Teaching Tacting of Private Events Based on Public Accompaniments: Effects of Contingencies,Audience Control,and Stimulus Complexity

Our current understanding of the role of private events in the science of behavior is based largely on Skinner’s natural science interpretation of private events. Skinner described public accompaniments as one source of control for a verbal community to differentially reinforce verbal behavior regarding private events. In this study, we developed an experimental analogue to study variables influencing tacting of private events. The participant had exclusive access to one set of stimuli (the private stimuli), and the experimenter attempted to teach tacts for private stimuli based on their correspondence with public stimuli accessible to both the experimenter and participant. Results of experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that reports of private stimuli were a function of degree of public-private correspondence, reinforcement contingency, and audience control. In some cases, we encountered reports controlled exclusively by public stimuli. Results of experiment 3 showed that public control was less likely when public stimuli were more complex and the experimenter had a unique behavioral history with respect to those stimuli that was not shared by the learner. The orderly patterns of data obtained suggest that analogue arrangements might be a useful, and even necessary, starting point for experimental investigations of how private events may enter into the analysis of behavior.     

Post‐secondary transitions of youth emancipated from foster care

This study investigated the extent to which KnowHow2Go (KH2Go), a national college access campaign developed for first‐generation students in the USA, would resonate with youth who had aged out of foster care. Interviews were conducted with 27 youth who were enrolled in a post‐secondary programme following emancipation from foster care. We found KH2Go to have a close fit with the experiences of youth who had been in foster care. Four topics emerged as particularly important for youth in our study: money management, work, parenting and transportation. Finally, the study identified attributes these youth demonstrated that contributed to their resilience during the transition process. This study and the data presented pertain to youth living in the south‐eastern USA.     

The Pay Equity Bargaining Process in Newfoundland: Understanding Cooperation and Conflict by Incorporating Gender and Class

In the latter half of the 1980s, when it was becoming apparent in Canada that previous equal pay policies had failed to close the gender wage gap, a number of provincial governments introduced pro–active pay equity policies. All these initiatives required the negotiation of pay equity in unionized workplaces. Leading up to the implementation of pay equity in Ontario, industrial relations specialists predicted an insurmountably conflictual process, whereas governments expected a new level of partnership with unions. Given these opposite expectations, the article aims to identify any significant patterns of cooperation and conflict in the pay equity bargaining process and to explore reasons for their dynamic. Based on a case study of Newfoundland’s health sector, neither prediction was correct as both conflict and cooperation occurred. It is argued that both the specificity and differences in the negotiations studied can be better understood by exploring the complex intertwinings of gender and class, namely, the ongoing articulation of their main manifestations: a reinforcing hierarchy and a transformative labour–feminist politic in the unions involved. The article concludes with some theoretical and policy observations concerning the importance of building in gender and class to current models of cooperative collective bargaining, as well as recognizing their importance in the pay equity process.     

A comparison of non-transferable utility values

Three values for non-transferable utility games -- the Harsanyi NTU-value, the Shapley NTU-value, and the Maschler--Owen consistent NTU-value -- are compared in a simple example.     

A Self-help Website for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: Who is Accessing the Website?

The OCD Challenge is an interactive self-help website for obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). OCD is often untreated and many barriers prohibit access to an evidence-based intervention including cost, lack of providers, and stigma. Analysis of 436 website participant's demographic data revealed that 63.1% were female, 80.5% were Caucasian, the mean age was 33.37 and the mean age of onset was 15.37. Results of the 436 website users showed a significant positive correlation between Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (YBOCS) assessment scores and disability as well as anxiety and stress scores. Future studies should examine the feasibility of the OCD Challenge at decreasing OCD, disability, depression, anxiety, and stress scores.     

Diffusing (let it happen) or disseminating (make it happen) innovations in health care

Management has different options for spreading new products. Our study empirically assessed the integral effects of both diffusion and dissemination on innovation adoption. Data on diffusion (as measured by social network density) and on dissemination (as measured by formulating objectives and executing focused activities) was gathered using a questionnaire given to 356 medical specialists, nested in 38 teams. We found both separate and integral effects for diffusion and dissemination. This shows the potential for both engaging the social network structures (diffusion) and adding process measures (dissemination) in order to optimize the innovation spreading process.     

Local and omnibus goodness-of-fit tests in classical measurement error models

We consider functional measurement error models, i.e. models where covariates are measured with error and yet no distributional assumptions are made about the mismeasured variable. We propose and study a score-type local test and an orthogonal series-based, omnibus goodness-of-fit test in this context, where no likelihood function is available or calculated-i.e. all the tests are proposed in the semiparametric model framework. We demonstrate that our tests have optimality properties and computational advantages that are similar to those of the classical score tests in the parametric model framework. The test procedures are applicable to several semiparametric extensions of measurement error models, including when the measurement error distribution is estimated non-parametrically as well as for generalized partially linear models. The performance of the local score-type and omnibus goodness-of-fit tests is demonstrated through simulation studies and analysis of a nutrition data set.     

Call Me Kuchu

This paper examines Call Me Kuchu, a 2012 documentary that profiles a group of activists in Uganda as they respond to the introduction of anti-homosexuality legislation in the Ugandan Parliament, the exposure of members of the LGBT community in the Ugandan publication Rolling Stone, and the death of activist David Kato. Utilizing queer theory, transnational feminism, and critical media studies, the authors provide a close reading of the film's formal elements in relation to the geopolitical context in which the film circulates. They argue for a more reflexive filmmaking praxis as well as significant contextualization of the issues of LGBT identity and human rights claims in relation to post-colonial politics. Ultimately, they offer suggestions for employing transnational filmmaking praxis and engaging with the film as a dynamic artifact of transnational and post-colonial contexts.