Parts and 'holes': gaps in rational number sense among children with vs. without mathematical learning disabilities

Many middle-school students struggle with decimals and fractions, even if they do not have a mathematical learning disability (MLD). In the present longitudinal study, we examined whether children with MLD have weaker rational number knowledge than children whose difficulty with rational numbers occurs in the absence of MLD. We found that children with MLD failed to accurately name decimals, to correctly rank order decimals and/or fractions, and to identify equivalent ratios (e.g. 0.5 = 1/2); they also 'identified' incorrect equivalents (e.g. 0.05 = 0.50). Children with low math achievement but no MLD accurately named decimals and identified equivalent pairs, but failed to correctly rank order decimals and fractions. Thus failure to accurately name decimals was an indicator of MLD; but accurate naming was no guarantee of rational number knowledge - most children who failed to correctly rank order fractions and decimals tests passed the naming task. Most children who failed the ranking tests at 6th grade also failed at 8th grade. Our findings suggest that a simple task involving naming and rank ordering fractions and decimals may be a useful addition to in-class assessments used to determine children's learning of rational numbers.     

Virginity for Sale: A Foucauldian Moment in the History of Sexuality

Natalie Dylan attempted to auction her virginity through the website of a legal Nevada brothel. Public discourses surrounding Dylan’s auction have characterized it as everything from a smart business transaction to the sale of her self-respect. Using a theoretical frame from Foucault, methods of textual construction, and rhetorical methods of analysis guided by cluster criticism, our paper explores how online discourses surrounding the auction enact problematics concerning the concepts of virginity and the interrelationships among women, sex, money, and power in American society. While Dylan’s discourse attempts to create space for sexual women and commodified sexuality as empowering for women, responses to her enterprise indicate there is little room for a woman’s unapologetic offer of her commodified virginity.     

The Scandal of Reason: A Critical Theory of Political Judgment

Abstract

Carruthers argues that knowledge of our own propositional attitudes is achieved by the same mechanism used to attain knowledge of other people’s minds. This seems incompatible with ‘privileged access’ – the idea that we have more reliable beliefs about our own mental states, regardless of the mechanism. At one point Carruthers seems to suggest he may be able to maintain privileged access, because we have additional sensory information in our own case. We raise a number of worries for this suggestion, concluding that Carruthers’s new theory cannot clearly preserve the superior reliability of our beliefs about our own attitudes.     

Anger - the hidden destroyer A psychodynamic approach with the physically disabled

Abstract

A basic challenge in the psychodynamic counselling of the physically disabled is the engagement of anger in relation to the patient's disability. Regardless of a patient's age at the onset of disability, they will exhibit anger, resentment and frustration for losses they may have, or perceive themselves to have, endured. Healthy physical and psychological adaptation requires the disabled patient to ‘cope’ with their anger. Feelings of anger may impede, obstruct or even derail the impetus towards healthy psychological and behavioural functioning. The manner in which we learn to negotiate the vicissitudes of daily life is linked to our selfobject development. This development does not end when we become adolescents or young adults, but continues throughout our life span. The normative, healthy psychological maturation required for adaptive behaviour is vulnerable to a wide range of impediments acquired at any point along the individual's developmental continuum. As clinicians we need to keep in mind that the self-regulation of internalized emotional states is transacted through a complex set of characterological and personality traits that may be impaired, or wanting, eventually leading to maladjusted psychopathological states. The therapeutic function of the clinician is to redress those ego deficits that stand in the way of a fully creative and productive life. The intended aim of this paper is to illustrate the manner in which I engage with those physically disabled persons presenting anger. I shall consider the use of counter-transference responses as behavioural in modifying various forms of anger formation manifested by disabled clients. It is my position that a positive shift in a disabled person's ego ideal through empathic transference will help to alleviate their underlying hostility and other forms of anger. The paper commences with a brief review of the experience of the disabled in Western society. I shall then turn to an examination of the psychotherapeutic approach underpinning my work with disabled clients. The third section will describe and illustrate, through case material, the clinician's use of self in the dyadic transaction with disabled clients.

