Forty-two single mothers with young infants were given access to a computer-mediated social support (CMSS) network concerned with parenting issues. The network operated 24 hours per day over a period of 6 months. It permitted public message exchanges, private e-mail, and text-based teleconferencing for as many as 8 participants at any one time. During the 6 month intervention, the 42 women accessed the network over 16,670 times. Individual differences in participation were significantly associated with indices of social isolation from peers. A descriptive analyses of the messages exchanged on the network disclosed that 98% of the replies to concerns posted in the public forum provided positive social support. The majority of the supportive replies fell into the category of emotional support, followed in order by informational and tangible support. Both the self-report data following the intervention, and qualitative data extracted from online discussions indicated that close personal relationships and a sense of community developed in this novel social environment. Finally, an analysis of pretest-posttest changes in the level of parenting stress revealed that mothers who participated regularly in this CMSS community were more likely to report a decrease in parenting stress following the intervention.

3 experiments with 3-month-old infants compared the effects of contingent and noncontingent adult-infant social interactions on subsequent infant-controlled habituation and choice tasks. Infants who experienced a prior noncontingent social interaction tended to adopt response strategies that reduced the density of stimulation during these subsequent nonsocial tasks. The results are discussed in terms of their generality and the types of mechanisms that might mediate these transfer effects from social to nonsocial procedures.

3 experiments with 3-month-old infants compared the effects of contingent and noncontingent adult-infant social interactions on subsequent infant-controlled habituation and choice tasks. Infants who experienced a prior noncontingent social interaction tended to adopt response strategies that reduced the density of stimulation during these subsequent nonsocial tasks. The results are discussed in terms of their generality and the types of mechanisms that might mediate these transfer effects from social to nonsocial procedures.

No abstract

Data from three experiments are reported in which college students (Exp. 1), preschool children (Exp. 2), and Mongolian gerbils (Exp. 3) were given access to an experimental environment in which we measured four different unconstrained activities. Once these multiple response baselines were established, we restricted access to one of the four activities and observed the changes which occurred in the three unrestricted alternatives. In all three experiments, we typically observed that only one of the alternatives was selected to substitute for the restricted activity. Some structural characteristics of the baseline response repertoire were examined to determine if they could be used to predict which of the alternative activities would increase during response restriction. The data indicate that the temporal pattern exhibited by a response during baseline sessions was effective in predicting response changes during the subsequent restriction phase in all three experimental preparations. Specifically, the alternative response which had temporal patterns most similar to the restricted response substituted for the latter during the restriction period.