Children’s Acceptance of Others with Disability: The Influence of a Disability-Simulation Program

Elementary school is a transitional and impressionable period for any child. In inclusive classroom settings, children with disabilities may experience the challenges of acceptance and integration into peer relationships. The experience of children with disabilities in such classrooms can be positive if their classmates are accepting and open. One way to encourage these attitudes is by increasing awareness through disability-simulation. This study evaluates an existing school program, whose goal is to increase acceptance of others with disability. We surveyed students to assess the influence of the program. An adapted acceptance scale was distributed to students before and after participation in the program. Our hypothesis was that student acceptance would increase after participating in the program. Additionally, we hypothesized that physical, visual, and auditory disabilities would be easier for students to understand, making acceptance scores for these disabilities higher than those for a learning disability. We report changes in acceptance using group means. Our results reveal that post-survey responses showed higher acceptance than pre-survey responses, especially for auditory disabilities. Other significant findings include differences in attitudes between the two schools and differences based on prior experience with someone with a disability. By evaluating the effectiveness of this type of program (whose efficacy has been controversial in the literature), this study can provide teachers, administrators, genetic counselors, and parents with a better idea of how to address children’s attitudes towards peers. In our study, the effectiveness of promoting understanding through disability-simulation has proven its worth to improve children’s acceptance.     

Who is most likely to fat talk? A social comparison perspective

Negative talk about food, weight, or the body that occurs commonly among women – fat talk – is gaining increasing attention. Whereas its negative eating pathology and body esteem correlates have received continued empirical validation, what is not yet known is who is most likely to fat talk. We propose that social comparison processes underlie and motivate much of fat talk. In a sample of 143 college women, we found evidence for the role of social comparison. First, having a stronger tendency to socially compare directly predicts fat talk. Second, as a woman's body image concerns increase, her likelihood of engaging in fat talk increases, and this is intensified if she has a greater tendency to socially compare. Finally, social comparison propensity begins to exert its exacerbating effects at surprisingly low levels of body image concern. Results are discussed in terms of the advantages of using a social comparison perspective to better understand fat talk.     

The re-emergence of emergence,and the causal role of synergy in emergent evolution

Despite its current popularity, “emergence” is a concept with a venerable history and an elusive, ambiguous standing in contemporary evolutionary theory. This paper briefly recounts the history of the term and details some of its current usages. Not only are there radically varying interpretations about how to define emergence but “reductionist” and “holistic” theorists hold very different views about the issue of causation. However, these two seemingly polar positions are not irreconcilable. Reductionism, or detailed analysis of the parts and their interactions, is essential for answering the “how” question in evolution—how does a complex living system work? But holism is equally necessary for answering the “why” question—why did a particular arrangement of parts evolve? In order to answer the “why” question, a broader, multi-leveled paradigm is required. The reductionist approach to explaining emergent complexity has entailed a search for underlying “laws of emergence.” In contrast, the “Synergism Hypothesis” focuses on the “economics”—the functional effects produced by emergent wholes and their selective consequences in evolutionary change. This paper also argues that emergent phenomena represent, in effect, a subset of a larger universe of cooperative, synergistic effects in the natural world.     

Perceived Control as a Moderator of the Prototype Effect in the Perception of Discrimination

Whether an individual's behavior is perceived as discriminatory has a great deal to do with the characteristics of the individual. The prototype effect refers to the finding that individuals who match people's prototypes of the typical executor of a particular kind of discrimination (e.g., the prototypical sex discriminator is male) are much more likely to receive attributions of discrimination than are nonprototypical executors. The motivated social cognition perspective, however, suggests that people's subjective needs will influence the extent to which they rely on simplified cognitive abstractions. The results of this study indicate that people's subjective perceptions of control over discrimination in their lives moderate the influence of the prototype effect on perceptions of discrimination in ambiguous situations.     

Individual Orientation Toward Engagement in Social Action

The issue of how an activist identity develops is one of the core issues in social psychology and social movement research. Because of problems in the measurement of individuals' propensities to engage in social action, however, findings in this area are often equivocal, and cross–study comparisons and conclusions are difficult to draw. Hence, the aim of these studies was to develop a measure to assess individuals' propensities to engage in social action. This measure, the Activism Orientation Scale (AOS), demonstrates strong psychometric properties and allows assessment of activist propensity across a wide continuum of social action behaviors, ideological positions, and movement issues. Additionally, the broad applicability of the AOS allows for its use by researchers, activists, and policymakers.     

