Teaching Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder to Mand “Why?”

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - For most children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), manding for information is an important skill that must be systematically taught. Although previous studies...     

Social Capital in Old-Age and the Role of the Social Marginalisation

Social Indicators Research - In India, despite heavy constitutional protection, due to caste-based discrimination, millions of residents are still struggling to access their basic rights such as...     

Teaching Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder to Mand “Why?”

For most children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), manding for information is an important skill that must be systematically taught. Although previous studies have evaluated interventions for teaching other mands for information, to date no studies have demonstrated effective procedures for teaching the mand “why?” The purpose of the present study was to teach 3 children with ASD to mand “why?” under relevant establishing operation conditions in 3 distinct scenarios. A trial-unique multiple-exemplar procedure was used to promote generalization and increase the value of information provided across trials. All 3 participants learned to mand “why?” in all 3 scenarios within a mean of 18 sessions (range 14–21 sessions), demonstrated generalization to novel stimuli and settings, and maintained this skill over time. Social validity for the intervention had an overall mean of 5.88 (range 1–7).     

Complexity,technology and the future of transformative politics

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that the ‘open space’ idea remains the key source of strength for the World Social Forum as a tool for transformative, liberatory politics. We suggest that this space can be seen as inhabited by two political identities formed on the basis of what we call the conventional left narrative on the one hand and the civilizational narrative on the other. We propose that WSF can continue to fulfil its mission well by serving as a forum where political and social activists and intellectuals can meet and learn from each other to overcome their current weaknesses. Key to such overcoming, we suggest, is that technology and complexity are politicized – a task which may be difficult but the avoidance of which may be irresponsible.     

A Note on the Use of Some Functions of Spacings in the Estimation of Common Scale Parameter of Several Symmetric Distributions

In this article, we consider the problem of best linear unbiased estimation and best linear invariant estimation of the common scale parameter of several symmetric distributions using some functions of spacings of all observations taken from individual samples. We also proved a sufficient condition for the non negativity of the common scale estimator obtained by the above method. Furthermore, we obtained necessary and sufficient conditions for the derived estimators to be constant multiple of the sum of first and last spacings of the pooled sample.     

Incentive issues in performance-based outsourcing contracts in the UK defence industry: a simulation study

Traditional outsourcing literature has claimed gains for the customer in terms of quality and costs. However, such gains are illusory in outsourcing of high-risk, complex tasks. The use of contracts and governance mechanisms for handling complex procurements is essential in obtaining rewards from outsourcing. Powerful incentives and risks are normally used in industrial service contracts to transfer risks to measure compliance with performance measures. The availability contracts for complex engineering services provision are forms of outsourcing contracts that transfer resources from government to external service providers on a substantial scale. The change moves the contractor role from creating resources to managing resources. Such role change mandates collaboration with customers and suppliers in supply/value chains. The management task is then perceived in terms of linking and optimising alignments rather than increasing service levels. Incentive design is one mechanism for linking the coordination of resources required in availability contracting to the business model. This article studies the impacts of agreed contract type and incentive mechanism on the customer and service provider profits using agent-based discrete event simulation model under multiple risk sharing scenarios.     

The Impact of Gender Characteristics on Mentoring in Graduate Departments of Sociology

There has been much research on gender inequality in graduate education and the benefits of mentoring. However, most of this research focuses on how mentoring addresses female graduate students’ experiences of gender inequality instead of how the gender characteristics of departments impact the level of mentoring they offer. In particular, I examine how the gender composition of departments in terms of faculty and administration as well as faculty awareness of gender inequality or feminist issues influences the types of mentoring structures found in graduate departments of sociology. Bivariate correlations indicated that these characteristics (gender characteristics in particular) had significant relationships with mentoring structures in departments. This study concludes with a discussion of these relationships, an overview of policy implications, and suggestions for future research.     

Fertility Behaviour under Income Uncertainty

This paper develops a two-period stochastic model of fertility behaviour to provide a possible explanation for the recent sharp decline in birth rates in the former Soviet Republics and Eastern European countries. Due to the existence of irreversibilities associated with the childbearing decision and the option of postponing childbearing for a later time, it may be optimal for individuals to postpone childbearing during times of increased income uncertainty.