Older adolescent females' knowledge of child development norms

This study, the first of three designed to investigate different age groups' knowledge of developmental norms of children, focused on older adolescent female university students. Data were collected from 280 midwestern university students through a questionnaire consisting of 16 items focusing on physical and social development of children from birth to three years of age. Results showed that knowledge of normal development was both over- and underestimated regardless of age of student or year in school. These findings are discussed within the context of the importance of knowledge of developmental norms for future parents.     

Some comments on Shettel-Neuber and O'Reilly's "handedness and career choice: another look at supposed left/right differences" (1983)

A property of attitudes, namely, the fact that attitudes select facts, is used to comment upon a paper on handedness and career choice.     

Children and cigarettes: The effect of a model who quits

Twenty-six previous studies were reviewed which demonstrated a consistent link between children's smoking uptake and exposure at home to an actively smoking older family member. The present study included another variable: the family model of smoking cessation. The smoking practices, intentions, and attitudes of 344 children aged 10–14 in Western Australia were anonymously assessed. Those with ex-smokers but no active smokers at home resembled children who had never been exposed to a smoking family model in being less likely to smoke now or intend to in the future, having fewer smoking chums, and believing that cigarettes had more personal and social disadvantages than their peers who shared households with active smokers. This suggested that any pro-smoking modeling while the ex-smoker was active had been counteracted by modeling of quitting. Implications for intervention were discussed.     

Michel de Certeau's keys of political discernment in May 1968: The theological-spiritual assumptions that informed his tools of analysis

This article seeks to identify the theoretical tools that supported Michel de Certeau's political discernment during the crisis of May 1968 in France. De Certeau's ability to elucidate the novelty and complexity of this event is linked to the intertwining of his experiences as a historian, traveller (voyageur), and Christian (specifically a Jesuit). De Certeau's articulation of a 'theology of difference' allowed him to construct the intellectual and spiritual tools that enabled a lucid discernment of May 1968. Through this theology, derived from negative theology, de Certeau made the experience of faith operative at a moment of cultural crisis. The article also analyses possibilities involved in the ‘rupture’, that is, the fracture that is implied in modernity; in the notion of an event that highlights the deficiency of language, its incapacity to establish ‘a truthful communication’ in society; and the recognition of the poetic dimension of speech, which is capable of interweaving speech and action. The May 1968 event invites these elements mutually to redefine themselves.     

Choice behavior and the accessibility of the reinforcer

In Experiment 1, matching of relative response rates to relative rates of reinforcement was obtained in concurrent variable-interval schedules when the absolute values of the two concurrent variable-interval schedules varied from 6 sec and 12 sec to 600 sec and 1200 sec. Increases in the duration of the changeover delay, however, produced decreases in the relative response rates and, consequently, some deviation from matching. In Experiment 2, matching of relative response rates to the relative duration of the reinforcer failed to occur when the equal variable-interval schedules arranging access to the two different reinforcer durations (1.5 and 6 sec) were varied in size from concurrent variable-interval 10-sec schedules to concurrent variable-interval 600-sec schedules.     

Rehabilitation of the Culturally Different: A Model of the Individual in Cultural Change

Services of rehabilitation agencies and facilities tend to be structured to the needs of the larger American culture. It is important, however, to reconsider our social service programs in view of the needs of different cultural groups when providing services that will aid these individuals to move across cultural boundaries. An attempt is made in this paper to develop a model of the individual who undergoes such cultural transition. Such a model should help define problems in service programs, assess the value of current service activities, and identify areas for developing new services that will aid the overall process of cultural transition. A model of behavior development is outlined, followed by a formulation of a model of the individual in cultural change.