Disabled by Design

This paper describes and analyses the author's attempts to engage in a user-led design/research process. This was undertaken during an MA in Design Research for Disability. The first section of the study delineates the background and context of the process of inquiry. This involves examination of the common features within design participation and emancipatory research. The second section of the study uses six principles of emancipatory research, defined by Emma Stone and Mark Priestley (1996), as a framework for analysis of the author's own process of inquiry.     

Communicating Global Activism

Many observers doubt the capacity of digital media to change the political game. The rise of a transnational activism that is aimed beyond states and directly at corporations, trade and development regimes offers a fruitful area for understanding how communication practices can help create a new politics. The Internet is implicated in the new global activism far beyond merely reducing the costs of communication, or transcending the geographical and temporal barriers associated with other communication media. Various uses of the Internet and digital media facilitate the loosely structured networks, the weak identity ties, and the patterns of issue and demonstration organizing that define a new global protest politics. Analysis of various cases shows how digital network configurations can facilitate: permanent campaigns; the growth of broad networks despite relatively weak social identity and ideology ties; transformation of individual member organizations and whole networks; and the capacity to communicate messages from desktops to television screens. The same qualities that make these communication-based politics durable also make them vulnerable to problems of control, decision-making and collective identity.     

Complex belief-desire reasoning in children

Previous research concerned with children's belief-desire psychology has examined the capacity to predict or interpret action on the basis of the implicit proposition that ‘when an actor desires a particular end and believes that a particular action will achieve that end, he or she will undertake that action’. The limitations of this formulation for understanding acts of omission are outlined and an elaborated version of belief-desire psychology introduced. This version holds that ‘when an actor desires a particular end and believes that a particular action will achieve that end, and when it is believed that there are no co-occurring outcomes of that action whose avoidance is desired more highly than is the originally conceived end, then the actor will undertake the action which will satisfy the original desire’. An experiment is reported which examines 4-, 5, and 7-year-olds' ability to predict story characters' actions on the basis of either their true or false beliefs concerning undesirable outcomes associated with the pursuit of a desired end. Children of all age-groups provided evidence of understanding the elaborated version of belief-desire psychology. However, a significant improvement was noted between the ages of 4 and 7 years in the ability to understand circumstances involving false beliefs.     

Clinical Writing of a Therapy in Progress: Ethical Questions and Therapeutic Challenges

Clinical implications and ethical dilemmas of the use of confidential case material in clinical writing are examined, including a review of the discourse among professionals who publish clinical work. This literature is applied to a clinical illustration of psychotherapy with a client who gave consent for publication and read the clinical write-up of her case material. It is suggested that clinical writing may increase client “self-reflection” if there is a “secure base” of attachment between therapist/author and the client. The impact on the client’s treatment process is examined, in addition to a discussion of ethical questions and professional recommendations. ²Dr. Susanne Bennett is an Assistant Professor, National School of Social Service of the Catholic University of America. Dr. Bennett is also a psychotherapist in private practice in Falls Church, VA.     

Supporting the Posts in Development Discourse: Under‐development,Over‐development,Post‐development

This article seeks to introduce scholars outside of development studies to post‐development thought, and to restate its relevance and value to those working within the development field. It begins with an overview of post‐development thought and its critique of the post‐World War Two development project. Following this, specific critiques levelled at post‐development thought and various responses to these are considered. In the last section, the possibility or desirability of raising the living standards of Third World people to a level comparable to those of the First World through economically based development strategies is questioned. The article concludes by drawing attention to First World overdevelopment and the continued value of post‐development thinking in unsettling the development trajectory for either the First or Third World.     

Implicit Valuation of the Near-Miss is Dependent on Outcome Context

Gambling studies have described a “near-miss effect” wherein the experience of almost winning increases gambling persistence. The near-miss has been proposed to inflate the value of preceding actions through its perceptual similarity to wins. We demonstrate here, however, that it acts as a conditioned stimulus to positively or negatively influence valuation, dependent on reward expectation and cognitive engagement. When subjects are asked to choose between two simulated slot machines, near-misses increase valuation of machines with a low payout rate, whereas they decrease valuation of high payout machines. This contextual effect impairs decisions and persists regardless of manipulations to outcome feedback or financial incentive provided for good performance. It is consistent with proposals that near-misses cause frustration when wins are expected, and we propose that it increases choice stochasticity and overrides avoidance of low-valued options. Intriguingly, the near-miss effect disappears when subjects are required to explicitly value machines by placing bets, rather than choosing between them. We propose that this task increases cognitive engagement and recruits participation of brain regions involved in cognitive processing, causing inhibition of otherwise dominant systems of decision-making. Our results reveal that only implicit, rather than explicit strategies of decision-making are affected by near-misses, and that the brain can fluidly shift between these strategies according to task demands.     

Mental illness etiology beliefs among African American men with serious mental illness and their social support networks

Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 26 African American men with serious mental illness who were consumers of community mental health services and 26 members of their social support networks. All participants were asked what they believed had caused the consumers’ mental illness. Consumer participants most commonly identified chronic life stressors as a causal factor, while social supports most often identified intrinsic factors such as genetics or biology as causes of mental illness. Some support participants believed that unintentional drug use had precipitated the onset of mental illness or had no causal theories. The fact that some support participants could not identify a causal explanation may indicate failure on the part of mental health care systems to engage with consumers’ social support networks and provide education about mental illness and its causes. The implications of etiology beliefs on mental health service utilization are discussed.     

A robustness framework for monitoring real options under uncertainty

This paper presents a problem structuring methodology to assess real option decisions in the face of unpredictability. Based on principles of robustness analysis and scenario planning, we demonstrate how decision-aiding can facilitate participation in projects setting and achieve effective decision making through the use of real options reasoning. We argue that robustness heuristics developed in earlier studies can be practical proxies for real options performance, hence indicators of efficient flexible planning. The developed framework also highlights how to integrate real options solutions in firms’ strategic plans and operating actions. The use of the methodology in a location decision application is provided for illustration.