Mutual Contributions of Individuals, Partners, and Institutions: Planning to Remember in Girl Scout Cookie Sales

This paper argues that planning entails distributed, mutual contributions of individuals, their social partners, and their community institutions. We suggest that these mutually involved contributions can be viewed through shifts in focus of analysis, contrasting with analyses of cognitive development that treat individuals as though they exist apart from their social and cultural worlds. We illustrate this argument with a study examining the distributed nature of planning to remember in a complex everyday task. We investigated the personal, interpersonal, and institutional cognitive contributions of 16 Girl Scouts, their mothers and customers and other companions, and institutions (the national organization and the cookie company) in keeping track of deliveries and planning collection of money in Girl Scout cookie sales and deliveries. The article also discusses an analytic methodology (Functional Pattern Analysis) for abstracting findings from the details of rich ethnographic data. Individual scouts, their mothers, customers, and the scouting organization and cookie company all played significant roles in keeping track of progress. In particular, tools and supports provided by the cookie company played a key role in organizing the cognitive tasks, and the scouts collaborated in planning with other people (usually their mothers and customers). Our findings illustrate the importance of examining contributions beyond those of the individual, while still recognizing the active roles of individuals in thinking. We argue that conceiving of individual, interpersonal, and institutional/cultural contributions as mutually constituting aspects of cognitive activities supports this aim beyond the usual focus on separate individual and ‘external’ factors.     

Employment status, psychiatric disability and quality of life: comparison of men and women with schizophrenia in Malaysia

This study explores the association between employment opportunities, psychiatric disability and quality of life of male and female patients with schizophrenia. The data were collected from 100 male and 100 female patients and their primary caregivers through personal interviews. The Disability Assessment Schedule and the Quality of Life Interview were used to collect the data. The results of the present study indicate that a large number of both the men and women were unemployed, although they suffered from only mild psychotic symptoms and had no or only minimum psychiatric disability. However, in almost all areas and levels of psychiatric disability, a significantly higher number of men than women were employed. However, the subjective Quality of Life of the employed men was significantly lower than that of the unemployed. Keeping in mind these two results, the present study argues that there is minimal community recognition in Malaysia for the employment potential of people with schizophrenia. The study also argues that policy makers must legislate to create more appropriate workplaces for the mentally ill. People with schizophrenia are entitled to just and fair treatment, and workplaces should be made attractive to them.     

Developing understanding of the idea of communities of learners

The idea of a community of learners is based on the premise that learning occurs as people participate in shared endeavors with others, with all playing active but often asymmetrical roles in sociocultural activity. This contrasts with models of learning that are based on one‐sided notions of learning— either that it occurs through transmission of knowledge from experts or acquisition of knowledge by novices, with the learner or the others (respectively) in a passive role. In this paper, I develop the distinction between the community of learners and one‐sided approaches from the perspective of a theory of learning as participation, and use two lines of research to illustrate the transitions in perspective necessary to understand the idea of communities of learners. One line of research examines differing models of teaching and learning employed by caregivers and toddlers from Guatemalan Mayan and middle‐class European‐American families; the other line of research involves a study of how middle‐class parents make a transition from their own schooling background to participate in instruction in a public US elementary school.     

Long-term low-dose dehydroepiandrosterone replacement therapy in aging males with partial androgen deficiency

Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) and dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEAS) age-related withdrawal is very likely to be involved in the aging process and the onset of age-related diseases, giving rise to the question of whether preventing or compensating the decline of these steroids may have endocrine and clinical benefits. The aim of the present trial was to evaluate the endocrine, neuroendocrine and clinical consequences of a long-term (1 year), low-dose (25?mg/day) replacement therapy in a group of aging men who presented the clinical characteristics of partial androgen deficiency (PADAM). Circulating DHEA, DHEAS, androstenedione, total testosterone and free testosterone, dihydrotestosterone (DHT), progesterone, 17-hydroxyprogesterone, allopregnanolone, estrone, estradiol, sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG), cortisol, follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), luteinizing hormone (LH), growth hormone (GH) and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) levels were evaluated monthly to assess the endocrine effects of the therapy, while β-endorphin values were used as a marker of the neuroendocrine effects. A Kupperman questionnaire was performed to evaluate the subjective symptoms before and after treatment.

The results showed a great modification of the endocrine profile; with the exception of cortisol levels, which remained unchanged, DHEA, DHEAS, androstenedione, total and free testosterone, DHT, progesterone, 17-hydroxyprogesterone, estrone, estradiol, GH, IGF-1 and β-endorphin levels increased significantly with respect to baseline values, while FSH, LH and SHBG levels showed a significant decrease. The Kupperman score indicated a progressive improvement in mood, fatigue and joint pain.

In conclusion, the present study demonstrates that 25?mg/day of DHEA is able to cause significant changes in the hormonal profile and clinical symptoms and can counteract the age-related decline of endocrine and neuroendocrine functions. Restoring DHEA levels to young adult values seems to benefit the age-related decline in physiological functions but, however promising, placebo-controlled trials are required to confirm these preliminary results.     

Children's Planning of Classroom Plays with Adult or Child Direction

This study examined the planning that occurred when children participated in classroom playcrafting with either adult or child leadership. In a first‐/second‐grade classroom in an innovative public school, we videotaped 11 sessions in which children volunteered to develop a play with small groups of classmates and seven sessions in which adult volunteers (parents and a grandparent) developed plays with small groups of children. The plays were crafted in one session of about an hour, and then usually performed for the class. More planning took place during child‐ than adult‐directed sessions (averaging 92 vs. 35 percent of the session's duration). The groups led by children were more frequently involved in planning of themes, planning of details of the themes, and especially in improvisationally mindstorming ideas than were the groups led by adults. In adult‐directed sessions, the adults often planned the play before the children joined the activity, and the children spent most of the session in non‐playplanning activities such as gluing and coloring puppets or rehearsal of lines designed by the adult in advance. We argue that opportunities to observe and participate in planning—which occurred more frequently in child‐directed than adult‐directed sessions—are important to the development of planning skills and of co‐ordination of plans with others.     

His Master's Voice: Television in Argentina. A Case Study of Cultural Penetration

While Flora's article deals with alternatives developed by Latin American governments to offset the impact of cultural penetration by developed countries, Edmond Rogoff presents us with a case study of such penetration. He examines the extent of United States originated programs in the metropolitan Buenos Aires area during four recent weeks. Only briefly (1968–1972) during the last twenty-five years has Argentine television programming been free from domination by foreign—mainly United States—material. Currently, virtually every time slot is filled with American-made programs of 1960 or 1970 vintage or with feature films imported from this country. While Rogoff declines to deal with the consequences of such mass importation of programs, he does provide us with valuable specific data which seems to corroborate the cultural imperialism thesis elaborated by Armand and Michelle Matterlart, Kaarle Nordenstreng, Herbert Schiller and others.     

An approach to the treatment evaluation of Hodgkin's disease

Hodgkin's disease is a cancer of the lymphatic system. The major feature influencing the type of treatment employed, and the ultimate prognosis, is the stage or extent of disease prior to therapy. This paper is concerned with evaluating the difference in patient progress of two staging procedures. One (pathological staging) procedure is more extensive than the other (clinical staging). The evaluation is carried out by firstly developing a mathematical model of patient progress for pathologically staged patients and then using this model to predict what would have happened to clinically staged patients if they had been treated according to their pathological stage. Comparison of these predictions with actual results suggests that pathologically staged patients appear to remain in disease free survival (remission) following radio-therapy longer than clinically staged patients.