How Sin Works: A Review Essay

Levinas's ethics of other-centered service has been criticized at the theoretical level for failing to offer a conception of moral agency adequate to ground its imperative and at the practical level for encouraging self- hatred. Levinas's explicit resistance to the incorporation of the phrase "as yourself" in the Judaeo-Christian love command might seem to validate the critics' complaints. The author argues, on the contrary, that Levinas does offer a strong and compelling conception of moral agency and that his ethics, properly understood, does not entail self-abnegation. Levinas's attempt to counter excessive and manipulative self-concern and self-inflation by insisting on the dependent and situational position of the self has been wrongly overinterpreted as an abandonment of the self and its just claims. The author seeks to establish a more balanced understanding by focusing attention on the "ethics of welcome", on Levinas's distinctive conception of passivity, and on the role of the "third" in all human relations.     

The effects of behavioral skills training on mand training by staff and unprompted vocal mands by children

We evaluated the effects of a training package, including instructions, modeling, rehearsal, and feedback, for training staff members to conduct mand training with children. Experimenters collected data on staff performance on each step of a task analysis of mand training and on unprompted child vocal mands. Training resulted in increases in staff performance in mand training and in unprompted mands by children. We observed replication of these effects across settings for all staff and for 3 of the children.     

Age,criterion flexibility,and item recognition

We examined young and older adults' ability to flexibly adapt response criterion on a recognition test when the probability that a test item had been studied was cued by test color. One word color signaled that the probability of the test item being old was 70% and a second color signaled that the probability of the test item being new was 70%. Young and older adults demonstrated similar levels of criterion shifting in response to color cues. Moreover, although both young and older adults were slowed when test-item color incorrectly predicted test-item status, the extent of slowing did not differ across age group. Putative measures of cognitive control predicted recognition accuracy but not the degree to which criterion changed with test-item color. These results suggest that adaptive criterion shifting does not tax cognitive control or, if it does require effort, may be no more onerous for older than for young adults.     

Differences in intelligence and automatic memory processes

Intelligence-related differences in memory have been viewed as dependent upon control rather than structural memory processes. A test of this notion was made by comparing retarded and nonretarded persons on a subject-paced continuous recognition memory task which was judged to be nonstrategic. The stimuli were computer-generated faces and words. Analyses of pacing rates and posttest interviews provided no consistent evidence for strategy use. Differences in memory between the retarded and nonretarded subjects were attributed to differences in automatic aspects of encoding.     

Listener response to stuttering modification techniques

In two investigations, nonprofessional listeners used a 25-item bi-polar adjective scale to evaluate an adult male speaker who stuttered. In investigation one, 24 listeners evaluated the speaker during a Stuttering Only and a Stuttering + Cancellation condition. In investigation two, 50 listeners evaluated the speaker in a Stuttering Only and a Stuttering + Pullout condition. Listeners in the first investigation did not assign significantly different ratings to the Stuttering Only and Stuttering + Cancellation conditions. In the second investigation listeners rated the Stuttering Only condition more positively than the Stuttering + Pullout condition (p < 0.05). Analysis of listener response to four open-ended questions indicated significantly more positive reaction to the Stuttering Only condition than either of the Stuttering + Modification conditions. Finally, listeners rated the speaker using the cancellation and pullout techniques as being significantly more handicapped than when he was stuttering only. The findings provided preliminary evidence indicating that everyday listeners may react less favorably to an adult male speaker who is modifying his stuttered speech than when this same speaker is simply stuttering.     

