Role-Taking Accuracy in Medical Encounters: A Test of two Theories

Abstract

This paper tests five hypotheses derived from two contrasting theoretical perspectives on role-taking accuracy: a social contact theory and an institutional resource theory. We investigate how well doctors and patients perceive one another's perspectives in a medical encounter. The cumulative weight of the data supports the proposed social contact theory. Increased contact between residents and patients, as reflected in physician's year in residency, contributes to more accurate role-taking on the part of physicians. Conditions of social compatibility between doctors and patients vis a vis gender or race lead to more accurate role-taking. Finally, personal characteristics are better predictors of role-taking accuracy than institutional status variables such as type of residency training program or doctor's year in residency status.     

New Indices of Money Supply and the Flexible Laurent Demand System

The article begins by surveying the existing results on the new Divisia monetary aggregates. Charts display the differences in behavior between the Divisia aggregates and the Federal Reserve's official simple-sum monetary aggregates. The article then compares system-wide fit for the simple-sum and Divisia monetary aggregates when used as data in the joint estimation of a system of demand equations. The demand system is derived from a new Laurent expansion approximation to the reciprocal indirect utility function. The Laurent expansion provides a better-behaved remainder term than that of the more commonly used Taylor series. The results favor the Divisia aggregates.     

Reframing national locality: religious minorities using history to transform local experience in Georgia

In the Republic of Georgia, Baptists are marginalized minorities vis-à-vis the powerful Georgian Orthodox Church. In recent years, Baptists have adopted ‘culturally relevant’ reforms, incorporating Orthodox symbols and sensibilities into worship and administration. These reforms also include the deployment of a historical narrative identifying them as authentic members of the ostensibly Orthodox national community. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among Georgian Baptists, I investigate how they use history to constitute new frames for interpreting themselves as appropriate to local contexts. Revising their history has helped constitute a viable national identity by ‘localizing’ Baptist faith and experience in the Georgian Orthodox milieu.     

Sibling Facilitation Mediates the Association Between Older and Younger Sibling Alcohol Use in Late Adolescence

Previous research has shown adolescent siblings are similar in their alcohol use and that this similarity is largely due to their shared environment. Using a genetically informed sibling sample (196 full‐biological pairs, 384 genetically unrelated pairs), we confirmed that the extent to which older siblings facilitate younger siblings' alcohol use (i.e., help them get alcohol) was one factor contributing to this shared environmental association. All analyses controlled for parent and peer influences. Findings were not moderated by sibling differences in genetic relatedness, gender, or ethnicity. Proximity in sibling age strengthened these associations, somewhat. Results were especially strong for sibling pairs where the older sibling was of legal drinking age. Implications for prevention and intervention are discussed.     

Recombinative Generalization of Tacts Through Matrix Training with Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Foss (Journal of Experimental Psychology, 76, 450–459, 1968a; Journal of Experimental Psychology, 77, 341–344, 1968b) compared overlap and non-overlap instruction to promote recombinative response generalization using a matrix training procedure. In the present study, we used a similar set of procedures to teach tacting of kitchen items and prepositions (i.e., relational autoclitics) to three females ages 13–20, diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. We taught some kitchen items/prepositions as tacts (e.g., “the strainer is to the right of the box”) according to a non-overlap instructional sequence. Subsequently, we taught more combinations in an overlap instructional sequence. Each training procedure was followed by probes of untrained relations. Two participants demonstrated recombinative generalization of untrained combinations following the first non-overlap phase, while the third participant demonstrated some response generalization of untrained relations after a few additional training sequences. All three participants demonstrated generalized tacting of object components while two participants showed generalized tacting of preposition components.     

Aviation as deportation infrastructure: airports,planes, and expulsion

ABSTRACT

The practices and mechanisms states use to forcibly move deportees across borders and sometimes vast distances have been curiously neglected by scholars. To remedy this imbalance this article develops a concept of deportation infrastructure. By building bridges between critical studies of infrastructure and migration and deportation studies, the article argues we can better understand topology, power relations, and resistance in the field of state-forced mobility. The article grounds this discussion in an analysis of deportation charter flights. It ends with a discussion of two additional concepts that speak to the theme of this special issue [Eule, Tobias, David Loher, and Anna Wyss. (2018). “Contested Control at the Margins of the State.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 44 (16): 2717–2729. doi:10.1080/1369183X.2017.1401511.], that is, the place of asymmetrical negotiations in the making and unmaking of border regimes. The first of these is strategic position, a term borrowed from studies of logistical politics. Deportees are sometimes able to utilise strategic positions when they exploit opportunities to disrupt finely tuned ecologies of air travel. The second is the mutability of infrastructure, a term that captures dynamics of change in the border regime.     

Inequality in the “Cradle of Liberty”: Race/Ethnicity and Wealth in Greater Boston

New data collected for the Boston Metropolitan Statistical Area provide detailed information on financial assets that allow analysis to extend beyond the traditional black–white divide. Targeting US-born blacks, Caribbean blacks, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and other Hispanics, findings from the National Asset Scorecard for Communities of Color survey underscore the large racial and ethnic disparities in financial wealth, even after controlling for demographic and socioeconomic status. Further, some notable differences between Boston’s communities of color highlight the importance of detailed analyses for research on the racial wealth gap. In particular, among non-white communities Dominicans report comparatively low asset and high debt amounts, while Caribbean blacks report relatively higher levels of wealth. Altogether, these findings point to the need for wealth building opportunities in communities of color and further investigation of the causes and consequences of financial disparities between groups of color disaggregated by specific ancestral origin.