Practicing Harm Reduction Psychotherapy: An Alternative Approach to Addictions

P. Denning (2000). Practicing Harm Reduction Psychotherapy: An Alternative Approach to Addictions.     

The Isolation of Motivational, Motoric, and Schedule Effects on Operant Performance: A Modeling Approach

Dissociating motoric and motivational effects of pharmacological manipulations on operant behavior is a substantial challenge. To address this problem, we applied a response‐bout analysis to data from rats trained to lever press for sucrose on variable‐interval (VI) schedules of reinforcement. Motoric, motivational, and schedule factors (effort requirement, deprivation level, and schedule requirements, respectively) were manipulated. Bout analysis found that interresponse times (IRTs) were described by a mixture of two exponential distributions, one characterizing IRTs within response bouts, another characterizing intervals between bouts. Increasing effort requirement lengthened the shortest IRT (the refractory period between responses). Adding a ratio requirement increased the length and density of response bouts. Both manipulations also decreased the bout‐initiation rate. In contrast, food deprivation only increased the bout‐initiation rate. Changes in the distribution of IRTs over time showed that responses during extinction were also emitted in bouts, and that the decrease in response rate was primarily due to progressively longer intervals between bouts. Taken together, these results suggest that changes in the refractory period indicate motoric effects, whereas selective alterations in bout initiation rate indicate incentive‐motivational effects. These findings support the use of response‐bout analyses to identify the influence of pharmacological manipulations on processes underlying operant performance.     

Teaching Philosophy of Science to Science Students: An Alternative Approach

Studies in Philosophy and Education -     

Direct and Frequent Curriculum-Based Measurement: An Alternative for Educational Decision Making

Direct and frequent measurement of student peroformance in the school curriculum is discussed as an emerging alternative way of educational decision making. Several alternative assessment models in which curriculum-based measurement is employed are discussed. To illustrate important points about curriculum-based measurement (CBM), a case example is utilized. It is seen that CBM procedures offer practical and useful means for making a range of instructional and placement decisions commonly made by special services personnel for handicapped children and youth.     

An Experimental Analysis of Operant Learning in the Parakeet

Twenty-five parakeets were used as subjects in a study involving food-rewarded operant learning. The parakeet behaved essentially in the same way as other birds (Leghorn chicken, Wyandotte chicken, pigeon, quail, turkey, etc.) with respect to number of rewarded reactions to criterion and percentage of animals learning. Parakeets, however, learned significantly faster than all other birds. These findings have implications within the framework of evolutionary comparative learning hypotheses.     

研究专家行为的实验途径:一种质性方法

随着认知心理学对具体领域问题解决的研究不断深入,研究者越来越关注人的高级认知过程;而伴随这一研究倾向的变化．旨在揭示高胜任能力或者专家行为的实质及其发展的科学研究方法也逐渐成形;本文介绍了选择符合科学研究的专家行为标准,即有效性、可重复性和可测量性;之后,详述了研究专家行为的步骤．即选择被试、明确典型任务、进行任务分析、设计研究方案、收集原始资料、分析原始资料和解释专家行为等。这一方法的阐述．为心理学工作者使用该方法提供了一类规范。     

Mental Models: An Alternative Evaluation of a Sensemaking Approach to Ethics Instruction

In spite of the wide variety of approaches to ethics training it is still debatable which approach has the highest potential to enhance professionals' integrity. The current effort assesses a novel curriculum that focuses on metacognitive reasoning strategies researchers use when making sense of day-to-day professional practices that have ethical implications. The evaluated trainings effectiveness was assessed by examining five key sensemaking processes, such as framing, emotion regulation, forecasting, self-reflection, and information integration that experts and novices apply in ethical decision-making. Mental models of trained and untrained graduate students, as well as faculty, working in the field of physical sciences were compared using a think-aloud protocol 6 months following the ethics training. Evaluation and comparison of the mental models of participants provided further validation evidence for sensemaking training. Specifically, it was found that trained students applied metacognitive reasoning strategies learned during training in their ethical decision-making that resulted in complex mental models focused on the objective assessment of the situation. Mental models of faculty and untrained students were externally-driven with a heavy focus on autobiographical processes. The study shows that sensemaking training has a potential to induce shifts in researchers' mental models by making them more cognitively complex via the use of metacognitive reasoning strategies. Furthermore, field experts may benefit from sensemaking training to improve their ethical decision-making framework in highly complex, novel, and ambiguous situations.     

瓦格纳定律与服务业增长——一个对我国服务业发展水平偏低的解释

医疗卫生、教育和社会保障等公共社会服务领域的公共支出不足是造成我国公共社会服务业发展落后进而制约我国服务业整体发展水平提高的一个主要因素。其原因包括:我国中央财政收入占GDP比重低、政府职能转变步伐慢以及我国地方政府以GDP和财政收入为导向的经济发展动力等。提高我国服务业发展水平应该逐步增加政府支出占GDP的比重、加快政府职能向公共社会服务转变、鼓励地方政府将政府支出更多投向公共社会服务领域。     

Managing Employees in the Service Sector: A Literature Review and Conceptual Development

Our economy is slowly shifting from a manufacturing base to a service base. Yet, management literature has been slow to respond. We know little about the unique challenges faced by managers in the service sector. This paper reviews literature on research on management practice and employee perceptions that lead to positive customer outcomes. Specifically, relational coordination efforts by a manager are suggested to lead to specific employee behaviors that have been correlated with customer outcomes. This literature review and conceptual development are presented here in hopes that future research will take a deeper look at the challenges faced by service sector managers.     

