‘It's gotten a bit old,charity’: Young adults in New Zealand talk about poverty,charitable giving and aid appeals

An extensive body of literature exists on the phenomena of poverty, charitable giving and the effectiveness of aid appeals. To date psychological research has predominantly focused on individualistic models to explain people's understandings of poverty and their charitable giving practices. Based upon a social constructionist epistemology, this study investigates how understandings of aid appeals, poverty and charitable giving are discursively produced and constructed in relation to one another through an analysis of New Zealand young adults' talk about these issues. Data were collected from three focus group discussions among pre‐existing friendship groups comprising three male and nine female students aged between 18 and 25. A brief video clip of aid appeals was used to stimulate discussion on poverty and charitable giving. Analysis of these discussions revealed three discursive themes relating to the aid appeals: local versus international need, emotional arousal and insufficient information. Drawing upon these themes the participants constructed poverty as relative or extreme, and largely explained by educational deficits. They constructed charitable giving as solicited through aid appeals, as compromised through immunity to such appeals, and as diminished through positionings of self‐help and self‐responsibility. These discursive constructions were drawn on by participants to legitimate their own non‐donor position. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Soul,freedom and salvation: a literary,cinematic and musical journey to the crossroads

It is tempting to assume that the construction of rational arguments for the existence of God reflects the basic logical form of theological discourse and debate. However, it would also seem that most if not all major religions are grounded mainly in stories (including biographies) of divine or divinely inspired saviours or prophets, and that the form of much ordinary religious understanding is ‘narratival’. In addition, such latter‐day moral and social theorists as Alasdair MacIntyre have held that human moral and spiritual understanding cannot but take a narrative form, and regarded religious stories as contributing crucially to such appreciation. However, while it is tempting to support such claims by reference to classics of literary and artistic culture, it is arguable that much contemporary cinematic and other popular art has also developed the major moral and spiritual themes of classical culture in significantly insightful ways. This article explores the movie Crossroads as a particularly fertile instance of such development.     

An evaluation of the conservative dual-criterion method for teaching university students to visually inspect AB-design graphs

The present study evaluated the effects of both a traditional lecture and the conservative dual-criterion (CDC) judgment aid on the ability of 6 university students to visually inspect AB-design line graphs. The traditional lecture reliably failed to improve visual inspection accuracy, whereas the CDC method substantially improved the performance of each participant.     

On the effects of noncontingent food delivery during naturally occurring periods of deprivation and satiation

Four adults diagnosed with moderate to profound mental retardation performed a manual response that was reinforced with food identified from a stimulus preference assessment. During baseline, the response was reinforced on a variable ratio (VR) schedule. Participants were then exposed to noncontingent reinforcement (NCR) plus extinction, and no‐food (i.e., extinction) conditions. A combination multielement and reversal design was used to evaluate intervention effects. For each participant, sessions were conducted both before and after the midday meal during baseline and NCR‐plus‐extinction conditions, thus capitalizing on naturally occurring states of food deprivation and satiation. Results showed that response rates were slightly higher during deprivation sessions than during satiation sessions during NCR‐plus‐extinction and VR schedules for three of the four participants. For three participants, initial NCR schedules did not reduce responding; however, subsequent NCR schedules, which were twice as dense, were effective in reducing response rates. The results are discussed in terms of the development of NCR as a reductive technology and the manipulation of establishing operations applied to the habilitation of individuals with developmental disabilities. The use of a basic experimental preparation as a method of examining decelerative interventions is also addressed. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Recent advances in the modification of establishing operations to reduce aberrant behavior

The term establishing operation (EO) refers to an event that alters the reinforcement effects of a particular stimulus. Although EOs have received more attention in the basic, non-human literature, reports of EO manipulations in the treatment of aberrant behavior are increasingly appearing. We discuss EO interventions for behaviors maintained by social positive reinforcement (e.g., noncontingent reinforcement), social negative reinforcement (e.g., noncontingent escape, curricular revision, demand fading), and automatic reinforcement (e.g., environmental enrichment, noncontingent stimulation, reduced aversive stimulation). Suggestions for future research concerning both specific EO interventions and the general manipulation of EOs as a behavior-change technique are provided. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.