Commentary on “six domains of research ethics”

This commentary on K.D. Pimple’s “Six Domains of Research Ethics”, focuses on the area of institutional integrity and looks at “relationships between researchers, their sponsoring institutions, funding agencies, and the government,” considering the implications of institutional demands and support for research, and, in turn, demands and support on research priorities and public education.     

The Comparative Effects of a Modified Self-Questioning Strategy and Story Mapping on the Reading Comprehension of Elementary Students with Learning Disabilities

An alternating treatments design was used to examine the effects of story mapping, a modified self-questioning strategy, and no intervention on literal and inferential reading comprehension of elementary students with learning disabilities. Immediate post-tests indicated that students attained significantly greater comprehension in the self-questioning and story mapping conditions over no intervention. Although students attained similarly high levels of overall comprehension when they used story mapping and self-questioning, students scored slightly higher on inferential comprehension questions in the self-questioning condition. Additionally, 4 out of the 5 students indicated a preference for the self-questioning strategy.     

Does the covert nature of caring prohibit the development of effective services for young carers?

Almost 3 million children in the UK live in households where at least one family member is affected by chronic illness or disability. A proportion of these children will be young carers. This paper begins with a brief review of the literature relating to young carers. Particular attention is paid to the adoption of a caring role, the'hidden' nature of caring including young people'sreluctance to discuss their caring, the impact of caring on education, and the location and type of services provided.The findings of a small-scale study carried out in Scotland are presented in order to highlight some of the issues raised in the literature. Discussion focuses on the implications for the field of guidance and counselling.     

Life Satisfaction Among Rural Low-Income Mothers: The Influence of Health, Human, Personal, and Social Capital

The satisfaction with life among rural low-income mothers was assessed using a sample of 163 mothers who participated in a multi-state, three-year longitudinal study. Dependent variables included those that represented various forms of capital (health, human, personal and social) as well as the mothers’ levels of life satisfaction from prior years. Nearly two-thirds of the rural mothers were satisfied with their life in all three years. Their level of satisfaction appeared to be constant, however, such persistence had a time frame of only one year. The variables that affected their satisfaction with life were symptoms of risk of depression (health capital) and income adequacy (personal capital). These findings provide important insight on a marginalized, yet often overlooked, population.     

A retrospective survey of community based utilization of Tay Sachs screening in Eight New Jersey counties

The purpose of this study was to determine the rate of utilization of Tay Sachs disease screening by the Ashkenazi Jewish population. Pregnant women who were referred to one of three genetic centers in New Jersey for amniocentesis unrelated to Tay Sachs screening were the study population. 4490 charts were reviewed retrospectively to determine the at risk population for Tay Sachs disease (Ashkenazi Jews) and whether or not patients and their spouses had elected Tay Sachs screening prior to referral. A group of 25 patients who did not elect screening were questioned as to their specific reason for declining Tay Sachs screening. Overall community utilization was 90%. Of the couples who did not elect screening, 64% felt that their risk to have an affected child was too small, 16% could not recall Tay Sachs screening being offered to them, 8% felt that screening was inconvenient. Tay Sachs screening as a voluntary preventive health care program has a high utilization rate in our study group.     

A Perspective on the Neurobiology of Language

This paper provides a perspective on current issues and challenges in the investigation of the neurobiology of language. It is proposed that the speech/language deficits of aphasic patients reflect impairments in the processing components involved in accessing language. More specifically, it is hypothesized that many of these deficits result from changes in the activation level of word candidates in the lexicon. Because word recognition and lexical access processes are crucially involved in virtually all aspects of language processing, such an impairment has repercussions throughout the components of the linguistic grammar. It is suggested that the intersection of such language behaviors with the identification of underlying neural systems will define future research directions. Methodological and technological issues are discussed as they impact on current and future research.