‘Who would take whose name?’ Accounts of naming practices in same‐sex relationships

The practice of a woman assuming her husband's last name upon marriage is a deeply embedded norm in some countries. Whether or not individual heterosexual couples reproduce or resist this practice, it provides a context for making decisions about marital names. No conventions, other than heteronormative ones, govern naming practices in same‐sex relationships and families, but very little is known about name changing in these contexts. This paper reports an exploratory qualitative study of the ways in which 30 lesbians and gay men in committed relationships made meaning of name changing and keeping. Only one participant reported changing her last name, some considered name changing a future possibility, but most had no plans to change their name. The lack of conventions regarding naming in same‐sex families created a dilemma for some participants—who would take whose name? Many participants did not want to entirely give up their name, thus a hyphenated last name was the most popular option for those contemplating a name change. Accounts of name changing centred on doing/being family. This was also a theme in accounts of name keeping, along with maintaining a continuity of personal and professional identity, avoiding hassle, complications and confusion and resisting heteronormativity. The findings are discussed in relation to other research on naming in same‐sex families and research on heterosexual marital naming practices. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

TEACHING CHILDREN WITH AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER TO MAND FOR INFORMATION USING “WHICH?”

We examined a procedure consisting of a preference assessment, prompting, contrived conditioned establishing operations, and consequences for correct and incorrect responses for teaching children with autism to mand “which?” We used a modified multiple baseline design across 3 participants. All the children learned to mand “which?” Generalization occurred to the natural environment, to a novel activity, and to a novel container; the results were maintained over time.Key words: mand for information, verbal behavior, verbal operant, whichContrived motivating operations have been used to teach mands for information to children with autism, including the mands “what?” (e.g., Williams, Donley, & Keller, 2000), “where?” (e.g., Betz, Higbee, & Pollard, 2010; Lechago, Carr, Grow, Love, & Almason, 2010), and “who?” (e.g., Endicott & Higbee, 2007; Sundberg, Loeb, Hale, & Eigenheer, 2002). More recently, researchers have examined the effects of contriving establishing operations (CEOs) in four different ways to teach children with autism to acquire the mands “what?” (Marion, Martin, Yu, & Buhler, 2011; Roy-Wsiaki, Marion, Martin, & Yu, 2010) and “where?” (Marion, Martin, Yu, Buhler, & Kerr, in press). Like the mands “what?” and “where?,” the mand “which?” is a mand for information that gives the speaker the ability to gather specific information regarding an item (e.g., “Which book is mine?”). Given the dearth of research that has examined interventions to teach mands for information using “which?,” the purpose of the present study was to extend the work of Marion et al. (2011, in press) by contriving one of four CEOs for teaching the mand “which?” to children with autism, and to assess for generalization to the other CEOs, the natural environment, and over time.     

Nutritional habits and motivations to eat after a palatable pre-load

A representative sample of college students was surveyed about nutritional habits and motivations to eat. Females were more likely to report dieting, being overweight, reading nutritional labels, eating healthy meals, as well as hungering for and consuming lower fat foods compared to males. Males reported a greater hunger for and consumption of candy bars compared to females. Thus, females may not be as ambivalent about eating sweet or higher fat foods as previously suggested. The experimental manipulation involved exposing subjects to either candy before the survey, candy with the survey, or just the survey with no candy exposure. Females exposed to the candy preload indicated an increased hunger for fruits and vegetables compared to female controls. Portions of this research have been presented at the 1999 annual meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association in Providence, RI. The authors would like to thank Mr. Steve Lukasik and Ms. Christie Piedmont for their assistance on this project.