Analyzing Stimulus-Stimulus Pairing Effects on Preferences for Speech Sounds

Several studies have demonstrated effects of stimulus-stimulus pairing (SSP) on children's vocalizations, but numerous treatment failures have also been reported. The present study attempted to isolate procedural variables related to failures of SSP to condition speech sounds as reinforcers. Three boys diagnosed with autism-spectrum disorders participated. Phase 1 was designed to assess SSP effects on production of auditory stimuli via button pressing. When SSP failed to produce a preference for the target stimulus, we instituted a series of procedural manipulations intended to address potential reasons for failure. One participant preferred the target stimulus when given the opportunity to select preferred items for pairing prior to each session, but a subsequent reversal attempt produced ambiguous results. Two participants showed no consistent preference in Phase 1 and underwent a within-session reinforcer evaluation in Phase 2, in which alternative controlling variables were demonstrated by delivering preferred stimuli contingent on button pressing.     

Critical autism studies: exploring epistemic dialogues and intersections,challenging dominant understandings of autism

In this paper we explore how our cultural contexts give rise to different kinds of knowledges of autism and examine how they are articulated, gain currency, and form the basis for policy, practice and political movements. We outline key tensions for the development of critical autism studies as an international, critical abilities approach. Our aim is not to offer a cross-cultural account of autism or to assume a coherence or universality of ‘autism’ as a singular diagnostic category/reality. Rather, we map the ways in which what is experienced and understood as autism, plays out in different cultural contexts, drawing on the notion of ‘epistemic communities’ to explore shifts in knowledge about autism, including concepts such as ‘neurodiversity’, and how these travel through cultural spaces. The paper explores two key epistemic tensions; the dominance of ‘neuro culture’ and dominant constructions of personhood and what it means to be human.     

Social Work Responses to Domestic Violence During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Experiences and Perspectives of Professionals at Women’s Shelters in Sweden

Clinical Social Work Journal - This study explores how social work professionals at women’s shelters in Sweden experience, understand, and are responding to domestic violence under the impact...     

Constructions of a Lynching

This paper examines the effects of white violence as carried out against a subordinate black community in a small southern town during 1900. The aftermath, as perceived by present-day residents, and the emergent constructions of the event are explored. It is suggested that the present reality constructions of blacks and whites continue to reflect the significance these historical events have had for group meanings and intergroup relations.     

Financing of college education by single-parent and two-parent families

The financing of college education by male and female single-parent families and two-parent families is compared. Female single parents are at a significant disadvantage in being able to accumulate funds, but this is partially offset by financial aid. Variables accounting for significant variation in the parents' contribution to student education expenses are: public versus private school, financial aid, parents' saving behavior, students' contribution, race, and family type. The amount of parental contribution is positively correlated with parent net worth, family per capita income, and total student cost; it is negatively correlated with age of the student.This study utilized data from the National Postsecondary Education Student Aid Study prepared for the National Center for Education Statistics, U. S. Department of Education, by Westat, Inc. Partial support for the research was supplied by the College of Human Ecology and the Computer Science Center of the University of Maryland. The author expresses her appreciation to the Editor and Reviewers for their valuable suggestions.Her research interests include personal finance, family resource management, and personal factors affecting the handling of money. She is a graduate of Berea College, Berea, KY, and received both the M. Ed. and Ed. D. from The Pennsylvania State University.     

Organizational Responses to Contending Institutional Logics: The Moderating Effect of Group Dynamics

This paper advances knowledge on how the forms of institutional logics that emerge and become venerated among members of a singular organization in a heterogeneous field are influenced by struggles between contending interest groups. It examines the moderating effect of group dynamics that occur when an organization attempts to balance novel institutional complexity within organizational bounds through its hiring and promotion systems. The authors argue that, while the specific institutional oppositions of heterogeneous fields compel organizational changes, the institutional forms that emerge and become legitimate among members of an organization in such fields are the effects of indeterminate social processes of regularization and breaking of coexisting logics. The paper provides insights into how the negotiations among groups of organizational actors over the process and outcome of institutional change are influenced by asymmetric power relationships yet significantly mediated by their social strategies. The findings reported are from an ethnography of the enactment of institutional changes at a South Korean credit card company following the economic crisis in 1997 and the International Monetary Fund bailout programme.