Women's Attitudes Toward Affirmative Action: Putting Actions in Context1

Although women typically favor affirmative action, they do exhibit a range of reactions to affirmative action programs. To understand the diversity of reactions, the present study proposed an examination of various forms of affirmative action in the context of the discrimination problem such actions were designed to address. In Study 1, 60 female university students were presented with one of six scenarios describing a situation of discrimination against women, followed by a series of potential affirmative action response options which participants rated in terms of their level of endorsement. Analyses of variance showed that, despite the range of discrimination scenarios, some of which presented extreme cases of discrimination against women, respondents consistently endorsed nondiscrimination measures, and opposed affirmative action strategies involving preferential treatment. Study 2, which preselected 43 women who valued social equality, replicated this finding and found that these results were not due to women not perceiving the presence of collective discrimination. Study 3 examined the attitudes of women in a law and security police training stream (n = 19), whose vulnerability to employment discrimination, both as a group and personally, would be salient. The women in this study endorsed all forms of affirmative action, including explicit preferential treatment in the hiring of women police officers. The implications of these results for the consideration and implementation of affirmative action programs are discussed.     

Implicit learning of predictive relationships in three-element visual sequences by young and old adults

Knowledge of sequential relationships enables future events to be anticipated and processed efficiently. Research with the serial reaction time task (SRTT) has shown that sequence learning often occurs implicitly without effort or awareness. Here, the authors report 4 experiments that use a triplet-learning task (TLT) to investigate sequence learning in young and older adults. In the TLT, people respond only to the last target event in a series of discrete, 3-event sequences or triplets. Target predictability is manipulated by varying the triplet frequency (joint probability) and/or the statistical relationships (conditional probabilities) among events within the triplets. Results reveal that both groups learned, though older adults showed less learning of both joint and conditional probabilities. Young people used the statistical information in both cues, but older adults relied primarily on information in the 2nd cue alone. The authors conclude that the TLT complements and extends the SRTT and other tasks by offering flexibility in the kinds of sequential statistical regularities that may be studied as well as by controlling event timing and eliminating motor response sequencing.     

Where am I? Distal cues use requires sensitivity to start location change in the rat

Place learning is impaired when a single plus maze is moved between adjacent locations 33-120 cm apart. This maze translation creates distinct start locations but maintains a single goal location with respect to distal cues. Hippocampal cell recording data suggest the majority of place fields are tied to apparatus boundaries, not to distal cues, when an apparatus is moved these distances to the left or right. Thus, rats may fail to appreciate the existence of multiple start locations with respect to distal cues when the maze is moved in this way and their start location on the surface is constant. Performance on the single plus maze problem was improved when texture cues were correlated with different start locations. Place learning was supported when multiple start locations were provided on a single large surface (double plus maze), even though rats did not explore the entire surface. Place learning was also supported when random extensions were added to a double plus maze such that start locations, relative to surface boundaries, were not informative as to goal location. This outcome suggests sensitivity to multiple start locations is required for distal cue use in translational place problems.     

A meta-analytic review of behavior modeling training

A meta-analysis of 117 studies evaluated the effects of behavior modeling training (BMT) on 6 training outcomes, across characteristics of training design. BMT effects were largest for learning outcomes, smaller for job behavior, and smaller still for results outcomes. Although BMT effects on declarative knowledge decayed over time, training effects on skills and job behavior remained stable or even increased. Skill development was greatest when learning points were used and presented as rule codes and when training time was longest. Transfer was greatest when mixed (negative and positive) models were presented, when practice included trainee-generated scenarios, when trainees were instructed to set goals, when trainees' superiors were also trained, and when rewards and sanctions were instituted in trainees' work environments.     

LEADERS IN READING RESEARCH AND INSTRUCTION

Five reading lesson instruction characteristics were examined in relation to first and second graders' end-of-year instructional reading level: (a) teacher's preferred interaction style (indicated by extent of teacher telling and coaching); (b) teacher's preferred grouping (indicated by extent of whole class and small group instruction); (c) teacher's preferred focus of reading activity (indicated by extent of focus on words/letters and comprehension); (d) degree of student active response; and (e) instruction material (indicated by extent of use of narrative text and worksheets). Sixteen first- and second-grade teachers and 166 of their students were observed during reading instruction three times across the school year. Analyses of covariance were conducted. Complex relationships heretofore not revealed appeared. Different patterns of relationships between instructional characteristics and instructional reading level emerged for higher achievers compared to lower achievers and for first compared to second grade.