Preventing the development of body issues in adolescent girls through intervention with their mothers

The purpose of this study was to test the efficacy of the Healthy Girls Project, an ecologically based, targeted prevention program aimed at discouraging the development of body-related problems in middle-school girls via an intervention directly and only with their mothers. Participants were 31 seventh- and eighth-grade girls and their mothers. The empirically based intervention comprised a series of 4 weekly workshops that had both interactive psychoeducational components and behavioral components (e.g., homework to do with daughters, modeling activities). The study design was experimental, with mother–daughter dyads randomly assigned to either the intervention group or a wait-list control group. Daughters completed pretest (i.e., pre-workshop) measures, posttest measures, and, 3 months later, follow-up measures. Results indicated that at both posttest and follow-up, girls whose mothers were in the intervention group perceived less pressure from their mothers to be thin. At follow-up, these girls also showed a lower drive for thinness. Results were mixed regarding group differences in body dissatisfaction levels at posttest and at follow-up. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for targeted prevention efforts aimed at girls during their middle-school years.     

Heterosocial involvement, peer pressure for thinness, and body dissatisfaction among young adolescent girls

The purpose of this study was to examine longitudinal connections among young adolescent heterosocial involvement (i.e., mixed-sex interactions), peer pressure for thinness, and body dissatisfaction. Three years of self-report questionnaire data were collected from 88 adolescent girls as they completed 6th through 8th grades. Results indicated that the relation between heterosocial involvement and body dissatisfaction was mediated by perceived peer pressure for thinness. Within this model, heterosocial involvement was associated with greater peer pressure for thinness. In turn, peer pressure for thinness was associated with greater body dissatisfaction. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for prevention and intervention efforts aimed at girls during their middle-school years.     

Assessing perceived social inequity: a relative deprivation framework

The set of studies presented here describes a theoretically based method of assessing perceived social inequity and illustrates the approach through the development of an instrument assessing this experience in women's lives. The Perceived Social Inequity Scale-Women's Form (PSIS-W) is grounded in relative deprivation theory (Davis, 1959), which states that discontent results from recognition of an unfair discrepancy between one's own situation and that of others. The psychometric quality of the 26-item PSIS-W is supported by consistent results across two factor analyses, strong temporal stability over 1- and 4-month intervals, and relationships found between it and a number of predicted variables. Implications for theory and research in the areas of social inequity, social stigma, and stereotype perception are discussed.     

EEG “maturational lag” profiles: Follow-up analyses

Nineteen children who had EEG diffuse slow frequency profiles suggesting a maturational lag were retested 1 to 2 years later receiving both EEG and psychometric assessments. They were compared to 18 children who also had been tested previously but did not have the slow frequency profile. Children with the maturational lag profile displayed varying degrees of EEG developmental change upon retest;i.e., some showed the expected developmental change while others remained the same. Within this group, there were significant relationships between the degree of EEG change and psychometric scores. Those that demonstrated the most EEG change had higher psychometric indices, and these relationships were not obtained in the comparison group. These findings suggest developmental heterogeneity with respect to brian maturation as measured by the EEG and also suggest that test-retest EEG data can clarify a maturational lag diagnosis.This work was supported by grants awarded to W. C Corning by the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council. The authors wish to acknowledge the assistance and support of J. Washburn, M. Staines, A. Goebel, Lyle MacDonald, and the staff of the psychology department, University of Waterloo.     

Telson reflex habituation in Limulus polyphemus.

Muscle correlates of reflex telson movement were recorded in intact Limulus (horseshoe crab) preparations with chronically implanted microelectrodes. Muscle activity habituated during repetitive tactile stimulation of the gills with puffs of air. Dishabituation was also observed, as were inverse relationships between the frequency and intensity of stimulation and the rate of response decrement. These findings closely paralleled those obtained during central recordings in acute dissected preparations, as did the demonstration under certain stimulation conditions of an initial incremental phase of responsivity. Although initial levels of responsivity recovered after 1 hr without stimulation, potentiation of habituation was observable after 2 hr. Both of these times greatly exceeded those previously observed in acute preparations. No generalization to a spatial displacement of the stimulus was obtained, although a visually elicited telson reflex had been shown to demonstrate a cross-optic generalization. Aspects of the comparative strategy and the adaptive value of telson reflex habituation in Limulus were briefly considered.