The power of a positive therapeutic outcome lies in the clinician's ability to engage with the client despite emotional content, clinical aptitude or specific approach. Empathic attunement brings into operation those mechanisms underpinning the dynamic process integral to the approach used in the above cases. Countertransference issues sometimes intervene in the unconstrained flow of therapy. Regardless, those issues that are salient to the client and are incorrectly handled by the clinician will appear recurrently until satisfactorily addressed. Further, even when errors are made in sessions, outcomes may be positive.

Whatever the initial purpose that brings a physically disabled person to therapy there will eventually be a need to address issues around their condition. It is not enough to ignore or accept a client's earliest statement that their disability Ms not a problem'. They may initially not have come into therapy for problems concerning their disability; however, the particular disability will ultimately play an important role as to how and what the person feels, thinks and believes about him or herself. In general, psychodynamic counselling with the physically disabled requires knowledge of disability issues as well as of counselling procedures. Those working with the disabled need to understand their own personal issues through analytic work and continued supervision. Working with the physically disabled can be overwhelming, frustrating and exhausting, but in the end is most rewarding.     

Mothers of Mass Murderers: Exploring Public Blame for the Mothers of School Shooters through an Application of Courtesy Stigma to the Columbine and Newtown Tragedies

The families of Dylan Klebold, Eric Harris, and Adam Lanza have been blamed for raising sons who became school killers. The mothers, in particular, have been portrayed as failed parents because of their sons’ actions. We applied Goffman’s concept of courtesy (associated) stigma to analyze readers’ responses on CBS and The Huffington News weblogs and to determine if the fathers, mothers, or both parents were singled out for blame. Content analysis indicated that the mothers were always blamed for their sons’ actions; no one blamed the fathers. We concluded that courtesy stigma and gender rules are closely related in framing these responses.     

Metachromatic Leukodystrophy and Nonverbal Learning Disability: Neuropsychological and Neuroradiological Findings in Heterozygous Carriers

Metachromatic leukodystrophy (MLD) is an autosomal recessive neurodegenerative disorder due to deficiency of the enzyme arylsulfatase A that leads to progressive, diffuse demyelination. The syndrome of nonverbal learning disability has been attributed to white matter abnormality and has been reported in children with this disorder and in some healthy family member carriers of gene. We examined the neuropsychologic profiles and MRIs of eight members of the family of a 7-year-old girl with this disease, all of whom were heterozygous carriers of the mutation and five of whom were also carriers of the MLD pseudodeficiency gene. All had low normal levels of arylsulfatase A, and seven of the eight had average or better profiles across all assessed neuropsychological domains. The patient's younger sister had a profile with features of the syndrome of nonverbal learning disability despite a normal MRI, whereas two members with minor white matter findings did not. This family does not provide evidence for the syndrome of nonverbal learning disability in heterozygous carriers of the gene for MLD, even when associated with the MLD pseudodeficiency gene.     

Female Paralympic Athlete Views of Effective and Ineffective Coaching Practices

People with physical disabilities are at a higher risk of developing secondary physical and mental health conditions, such as fatigue, obesity, and depression. The purpose of this study was to explore female Paralympic athlete views of effective and ineffective coaching practices. Individual semistructured interviews were conducted with 8 athletes who achieved an average of 8 combined Paralympic and Parapan American medals. A hierarchical content analysis revealed the athletes’ perceptions and experiences of both effective and ineffective coaching strategies and behaviors, including how these experiences affected them on a personal and professional level. All athletes achieved tremendous athletic accomplishments and recognized the importance and value of their coaches in helping them reach such high standards of success. In addition, the participants spoke about male coaches inappropriately addressing their disability and gender and how it negatively influenced their psychological well-being. These results are particularly troublesome when you consider that females with a disability are more susceptible to experiencing discrimination, exclusion, or harassment and more likely to experience body image issues compared to their male counterparts. This research adds to the small body of coaching knowledge in parasport and is one of the first studies to include an all-female sample of Paralympic athletes. In addition, it offers a number of practical implications for coaches, athletes, and the Paralympic community.

