The Effects of Limited and Conflicting Stereotypic information on Group Categorization in Northern Ireland1

The process of group categorization, as suggested by Tajfel and Turner's (1979) theory of intergroup comparison, was examined under conditions of intergroup conflict in Northern Ireland. The theory predicts that under “normal” conditions groups have a need to distinguish themselves from others. The present study investigates how individuals in Northern Ireland under extreme environmental pressures to identify both their own and other groups, can use learned stereotypic cues in making such categorizations. Results suggested that such limited information was highly effective in the process of categorization, with both Protestant and Catholic subjects exhibiting significant agreement and confidence in identifying unknown persons on the basis of stereotypic cues Conflicting information was found to reduce subject's confidence levels, with conflicting Catholic cues being more disruptive than Protestant ones     

“Caught in the Same Webs”<Emphasis Type="Italic">—</Emphasis>Service Providers’ Insights on Gender-Based and Structural Violence Among Female Temporary Foreign Workers in Canada

Drawing on the experiences of service providers supporting live-in caregivers and migrant agricultural workers in two Canadian provinces (Ontario and Quebec), we explore how structural violence shapes the precarious conditions of female temporary foreign workers. Service providers emphasized how transnational social pressures on women to maintain employment, the captivity involved in women’s employment contracts, the limits on unionization, and women’s isolation and lack of privacy, act together to create an unbalanced relationship between the employer and female worker. In turn, this leads to precarious migration and work conditions that foster a vulnerability to violence and abuse while at the same time limiting access to and delivery of services and social support to female temporary foreign workers. Amid these restrictions, service providers focus on making a difference where they can through initiatives such as human rights education workshops, offering support, understanding Canadian regulation, and empowerment workshops. Greater Canadian national options for permanent residency status could provide a basis for adequate services to temporary foreign workers as part of their universal human rights. Temporary foreign workers contribute to Canadian society, making it encumbant upon the Canadian state to ensure the respect of their universal human rights.     

Use of the pigmentometer,a new device for measuring skin albedo: Relating skin color with a series of physiological measures

Use of the Pigmentometer, a new device for measuring skin albedo: Relating skin color with a series of physiological measures. An apparatus has been described for the indirect measurement of skin albedo in human subjects. This device operates on the principle of the reflectance of light as influenced by the lightness or darkness of the skin. This new equipment was used to examine the relationship between lightness or darkness of the skin and the basal level and responsivity of some autonomic nerovus system physiological variables in a series of 46 black and 47 white male and female subjects. It was observed that blacks had significantly lower (darker) skin albedo (PI), a significantly higher skin resistance (SR) and amplitude of the galvanic skin response (GSR), and an insignificant higher basal heart rate (HR). Pearson Product-Movement correlations between all measures from the total population showed significant relationships between PI and SR, SR and GSR and HR and HRR (heart rate response). The further separation of the total population into subgroups of blacks, whites, males, females, and black and white male and female groups, respectively, altered some of these differences and relationships previously observed. These results appeared to support the premise that race is more responsible for influencing the measured physiological responses, particularly SR, than is the lightness or darkness of the skin.     

Behavioral training for teachers in special education: the Gonzaga University program

The Gonzaga University's behaviorally based Department of Special Education offers an undergraduate major in special education for the completion of a Bachelor of Education degree, as well as a Master of Education in Special Education. The basic behavioral, data‐based model, philosophy, and courses are outlined at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Outcome data gathered from the program's consumers indicated high levels of student and employer satisfaction with the program, the faculty, and the curricular content. The manner in which the program is viewed as compatible with state and national accrediting bodies is discussed. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effects of reciprocal peer tutoring with a group contingency on quiz performance in vocabulary with seventh-and eighth-grade students

The purpose of this study was to compare reciprocal peer tutoring with a group contingency to a traditional vocabulary program in a regular middle-school classroom. The participants were 20 seventh and 12 eighth-grade students enrolled in a private parochial school. A counter-balanced time-series design was employed to evaluate the effects of reciprocal peer tutoring across the two groups of students. The overall results indicated that when students participated in reciprocal peer tutoring, scores on weekly quizzes in vocabulary were signifcantly higher. Reciprocal peer tutoring with a group contingency was beneficial to middle school students, easy to implement, and a cost- and time-efficient system for teachers and students. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mental Causation and Shoemaker-Realization

Sydney Shoemaker has proposed a new definition of `realization’ and used it to try to explain how mental events can be causes within the framework of a non-reductive physicalism. I argue that it is not actually his notion of realization that is doing the work in his account of mental causation, but rather the assumption that certain physical properties entail mental properties that do not entail them. I also point out how his account relies on certain other controversial assumptions, including analytical filler-functionalism for mental properties, and the assumption that causes must be proportional to their effects. I conclude by pointing out that Shoemaker has provided no explanation of why, on his view, certain physical properties entail mental properties.

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