Rebuilding Professional Lives: Immigrant Professionals Working in the Ontario Settlement Service Sector

Based on an online survey and in-depth interviews conducted from 2009 to 2010, this study looks at the reality of a particular group of foreign-born and foreign-trained professionals in Ontario. These are the professionals who did not get to practise their respective professions after immigration but acquired a new profession in the form of settlement work. The study identifies their pre-immigration education and work history, the reasons they left their countries of origin (or of permanent residence) for Canada, the expectations they had, the choices they made about pursuing professional practice, the efforts they put towards that or some alternative goal, and their eventual professional reconstitution as settlement workers. Following the Canadian trajectory of these dual professionals has three contributions to research into immigrant access to professions. First, their individual experiences reveal the social processes of inclusion in, and exclusion from, professional practice. Second, unlike those immigrants who are de-professionalized in the post-immigration period, our target population reinvent themselves as practitioners of a new profession and thus provide a more nuanced immigrant experience. Third, their common practice as settlement workers gives us insight into the dynamics of an emerging profession that is settlement work.     

The Effects of Imagery Training on Swimming Performance: An Applied Investigation

A multiple-baseline design was used to examine the influence of an imagery intervention on the performance of swimmers’ times on a thousand-yard practice set. Performance times for four swimmers were collected over a 15-week period during preseason training. The intervention took place over a 3-week period and was introduced after the fourth week of the study. The results revealed that three out of four participants significantly improved their times on the one thousand-yard practice set after being introduced to the imagery intervention. The results are discussed in terms of the implications of using imagery to improve athlete's performance on continuous tasks.     

服务业外包:深度开放中的产业新选择

在对外开放过程中,以加工贸易为主的"中国制造",造就了举世瞩目的"中国奇迹".低成本优势的丧失和产业升级的压力要求中国超越制造业外包的发展模式.随着全球产业结构呈现出的"工业型经济"向"服务型经济"的转变,服务业外包成为全球化3.0时代的主要特征,构成"世界变平"的重要的推动力,同时也是中国外向型经济深度开放中的新选择.中国服务业外包以制造业外包为基础,在未来一段时间内有望成为中国经济增长的新引擎.中国需要在知识产权保护和英语普及等方面进行努力,实现从"中国制造"到"中国服务"的转变.     

Examining Personal Control Beliefs as a Mediating Variable in the Health-Damaging Behavior of Substance Use: An Alternative Approach

Substance use continues to be a concern for researchers and health professionals alike. One of the most extensive areas of research on health-related behaviors such as smoking and drug use has been on personal control beliefs. Since many health actions (both facilitative and deleterious) depend on voluntary behaviors, and many health-related prevention and intervention programs are predicted on an assumption of controllability, this is an important area to consider. This article is a review of some of the literature and presents an alternative approach that entails using area-specific and domain-specific methods to examine the role that control beliefs play in the health-damaging behavior of substance use.     

An International Comparison of Personality Differences between Hospitality and Other Service Sector Managers

This paper seeks to examine the hypothesis that reliable and valid personality instruments could have international applicability. Utilising data from 327 practising managers drawn from service industries in the United Kingdom, Hungary and the Czech Republic, the research offers a basis for discriminating between the profiles of hospitality and other service sector managers employing stepwise discriminant function analysis, F-tests and classification ratios. The findings, based on a subsequent ANOVA, suggest that these personality profiles extend across the three countries under study. Also, the research provides a methodological approach for consideration in future meta-analytical studies of the processes of management development.     

The Other Shoe: An Early Operant Conditioning Chamber for Pigeons

We describe an early operant conditioning chamber fabricated by Harvard University instrument maker Ralph Gerbrands and shipped to Japan in 1952 in response to a request of Professor B. F. Skinner by Japanese psychologists. It is a rare example, perhaps the earliest still physically existing, of such a chamber for use with pigeons. Although the overall structure and many of the components are similar to contemporary pigeon chambers, several differences are noted and contrasted to evolutionary changes in this most important laboratory tool in the experimental analysis of behavior. The chamber also is testimony to the early internationalization of behavior analysis.     

Licensure in Counseling: An Alternative Direction

Bernstein, B.L, & Lecomte, C. Licensure in Psychology: Alternative Directions. Professional Psychology, 1981, 12, 200–208.     

Native Language and Immigrant Labour Market Outcomes: An Alternative Approach to Measuring the Returns for Language Skills

In contrast with the conventional approach of studying the interrelation between immigrants’ language skills and their chances of succeeding in the host country labour market, this article explores the relevance of having and not having a mother tongue in common with the native population for otherwise similar immigrants. This is accomplished by using linked register data from two countries, which makes it possible to separate people according to their native language. We find that immigrants who have their mother tongue in common with natives have substantially higher employment and income levels than immigrants who originate from the same country, but whose native language is linguistically different from the dominant language of the host country. The results support the view that language is a fundamental part of immigrants’ human capital and thus promotes their labour market outcomes.     

The Alpha-1 Association Genetic Counseling Program: An Innovative Approach to Service

In an era of specialty medicine, genetic counselors are becoming increasingly focused in their service provision. The Alpha-1 Association Genetic Counseling Program, established in September 2007, specializes in confidential toll-free genetic counseling provided by a certified genetic counselor for Alpha-1 Antitrypsin deficiency, a co-dominant condition associated with lung and/or liver disease. The program received more than 600 callers in its first 2 years. Sixty-seven percent of new callers were family members, carriers, or health professionals. The number of callers increased between the first 2 years, with the greatest increases being family members and health professionals. Testing options and explanation of results encompassed 60% of initial reasons for calls. Seventy-two percent of referrals came from family and friends, test result letters, and the Alpha-1 Association. Between year 1 and 2 family member referrals showed the largest increase. This disease-specific genetic counseling program provides a model that may be useful for other rare disease communities.