Modeling the Development of Infant Categorization

Research on infant categorization has made remarkable progress since the first studies were reported in the late 1970s (e.g., Cohen & Caputo, 1978; Cohen & Strauss, 1977; Strauss, 1979). This progress is evident in a recent volume on early categorization and concept acquisition (Rakison & Oakes, 2003), the first half of which is devoted entirely to theory and research on infant categorization. Even in the early days of such research an important distinction was made between demonstration‐oriented studies and process‐oriented studies (Cohen & Younger, 1983; Younger & Cohen, 1985). Demonstration studies simply presented infants with established category items (by adult standards) such as pictures of stuffed animals, faces, dogs, cats, animals, or vehicles and examined whether infants would generalize their responding to novel members of the same category. Process studies, on the other hand, presented infants with novel categories and manipulated feature values of category items to examine the mechanisms underlying infant category acquisition.     

The Volunteer Citizen After Welfare Reform in the United States: An Ethnographic Study of Volunteerism in Action

In the United States, neoliberal strategies for social, economic, and state organization have been accompanied by frequent calls for volunteers to solve serious social problems. A case study of a community mobilization of middle-class volunteers to provide one-on-one support to families in poverty shows both possibilities and limitations. Volunteers provide social support to families in poverty, thus alleviating social isolation. Volunteers learn about systemic forces that cause poverty, its effects on families and communities, and about themselves and their capacities to engage in poverty work. However, social isolation is but one of many problems associated with poverty, and even a more knowledgeable amateur volunteer corps cannot take the place of substantial social, economic, and political change.     

Perceptions of students' locus of control of discipline among pre‐service and in‐service teachers in multicultural classrooms

The purpose of this study was to determine teacher perceptions of students' behavior/misbehavior in the classroom, and the differences between pre‐service and in‐service teachers' perceptions of students' locus of control of discipline (i.e. the source of discipline) in multicultural classrooms. The study also investigated perceptions in three related dimensions of discipline: motivation, mechanism and the basis of discipline. Furthermore, the study generated data to determine whether culture was perceived as a factor in teachers' perceptions of students' locus of control of behavior in the classroom. Findings were intended to assist in determining choices for appropriate intervention strategies for use in effective discipline or management of behavior in multicultural classrooms.     

Perception of family need in pediatric oncology

This paper studies the needs of a family in which a child has been diagnosed with cancer. The tasks of the family include meeting the physical and psychosocial needs of the child while attempting to maintain normal family functioning. Various psychological and social factors affect the outcome of medical treatment and the recovery process. The paper highlights the needs assessment as a tool in a comprehensive approach to service delivery.     

Balancing Safety and Privacy: The Case of Room Locks in Assisted Living

Assisted living settings are charged with protecting privacy and choice of residents while guaranteeing safety and providing services. This article uses qualitative data from seven distinct assisted living settings to illuminate the challenge of balancing these expectations to maximize quality of life for residents. The simple object of door locks serves as the focal point for narrative from residents, family, staff, and administrators regarding the daily dilemmas of balancing these goals. Results show that there is a lack of consensus on the relative importance of locks and security within and across groups and settings. As residents age in place, sustaining the balance is likely to become even more challenging.     

Emotion-Focused Couples Therapy and the Facilitation of Forgiveness

The goal of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of an emotion-focused couple therapy intervention for resolving emotional injuries. Twenty couples acting as their own waitlist controls were offered a 10–12-session treatment to help resolve unresolved anger and hurt from a betrayal, an abandonment, or an identity insult that they had been unable to resolve for at least 2 years. Treated couples fared significantly better on all outcome measures over the treatment period compared to the waitlist period. They showed a significant improvement in dyadic satisfaction, trust, and forgiveness as well as improvement on symptom and target complaint measures. Changes were maintained on all of the measures at 3-month follow-up except trust, on which the injured partners deteriorated. At the end of treatment, 11 couples were identified as having completely forgiven their partners and six had made progress toward forgiveness compared with only three having made progress toward forgiveness over the waitlist period. The results suggest that EFT is effective in alleviating marital distress and promoting forgiveness in a brief period of time but that additional sessions may be needed to enhance enduring change.     

On the potential cost effectiveness of scientific audits

The rationale for the routine performance of scientific audits has been previously discussed, and it has been proposed that independent professionals audit scientific data just as certified public accountants in independent public accounting firms audit financial data (1–4). Scientific audits would typically require the examination of data in laboratory notebooks and other work sheets, upon which research publications are based. Examples of such audits have been publicized recently, although these represent audits which have been conducted relatively inefficiently, over periods of several years per audit, and which have only been conducted due to the persistence of whistleblowers suspecting scientific fraud (5, 6). A detailed report has also appeared on the results of an audit of the research activities of a particular individual, where the audit was limited solely to an examination of the research publications themselves for errors and discrepancies (7). It should be emphasized that the purpose of conducting scientific audits is not only to detect fabrication of experimental results but also to monitor presumably more prevalent, non‐fraudulent, inappropriate practices, such as misrepresentation of data, inaccurate reporting, and departure from institutional guidelines for handling hazardous materials, working with human subjects, etc.

Two concerns which have been raised concerning the performance of scientific audits relate to cost. What would they cost, and who would pay for them? These questions, however, may be turned around. What does it cost not to conduct such audits, and who pays for that? An assumption often made is that science is self‐correcting, that sooner or later the truth will be revealed because of the need to replicate experiments of others for independent verification of novel findings (8). Testimony recently presented at a U.S. congressional hearing suggests that the self‐correcting manner in which science advances represents a very slow and inefficient process for uncovering scientific fraud (5, 6, 9). Data from a survey of university scientists was also presented, indicating “. . . a reluctance to take prompt, corrective action not only when an investigator suspects another of misconduct but also should the investigator discover flaws in his or her own published reports‐whether the flaws were the result of honest error or fraud”; (10).

The uncritical acceptance by established scientists that the self‐correcting process works compounds the problem. The Editor of Science has written that”;. . . 99.9999 percent of reports are accurate and truthful. . .”; (8). If indeed only 0.0001% of published reports were inaccurate or untruthful, there would be little justification for scientific audits. However, congressional testimony from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) revealed that”;. . . the NIH Director's office has handled an average of 15–20 allegations and reports of misconduct annually in its extramural programs, which supports the work of approximately 50,000 scientists”; (11). As I shall attempt to demonstrate, since NIH alone receives fraud‐related complaints concerning the work of at least 0.03% of scientists it supports in other institutions, and since evidence indicates that the incidence of fraud is considerably greater than 0.03% (10, 12), the need to audit data is justifiable on the basis of being cost effective.