Grading the ‘cultural literacy’ project

The essay examines the argument advanced by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., for instituting ‘cultural literacy’ as a fundamental priority of schools. A number of confusions and equivocations in Hirsch's reasoning are identified, and the propensity of his project to indoctrinate is exposed. Among the features of Hirsch's argument shown to be troubling are his shifting construal of ‘language’, his inconsistency about the requirements of cultural literacy, and his uncritical relation to traditional images of the American past and present. The upshot is to raise the question why Hirsch's project has elicited wide support and praise.     

Neural Network Models and Mechanisms of Strategy Development

The focus of this paper is mechanisms that may be responsible for intellectual and developmental differences in the cognitive strategies of typical and atypical children, including those with mental retardation. The discussion of these mechanisms is based on behavioral experiments on external memory strategies and on a set of neural network models designed for these tasks. Following the review of the external memory research, the rationale for using neural network models, how they have been used in other research, and their specific application to intellectual and developmental differences in external memory, including the results of several simulations, are reviewed. This is followed by a discussion of the mechanisms of intellectual differences and developmental change included in the models and some challenges for this type of modeling. Neural network modeling is discussed as an asset to research on cognitive development.     

BEHAVIORAL THERAPY DEVELOPMENT AND PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE:

Abstract— An abundance of research from diverse areas of psychological science is potentially relevant to behavioral therapy development research. The National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health convened a workshop to reinforce the connection between basic behavioral and therapy development research. The articles in this Special Section are the product of this workshop. Several lines of basic behavioral research are described, and implications for the development of behavioral therapies are discussed. This Special Section highlights the notion that strengthening the bond between behavioral therapy development research and basic behavioral science will accelerate the advancement of knowledge about behavior, behavioral change and therapeutic interventions.     

Referenzsemantik in der Partnermodellierung

How can we explain that an assertion on something perceived can be understood in the same manner by somebody who cannot perceive that scene? This problem bases the interest in computational linguistics in how listener modeling could possibly be harmonized with reference semantics. Mental images substituting real perception appear as a way out. The architecture of the listener model has to be adapted to the creation and use of such pictorial data structures. Furthermore, the relation between the latter and a verbal (i. e., propositional) representation must be understood. The resulting architecture of a listener model with reference semantics can be employed to solve communicational problems from three general classes in a better way, as is demonstrated by an example implementation.     

ACADEMIC EFFECTS OF PROVIDING PEER SUPPORT IN GENERAL EDUCATION CLASSROOMS ON STUDENTS WITHOUT DISABILITIES

We studied the academic effects on peers without disabilities of serving as peer supports for students with disabilities in general education classrooms. Three peers were studied using a range of indicators, including academic engagement, coursework performance, and social validity assessments. Peers assisting a student with disabilities via curricular adaptation, assignment completion, and social facilitation constituted the multicomponent independent variable. We used withdrawal or multiple baseline designs to demonstrate positive benefits for peers for all measures used. In addition, follow-up data for 2 peers indicated that the positive changes associated with serving as a peer support were maintained for up to 2 months. Our results are discussed in relation to the possible academic and social effects of providing peer supports in general education classrooms for students with and without disabilities.     

Practice and Persuasive Frame: Effects on Beliefs,Intention, and Performance of a Cancer Self-Examination1

Many behaviors are performed less frequently than intended because they require knowledge and skill to overcome behavioral barriers. This experiment tested effects of two factors, direct experience and message frame, that were hypothesized to affect men's intention to perform the testicle self-exam for cancer (TSE) and their actual exam performance, in part by affecting their knowledge and beliefs about overcoming TSE performance barriers. Men's experience performing the TSE on a life-like model and the frame (negative, positive, or neutral) of the recommendation promoting the exam were manipulated factorially. Consistent with prediction, men who practiced (vs. did not practice) the self-exam: (a) endorsed stronger beliefs about behavior-specific knowledge (e.g., ability to imagine a lump), (b) held more positive intention, and (c) translated that intention more consistently into self-reported action, in part because their behavior-specific knowledge increased their tendency to act on their intention. Consistent with action phase theory (Gollwitzer, 1990), intention related more strongly to behavior-specific beliefs than to general, long-term beliefs, and more strongly than attitude related to behavior-specific beliefs. These findings have practical and theoretical implications for promoting healthful and other intended behaviors.     

Biased attention in childhood Anxiety disorders: A preliminary study

This study provides preliminary tests of two hypotheses: (1) Anxiety-disordered children show an attentional bias toward emotionally threatening stimuli, and (2) normal controls show an attentional bias away from emotionally threatening stimuli. Twelve children, 9 to 14 years of age, with primary diagnoses of anxiety disorder were compared with 12 normal controls matched for age, gender, vocabulary level, and reading ability. Subjects completed a reaction time task that measured visual attention toward threatening versus neutral words. The anxious group showed the predicted attentional bias toward threat words. However, controls did not show the predicted bias away from threat words. These results are the first showing that biased attentional processing occurs among clinically anxious children. The potential role of such an attentional bias in childhood anxiety disorders and future direction for research are discussed.This research was supported by a Seed Grant and a Small Grant to the first author from The Ohio State University. Portions of this paper were presented at the 27th Annual Convention of the Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy, Atlanta, November 1993. Thanks are extended to the participants and all those who helped with the project.     

Aesthetic preference and DSM-IIIR personality disorders

This report tested whether those individuals with a cluster B DSM-IIIR personality disorder (narcissistic, borderline, antisocial or histrionic) had higher scores for aesthetic preference for visually complex drawings using the Barron-Welch Art Scale. In a sample of 141 patients and controls, the 56 subjects who met the criteria for one of the cluster B personality disorder diagnoses displayed higher Barron-Welch Art Scale Scores. A multiple regression analysis showed that narcissistic and borderline personality disorder contributed positively, while dependent personality disorder, negatively to preference for complexity. The findings support the notion that aesthetic choices and values reflected through the dimension of openness to experience may contribute to the behavioral manifestations of the personality disorders.