When to Self-Correct?: A Comparison of Two Procedures on Spelling Performance

We compared the effects of two self-correction procedures on the spelling performance of 5 elementary school students with learning disabilities. Previous studies consistently have demonstrated self-correction to be more effective than traditional approaches to spelling instruction. However, we could find no single-subject design experiments analyzing the procedural details of how or when self-correction should be conducted to be most effective. For 4 days each week students practiced a list of 20 spelling words by listening to an audiotape on which the weekly list was dictated and writing the words. For half of each week's words, students checked and self-corrected after attempting each word; for the other half of the list, the students self-corrected after attempting all 10 words. An alternating treatments design showed self-correction after each word to be more effective for acquisition of new spelling words as measured by end-of-the-week tests for all 5 students, and maintenance of previously studied spelling words as measured by 1-week maintenance tests for 4 of the 5 students.     

An integrated model for guiding the selection of treatment components for problem behavior maintained by automatic reinforcement

We evaluated the usefulness of 2 assessments to guide treatment selection for individuals whose prior functional analysis indicated that automatic reinforcement maintained their problem behavior. In the 1st assessment, we compared levels of problem behavior during a noncontingent play condition and an alone or ignore condition. In the 2nd, we assessed participants’ relative preferences for automatic reinforcement and social reinforcers in a concurrent‐operants arrangement. We used the results of these 2 assessments to assign 5 participants to a treatment based on noncontingent access to social reinforcers or to a treatment based on differential access to social reinforcers. We conducted monthly probes with the participants over 10 to 12 months to evaluate the effects of the treatment procedures. All participants showed reductions in problem behavior over this period.     

Cultural worldviews and climate change: A view from China

We investigated the association between cultural worldviews and climate change risk perceptions, support for climate friendly policies and climate change mitigation behaviours in a large Chinese sample. Items from Dake's cultural theory scales and Kahan's cultural cognition scale were presented to a Qualtrics online panel consisting of 515 Mandarin‐speaking residents of Beijing. A series of factor analyses revealed that the combined item sets were best represented by four‐dimensions: hierarchism, individualism, egalitarianism and fatalism. Mediation analysis revealed that respondents with egalitarian and non‐fatalist worldviews perceived greater risk associated with climate change, which in turn predicted greater support for policies to manage climate change and increased mitigation behaviour. In addition, respondents who scored high on individualism were less likely to support climate change policies, but this effect was not mediated by risk perceptions. Overall, our results suggest cultural worldviews may influence policy support both directly and indirectly through risk perceptions.     

Intoxicated Witnesses: Testing the Validity of the Alcohol Myopia Theory

In an assessment of the Alcohol Myopia Theory (AMT), the effects of alcohol on an eyewitness's recall of high‐salience and low‐salience details were investigated. In a laboratory, Study 1 participants watched a staged videoed theft whilst either sober (control or placebo), above (M_BAC = 0.09%) or below (M_BAC = 0.06%) the UK drink‐drive limit. A week later, a free recall and recognition tests were completed. Intoxication was not found to reduce recall accuracy using either recall task. In Study 2, whilst on a night out, participants watched the videoed theft with high (M_BAC = 0.14%) or low (M_BAC = 0.05%) blood alcohol concentrations (BACs). A week later, the free recall and recognition tests were attempted. High BACs were seen to impair recall when memory was assessed through free recall but not with the recognition test. Neither study found the attention narrowing predicted by AMT using either recall technique, although poor recall for low‐salience details in all groups may have contributed to this result. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Perspectives from the Edge: Chaplains in Greater Boston, 1945–2015

We follow Bender et al.’s (Religion on the Edge: De‐Centering and Recentering the Sociology of Religion) call to study religion “on the edge” by looking at the work of chaplains, religious professionals who work outside of congregations. Rather than studying chaplains within a single type of institution—the military, healthcare, or other sectors—we shift the unit of analysis to geography, asking where chaplains in Greater Boston worked between 1945 and the present. Based on coverage in the Boston Globe, we find that chaplains, mostly men, worked across Greater Boston between 1945 and 2015. The majority were Catholic with frequent minorities of Protestants and Jews, and—after 1995—a few Buddhists, Muslims, and Humanists. Most worked in higher education, healthcare, and prisons. While much of the chaplains’ work seems improvisational and varied, we identify services related to ceremonies, bearing witness, and working around death as common occurrences across the venues where chaplains worked. To the extent that these patterns are evident in other cities, they suggest that chaplains have regularly been a quiet part of the religious landscape, that they are a consistent part of the institutional field, and that their work has more commonalities across sectors than previous studies suggest.     

Cumulative Risk,Emotion Dysregulation,and Adjustment in South African Youth

Research on cumulative risk is growing, however, little work has occurred in low- or middle-income countries, and few studies have focused on processes linking risk to outcomes. This study explored relations between components of cumulative risk and adjustment in a sample of 324 South African youth (M age?=?13.11 years; SD?=?1.54 years; 65% female; 56% Black/African; 14% Colored; 23% Indian; 7% White), and tested competing models of emotion dysregulation as a mediator or moderator of risk—adjustment links. Data was collected from youth and their female caregivers during home interviews. Structural equation models and regression analyses accounting for age and sex contributions revealed that emotion dysregulation mediated associations between sociodemographic risk and internalizing symptoms, externalizing problem behavior, and drug use severity, and moderated links between psychosocial risk and internalizing symptoms and externalizing problem behavior. For the mediator models, sociodemographic risk was associated with impaired emotion regulation, which in turn was linked with heightened adjustment difficulties. For the moderator models, psychosocial risk was linked with adjustment problems only when emotion dysregulation was high. These data indicate the importance of disentangling components of cumulative risk. Future research within the South African cultural context might build on these findings by adapting and testing school- or family-based prevention or intervention programs that include modules on emotion regulation.