COMMENTS ON FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS PROCEDURES FOR SCHOOL-BASED BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS

Functional analysis procedures were developed in the 1980s in an effort to determine whether clinicians could identify the function of behavior problems like self-injury and aggression. More recently, several groups of researchers have been attempting to extend that procedure to classroom environments. The following commentary reflects my viewpoint of this transition.     

The importance of the individual in the ‘causal’ relationship between attractiveness and self-esteem

This paper argues that many psychological explanations underlying health and social behaviour stress the importance of the relationship between attractiveness and self-esteem. The nature of this relationship is not well understood, yet can have important implications for the individual in areas of medical intervention which involve treatment on aesthetic grounds. A survey of psychosocial factors among 1018 children aged 11-12 years is reported. The study examined the association between perception of physical attractiveness and self-esteem in order to clarify the relationship between self-esteem and self versus others' perception of attractiveness. Self-ratings of attractiveness were linked to judges' ratings to determine whether subjects underrated, over-rated, or accurately perceived their own physical attractiveness. The results showed that although ratings of general facial attractiveness by others were associated with self-perceived attractiveness, in the specific area of dental health, attractiveness (as judged by others) was not. There were no significant relationships between ratings of attractiveness by others and self-esteem. Self-perception of attractiveness, however, was significantly associated with self-esteem. Further analyses showed that children who under-rated their own facial attractiveness had a lower mean score for self-esteem than over-raters or accurate perceivers (who did not differ significantly). In contrast, under-raters of dental attractiveness had a lower mean score for self-esteem than over-raters, but did not differ significantly from accurate perceivers. Over-raters of dental attractiveness had a higher mean score for self-esteem than accurate perceivers. These finding suggest that if an over-rater were to receive treatment on aesthetic grounds it is unlikely, given that they have high self-esteem already, that such intervention will have a profound psychological impact. These data indicate the importance of determining the way in which individuals evaluate their appearance compared to others, and may help to clarify previously equivocal findings concerning the relationship between self-esteem and attractiveness.     

The behavior analyst consulting model: Identifying and validating naturally effective instructional models

Increasingly, behavior analysts are attempting to develop interventions based on precision assessments of the situational factors surrounding a behavior of interest, those requiring reduction (as in functional analysis) or those requiring acceleration (as in ecobehavioral analysis). Using ecobehavioral assessments of naturalistic classroom instruction, we sought to identify a set of potentially effective procedures and to test their function. Using as selection criteria students' gains in academic achievement, and their observed academic behavior, we identified potentially effective versus ineffective instructional procedures used to teach language arts skills to students with learning disabilities (Study I). Subsequently, we sought to test and replicate the functionality of the identified procedures within a series of single-subject experiments. Results from a resource room application (Study II) indicated that the targeted effective procedure surpassed the targeted ineffective procedure in terms of both content mastery and the quality of students' written language samples. Results from a regular classroom application (Study III) indicated that the targeted effective procedure was also more effective than the conventional instructional procedure employed naturally by the regular education teacher. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

对话学习与道德教育论

C .O .Schrag的哲学解释学和K .J.Gergen的社会结构主义等理论对我们阐明以学生活动为中心的对话学习理论具有启发性。对话学习是我们能够开创美好未来的最佳教育理论。人类是通过对话创造未来可能的生活。人类的未来充满各种不确定性 ,惟有对话才能把这种不确定性转化为确定性和可能性 ,并且把未来的可能性转化为学生的创造性活动。学生是在进行对话的过程中表现自己并得到成长。对话是通过语言的相互交流、相互解释和相互理解来达到共识的过程。另外 ,对话既是学生实现自我潜能的过程 ,同时也是创造文化的过程。学生在面对面的相互理解、相互交流、相互切磋的对话过程中能够创造出新的理念。通过这种对话过程 ,学生将创造出更有价值的人生 ,也将创造出道德的和美学的文化共同体。活生生的对话使你和我成为“亲近的我们” ,使共同体的生活更具有道德性和创造性。总之 ,以学生活动为中心的对话学习教育理论的实施将有力地推进学校、国家和人类的充满道德和创造力的文化共同体。我们社会和教育现状也要求 ,必须要从以老师为中心的教育体制转向以学生对话为中心的新的教育体制。     