Lay Summary: This study adds to the small body of coaching knowledge in parasport by interviewing female Paralympic athletes. Athletes talked about coaches who enhanced their athletic performance and personal development, whereas others spoke about male coaches inappropriately addressing their disability and gender and how it negatively influenced their psychological well-being.     

Inner Opacity. Nietzsche on Introspection and Agency

Abstract

Nietzsche believes that we do not know our own actions, nor their real motives. This belief, however, is but a consequence of his assuming a quite general skepticism about introspection. The main aim of this paper is to offer a reading of this last view, which I shall call the Inner Opacity (IO) view. In the first part of the paper I show that a strong motivation behind IO lies in Nietzsche’s claim that self-knowledge exploits the same set of cognitive capacities as well as the same folk-psychological framework involved in outward-directed mind-reading. In the second part I turn to Nietzsche’s view of agency and argue that he sees a fundamental discrepancy between the conscious attitudes we have introspective access to, on the one hand, and the subpersonal processes and states occurring at the unconscious level of the drives, on the other hand.     

Peering into the opaque mind

Abstract

Carolyn Saarni’s pioneering research showed that young children learn how to hide their feelings—to conceal disappointment with a smile or to conceal amusement with a neutral expression. By 6 years of age, children understand the implications of such concealment. They can distinguish between: (i) an individual’s true but hidden emotion; (ii) the emotion that the individual overtly expresses; and (iii) the emotion that other people might mistakenly attribute to the individual. Effectively, young children grasp that the mind is opaque. Its contents can remain hidden from others. We examine two issues raised by this important conceptual insight. First, we ask how it emerges in young children—what experiences lead them to acknowledge the mind’s opacity? Second, in light of Saarni’s emphasis on the impact of cultural beliefs and practices, we discuss anthropological evidence that in certain cultures the mind’s opacity is regarded as a social desideratum so that enquiries into, or speculations about, a person’s private mental states are regarded as inappropriate. We consider the understanding of hidden emotion that children will acquire if they grow up in such a culture. We propose—paradoxically—that they will readily differentiate between what is actually felt and what is overtly expressed. We conclude by reviewing recent cross-cultural evidence lending initial support to that prediction.     

Numerical and nonnumerical estimation in children with and without mathematical learning disabilities

There are currently multiple explanations for mathematical learning disabilities (MLD). The present study focused on those assuming that MLD are due to a basic numerical deficit affecting the ability to represent and to manipulate number magnitude ( Butterworth, 1999 , 2005 ; A. J. Wilson & Dehaene, 2007 ) and/or to access that number magnitude representation from numerical symbols ( Rousselle & No?l, 2007 ). The present study provides an original contribution to this issue by testing MLD children (carefully selected on the basis of preserved abilities in other domains) on numerical estimation tasks with contrasting symbolic (Arabic numerals) and nonsymbolic (collection of dots) numbers used as input or output. MLD children performed consistently less accurately than control children on all the estimation tasks. However, MLD children were even weaker when the task involved the mapping between symbolic and nonsymbolic numbers than when the task required a mapping between two nonsymbolic numerical formats. Moreover, in the estimation of nonsymbolic numerosities, MLD children relied more than control children on perceptual cues such as the cumulative area of the dots. Finally, the task requiring a mapping from a nonsymbolic format to a symbolic format was the best predictor of MLD. In order to explain these present results, as well as those reported in the literature, we propose that the impoverished number magnitude representation of MLD children may arise from an initial mapping deficit between number symbols and that magnitude representation.     

