A COMPARISON OF TIME DELAY AND DECREASING PROMPT HIERARCHY STRATEGIES IN TEACHING BANKING SKILLS TO STUDENTS WITH MODERATE HANDICAPS

Four students with moderate handicaps were taught to cash checks and to use an automatic teller through either a decreasing prompt hierarchy or time delay procedure. The strategies were compared within a multielement design. Results indicated that both strategies led to the acquisition of the target tasks; however, the decreasing prompt hierarchy was more efficient. Four and 8-week follow-up probes indicated that the strategies were equally effective in producing maintenance of performance.     

A Comparison of Constant Time Delay and Simultaneous Prompting Within Embedded Instruction in General Education Classes with Students with Moderate to Severe Disabilities

An adapted alternating treatment design was used to measure the effectiveness of constant time delay and simultaneous prompting procedures within an embedded instruction format on the acquisition of academic skills. Four middle school students with moderate to severe disabilities and the paraprofessionals who supported these students in their general education classes participated in the study. The results of the study indicated that both procedures were effective in promoting the acquisition of the target skills. However, the constant time delay procedure was more effective for two of the students and the simultaneous prompting procedure was more effective for the remaining students. Results are discussed in terms of future research and implications for supporting the inclusion of students with moderate and severe disabilities in general education classes.     

Mind and the Environment

Intuitively, an object is something that coheres internally and is largely independent of its environment. But what is the environment? Viewed at one scale, it surrounds and separates objects and differentiates them. Viewed at another scale, it is itself a collection of objects surrounded by (more) environment. At all scales, we describe the world in terms of objects in an environment. I examine the nature of the environment and its role in mediating the object-subject relation. This dedicated analysis of the environment provides a new perspective on the notion of objectivity.     

Preschoolers’ autobiographical memory specificity relates to their emotional adjustment

Reduced autobiographical memory specificity (AMS) has robust associations with psychopathology. As such, understanding the development of AMS (or its inverse, overgeneral autobiographical memory) and how it may be unique from other aspects of memory performance is important. In particular, it is unclear whether child AMS is distinct from autobiographical memory performance in other contexts, such as during mother–child reminiscing, and whether reduced AMS during early childhood is associated with emotional adjustment as found later in development. In this study, associations between children’s AMS and memory performance during mother–child reminiscing were evaluated. Moreover, the contributions of each type of child memory performance to child internalizing and externalizing symptoms were examined. Participants included 95 mother–child dyads drawn from a diverse, low-income community. Children’s ages ranged from 3.5 years to 6 years. Dyads participated in a joint reminiscing task about 4 past events, children participated in assessments of AMS, and mothers rated children’s emotional adjustment. Path analysis results indicated that children’s AMS was not significantly related to children’s unique memory contributions during reminiscing. Child AMS was negatively associated with emotional symptoms, whereas child memory during reminiscing was not.     

‘That's OK. He's a guy’: A mixed-methods study of gender double-standards for alcohol use

Although drinking and drunkenness have traditionally been considered masculine behaviours, young women's alcohol consumption has increased in recent years. This mixed methods study was conducted to examine the extent to which young people endorse gender double-standards for alcohol use – i.e., less acceptance of drinking and drunkenness in women than men – and how these influence men's and women's alcohol consumption. A sample of 731 English university students completed an online survey of gender role attitudes, beliefs about the gendered nature of alcohol use and recent alcohol consumption. Sixteen participants were then purposively selected for individual interviews: eight women and men with the most egalitarian gender role beliefs, and eight women and men with the least egalitarian beliefs. The two sets of data revealed that although there were few sex differences in actual levels of drinking or drunkenness, gender double-standards for alcohol use persist: beer drinking, binge drinking and public drunkenness tended to be perceived as masculine, and even the most egalitarian respondents were more judgemental of women's drinking. Participants modified their drinking style so as to maintain a desired gender identity. Although gender double-standards could be a focus of interventions to encourage moderate drinking, such approaches could reinforce gender inequalities.     

Perceptual Processes in the Cross-Race Effect: Evidence From Eyetracking

The cross-race effect (CRE) is the tendency to have better recognition accuracy for same-race than for other-race faces due to differential encoding strategies. Research exploring the nature of encoding differences has yielded few definitive conclusions. The present experiments explored this issue using an eyetracker during a recognition task involving White participants viewing White and African American faces. Participants fixated faster and longer on the upper features of White faces and the lower features of African American faces. When instructing participants to attend to certain features in African American faces, this pattern was exaggerated. Gaze patterns were related to improved recognition accuracy.