Engagement mentoring for socially excluded youth: problematising an 'holistic' approach to creating employability through the transformation of habitus

This paper traces the emergence of engagement mentoring, which seeks to re-engage socially excluded youth with the formal labour market by altering their attitudes, values, and beliefs. Engagement mentoring has been promoted in European and British policy as an holistic response to social exclusion, for example, in the new Connexions service. However, the original meaning of 'holism' has become contested, and policies and practices which claim to be holistic require clearer analysis. Drawing on Bourdieuian theory, and evidence from recent research, this paper interrogates the holistic claims of engagement mentoring from the perspective of its intended effects on mentees. It argues that the model treats personal disposition--habitus--as a raw material to be wrought into 'employable' dispositions, with little or no acknowledgement of institutional or structural fields of power. However, habitus is highly complex, with deep-rooted and collective aspects not easily transformed. A greater understanding of habitus might result in more genuinely holistic approaches to mentoring, and counter a perceptible policy drift towards totalitarian rather than holistic practice.     

A comparison of the effects of partial reinforcement schedules using a within-subject serial autoshaping procedure

Three experiments, each using a single group of pigeons, are reported. In Experiment 1 subjects were initially trained with two stimuli, one of which was always followed by food, the other being reinforced according to a 50% partial reinforcement schedule. Subsequently a serial procedure was adopted in which an additional stimulus, C, was consistently followed by the partially reinforced CS. A second additional stimulus, A, was followed on half of its occurrences by the continuously reinforced CS, its remaining presentations being followed by nothing. The rate of autoshaped keypecking was substantially greater during A than during C. In the remaining experiments subjects received first-order conditioning with a single stimulus that was either partially (Experiment 2) or continuously (Experiment 3) reinforced. The stimuli A and C were then again introduced for serial autoshaping. Stimulus A was occasionally paired with the CS and occasionally followed by nothing, whereas stimulus C was always followed by the CS. As in Experiment 1, the rate of responding during A was greater than during C. It is proposed that one influence on the rate of autoshaped keypecking during a CS is the accuracy with which the immediate consequences of that CS are predicted.     

Verbal conditioning of stimulus significance in the orienting response context

The manipulation of stimulus significance, by instructions from the experimenter, may be taken as an example of verbal conditioning. Consideration of such a mechanism suggested that personality effects previously found in conditioning studies should be apparent in instructional manipulations of significance in a study of the orienting response (OR) to words. Because of recent changes in dimensioning of the personality structure, some of the items originally used to define Eysenck’s extraversion (E) dimension are now used to assess the new dimension of psychoticism (P), suggesting that at least some of the established effects of E upon conditioning may be associated now with P. Hence the P scale was focused on in this study. Words differing on the evaluative dimension of the semantic differential were presented in three blocks, the first under indifferent instructions, the second under instructions to rate the words for their affective impact, and the third under indifferent instructions again. These blocks correspond to baseline, conditioning, and extinction conditions respectively. Electrodermal activity indicated enhanced conditioning, together with greater carry-over effects in the extinction phase, for low-P compared with high-P subjects. The results indicate the importance of personality effects in studies of stimulus significance and illustrate the value of the verbal conditioning mechanism in this area of the OR field. They also suggest the need to re-examine previously obtained E-effects in conditioning studies in light of changing personality tests.     

Validity and clinical scale comparisons between the MMPI and MMPI-2 with psychiatric inpatients.

This study was designed to investigate the comparability of the original MMPI (1950) and the MMPI-2 (1989) with a psychiatric patient population. 34 male and 3 female patients, shortly after admission to one of two acute psychiatry units, completed the old and revised versions of the MMPI. Paired t tests indicated but scant differences for raw scores, while many more differences were found among T scores for validity, clinical, and supplemental scales. Analyses, however, showed all scales on the two forms to be highly correlated. Analysis of the high-point and two-point codes across the two administrations also showed relative stability, although the proportion of Scales 2 (Depression) and 8 (Schizophrenia) decreased, while those for Scales 6 (Paranoia) and 7 (Psychasthenia) increased markedly in the MMPI-2 protocols. Examination of each version's discriminability among mood- and thought-disordered subsamples suggested that the MMPI provides slightly better delineation between diagnostic classes. Discriminant function analyses showed that there were essentially no differences between the two forms in the accurate classification of clinical and nonclinical groups. The findings reported here provide support for the MMPI-2; despite modification, the newer form retains the advantages of the original MMPI. Differences found here may be unique to psychiatric patients and their patterns of MMPI/MMPI-2 equivalence and may not generalize to other special populations.     

TEACHING IDIOM COMPREHENSION TO CHILDREN WITH MENTAL RETARDATION

This study examined the effectiveness of a training program designed to teach children with mild mental retardation the meaning of 12 idiomatic phrases, such as “to hit the sack.” Four 9-year-old children participated in the training. A multiple baseline design across subjects and across three sets of idioms was implemented. Training consisted of presenting both literal and idiomatic contexts in the form of story narratives, and asking the children to explain the outcome of the story and to select one picture from an array of four that represented the outcome. All children demonstrated learning, although 1 child required review procedures to facilitate maintenance. Children were able to generalize their receptive learning to an expressive task with varying levels of success. All children demonstrated an ability to understand the learned idioms when presented in unfamiliar contexts.     

Do recognizable figures enjoy an advantage in binocular rivalry?

Five experiments examined whether recognizable stimuli predominate in binocular rivalry. It was found that a face predominated more than did a pattern equated for spatial frequency, luminance, and contrast; an objective reaction time procedure confirmed predominance of the face. The face was still liable to fragmentation as stimulus size increased. Observers tracked exclusive dominance of a picture of a camouflaged figure (a Dalmatian dog) prior to and then following discovery of the figure's presence; control observers received the same protocol with a scrambled version of the dog stimulus. Compared with control results, predominance of the dog picture was higher even before observers knew of the camouflaged figure. Inversion of the dog figure reduced its predominance. Binocular rivalry is sensitive to object-related, configural properties of a stimulus.     

The gestural repertoire and its evolution over the second year

The entire repertoire of communicative gestures was documented in a longitudinal, observational study of 10 infants, whose combined ages covered the range from 9 to 22 months. Early in the second year, giving as a request to do something with the object increased, while emotive gestures decreased. Later in the second year, pointing gestures increased, while protest gestures tended to decrease. Combining gestures with vocalization tended to increase only for protest gestures later in the second year. Eye contact showed a small but continuous increase in coordination with gestures over the second year, particularly with comment, request, and emotive gestures. These findings indicate an increasing use of the parent as an agent and of the informative function in non-verbal communication during this period of transition to verbal communication.