Divisions of Labor in Mexican Origin and Anglo Families: Structure and Culture

Using OLS regression we model predictors of housework hours for 393 Mexican origin and Anglo families from California and Arizona. Contradicting cultural theories, Mexican origin mothers performed less housework when they were employed more hours, had higher relative earnings, and when husbands had more education. Mexican origin fathers performed more housework when family income was lower, wives contributed a larger share of earnings, and fathers had more egalitarian gender ideals. Fathers’ employment hours, wives’ gender attitudes, and familism were not significantly associated with housework hours in Mexican origin families, but were significant in Anglo families. Unique features of the study include analysis of generational status, gatekeeping, and familism. Theoretical reasons for attitudes and socioeconomic status predicting housework are discussed.     

Feast your eyes: hunger and trait reward drive predict attentional bias for food cues

Appraisal theories of emotion predict that the relevance of a stimulus to a person's needs and goals influences attentional allocation. We used a modified visual probe task to examine the influence of hunger and trait reward drive on food-related attentional bias. Both hunger and trait reward drive predicted degree of attentional "disengagement" from food images at short (100 ms), but not long (500, 2,000 ms) stimulus durations. Effects of hunger were found for both bland and appetizing foods, while effects of reward drive were restricted to appetizing foods. Our findings extend previous research showing delayed "disengagement" from threat-related stimuli, suggesting that both organismic- and goal-relevance are key biasing factors in attentional competition.     

Violent Female Action Characters in Contemporary American Cinema

This research is a content analysis of violent female action characters (“VFAC”) shown in American action films from 1991 through 2005. The analysis focused on three aspects of VFACs: (1) gender stereotypes, (2) demographics, and (3) quantity and type of violence. Findings showed that 58.6% of VFACs were portrayed in a submissive role to the male hero in the film, and 42% were romantically linked to him. The average VFAC was young, white, highly educated, and unmarried. VFACs engaged in masculine types of violence yet retained feminine stereotypes due to their submissive role and romantic involvement with a dominant male hero character. The findings suggest continued gender stereotypes set within a violent framework of contemporary American cinema.     

A Comparison of Within- and Across-Activity Choices for Reducing Challenging Behavior in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Offering children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) choices between activities (e.g., working on math or English), instructional materials (e.g., using a pen or pencil), or environmental arrangements (e.g., where to sit) has been shown to reduce challenging behavior maintained by escape from task demands. However, the majority of research investigating choice-based interventions for challenging behavior has examined across-activity choices (i.e., choosing between activities) and relatively few studies have examined within-activity choice (i.e., choosing between instructional materials or environmental arrangements). The purpose of this study is to replicate and extend previous research on choice-based challenging behavior interventions by comparing the effects of across-activity choices and within-activity choices on the escape-maintained challenging behavior of 4 children with ASD. An alternating treatment design was embedded within the “B” phase of an ABAB design in which the “A” phase represented a no-choice baseline condition. Both choice formats resulted in less challenging behavior than the baseline condition for all participants. Across-activity choice resulted in less challenging behavior than within-activity choice for 3 participants. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

What teacher factors influence their attributions for children's difficulties in learning?

Background Identifying the factors that influence teacher beliefs about teaching children with learning difficulties is important for the success of inclusive education. This study explores the relationship between teachers' role, self‐efficacy, attitudes towards disabled people, teaching experience and training, on teachers' attributions for children's difficulties in learning. Method One hundred and eighteen primary school teachers (44 general mainstream, 33 mainstream learning support, and 41 special education teachers) completed the short form of the Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale, the Interaction with Disabled Persons Scale (IDP), and a revised version of the Teacher Attribution Scale. Results Regression analysis found that teachers' role influenced stability and controllability attributions. However, for stability attributions the effect was not sustained when examined in the context of the other factors of teaching efficacy, experience, training, and attitudes towards disability. What emerged as important instead was strong feelings of sympathy towards disabled people which predicted stable attributions about learning difficulties. Experience of teaching children with additional support needs and teaching efficacy positively predicted external locus of causality attributions. Surprisingly, training was not found to have an impact on attributions. A mixed MANOVA found that mainstream teachers' controllability attributions were influenced by whether or not the child had identified learning support needs. Conclusions Teacher efficacy, experience of teaching students with support needs, attitudes towards disabled people, and teachers' role all impact on teacher attributions, but no relationship with training was found. Implications for teacher training and development, and for student achievement and student self‐perception are discussed.     

“Growing your own herbs” and “cooking from scratch”: Contemporary discourses around good mothering,food, and class‐related identities

In a cultural climate of “intensive parenting” and concerns about the “obesity epidemic,” parents are expected to take responsibility for their children's health, particularly through the provision of a “healthy” diet. This study involved intergenerational dyad interviews with both middle‐class and working‐class mothers and daughters from the United Kingdom. Analysing the data using discourse analysis informed by feminist poststructuralist theory, we found that mothers were positioned as having prime responsibility for the nurturing of family members, including the provision of a healthy diet. However, providing a healthy diet alone was insufficient; mothers needed to demonstrate that time and effort had been taken in the preparation of meals using fresh ingredients. Those who failed to do so were positioned as “lazy,” thus inviting the blaming of mothers for any current or future health problems encountered by family members (especially children). However, talk from some of the working‐class mothers pointed to the unattainable and “classed” ideals that are set by such cultural expectations.     

‘I don't think racism is that bad any more’: Exploring the ‘end of racism’ discourse among students in English schools

In this paper, we present findings on lay constructions of racism from a focus group study (11 groups, n = 72) with a mixed sample of secondary‐school students in England. We show that racism was, on the whole, ‘othered’: It was located in other times, places, and people or was denied altogether. We show that this way of talking about racism had different uses depending on the identity stakes involved in different interactional contexts. Even in the cases where racism was constructed as common, participants worked hard to make an ‘irrefutable’ argument, which suggests that they were anticipating reputational damage by making a claim for the persistence of racism. We discuss these findings with regard to the different levels of analysis involved in constructions of racism (micro‐interactional, local and broader normative context) and with regard to an ‘end of racism’ discourse that appeared to provide the normative framework for participants' accounts.     

Cognitive behavioral therapy reduces suicidal ideation in schizophrenia: results from a randomized controlled trial

Patients with schizophrenia are at high risk of suicide. Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) has been shown to reduce symptoms in schizophrenia. This study examines whether CBT also changes the level of suicidal ideation in patients with schizophrenia compared to a control group. Ninety ambulatory patients with symptoms of schizophrenia resistant to conventional antipsychotic medication were randomized to CBT or befriending. They were assessed using the Comprehensive Psychopathological Rating Scale, including a rating of suicidal ideation at baseline, post intervention, and after 9 months. Post-hoc analysis revealed that CBT provided significant reductions in suicidal ideation at the end of therapy, and sustained at the follow-up. Further research is required to substantiate these findings and determine the process and mechanisms through which this reduction is achieved.     

Let Me Entertain You: The Exciting Perks and Perils of Teaching American Religion as a Vaudeville (or Burlesque?) Performer

While teaching a course on religion and consumer culture in the United States, the author was intensely preoccupied with holding the interest of her undergraduate students during class sessions. Inspired in part by the subject matter of the course, she reflects here upon the extent that her courses on American religion drew upon the semiotics of commercial entertainment. While acknowledging the limitations and distortions possible in thinking of the teacher as an entertainer, this paper explores the teaching metaphor of the Vaudevillian Performer, arguing that if put in context with the work on reception in cultural studies, it can be a helpful model in the classroom.