The Roles of Explanation and Feedback in False Belief Understanding: A Microgenetic Analysis

The authors examined effects of feedback and explanation on false belief performance. Thirty-three children (42–54 months; 15 girls, 18 boys) were randomly assigned to four treatment conditions: explanation, feedback, feedback researcher explains, and feedback child explains. Children completed false belief tasks during pretraining, 8 training sessions, and posttraining across 6 weeks. Language comprehension was assessed at pretraining. The authors hypothesized that children would improve most when training involved feedback and explanation. Generalized estimating equations modeling was used to analyze the data. Children who received feedback and generated explanations for characters’ false beliefs improved across training sessions more so than children in other conditions. Children's explanations for false beliefs also were explored. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

Normal/Deserving Citizens and the Transabled Other: A Sociological Analysis of Online Commenters Reactions to Transability

ABSTRACT

In this paper, the authors explore the ways that online commenters on the National Post’s website articulate their opinions, understandings, and feelings about a news story on the topic of transability. By conducting a content analysis of the online data, the authors examine how the commenters demonstrate that dominant forms of power, knowledge, and discourse permeate common-sense understandings of the healthy, normal citizen through their acting incredulous towards, pathologizing, shaming, and sometimes reacting violently towards transabled people.     

examining the role of differential association and techniques of neutralization in explaining corporate crime

A limited number of studies have examined white-collar offending decision making patterns and virtually none have focused on testing Differential Association or Techniques of Neutralization theory in particular. This study evaluates the offending decisions of MBA students to commit corporate offending in the promotion/sales of a hypothetical pharmaceutical drug. The sample consisted of 133 MBA students enrolled at a university in the United States. Findings supported predictions that anticipated agreement of coworkers and the board of directors would be positively associated with decisions to further market and produce a hypothetical drug that was about to be recalled by the Food and Drug Administration. However, results also showed that the decision to commit corporate crime was inversely related to perceptions that close friends and business professors agree with the decision, which went against predictions based on differential association theory. Several neutralizing techniques—especially the beliefs that government exaggerates dangers to the consumer and profit is the most important priority—predicted the decision to further market the drug. Subsequent analyses showed that older respondents were more likely to employ techniques of neutralization in decisions to commit corporate crime, especially techniques relating to profits. Future research directions are outlined.     

An Empirical Test of the Relationship Between Employee Theft and Low Self-Control

Although Gottfredson and Hirschi (1987, 1990 Gottfredson , M. and T. Hirschi . 1990. A General Theory of Crime . Stanford , CA : Stanford University Press. [Google Scholar]) maintain that low self-control can account for white-collar/corporate offending, there have been few and inconclusive empirical tests in this area. One area of white-collar crime, in particular, which could benefit from an examination of the role of low self-control in predicting offending, is employee theft. Although employee theft is one of the more costly and pervasive crimes impacting the American economy each year, there has been very little research examining the role of individual characteristics and personality traits in predicting this type of deviant behavior. The current research is a preliminary attempt at integrating the two bodies of literature, employee theft and low self-control.     

Helping Spouses Cope with Partners Coming Out: A Solution-Focused Approach

This article reviews previous research on coping strategies of spouses with partners who have come out. The current research on coping strategies has come from the work of Amity Pierce Buxton. Next the article examines previous treatment methods used with spouses of gay, lesbian, and bisexual partners. Solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT) is discussed and suggested as an approach with this population. A case example is presented to show how SFBT was used with a client struggling with the news of her partner coming out. Finally, the implications of using SFBT and how the approach helps partners progress through Buxton's stages is discussed.     

Emotional reactivity,self-control and children's hostile attributions over middle childhood

Hostile attribution bias, a child's tendency to interpret ambiguous social information as threatening or hostile, has been discussed as an important point in which social, emotional and cognitive information intersect. This study explores the natural changes that occur in children's hostile attributions across three grades during middle childhood and examines how emotional reactivity and self-control at third, fourth and fifth grade independently and interactively relate to these trajectories. Participants included 919 children whose mothers reported on their emotional reactivity, whose teachers reported on their self-control and who completed an attribution bias interview, all at grades 3, 4 and 5. Results revealed that among children with a greater tendency to make hostile attributions at third grade, lower self-control at third grade was associated with greater initial hostile attribution bias and less decline in biases over time. Additionally, greater emotional reactivity at fourth grade was associated with declines in these children's hostile attributions, but only when self-control was also higher at fourth grade.     

