Teaching help‐seeking when lost to individuals with autism spectrum disorder

Deficits in safety skills and communication deficits place individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) at an increased risk of danger. We used a multiple‐probe across‐participants design to evaluate the effects of video modeling and programming common stimuli to teach low‐ and high‐tech help‐seeking responses to children with ASD when lost. Participants acquired answering or making a FaceTime^® call and exchanging an identification card in contrived and natural settings. Responses generalized to novel community settings and maintained during a one‐ and two‐week follow‐up. Social validity measures showed that the procedures and outcomes of the study were acceptable to indirect and direct consumers, and immediate and extended community members. Implications are that children with ASD can effectively be taught both low‐ and high‐tech help‐seeking responses when lost.     

(Probably) not companions in guilt

In this paper, I will attempt to develop and defend a common form of intuitive resistance to the companions in guilt argument. I will argue that (contra the companions in guilt argument) one can reasonably believe there are promising solutions to the access problem for mathematical realism that don’t translate to moral realism. In particular, I will suggest that the structuralist project of accounting for mathematical knowledge in terms of some form of logical knowledge offers significant hope of success while no analogous approach offers such hope for moral realism.     

Athlete Lifestyle Support of Elite Youth Cricketers: An Ethnography of Player Concerns Within a National Talent Development Program

The 15-month ethnography reported here investigated the culturally and contextually relevant lifestyle concerns for which national-level youth cricketers seek support and the personal meanings ascribed to them. Players discussed lifestyle challenges and support, with five themes emerging: (a) players appreciating lifestyle support, (b) adapting to the new environment, (c) managing competing demands, (d) educational choices and professional contracts, and (e) identity negotiation in critical moments. The challenges impacted players' sense of self, well-being, and ultimately performance. The findings suggest lifestyle practitioners should support players through counseling approaches, strong player relationships, and environment immersion with a view to impacting performance.     

Self-care for academics: a poetic invitation to reflect and resist

In newspapers and blogs, on Twitter, and in academic papers, stories of struggling academics abound. Substance abuse, depression, failed relationships, and chronic illness are the casualties of a neoliberal university sector that values quantity over quality and demands ever more for ever less. Within the academic literature a growing counter-movement has called for resistance, collective action, and slow scholarship. Much of this work, however, has focused on strategies that can be applied within academia. Little has been written about the activities that academics do outside the university; activities that have no purpose other than enjoyment, rest, and renewal; activities that represent the valuing of the self as a human being, rather than a means of production; activities that could best be defined as self-care. Using reflective practice to construct a poem comprising three voices, this paper explores those activities. This poetic representation is an effort to create time and space for the authors, and a manifesto to encourage other academics to demand and protect the time, space, and reflective practice that are essential to both personal wellbeing and quality research and education.     

Social Beliefs and Visual Attention: How the Social Relevance of a Cue Influences Spatial Orienting

We are highly tuned to each other's visual attention. Perceiving the eye or hand movements of another person can influence the timing of a saccade or the reach of our own. However, the explanation for such spatial orienting in interpersonal contexts remains disputed. Is it due to the social appearance of the cue—a hand or an eye—or due to its social relevance—a cue that is connected to another person with attentional and intentional states? We developed an interpersonal version of the Posner spatial cueing paradigm. Participants saw a cue and detected a target at the same or a different location, while interacting with an unseen partner. Participants were led to believe that the cue was either connected to the gaze location of their partner or was generated randomly by a computer (Experiment 1), and that their partner had higher or lower social rank while engaged in the same or a different task (Experiment 2). We found that spatial cue‐target compatibility effects were greater when the cue related to a partner's gaze. This effect was amplified by the partner's social rank, but only when participants believed their partner was engaged in the same task. Taken together, this is strong evidence in support of the idea that spatial orienting is interpersonally attuned to the social relevance of the cue—whether the cue is connected to another person, who this person is, and what this person is doing—and does not exclusively rely on the social appearance of the cue. Visual attention is not only guided by the physical salience of one's environment but also by the mental representation of its social relevance.     

Using unexpected questions to elicit information and cues to deceit in interpreter‐based interviews

We examined whether speech‐related differences between truth tellers and liars are more profound when answering unexpected questions than when answering expected questions. We also examined whether the presence of an interpreter affected these results. In the experiment, 204 participants from the United States (Hispanic participants only), Russia, and the Republic of Korea were interviewed in their native language by a native‐speaking interviewer or by a British interviewer through an interpreter. Truth tellers discussed a trip that they had made during the last 12 months; liars fabricated a story about such a trip. The key dependent variables were the amount of information provided and the proportion of all statements that were complications. The proportion of complications distinguished truth tellers from liars better when answering unexpected than expected questions, but only in interpreter‐absent interviews. The number of details provided did not differ between truth tellers and liars or between interpreter‐absent and interpreter‐present interviews.     

Children at Risk: Effects of a Four-Year Head Start Transition Program on Special Education Identification

Children in Head Start are at risk for school learning or behavioral problems. While Head Start has decreased special education placement, there has been little systematic data until recently on identification of children in disability categories following preschool. In this study, two cohorts of 6,162 children across 30 sites were followed through third grade. Approximately half of these children were provided transition assistance from kindergarten through third grade. This included school transition and curricular modifications, parent involvement activities, health screening or referrals, and family social services, all similar to those received in Head Start. They were compared to a similar group of Head Start children who did not receive such services beyond the Head Start experience. Special education eligibility was determined from school records in the spring of third grade. Only 0.89% of children in the transition group were identified in the mental retardation category compared to 1.26% in the non-transition group. In the category of emotional disturbance, these same figures were 1.21% and 1.65% respectively. Both differences were statistically significant, but an opposite effect was found in the category of speech or language impairment. Findings are discussed in relation to differences in disability categories and implications for early identification.     

Perceived Genetic Risks for Bipolar Disorder in a Patient Population: An Exploratory Study

Thirty-one subjects with bipolar illness completed a questionnaire about genetic risk for bipolar disorder. Subjects estimated both quantitative and qualitative genetic risk for bipolar disorder for the following categories: general population, siblings, parents, spouses, and children. Results showed that quantitative risks were inflated when compared to qualitative risks and that subjects routinely overestimated the risk for developing bipolar illness. These findings suggest that genetic counseling may be useful for this population.     

Culturally Congruent Mentoring: Predicting Asian American Student Participation Using the Theory of Reasoned Action1

Predictors of Asian American first‐year college students’ intention to participate in a culturally congruent mentoring program was empirically documented using Ajzen and Fishbein's (1980) theory of reasoned action (TRA). Intention to participate was predicted by the belief that participation eases transition to college. Also, attitude toward participation was positively related to students’ beliefs that participation will strengthen ethnic identity and combat model‐minority myth. With 78% of students who intended to participate, results suggest that Asian American college students need programming that addresses issues as first‐year college students and those related to their cultural experience. The use of the TRA to better understand issues related to peer mentoring is illuminated. Wider implications for implementing culturally congruent mentoring programs in educational settings are discussed.