NONVOCAL LANGUAGE ACQUISITION IN ADOLESCENTS WITH SEVERE PHYSICAL DISABILITIES: BLISSYMBOL VERSUS ICONIC STIMULUS FORMATS

This study compared training in two language systems for three severely handicapped, nonvocal adolescents: the Bliss symbol system and an iconic picture system. Following baseline, training and review trials were implemented using an alternating treatments design. Daily probes were conducted to assess maintenance, stimulus generalization, and response generalization, and data were collected on spontaneous usage of either language system throughout the school day. Results showed that students required approximately four times as many trials to acquire Bliss symbols as iconic pictures, and that students maintained a higher percentage of iconic pictures. Stimulus generalization occurred in both language systems, while the number of correct responses during responses generalization probes was much greater for the iconic system. Finally, students almost always showed more iconic responses than Bliss responses in daily spontaneous usage. These results suggest that an iconic system might be more readily acquired, maintained, and generalized to daily situations. Implications of these findings for the newly verbal person were discussed.     

Reviews of current books

Pastoral Psychology -     

Explicit syllable and phoneme segmentation in the young child

To write a language, one must first abstract the unit to be used from the acoustic stream of speech. Writing systems based on the meaningless units, syllables and phonemes, were late developments in the history of written language. The alphabetic system, which requires abstraction of the phonemic unit of speech, was the last to appear, evolved from a syllabary and, unlike the other systems, was apparently invented only once. It might therefore be supposed that phoneme segmentation is particularly difficult and more difficult, indeed, than syllable segmentation. Speech research suggests reasons why this may be so. The present study provides direct evidence of a similar developmental ordering of syllable and phoneme segmentation abilities in the young child. By means of a task which required preschool, kindergarten, and first-grade children to tap out the number of segments in spoken utterances, it was found that, though ability in both syllable and phoneme segmentation increased with grade level, analysis into phonemes was significantly harder and perfected later than analysis into syllables. The relative difficulties of the different units of segmentation are discussed in relation to reading acquisition.     

Two Sides of the Same Coin? Viewing Altruism and Aggression Through the Adaptive Lens of Kinship

Are altruism and aggression polar opposites, or are they two sides of the same coin? In this review, the authors examine the evolved biological roots of these behaviors and focus on the psychology of kinship and how it can serve to bridge both behaviors. Drawing on inclusive fitness theory ( Hamilton, 1964 ), the kinship, acceptance, and rejection model of altruism and aggression (KARMAA; Webster, 2008 ), and a sociofunctional threat‐based approach to prejudice ( Cottrell & Neuberg, 2005 ), the authors propose that altruism and aggression can be viewed as two sides of the same coin depending on context and perspective. For example, a mother bear protecting her cubs by attacking a predator may be simultaneously exhibiting an act of altruism and aggression. After offering some empirical support for their view, the authors discuss the theoretical and practical implications of viewing altruism and aggression as related constructs at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and intergroup levels.     

Teachers' perceptions of the frequency and seriousness of violations of ethical standards

Despite nationwide efforts to professionalize public-school teaching, little attention has been given to the matter of standards of professional conduct for teachers. The authors examined teachers' perceptions of the frequency and seriousness of different categories of teacher misconduct. They administered a 34-item questionnaire to 235 school professionals in northwestern South Carolina. For each item, respondents rated the extent to which they agreed or disagreed that the behavior occurred frequently and represented a serious violation of professional ethics. Factor analysis of the ratings of seriousness yielded 3 domains of ethical concerns: (a) student-teacher boundary violations, (b) carelessness in behavior, and (c) subjectivity in grading and instruction. Teachers rated boundary violations as the most serious but least common violations and carelessness in behavior as the most frequent but least serious violation. Problems of subjectivity in grading were rated as moderately frequent and moderately serious. The authors found no differences between male and female teachers or between elementary and secondary teachers in their ratings of the seriousness or frequency of any of the 3 groups of ethical concerns. The authors discuss implications for development of a national code of teacher conduct.     

Why older adults make more immediate treatment decisions about cancer than younger adults

Literature relevant to medical decision making was reviewed, and a model was outlined for testing. Two studies examined whether older adults make more immediate decisions than younger adults about treatments for prostate or breast cancer in authentic scenarios. Findings clearly showed that older adults were more likely to make immediate decisions than younger adults. The research is important because it not only demonstrates the consistency of this age-related effect across disease domains, gender, ethnic groups, and prevalent education levels but begins to investigate a model to explain the effect. Major reasons for the effect focus on treatment knowledge, interest and engagement, and cognitive resources. Treatment knowledge, general cancer knowledge, interest, and cognitive resources relate to different ways of processing treatment information and preferences for immediate versus delayed decision making. Adults with high knowledge of treatments on a reliable test tended to make immediate treatment decisions, which supports the knowledge explanation. Adults with more cognitive resources and more interest tended to delay their treatment decisions. Little support was found for a cohort explanation for the relationship between age and preference for immediate medical decision making.     

Coming Full Circle: A Reciprocal-Engagement Model of Genetic Counseling Practice

As genetic health care and genetic testing expand from primarily addressing conditions that are exclusively genetic in nature to common diseases with both genetic and environmental components, the scope of genetic counseling has grown. Identification and utilization of a normative model of practice defined by members of the profession is critical as genetic services become more commonplace in medical care. The purpose of this paper is to describe the results of a consensus conference convened to define a model of genetic counseling practice based on the guidance of educators and leaders in the profession. Twenty-three program directors or their representatives from 20 genetic counseling graduate programs in North America listened to presentations and participated in group discussions aimed at determining the elements of a model of practice, including tenets, goals, strategies, and behaviors for addressing patients’ genetic concerns. Their discussion is summarized, training implications and research recommendations are presented, and a model of practice that extends their ideas is proposed.     

Congruence in Satir's Model: Its Spiritual and Religious Significance

This article casts into relief the essentialist-existential philosophy implicit in Satir's model of healing using Paul Tillich's systematic philosophical framework. Parallels between Satir's model of the person are drawn with Tillich's ontological categories of essence and existence, individualization and participation, and destiny and freedom. Congruence as the integration of elements in three vital human dimensions: the interpersonal, intrapsychic, and spiritual-universal, is correlated with Tillich's philosophical understanding of salvation. The religious quest is understood as a systemic, multidimensional process that brings the interactive and interdependent personal, interpersonal and spiritual dimensions into a restored unity. Thus Satir's rehumanization project and Tillich's religious quest are shown to coincide.