A Comparison of Video Feedback and In Vivo Self-Monitoring on the Social Interactions of an Adolescent with Asperger Syndrome

Difficulties with social interactions and restrictive and repetitive interest patterns or behaviors are common among individuals with Asperger syndrome. These difficulties often pose barriers to establishing and maintaining social relationships. In the current study, 2 different interventions were compared that focused on improving the social interactions of a 14-year-old adolescent with Asperger syndrome. A reversal design was used to compare the effectiveness of video feedback and in vivo self-monitoring on inappropriate and appropriate social interactions during activities with a teacher. The procedures were replicated during activities with peers, and generalization was assessed during activities with the adolescent’s mother. Although video feedback resulted in slight reductions in inappropriate behavior, larger reductions occurred during in vivo self-monitoring. Treatment acceptability data indicated high participant satisfaction with both interventions; however, the in vivo self-monitoring was rated as slightly preferred.     

Family Policy in South Korea: Development, Current Status, and Challenges

We provide a comprehensive review of family policy in South Korea (Korea hereafter) for international readers. Alarmed by recent social and demographic changes, the Korean government has started to establish explicit family policies from the mid 2000s. These policies have signified a symbolic attention shift to family matters in the history of social policy in Korea. In this paper, we focus on three areas of family policy: (a) work-family policies, (b) a healthy family policy, and (c) a policy for multi-cultural families. Work-family policies aim to help working families with young children balance work responsibilities and family caregiving through multiple leave options and child care support. The Framework Act on Healthy Families, the first explicit family policy in Korea, requires local governments to provide family services through Healthy Family Support Centers. The Multi-Cultural Family Support Act also established a formal support system for multi-cultural families with immigrant spouses, a population group that has recently increased in Korea. We further discuss the domestic and comparative contexts of Korean family policy and provide suggestions for the remaining challenges.     

Parent Participation Within Community Center or In-Home Outreach Delivery Models of the Early Risers Conduct Problems Prevention Program

A variety of predictors of parent participation in prevention programming have been identified in past research, but few studies have investigated how those predictors may vary by implementation context. Patterns of parent participation were examined in the Early Risers Conduct Problems Prevention Program using two family-focused service delivery models: a community center model (Center) and an in-home outreach-based model (Outreach). An ethnically diverse sample of Kindergarten through second grade students (n = 246) displaying elevated levels of aggression were recruited for the study and randomly assigned to either the Center (n = 121) or Outreach (n = 125) models. In both delivery models, participants and their families completed an assortment of baseline measures and received family skills and child skills intervention components and family- and school-based case management. Parents in the Center model demonstrated greater overall participation in family-focused components of the intervention. Parent motivation with parent-focused expectancies for the intervention represented the strongest predictor of parent participation across both delivery models. Family income differentially predicted parent participation across the two models, with low income predicting greater participation in the Center model and lower participation in the Outreach model. A qualitative finding emerged showing that parents receiving parent skills in the Center model via groups preferred to learn skills related to facilitating overall family relationships, whereas parents receiving parent skills via individual Outreach meetings preferred to improve a child’s behavior and emotion skills. Implications are discussed for the design of prevention programming in order to maximize parent participation in high risk populations.     

Parent involvement in school: English speaking versus Spanish speaking families

The purpose of the present study was to explore the relationships between three predictor variables (attitude toward school, parent-child communication, and school commitment action) and the criterion variable (parent involvement) in a representative sample and to examine if these relationships were consistent across three groups (English speaking Caucasian family, English speaking Latino family, and Spanish speaking Latino families). Using a national database (N = 9.841), multi-group SEM analyses were conducted to investigate the relationship between three predictor variables and the criterion variable in three family groups. While all three predictor variables significantly predicted parent involvement in English speaking Caucasian and Latino families, only two variables (parent-child communication and school commitment actions), significantly predicted parent involvement in Spanish speaking Latino families. The results of this study suggest that when administrators, teachers and counselors in school strive to share specific school-related information with Latino families, Spanish speaking families are more likely to become involved with schools.     

