The theory of games as a tool for the social epistemologist

Philosophical Studies - Traditionally, epistemologists have distinguished between epistemic and pragmatic goals. In so doing, they presume that much of game theory is irrelevant to epistemic...     

Seeing What’s Possible: Videos are more Effective than Written Portrayals for Enhancing the Relatability of Scientists and Promoting Black Female Students’ Interest in STEM

Sex Roles - Although interactions with Black female scientists can alter beliefs about STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) and encourage Black female students’ interest in...     

Conceptualizing Self-determination from a Behavioral Perspective: The Role of Choice,Self-control,and Self-management

The goal of education can be defined in many ways; but in searching the literature, we found that in most cases, people consider the goal of education to be developing a self-determined individual. Self-determination is an abstract term. Behavior analysts may find this term difficult to define. Therefore, it may be difficult to observe and measure whether “self-determined behaviors” have developed. Many other service providers use this term frequently; thus, behavior analysts working with these service providers must come to terms with this concept in order to better collaborate. We argue that self-determination can be operationally defined with the concepts of choice, self-control, and self-management. By using the measurable behaviors included in these concepts, we believe that services can be developed to teach self-determination skills. This paper explores these concepts and how they can contribute to an operational definition of self-determination, and ultimately, help behavior analysts work with other providers to effectively teach self-determination to individuals with developmental disabilities.

     

Constant Time Delay and System of Least Prompts: Efficiency and Child Preference

Prompting procedures are effective for teaching skills, but limited comparative data exist to guide practitioners to select the best procedures for individuals. This study compared efficiency of two prompting procedures—constant time delay (CTD) and system of least prompts (SLP)—to teach expressive identification of 32 targets to 10 preschoolers with and without disabilities. To assess efficiency differences between conditions and analyze changes in learning over time, we used adapted alternating treatments designs in the measurement context of cumulative records. CTD was more efficient for five children, SLP was more efficient for three children, and results were inconclusive for two children. We measured children’s choices between procedures via simultaneous treatments designs, to assess child preference and whether preferences and efficiency aligned. Preference outcomes were mixed and did not consistently align with efficiency. We used exploratory analyses to assess whether child characteristics moderated outcomes. Children for whom CTD was more efficient had significantly fewer sessions to mastery, non-significantly fewer errors, and non-significantly higher developmental assessment scores, compared to children for whom SLP was more efficient.

     

‘Believe in me,and I will too’: a study of how teachers’ expectations instilled confidence in Grade 10 students

Social Psychology of Education - Teacher expectation research has continued to establish an association between what teachers expect of their students and what students accomplish academically....     

The prioritization of visuo-spatial associations during mental imagery

While previous research has shown that during mental imagery participants look back to areas visited during encoding it is unclear what happens when information presented during encoding is incongruent. To investigate this research question, we presented 30 participants with incongruent audio-visual associations (e.g. the image of a car paired with the sound of a cat) and later asked them to create a congruent mental representation based on the auditory cue (e.g. to create a mental representation of a cat while hearing the sound of a cat). The results revealed that participants spent more time in the areas where they previously saw the object and that incongruent audio-visual information during encoding did not appear to interfere with the generation and maintenance of mental images. This finding suggests that eye movements can be flexibly employed during mental imagery depending on the demands of the task.

     

Mothers' resolution of their children's diagnosis: Organized patterns of caregiving representations

In this paper we examine mothers' representations of one form of trauma to the caregiving system: the experience of receiving a diagnosis of a chronic illness or disability in their child. An interview and classification system was used with 91 mothers of children ages 15–50 months with cerebral palsy or epilepsy. Mothers were classified as Resolved or Unresolved with respect to their child's diagnosis and grouped into subcategories within these major groups. Roughly half of these mothers were classified as Unresolved with respect to their child's diagnosis. Diagnosis type, severity of condition, developmental age, and time since receiving diagnosis were all unrelated to the distribution of Resolved/Unresolved classifications. Patterns of resolution in which cognitive strategies predominated were the most frequent form within the Resolved classification. Findings provide support for the organizational nature of caregiving representations as well as a number of implications for clinical practice.     

MEMORY WALLET INTERVENTION IN AN ADULT DAY-CARE SETTING

The use of memory wallets to prompt factual information during conversations with day-care center volunteers was evaluated for four subjects with dementia. Memory wallets contained 15–20 pictures and sentences about familiar persons, places, and events that each subject had difficulty remembering. All subjects used the memory wallets to improve their conversations by increasing factual statements and decreasing ambiguous, unintelligible, and perseverative utterances. Volunteers decreased their use of questions and prompts during conversations in which subjects used their memory wallets. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of using volunteers to develop memory wallets and to encourage their use during conversations with day-care clients.     

Training Counsellors to Work with People who Live with Cancer: A Needs-led Approach to Planning

This paper traces the development of a cancer counselling service within a voluntary helping agency. The steps of recognizing the needs of people with cancer, identifying multi-faceted desired outcomes and the implementation of one specific goal, that of provision of a counselling service, are outlined. Significant events, stages and decisions made during this process are described and discussed. The emphasis throughout is on the importance of needs analysis and client group consultation in order that the planned service is best placed to meet such needs.