Opening to the otherwise: The discipline of listening and the necessity of free‐association for psychoanalytic praxis

It is argued that only free‐association methodically opens the discourse of self‐consciousness (the representations available to reflective awareness) to the voicing of the repressed. The method is key to Freud's originality and the sine qua non of any genuinely psychoanalytic process. Clinical procedures which do not prioritize a steadfast and ongoing commitment to this method (instead emphasizing either interpretative formulations, as decisive acts that appear to fix and finalize the meaning of a particular lived experience, or the vicissitudes of transference‐countertransference in the immediate treatment situation) all too readily entrap the treatment, limiting its capacity to divulge the power of unconscious processes. Influenced by Laplanche, Freud's 1920 principles of lifefulness and deathfulness (the binding and unbinding of psychic energy in representations) facilitate an understanding of the unique significance of free‐associative discourse in opening the representational textuality of self‐consciousness to the voicing of that which is otherwise than representationality and reason. The ‘otherwise’ is intimated as the returning force of the repressed, as the ‘unfathomable navel’ of ‘thing‐presentations,’ experienced and expressed within the text of awareness, yet not translatable into the law and order of its logical and rhetorical reflections. Free‐associative discourse thus affects self‐consciousness in a way that is radically different from other creative procedures (‘psychosynthetic’ or integratively interpretive). In this respect, the status of free‐associative praxis as necessary for a genuinely psychoanalytic process is justified.     

The effects of preference assessment type on problem behavior

Individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities who engage in problem behavior maintained by access to tangibles may exhibit more problem behavior during certain preference assessments. We compared three common preference assessments to determine which resulted in fewer problem behaviors. The paired stimulus and multiple‐stimulus without replacement assessments produced higher rates of problem behavior than the free operant (FO) assessment, suggesting that the FO assessment may be the most appropriate assessment for individuals who engage in problem behavior maintained by access to tangibles.     

Eye tracking reveals the cost of switching between self and other perspectives in a visual perspective-taking task

Previous studies have shown that while people can rapidly and accurately compute their own and other people’s visual perspectives, they experience difficulty ignoring the irrelevant perspective when the two perspectives differ. We used the “avatar” perspective-taking task to examine the mechanisms that underlie these egocentric (i.e., interference from their own perspective) and altercentric (i.e., interference from the other person’s perspective) tendencies. Participants were eye-tracked as they verified the number of discs in a visual scene according to either their own or an on-screen avatar’s perspective. Crucially in some trials the two perspectives were inconsistent (i.e., each saw a different number of discs), while in others they were consistent. To examine the effect of perspective switching, performance was compared for trials that were preceded with the same versus a different perspective cue. We found that altercentric interference can be reduced or eliminated when participants stick with their own perspective across consecutive trials. Our eye-tracking analyses revealed distinct fixation patterns for self and other perspective taking, suggesting that consistency effects in this paradigm are driven by implicit mentalizing of what others can see, and not automatic directional cues from the avatar.     

Effects of self‐enhancement on agreement on personality profiles

Effects of self‐enhancement and socially desirable responding (SDR) on rater agreement for personality profiles were studied in 304 students. Dyads of participants described themselves and their peer on the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO‐PI‐R) that measures 30 facets of personality. In addition, participants filled in six scales measuring self‐enhancement or SDR. Data analyses focussed on moderator and suppressor effects of SDR on the similarity between self‐reported and other reported NEO‐PI‐R profiles. Three kinds of profile agreement were distinguished: (a) normative agreement; (b) distinctive agreement and (c) profile normativeness, that is, how strongly a self‐reported personality profile resembled the average profile of all participants. There were no moderator or suppressor effects on distinctive agreement, but SDR predicted profile normativeness quite strongly. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.