Using Transfer Procedures to Teach Tacts to a Child with Autism

This applied study attempted to evaluate a combination of transfer procedures commonly used to teach tacts to children with autism. A receptive to echoic to tact transfer and an echoic to tact transfer procedure were combined during 5-min instructional sessions to teach tacts to a seven-year-old vocal child with autism. A multiple baseline design across three sets of ten tacts was used. Without the teaching procedure, the child acquired no target tacts. With the 5-min teaching procedure implemented first with Set 1 then with Sets 2 and 3, respectively, the child acquired thirty new tacts over sixty teaching sessions. The results have wide application for children with and without autism who need instruction to learn tacts.     

SEXUAL PRIVACY AND EARLY SEXUAL DEBUT IN NAIROBI INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS1

The purpose of this paper is to examine sexual privacy as a factor that may influence the relatively earlier sexual debut among the urban poor in Nairobi. 40 focus group discussions were held with people aged 13–17, 18–24, 25–49 and 50+ years, community leaders and service providers in four informal settlements of Nairobi. Lack of sexual privacy was identified as a major problem. Although adults were reported to use various means to acquire some measure of privacy, such as waiting for children to fall asleep, switching off the lights and separating the sleeping areas using curtains, these measures were found inadequate. The participants therefore associated young people's early initiation of sexual activity with lack of sexual privacy. Sexual privacy has not received adequate research attention as a dimension of poverty that influences young people's sexuality. More studies are called for to unravel the specific association between sexual privacy among adults and young people's sexual behaviour. The living conditions of the urban poor should also be addressed to mitigate the effects of lack of sexual privacy.     

CHANGING FAMILIES/CHANGING COMMUNITIES

Scholars writing about community in recent years have been more likely to lament its passing than celebrate its exemplars. What's missing in this recent revival of interest in community is a systematic link with work–family issues and, in particular, an explicit recognition that women's and men's work–family lives have changed dramatically in the post-World War II era. We investigate the consequences of structural shifts in our family and work lives for a sample of elite, managerial women in dual-earner marriages, a population for whom work and family concerns are both immediate and salient. Understanding changing definitions of, and trends in, family and work can provide a useful lens through which we can profitably address recent debates about the decline or resurgence of community and civic society. Our findings suggest that, although conceived differently than in previous decades, family remains central to our respondents’ sense of community and structures their civic engagement. In contrast with previous generations of women, however, work is also important, for defining women's sense of self and community and for offering an alternative venue for community service.     

IMMIGRANTS AND ETHNICS:

Immigration is both an historical and contemporary phenomenon in the United States. As a result, various ancestral generations coexist. For example, third generation Polish American ethnics share social space with recent Polish immigrants in Chicago. While common ancestry leads immigrants and ethnics to think they ought to work together, dissimilarities between the groups lead to conflict. Two sources of conflict are identified. First, disparate cultural identities emerge because immigrant culture is embedded in the homeland, while ethnic culture is constructed over generations in the context of the host country. Second, immigrants and ethincs have different needs: the newcomers need to learn the culture of the host society, the established ethnics need to maintain an attachment to the culture of the home country. The findings suggest that ancestry does not always function as a basis for solidarity between immigrant and ethnic populations.     

Perceiving Age Discrimination in Response to Intergenerational Inequity

Young ( N = 57), middle-aged ( N = 57), and older adults ( N = 47) were presented with an editorial that argued in favor of their age group's economic interests (e.g., their privilege was fair; their disadvantage was unfair) or against their age group's economic interests (e.g., their privilege was unfair; their disadvantage was fair). Participants completed measures of perceived age discrimination, attributions for outcomes, and support for age-based spending. Unfavorable intergenerational comparisons elicited higher perceived age discrimination in middle-aged adults, and more support among all age groups for funding to middle-aged adults compared to favorable comparisons. Young and older adults reported more age discrimination than middle-aged adults regardless of comparison type. Age group status consequences for responses to the intergenerational conflict debate are discussed.     

A theory of age exclusion through closure: ‘Chronological age’ to ‘clinical need’

In an approach, I term ‘age exclusion through closure,’ I describe the exclusion of older people, from the workforce, and from hospital-based continuing care in Britain. Nineteenth century socioeconomic changes—the introduction of workplace technology, social surveys, the New Poor Law, and workhouse isolation, culminated in workforce exclusion on the grounds of chronological age. In the 20th century, the Poor Law ‘therapy’/‘succour’ divide, was recast in the Welfare State ‘health’/‘social care’ divide. Socioeconomic changes—the rising cost of health care, demographic change, the development of geriatric medicine, and economic restructuring, have served to allocatively ration ‘continuing care’ at this interface through the criteria of ‘clinical need.’ To conclude, age has become forged to clinical need, to become a formidable force of exclusion and exploitation perpetuating Poor Law closure between those ‘able’ and ‘unable’ to work, and creating a consequent ‘process of subordination’ within Welfare State capitalism.     

Training teachers to safeguard children: developing a consistent approach

Earlier work on the preparation of student teachers to deal with child protection concerns had indicated that initial teacher training (ITT) providers were often struggling to determine what to include on the subject and who should provide the input, as well as coping with the difficulty of trying to fit it into an overfull curriculum. In an attempt to support this work, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) developed a course for this group of students. Although an evaluation indicated the need for the materials to be redrafted, the views of both those involved in the exercise and a subsequent survey of ITT providers not only contributed to the redraft but also to the debate around the most effective approach to training professionals to protect children and young people. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Empowering Patients Through Access to Information

The United States federal government is in the midst of an e- government revolution characterized by a shift from paper-based citizen-government interactions to electronic-based interactions. Driven by the demands of citizens and supported by the President and Congress, federal departments are redesigning the look and feel of their Internet presences, moving away from traditional bureaucracy- centred presentation of information to more usable citizen-centred presentations. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the USA's principal federal agency tasked with protecting the health of all Americans and providing essential human services, has undertaken a massive reorganization of its e-health enterprise. The most publicly visible component of this reorganization is the hhs.gov portal website. This desperately needed portal - usability testing indicated that more than 60 per cent of visitors to the Department's original website failed to find the information they sought - provides easy access to the wealth of HHS information and links its diverse operating agencies. The new HHS portal simplifies citizen access to the Department by: decompartmentalizing information by removing content from bureaucratic silos² and rearranging it in a natural navigation scheme; tuning content and navigation features to ensure that all users have access to information tailored for them; presenting content in appropriate and citizen-preferred formats; and complying with federal accessibility regulations for blind and vision-impaired users. This paper presents a series of lessons learned during the development of the HHS portal, and results of usability testing to determine what common design features present accessibility problems particular to the blind and vision-impaired communities. These discussions of practical avenues to improving the accessibility and usability of e-health websites through appropriate and effective information designs are followed by our thoughts on the future of Internet architectures and the limitations of 'layering' technologies when striving for universal accessibility.