First personal modes of presentation and the structure of empathy

Abstract

I argue that we can understand the de se by employing the subjective mode of presentation or, if one’s ontology permits it, by defending an abundant ontology of perspectival personal properties or facts. I do this in the context of a discussion of Cappelen and Dever’s recent criticisms of the de se. Then, I discuss the distinctive role of the first personal perspective in discussions about empathy, rational deference, and self-understanding, and develop a way to frame the problem of lacking prospective access to your future self as a problem with your capacity to imaginatively empathize with your (possible) future selves.     

数学学习困难初中生的记忆广度特点

记忆广度包括短时记忆广度和工作记忆广度,为揭示数学学习困难学生认知缺损特点,筛选103名初中生（平均年龄12.57岁）,比较数学困难学生（49名）与数学优秀学生（54名）的记忆广度差异,通过词语系列任务、阅读广度任务以及倒背数字任务,分别测查了短时记忆、言语工作记忆以及数字工作记忆。结果发现,数困组与优秀组的学生在词语系列任务中没有显著差异（t＝-1.59, p>.05）,在阅读广度任务中,具有显著差异（t＝-2.38, p<.05）,在倒背数字任务中具有极其显著的差异（t＝-4.69, p<.01）。阅读广度和倒背数字之间具有显著相关(r=.24, p<.05),词语系列任务与阅读广度(r=.19, p>.05)和倒背数字任务(r=.05, p>.05)之间不存在显著相关。研究表明,在具有干扰情况的任务更能有效预测数学成绩,数学学习困难的认知缺损主要是对抗干扰的能力不足,而非简单的短时记忆广度。     

Exploring temporal changes in obligated and delivered inducements: a dynamic systems perspective

ABSTRACT

The psychological contract (PC) is a dynamic process, where employees actively and passively adjust their perceptions of obligated and delivered inducements. In this study, we focus on the temporal changes in employee’s perceptions of obligated and delivered inducements and show that these micro-level dynamics take place at every stage through the PC process. We introduce a dynamic systems perspective to understand these temporal fluctuations. We show that employees’ perceptions of obligated and delivered inducements interact with each other and form a dynamic system. We compared daily and weekly time-frames and found that the daily time-frame maximizes the temporal fluctuations of employees’ perceptions of obligated and delivered inducements, whereas the weekly frame captures more complex trajectories. Furthermore, inducements that are explicitly communicated demonstrate more temporal fluctuations than inducements that are not explicitly communicated. We advance PC theory by providing more understanding of the temporal dynamics of employees’ perceptions of obligated and delivered inducements. We provide practical guidelines for the choice of an ideal time-frame to study employees’ perceptions of obligated and delivered inducements, depending on the specific inducements and the aim of the research. We propose that researchers further integrate dynamic systems theory into PC models.     

Experiences of surgery readiness assessments in British Columbia

Abstract

Background: A surgical readiness assessment is a major step in the medical journey of trans people seeking gender-affirming surgery. Much of the peer-reviewed literature surrounding surgical readiness assessments emphasizes the perspectives of academics and clinicians, leaving the voices of trans and gender diverse patients largely unheard.

Aims: This paper foregrounds patient experiences with surgery readiness assessments to discuss the tensions, challenges and opportunities they generate.

Methods: We conducted a thematic analysis of 35 in-depth interviews with trans people who accessed or were seeking to access gender-affirming surgery in British Columbia.

Results: We developed three main themes to capture participants’ narratives of their surgical assessment experiences. The first, assessments as gatekeeping, explores the stories of people who described their assessments as outdated and even discriminatory processes. The second, assessments as a barrier to care, discusses the informational missteps, bureaucratic regulations, economic issues, and geographic concerns that made assessments difficult to access. The third, assessments as useful, includes positive stories about assessments that often involved feeling supported by an assessor and feeling prepared for the next steps.

