Philosophy of Education in a Poor Historical Moment: A Personal Account

Under the post-metaphysical sky “old” humanistic-oriented education is possible solely at the cost of its transformation into its negative, into a power that is determined to diminish human potentials for self-exaltation. Nothing less than total metamorphosis is needed to rescue the core of humanistic genesis: the quest for edifying Life and resistance to the call for “home-returning” into the total harmony that is promised to us within nothingness.     

Alliance-Outcome Associations in a Community-Based Social Skills Intervention for Youth With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Although the alliance is a consistent predictor of treatment outcomes in psychosocial interventions, few studies have examined this association among youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In particular, youth-therapist alliance has never been examined in social skills interventions (SSIs), a common modality for this population. In this study, thirty-four youth with ASD (M_age = 12.41; 79% male) participated in a community-delivered, group-based SSI in a summer camp format led by eight Head Therapists (M_age = 32.12; 50% male). Early alliance and change in alliance over the course of the treatment were assessed via self- and observer-reported measures. Both self- and observer-rated alliance were associated with positive treatment outcomes as reported by parents (decreased problem behaviors) and other peers in the group (reciprocated friendship and social preference). These results provide the first evidence of the role of the alliance in an SSI for youth with ASD and add to the growing body of literature that demonstrates the importance of assessing and addressing the alliance in treatment for this population.     

Social preference in rats

Rats were given repeated choices between social and nonsocial outcomes, and between familiar and unfamiliar social outcomes. Lever presses on either of 2 levers in the middle chamber of a 3-chamber apparatus opened a door adjacent to the lever, permitting 45-s access to social interaction with the rat in the chosen side chamber. In Experiment 1, rats preferred (a) social over nonsocial options, choosing their cagemate rat over an empty chamber, and (b) an unfamiliar over a familiar rat, choosing a non-cagemate over their cagemate. These findings were replicated in Experiment 2 with 2 different non-cagemate rats. Rats preferred both non-cagemate rats to a similar degree when pitted against their cagemate, but were indifferent when the 2 non-cagemates were pitted against each other. Similar preference for social over nonsocial and non-cagemate over cagemate was seen in Experiment 3, with new non-cagemate rats introduced after every third session. Response rates (for both cagemate and non-cagemate rats) were elevated under conditions of nonsocial (isolated) housing compared to conditions of social (paired) housing, demonstrating a social deprivation effect. Together, the experiments contribute to an experimental analysis of social preference within a social reinforcement framework, drawing on methods with proven efficacy in the analysis of reinforcement more generally.     

Human social defeat and approach–avoidance: Escalating social-evaluative threat and threat of aggression increases social avoidance

Basic research on avoidance by Murray Sidman laid the foundation for advances in the classification, conceptualization and treatment of avoidance in psychological disorders. Contemporary avoidance research is explicitly translational and increasingly focused on how competing appetitive and aversive contingencies influence avoidance. In this laboratory investigation, we examined the effects of escalating social-evaluative threat and threat of social aggression on avoidance of social interactions. During social-defeat learning, 38 adults learned to associate 9 virtual peers with an increasing probability of receiving negative evaluations. Additionally, 1 virtual peer was associated with positive evaluations. Next, in an approach–avoidance task with social-evaluative threat, 1 peer associated with negative evaluations was presented alongside the peer associated with positive evaluations. Approaching peers produced a positive or a probabilistic negative evaluation, while avoiding peers prevented a negative evaluation (and forfeited a positive evaluation). In an approach–avoidance task with social aggression, virtual peers gave and took money away from participants. Escalating social-evaluative threat and aggression increased avoidance, ratings of feeling threatened and threat expectancy and decreased ratings of peer favorableness. These findings underscore the potential of coupling social defeat and approach–avoidance paradigms for translational research on the neurobehavioral mechanisms of social approach–avoidance decision-making and anxiety.     

When Gender Matters in Scientific Communication: The Role of Generic Language

Sex Roles - Prior research has documented gender differences in self-presentation and self-promotion. For example, a recent analysis of scientific publications in the biomedical sciences reveals...     

Quitters would not prosper: Examining the relationship between online assessment performance and assessment attrition behavior

Hiring managers are often hesitant to implement online assessments over concerns that higher‐quality candidates are more likely to quit lengthy assessment batteries than lower‐quality candidates. In this paper, we present the results of two studies that collectively challenge this assumption. In Study 1, data from 327,517 job‐seekers spanning eight hiring contexts showed that assessment performance was negatively associated with subsequent assessment attrition behavior. In Study 2, we replicated this pattern of effects in two additional samples comprising 1,844,604 applicants for hourly associate positions, and 18,937 applicants for nursing positions. Collectively, these findings suggest that some degree of attrition may ultimately benefit, rather than harm, organizations using prehire assessments.     

Hungry people prefer larger bodies and objects: The importance of testing boundary effects

Several lab-based studies have indicated that when people are hungry, they judge larger women's bodies as more attractive, compared to when they are satiated. These satiety-dependent judgements are assumed to provide explanatory power when it comes to the noted cross-cultural differences in attitudes towards women's adiposity, whereby people who live in regions that are under greater nutritional stress tend to have more favourable attitudes towards bigger bodies. However, it is premature to assume that women's bodies are the proper or actual domain of the satiety-dependent judgement shifts found within research study testing contexts until stimuli other than female bodies have also been tested: The research programme falls into the trap of confirmation bias unless we also seek out disconfirmatory evidence and test the boundaries of the effects of hunger. Accordingly, we collected attractiveness judgements of female and male bodies manipulated to vary in size by varying level of adiposity, and objects manipulated to vary in size, from 186 participants who also reported their current hunger level. We found that larger sizes of stimuli in general, and women's bodies in particular, especially when judged by women, were judged as more attractive by the hungrier participants. We discuss these patterns in the context of the Insurance Hypothesis, the Environmental Security Hypothesis, and the impact of hunger on acquisition.