Independent effects of geometry and landmark in a spontaneous reorientation task: a study of two species of fish

While disoriented humans and animals use both landmarks and environmental geometry to guide their navigation, it is not clear what kinds of cognitive mechanisms underlie these behaviors. Because traditional tests of trained navigation behavior in environments containing both landmarks and geometric information may cloud our insight into the nature of these processes, the present study tested the spontaneous use of landmarks and environmental shape by two species of fish-Redtail Splitfins (Xenotoca eiseni) and Zebrafish (Danio rerio). The results suggest that while geometry is spontaneously used by both species and both sexes to compute relative position or direction, the spontaneous use of landmarks is limited to direct beaconing and complicated by attraction to features and variability across species and sex. These findings support the view that while multiple cues may ultimately guide behavior, the computation of orientation and relative positions is specified by geometric input and is independent from other navigation processes such as beaconing.     

Servicescapes: The role that place plays in stay‐at‐home mothers’ lives

Over the past decade, increasing attention has been paid to gender‐related consumption behaviour. However, a relative gap in our knowledge still exists when it comes to understanding the changes that occur as a result of motherhood and how this may influence their interactions in the retail environment. The purpose of this article is to explore stay‐at‐home mothers’ experiences in the servicescape to gain a better understanding of how they associate with servicescapes during this transitional period, how they use retail space to suit their needs, and how they use retail space to negotiate their role as a stay‐at‐home mother. Five stay‐at‐home mothers with children younger than 5 years were provided with disposable cameras and asked to photograph servicescapes that they visited regularly. Over a 1‐year period, they were interviewed several times, and photo‐elicitation techniques were used throughout the interviewing process. The results of this study suggest that when consumers undergo role or identity changes, certain places can be used to smooth this process. Not only can the retail environment be used as a coping mechanism for stay‐at‐home mothers, it can also be viewed as a “second place” as opposed to a “third place”, thus enabling isolated consumers to feel connected with the outside world. Last, this study highlights the temporal dimensions of place. Throughout one's lifetime, one will form attachments to and patronise different places, which will evolve and change as individuals, accordingly, take on different roles and identities. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Smiles as signals of lower status in football players and fashion models: Evidence that smiles are associated with lower dominance and lower prestige

Across four studies, the current paper demonstrates that smiles are associated with lower social status. Moreover, the association between smiles and lower status appears in the psychology of observers and generalizes across two forms of status: prestige and dominance. In the first study, faces of fashion models representing less prestigious apparel brands were found to be more similar to a canonical smile display than the faces of models representing more prestigious apparel brands.?In a second study, after being experimentally primed with either high or low prestige fashion narratives, participants in the low prestige condition were more likely to perceive smiles in a series of photographs depicting smiling and non-smiling faces. A third study of football player photographs revealed that the faces of less dominant (smaller) football players were more similar to the canonical smile display than the faces of their physically larger counterparts. Using the same football player photographs, a fourth study found that smiling was a more reliable indicator of perceived status-relevant personality traits than perceptions of the football players' physical sizes inferred from the photographs.     

A common computational process in cueing and conjunction search tasks

The question of whether Posner’s beam is the same as Treisman’s glue is addressed to construct a computational model that integrates both target and cue information. The cueing and conjunction search tasks are conducted to analyze a common process that may be underlying the tasks. The dynamic interaction between target and cue information produces attentional benefit- and cost-based in the cueing task. Furthermore, the search order for target candidates in a conjunction search task is determined through the integration of target and cue information, which is basically the same as in the cueing task. Our simulations suggest that consistency (or validity) is considered as a computational process that may be commonly involved in the both tasks.     

Young children can tell strategic lies after committing a transgression

This study investigated whether young children make strategic decisions about whether to lie to conceal a transgression based on the lie recipient's knowledge. In Experiment 1, 168 3- to 5-year-olds were asked not to peek at the toy in the experimenter's absence, and the majority of children peeked. Children were questioned about their transgression in either the presence or absence of an eyewitness of their transgression. Whereas 4- and 5-year-olds were able to adjust their decisions of whether to lie based on the presence or absence of the eyewitness, 3-year-olds did not. Experiments 2 and 3 manipulated whether the lie recipient appeared to have learned information about children's peeking from an eyewitness or was merely bluffing. Results revealed that when the lie recipient appeared to be genuinely knowledgeable about their transgression, even 3-year-olds were significantly less likely to lie compared with when the lie recipient appeared to be bluffing. Thus, preschool children are able to make strategic decisions about whether to lie or tell the truth based on whether the lie recipient is genuinely knowledgeable about the true state of affairs.