INCREASING AUTISTIC CHILDREN'S SPONTANEOUS VERBALIZATIONS OF AFFECTION: AN ASSESSMENT OF TIME DELAY AND PEER MODELING PROCEDURES

We assessed the efficacy of time delay and peer modeling procedures in increasing autistic children's spontaneous verbalizations of affection. Four autistic children were taught to spontaneously say “I like (love) you” in response to a hug from a familiar person and their mother. Generalization from a free play training setting to free play outdoors and at home was assessed. Ancillary social and affection behaviors were also observed. Results indicated that the time delay was a quick and effective procedure for all the children. Peer modeling was unsuccessful in teaching the target behavior.     

Grandparents Raising Grandchildren

Children and youths are being raised by grandparents in greater numbers than would be expected by choice or by chance. These new households represent a transfer of child-rearing responsibilities from an absent or incapacitated parent to an older adult who could also be at risk for disability. This article discusses the implications of this trend for the helping professions, particularly as they apply to interventions required to assure the mental and physical stability of both grandparent and child.     

The Many Meanings of Religiousness: A Policy-Capturing Approach

ABSTRACT This article reports the results of two policy-capturing studies that investigated individual differences in the meaning of religiousness. Policy capturing requires judges to respond to a large number of hypothetical scenarios or profiles that differ along a number of potentially relevant cues or attributes. Multiple regression analyses are then conducted to ascertain which cues are influencing each judge's responses. For both studies, 100 profiles were developed describing hypothetical individuals who differed on 10 cues thought to influence perceptions of religiousness (e.g., church attendance, doctrinal orthodoxy), and judges rated each profile on a 9-point religiousness scale. Judges in Study 1 were 27 Roman Catholic and Protestant college students. Policy-capturing analyses identified clear individual differences in the cues that afifected judgments of religiousness, and in the self-insight of the students into their personal policies. To test whether these findings reflected the youth or religious maturity of the sample, the study was replicated with a sample of 22 Catholic and Protestant clergy. Similar results were found in Study 2. In both samples, individual policy capturing did a significantly better job of predicting judgments of religiousness than did self-described policies or policies created by averaging across judges. Together these findings underscore the diversity of religious meanings and the need for further idiographic investigations in the psychology of religion.     

Social and Situational Factors Associated With Contraceptive Switching: Implications for Practitioners1

This study was an investigation of contraceptive switching in the context of a 5-wave panel design of diaphragm and pill users from the New York City metropolitan area. The respondents were 525 women between the ages of 14 and 46, who came to one of 10 family planning clinics to obtain birth control, Results indicated a hazard function for switching in which the hazard rate increased in the initial weeks and then gradually declined over time. Clinic experiences on the part of the women were found to alter survivorship trends. Implications of the data for service providers were developed.     

Review

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Review