Gypsy Children in Post-Communist Eastern Europe

SUMMARY: Far generations Gypsies have suffered from oppression and discrimination. Five centuries of slavery, attempted genocide during the Holocaust, forced assimilation and separation under communism have all been part of their history. In some areas of Eastern Europe, 90 per cent of children in state care are of Gypsy origin. In post-communist Eastern Europe economic recession has brought a new wave of anti-Gypsy feeling and violence. In such a climate Gypsy children face a forbidding future. Here in the UK we are currently debating new proposals under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill which could radically affect the lives of Gypsy children and their families. As we consider this legislation, do we have something to learn from the experience of Gypsy children in Eastern Europe?     

Anticipating the social consequences of AIDS: A position paper

Even conservative estimates of the future course of AIDS epidemic make clear that only a small fraction of people who ultimately will experience AIDS symptoms now have them and that the spread of the virus will continue for some time to come. This article focuses on the social consequences of the AIDS epidemic, some of which are beginning to be felt. I argue that sociologists have an important contribution to make anticipating the long range social consequences of AIDS. Intelligent planning is impossible without a reduction of uncertainty in what the future might hold. He currently is chair of the Methodology section of the American Sociological Association and vice-chair of the Board of the Directors of the Social Science Research Council. with research interests in gender, kinship, and biosocial science. Her concern for the AIDS epidemic flows from its being a major focus in an interdisciplinary course on human sexuality that she teaches. For the past two years at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, she has coordinated AIDS prevention programs for women and supervised the development of educational materials. For the past three years she has been actively involved in AIDS-related research.     

Teaching Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders to Mand for the Removal of Stimuli That Prevent Access to Preferred Items

Mand training is often a primary focus in early language instruction and typically includes mands that are positively reinforced. However, mands maintained by negative reinforcement are also important skills to teach. These include mands to escape aversive demands or unwanted items. Another type of negatively reinforced mand important to teach involves the removal of a stimulus that prevents access to a preferred activity. We taught 5 participants diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders to mand for the removal of a stimulus in order to access a preferred item that had been blocked. An evaluation was conducted to determine if participants responded differentially when the establishing operations for the preferred item were present versus absent. All participants learned to mand for the removal of the stimulus exclusively under conditions when the establishing operation was present.     

The moral evolution of the Russian–Yiddish–English writer Abraham Cahan

One of the ways in which Cahan remained culturally Russian was his devotion to the kind of literary realism that embodies a clear system of values. This article examines the kind of values Cahan promoted, looking specifically at how this writer of educative but realist fiction dealt with the disconnect between socialist ideals and immigrant life. It follows the evolution of Cahan’s literary formula from the transparency of the early stories to the cynicism of The Rise of David Levinsky, seeing the seeds for transformation in the “Bintel Brief” advice column of the Forverts, which was executed and possibly written under Cahan’s direction. The moral vision of Levinsky is compared to that of two predecessors with which Cahan was familiar: William Dean Howells’s The Rise of Silas Lapham and Pyotr Boborykin’s 1881 Russian novel Kitaigorod.     

The Gambling Cognitions Inventory: scale development and psychometric validation with problem and pathological gamblers

Cognitive distortions are typically identified as an important etiological factor in pathological gambling. The Gambling Cognitions Inventory (GCI) developed by Holub (2003) is examined in this study using a sample of 710 pathological gamblers collected in four Canadian studies. Confirmatory factor analysis did not support the initial 40-item scale and suggested a 33-item scale. The sample was split into two groups to conduct exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Scree plots and parallel analysis suggested a two-factor scale. The scale developed by exploratory factor analysis on the first sample was supported by confirmatory factor analysis on the second sample (CFI>0.95; RMSEA < 0.05). The two factors indicated a Skill and Attitude subscale and a Luck and Chance subscale. Analysis conducted within each of the four studies showed good internal reliability for the scale (range of α = 0.91–0.95) and subscales (α = 0.77–0.92). The scale and subscales correlated with gambling severity measures as well as other measures of gambling cognitions including the Gambling Attitudes and Beliefs Scale and the Gambling Beliefs Questionnaire. The results of the study indicate that the GCI is a psychometrically strong scale and may be beneficial in directing cognitive therapy to the most problematic cognitions.