The assessed crisis service needs of clients in community-based programs serving persons with developmental disabilities

Crisis services for persons with developmental disabilities who display challenging behaviors is rapidly emerging as a critical need for individuals placed in the community. Many states continue to close their large state facilities for persons with developmental disabilities. Challenging behaviors impedes successful living in the community. A questionnaire providing information on the types of challenging behavior, the availability and perceived need for on-site and off-site crisis-respite support services, and the optimal method of accessing community-based crisis services, was sent to Minnesota residential facilities in the metropolitan and rural areas. The results revealed commonalities between these respondents as well as the differences. As the national trend of deinstitutionalization continues, the information derived from this study will be useful for the development of crisis services in other states. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Infinitary Belief Revision

This paper extends the AGM theory of belief revision to accommodate infinitary belief change. We generalize both axiomatization and modeling of the AGM theory. We show that most properties of the AGM belief change operations are preserved by the generalized operations whereas the infinitary belief change operations have their special properties. We prove that the extended axiomatic system for the generalized belief change operators with a Limit Postulate properly specifies infinite belief change. This framework provides a basis for first-order belief revision and the theory of revising a belief state by a belief state.     

Three‐dimensional living

This article is based on a plenary address given to an international audience (from 32 countries) in Vancouver, Canada, as part of the 2001 Going for Gold conference. This conference included delegates from the following associations: the International Association of Educational and Vocational Guidance, the Canadian Counselling Association, Aspect, and the Labour Market and Career Information Association. The article uses a metaphor to broadly address the issue of lifestyle for counselors and clients.     

Seeds aren’t anchors

Exposure to a few task-relevant numerical facts (seed facts) often improves subsequent numerical estimates. We performed two experiments to investigate the mechanism that produces these seeding effects. In Experiment 1, participants estimated national populations; in Experiment 2, they estimated between-city distances. In both, items were selected so that the actual value of the seed facts (SA) was, on average, below participants' initial estimates for those items (S1) and above the initial estimates for the transfer items (T1). Given this configuration, the anchoring position predicts that the postseeding transfer estimates should be greater than the preseeding transfer estimates (T2 > T1), whereas the feedback/induction position predicts the opposite (T2 < T1). In both experiments, the latter pattern of results emerged, supporting the conclusion that seeds aren't anchors.     

General self-efficacy and control in relation to anxiety and cognitive performance

The present investigation employed a general measure of self-efficacy, a measure of perceived control, and items relating to expectation and evaluation (pre and post). The purpose was to determine whether general self-efficacy or perceived control best predicted the criterion variables of state anxiety and performance on a stressful cognitive task (solving anagrams) under conditions of high versus low control. These relationships were tested under the experimental conditions of high and low objective control (i.e., the actual control afforded by the situation). Results showed that general self-efficacy, relative to perceived control was a better predictor of state anxiety in the high and low control conditions but neither predicted actual performance. Participants’ expectations of task difficulty, their own performance, and their performance relative to the performance of others taken before the task were compared with their evaluations of difficulty and performance after completing the task. Participants indicated that the task was easier than anticipated, but rated their own performance more poorly after completion of the task. The study reported in this article was supported, in part, by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Grant No. 410-94-1473 to Norman S. Endler.     

Verbal and Nonverbal Emotional Memory Following Unilateral Amygdala Damage

The amygdala is involved in the normal facilitation of memory by emotion, but the separate contributions of the left and right amygdala to memory for verbal or nonverbal emotional material have not been investigated. Fourteen patients with damage to the medial temporal lobe including the amygdala (seven left, seven right), 18 brain-damaged, and 36 normal controls were exposed to emotional and neutral pictures accompanied by verbal narratives. Memory for both narratives and pictures was assessed with a free recall test 24 h later. Subjects with left amygdala damage failed to show the normally robust enhancement of memory for verbal and nonverbal emotional stimuli. The group with right amygdala damage showed the normal pattern of facilitation of memory by emotion for both verbal and nonverbal stimuli despite an overall reduction in memory performance. Furthermore, subjects with left amygdala damage were disproportionately impaired on memory for emotional narratives as compared with memory for emotional pictures. The latter finding offers partial support for a lateralized and material-specific pattern of the amygdala's contribution to emotional memory.     

Criteria of Justice: Desert,Needs and Equality

The conception of social justice as equality is defended in this paper by examining what may appear to be two inegalitarian conceptions of justice, as distribution according to desert and as distribution according to need. It is argued that claims of just entitlement arise within a context of reciprocal co-operation for mutual benefit. Within such a context there are special cases where it can be said that those who contribute more deserve more, and that those who need more should get more, but those claims themselves presuppose a norm of equal contribution and equal benefit. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.