Relational Effects of Reading Motivation and Academic Achievement Among Adolescent Boys

This study explores the relationship between academic achievement and reading motivation among adolescent boys. We seek to understand (1) if motivational construct scores change meaningfully over time, (2) what relationship exists between the achievement scores and reported reading motivation, and (3) if students who report higher reading motivation initially have greater gains in achievement over time than students who report lower reading motivation. Results suggest some variation in construct scores over time. Achievement scores obtained in eighth grade were predictive of numerous motivational construct scores in ninth grade; limited results suggest that motivation in ninth grade may affect later achievement.     

Investigating Links from Teacher Knowledge,to Classroom Practice,to Student Learning in the Instructional System of the Middle-School Mathematics Classroom

Using data collected in 125 seventh-grade and 56 eighth-grade Texas classrooms in the context of the “Scaling Up SimCalc” research project in 2005–07, we examined relationships between teachers’ mathematics knowledge, teachers’ classroom decision making, and student achievement outcomes on topics of rate, proportionality, and linear function—three important and cognitively demanding prealgebra topics. We found that teachers’ mathematical knowledge was correlated with student achievement in only one study out of three. We also found a lack of correlations between teachers’ mathematical knowledge and critical aspects of instructional decision making. Curriculum and other learning resources (e.g., technology, student–student interactions) are clearly important factors for student learning in addition to, and in interaction with, teachers’ mathematical knowledge. Our results suggest that mathematics knowledge for teaching may have a nonlinear relationship with student learning, that those effects may be heavily mediated by other instructional factors, and that short-term content knowledge gains in teacher workshops may not persist in classroom instruction. We discuss a need in the field for richer models of how “mathematical knowledge for teaching” works in the context of complete instructional systems.     

Developing Norms of Argumentation: Metacognitive,Epistemological, and Social Dimensions of Developing Argumentive Competence

We examine how extended engagement in argumentation with peers leads to enhanced metalevel understanding of argumentive discourse. Following such engagement, young adolescents demonstrated enhanced understanding of counterargument and use of evidence as objectives of skilled argumentation, relative to a nonparticipating comparison group. Among the participating group, analysis of metatalk (talk about the discourse, distinguished from talk about the topic) during electronic peer dialogs proved revealing regarding participants’ evolving awareness of and adherence to discourse norms. Metatalk became more reciprocal and sustained with time and revealed an increasing focus on the argumentation process and engagement in talk that seeks to direct it. Implications are considered for understanding and studying argumentation as a social practice that encompasses not only individual skills but also the less visible norms that govern it and that members of a social group come to share.     

Treating PTSD in active duty service members using cognitive processing therapy or prolonged exposure therapy: Examining everyday practice at a military outpatient clinic

The Institute of Medicine has stressed the need for evaluations of evidence-based treatments (EBTs) for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among active duty service members (AD) using a variety of evaluation approaches (Institute of Medicine, 2012). The current study examined the clinical files of 134 service members who completed treatment for PTSD using either prolonged exposure (PE) or cognitive processing therapy at an outpatient clinic. At the completion of each session, therapists made a clinical rating as to whether or not the session was protocol adherent. The total number of treatment sessions and the proportion of sessions rated as being protocol adherent were calculated. Multi-level models estimated the change in patient PTSD and other psychological symptoms over time as a function of clinician-rated protocol adherence and total number of sessions. Approximately 65% of clinic encounters were rated by therapists as being protocol adherent. Significant reductions in PTSD and psychological symptoms were associated with protocol adherence, and this was particularly true for patients who began treatment above clinical thresholds for both PTSD and other psychological symptoms. However, as the number of sessions increased, the impact of protocol adherence was attenuated. Patient characteristics, including gender, ethnicity, and co-morbidity for other psychiatric disorders were not related to symptom change trajectories over time. These findings suggest that protocol adherence and efficiency in delivery of EBTs for the treatment of PTSD with AD is critical.