Discussion: These narratives demonstrate how much variation exists among people’s experiences of readiness assessments for gender-affirming surgery. No matter how their actual assessment turned out, many participants approached their appointments with a great deal of anxiety and trepidation. We attributed this stress was to challenges ranging from lengthy wait times, arbitrary medical gatekeeping, a lack of access to knowledgeable and supportive providers, unclear or changing administrative processes, and insufficient communication. To address these challenges, it is crucial for the medical system to create more accessible pathways with centralized, up-to-date information for people trying to access assessments. Patients are best served by multi-disciplinary gender-affirming teams that provide individualized care.     

“Going the Extra Mile”: Disclosure,Accommodation, and Stigma Management among Working Women with Disabilities

ABSTRACT

Although research has quantitatively evaluated the impacts of stigma upon working women with disabilities (WWD), nuanced, qualitative accounts voiced by these women are rare. To address this literature gap, we conducted seven focus groups with 42 WWD. We asked: “What are women’s experiences of disability disclosure and accommodation in the workplace?” Findings reveal that WWD face intentional and unintentional structural discrimination and must weigh the pros and cons of disclosure and navigate devaluation threats in pursuing workplace accommodations. “Going the extra mile” emerged as a stigma management technique which was prevalent among women of higher social capital.     

数学学习困难初中生的中央执行系统特点

为揭示数学学习困难学生的认知过程加工特点,筛选上海111名初中生（男生46名,女生68名,平均年龄11.97岁）比较数学困难学生（55名）与数学优秀学生（56名）的中央执行系统的表现差异,通过反应停止任务和Flanker任务考察抑制能力以及注意控制能力。结果发现各种抑制和注意控制条件下,数困组学生的正确率低于数优组;在具有干扰的情况的成绩更能有效预测数学成绩;中央执行系统能力在初中总体具有上升发展趋势,数困生的发展具有波动性。因此,数学学习困难在中央执行系统中的缺损主要是对抗干扰的能力不足,而非简单的加工速度。     

Gender Biases and Therapists’ Conceptualization of Couple Difficulties

In spite of the fact that gender issues have played an important role in many family therapy training programs, little research has been developed to explore the effects of gender and gender biases in therapists’ conceptualizations of client problems. This study explores beginning and advanced marriage and family therapy (MFT) student’s inclusion of gender in the conceptualization of a clinical case. To examine clinician’s thinking, 32 therapists (18 beginning MFT students and 14 advanced MFT students) were asked to 1) view the first 20 minutes of an intake interview conducted by a sex therapist, and 2) identify the couple’s central issues. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were used to explore constructs associated with therapists considerations and inclusion of gender and cultural issues in their conceptualizations of marital difficulties. Results revealed that trained MFT students who considered gender may have analyzed gender issues more extensively than untrained MFT students. In addition, results of qualitative analysis of participant critiques revealed subtle forms of gender and cultural biases. Discussion focuses on how these biases, some of which are linked to clinical theory, can lead to differential expectations and inequality in the treatment of men and women in couple therapy. Implications for clinical training, curriculum development, and future research are also discussed.     

Sensitivity to general and specific numerical features in typical achievers and children with mathematics learning disability

We examined the development of sensitivity to general and specific numerical features in typical achievers and in 6th and 8th graders with mathematics learning disability (MLD), using two effects in mental multiplication: operand-relatedness (i.e., difficulty in avoiding errors that are related to the operands via a shared multiplication row) and decade-consistency (i.e., difficulty in avoiding errors that are operand related and also share a decade with the true result). Responses to decade-consistent products were quick but erroneous. In line with the processing sequence in adults, children first became sensitive to the general numerical feature of operand-relatedness (typical achievers—from 3rd grade; children with MLD in 8th grade) and only later to the specific feature of decade-consistency (typical achievers—from 4th grade, but only from 6th grade in a mature pattern). Implications of the numerical sensitivity in children with MLD are discussed.