energy conservation," Field points out. Infants in the treatment group also outdistanced controls on a number of behavioral measures, and they were hospitalized on the average six days fewer than infants in the control group.
-Adapted from Bruce Bower, Science News

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Definitions:

Aversive Conditioning

A form of behavioral training in which noxious stimuli are associated with undesirable behaviors to reduce their occurrence.

Cognitive-behavioral Therapy

A form of psychotherapy that treats problems and boosts happiness by modifying dysfunctional emotions, behaviors, and thoughts.

Transference

In psychoanalysis, the process by which emotions and desires originally associated with one person are unconsciously shifted to another person.

Token Economy

A behavior modification method that uses tokens as a form of immediate reinforcement for exhibiting desired behaviors.