A comparison of procedural variations in teaching behavior chains: manual guidance, trainer completion, and no completion of untrained steps

We compared variations for teaching a sequence of responses through forward chaining. Seven children who had been diagnosed with autism participated in a comparison of teacher completion (TC) of steps beyond the training step and manually guiding the student (SC) to complete steps beyond the training step. A no-completion (NC) condition, in which the steps beyond the training step were not completed, was added to the comparison with 4 of the participants. Results showed that learning occurred with all procedures, although 5 participants acquired the chains most efficiently in the SC condition and the other 2 learned most efficiently in the TC condition. Of the participants for whom an NC condition was included, the tasks were acquired with the shortest average session length and total training time. Despite the potential benefits of TC and SC procedures, NC is a viable option and may be preferable for some students.     

家中游戏情境对父婴交流行为的影响

采用录像手段,考察真实的家庭环境中,自由游戏和完成任务游戏情境对16对父婴交流行为的影响。研究结果表明：父亲表现出高控制的交流行为,以行动指令和信息祈求①为主,孩子则以顺从行为为主。游戏情境对父亲的部分交流行为有明显影响,父亲在自由游戏中的信息祈求行为①比在任务游戏中多,断言行为②比在任务游戏中少。总体上,父亲根据游戏情境调整自己的交流行为,婴儿也表现出相应的适应性行为。     

Equality of whom? a genetic perspective on equality (of opportunity)

Rawls’ principle of fair equality of opportunity has been regularly discussed and criticized for being inadequate regarding natural inequalities. In so far as this egalitarian goal is sound, the purpose of the paper is to see how the prospect of radical genetic intervention might affect this particular inadequacy. I propose that, in a post-genetic setting, an appropriate response would be to extend the same rules regulating societal inequalities to a regulation of comparable genetic inequalities. I defend this stance against recent arguments from the authors of From Chance to Choice and from Colin Farrelly’s alternative of the genetic difference principle. Thanks and appreciation to Dr. Pete Morris, Noreen McGuire and Ann Feeney for their support and encouragement. My thanks also to the participants of the Ninth Manchester Graduate (Brave New World 2005) Conference in Political Theory, where a shorter version of this paper was read.     

Evaluation of the effects of a childhood depression prevention program

The study aimed to design and evaluate a program for the prevention of childhood depression (“Pozik-Bizi” [in English, “Live-Happily”]), comparing its effects with a socio-emotional intervention program based on cooperative play. The sample comprised 420 students aged 7 to 10?years from the Basque Country, 51.9% were randomly assigned to the experimental condition (“Pozik-Bizi”) program and 48.1% to the control group (“Play program”). Using a pretest-posttest repeated measures experimental design, 7 evaluation instruments were administered. When comparing the two interventions, it was confirmed that those who participated in the “Pozik-Bizi” program significantly decreased their level of clinical maladjustment, school maladjustment, emotional, and behavioral problems, and they increased positive behaviors that inhibit depression. However, the cooperative play program improved self-concept and social skills significantly more than the “Pozik-Bizi” program. The effect size in all the variables was small. The discussion analyzes the effectiveness of specific programs of prevention of childhood depression versus global programs of social-emotional development. This work provides a program to prevent childhood depression that has been shown to be effective in the reduction of clinical variables. In addition, this study confirms the positive potential of programs of cooperative play, to increase self-concept and social skills.     

Impact of play therapy on parent-child relationship stress at a mental health training setting

This study investigated the impact of Child-Centred Play Therapy (CCPT)/Non-Directive Play Therapy on parent-child relationship stress using archival data from 202 child clients divided into clinical behavioural groups over 3-74 sessions in a mental health training setting. Results demonstrated significant differences between pre and post testing on the Parenting Stress Index. CCPT appeared to be especially effective with children identified with clinical externalising behavioural problems, combined externalising and internalising behavioural problems, and children who were not categorised with clinical problem behaviours but whose parents sought counselling services for them. There were also significant differences determined by length of therapy. Results are discussed concerning implications for clinical practice and further research.     

Emergence of Information Transfer by Inductive Learning

We study a simple game theoretic model of information transfer which we consider to be a baseline model for capturing strategic aspects of epistemological questions. In particular, we focus on the question whether simple learning rules lead to an efficient transfer of information. We find that reinforcement learning, which is based exclusively on payoff experiences, is inadequate to generate efficient networks of information transfer. Fictitious play, the game theoretic counterpart to Carnapian inductive logic and a more sophisticated kind of learning, suffices to produce efficiency in information transfer.     

The Incompleteness of ‘Punishment as Fair Play’: A Response to Dagger

Richard Dagger (in this issue) provides perhaps the most persuasive version of a ‘fair play’ theory of criminal punishment, grounded in an attractive liberal republican political theory. But, I argue, his version of the theory still faces serious objections: that its explanation of why some central mala in se are properly criminalised is still distorting, despite his appeal to the burdens of ‘general compliance’; and that it cannot adequately explain (as it should explain) the differential seriousness and wrongfulness of different kinds of crime.

Punishment as Fair Play

This article defends the fair-play theory of legal punishment against three objections. The first, the irrelevance objection, is the long-standing complaint that fair play fails to capture what it is about crimes that makes criminals deserving of punishment; the others are the recently raised false-equivalence and lacks-integration objections. In response, I sketch an account of fair-play theory that is grounded in a conception of the political order as a meta-cooperative practice—a conception that falls somewhere between contractual and communitarian conceptions—and draw on this account to show how the theory can overcome the objections.

公共行政的道德之维

公共行政道德,是现代公共行政的理论研究与实务运行的一个重要维度。但长期以来,公共行政领域存在着严重的忽视价值取向的“技术主义”倾向;公共行政道德以其公共性、服务性和责任性的基本特征,区别于其他领域或类型的道德性质;公共行政道德建设要正确认识和处理技术与价值、公正与效率、制度与品性、权力与权利的关系,坚持价值优先、公正优先、制度优先和权利优先的原则。