A Debate on the Ethics of Aging: Does the Concept of Autonomy Provide a Sufficient Framework for Aging Policy?

This article presents a debate on the issue of autonomy in aging policy held at the 1994 annual meeting of the American Society on Aging held in San Francisco, California. Harry R. Moody, director of the Institute for Human Values in Aging at Hunter College, supports a reconceptualized notion of personal autonomy which focuses on issues of power, theory, and practice, and finds conflicts between autonomy and justice in the lived world of the elderly and disabled. In aging policy, he promotes an emphasis on social movements such as Hospice rather than on autonomy of individuals. He suggests alternatives to extreme paternalism or complete autonomy, such as a communicative ethics approach. Larry Polivka, director of the Florida Policy Exchange Center on Aging at the University of South Florida, affirms that policy for the aging and disabled should be based ona commitment to autonomy. He describes an integrated model for long-term care that places autonomy first and includes features of communicative ethics and the negotiated consent and virtues models of ethics.     

Construct similarity, self-meaningfulness, and interpersonal attraction

Self-meaningfulness, a concept arising from personal construct theory research, has been defined in terms of the importance of the self in the personal construct system Forty-two undergraduate volunteers completed Repertory Grid ratings of the self and 15 individuals (five liked, five disliked, and five toward whom the subject was neutral) It was found that high self-meaningfulness individuals' ratings of attraction were more strongly associated with the perception of similarity than were the ratings of low self-meaningfulness subjects High self-meaningfulness subjects saw liked individuals as significantly more similar to the self than did low self-meaningfulness subjects In addition, liked, neutral, and disliked figures were seen as significantly different from one another on the similarity to self-measure for high self-meaningfulness subjects Only disliked figures were judged as more distant from the self for low self-meaningfulness subjects These findings were discussed in terms of the importance of investigating individual differences in similarity-attraction     

Lexical development norms for young children

Developmental norms for young children’s vocabularies have a number of applications in research design, assessment, and intervention, but have previously been very difficult to obtain. In the present study, month-by-month norms for comprehension and production of 396 words from 8 to 16 months, and production of 680 words from 16 to 30 months, were derived from a norming study of 1,789 children between the ages of 8 and 30 months using the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories (Fenson et al., 1993). The norms are available in the form of a database program, LEX, for MS-DOS-based computers.     

Family characteristics as mediators of the influence of problem drinking and multiple risk status on child mental health

Structural equation modeling was used to test a theoretical model in which family cohesion and family reframing coping were hypothesized as mediators between family drinking problems, multiple risk factors, negative life events, and child mental health (conduct disorder, depression, anxiety) in two-parent families. Family cohesion mediated the relationships of family drinking problems and negative life events to child conduct disorder and depression. Negative life events mediated the relationships of family drinking problems and family multiple risk to child conduct disorder. Family reframing coping did not function as a mediator nor was it related to child mental health when other factors were considered simultaneously. Results indicate that increasing family cohesion and reducing sources of stress within the family (negative life events) represent promising areas for interventions for children with problem-drinking parents. Work on this study was funded in part by the National Institute for Mental Health Grant 2-P50-MH39246-06 to support a Preventive Intervention Research Center. The authors gratefully acknowledge contributions made by Rita Shell, Marcia Michaels, Joanne Gersten, George Knight, and Carolyn Berg.     

A Model Faculty Peer Review Process for Counselor Education Programs

The authors describe a counselor education faculty peer review model that addresses the professional functioning of each member of the counselor education faculty regardless of her or his rank, salary, status, or administrative responsibilities.     

Retention and treatment failure in Classwide Peer Tutoring: Implications for further research

Knowledge of basic arithmetic facts aids in the acquisition and speed of performance of arithmetic operations. A peer mediated instructional procedure, Classwide Peer Tutoring (CWPT), has been shown to increase the rates and accuracy of students responses to academic tasks and to improve student performance on a variety of academic tasks. The present investigation evaluated the retention of 100 subtraction items by primary grade-age children with mild disabilities using CWPT for 10 weeks. Short- and long-term retention of items, and rate of correct responding were assessed. Results indicated that the students' average pretest score was 58.0% correct, and their average weekly posttest score was 87.12 correct, a 27% improvement in accuracy. Short- and longer-term retention measured on posttests was 88.7 % and 85.0% correct, respectively. Improvement in students rate of accurate responding to subtraction items practiced during CWPT was obtained. Student failure to learn particular items was not attributable to fewer opportunities to practice these items, less accurate practice, or item difficulty. Students reported positive evaluation of CWPT and perceived positive social and self esteem outcomes. Directions for future research focusing on retention and analysis of treatment failure are suggested.