Becoming a ‘proper man’: young people’s attitudes about interpersonal violence and perceptions of gender

Whilst public awareness campaigns, interventions and legal reforms have done much to challenge gendered interpersonal violence, the incidence and prevalence of this violence is not decreasing. Furthermore, research with young people reveals significant acceptance and tolerance of interpersonal violence if perpetrated by men within the parameters of an intimate heterosexual relationship. Empirical data from a study with young people in Glasgow will be used in this article to explore young people’s attitudes about gendered interpersonal abuse and violence and young people’s perceptions of gender roles and specifically ‘masculinity’. It is argued that in order to understand the continued tolerance of male abuse/violence, it is necessary to appreciate how young people conceptualise the role of women and men within intimate heterosexual relationships.     

Responding to individuals with severe learning difficulties and stereotyped behaviour: challenges for an inclusive era

Traditionally, professionals working with individuals with severe learning difficulties who demonstrate stereotyped behaviours, such as rocking and hand-flapping, have viewed such behaviours as undesirable, inappropriate and in need of reduction or elimination. This perspective is influenced by notions of readying those individuals for mixed settings, educating, training or modifying them to help gain their acceptance. Intensive Interaction is an alternative approach for working with individuals with complex difficulties that responds positively to them and their stereotyped behaviours, sometimes using these as a point of connection. Intensive Interaction sets out to enhance social and communication abilities and not to reduce stereotyped behaviours. However, findings from two studies of Intensive Interaction that show some reduction in stereotyped behaviours are reported and discussed. The authors consider the way in which more inclusive thinking connects with changes in thinking about stereotyped behaviour and the individuals who engage in them.     

KNOWLEDGE AND ATTITUDES OF UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS REGARDING THE HEALTH AND NUTRITION OF OLDER ADULTS

This study evaluated knowledge and attitudes of undergraduates regarding nutrition and health of the aged and students' intentions of pursuing career involvement with older adults. The participants evaluated were undergraduates from three mid-western universities (n=1,755). The majority of those surveyed were uninformed and unlikely to pursue career involvement with older adults. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed.     

Blocking in autoshaped lever-pressing procedures with rats

Rats will approach and contact a lever whose insertion into the chamber signals response-independent food delivery. This “autoshaping” or “sign-tracking” phenomenon has recently attracted considerable attention as a platform for studying individual differences in impulsivity, drug sensitization, and other traits associated with vulnerability to drug addiction. Here, we examined two basic stimulus selection phenomena—blocking and overshadowing—in the autoshaped lever pressing of rats. Blocking and overshadowing were decidedly asymmetrical. Previously reinforced lever-extension conditioned stimuli (CSs) completely blocked conditioning to auditory cues (Exps. 1 and 2), and previously nonreinforced lever-extension CSs overshadowed conditioning to auditory cues. By contrast, conditioning to lever-extension CSs was not blocked by either auditory (Exp. 3) or lever-insertion (Exp. 4) cues, and was not overshadowed by auditory cues. Conditioning to a lever-insertion cue was somewhat overshadowed by the presence of another lever, especially in terms of food cup behavior displayed after lever withdrawal. We discuss several frameworks in which the apparent immunity of autoshaped lever pressing to blocking might be understood. Given evidence that different brain systems are engaged when different kinds of cues are paired with food delivery, it is worth considering the possibility that interactions among them in learning and performance may follow different rules. In particular, it is intriguing to speculate that the roles of simple cue–reinforcer contiguity, as well as of individual and aggregate reinforcer prediction errors, may differ across stimulus classes.     

The impact of past dating relationship solidarity on commitment,satisfaction, and investment in current relationships

The purpose of this study was to determine how previous romantic relationships impact subsequent romantic relationships. Specifically, this study examined if past relationship solidarity is related to current relationship commitment, satisfaction, and investment among individuals in dating relationships. Participants were 204 undergraduates at an Eastern university who were currently in a dating relationship. Results indicated that past relationship solidarity is significantly and negatively related to current relationship commitment and satisfaction, but not significantly related to current investment. Several moderating variables were also examined, including the nature and attribution of individuals' breakups, the length of past and current relationships, and participant sex. Results revealed that the nature and style of past breakups were particularly salient moderating variables, such that past solidarity was related to future relationship commitment and satisfaction only when breakups were mutual and somewhat ambiguous. Furthermore, these relationships were significant only for women and not men.     

Field-Based Evaluation of Two-Tiered Instruction for Enhancing Kindergarten Phonological Awareness

Research Findings: This study reports on the outcomes of a multisite, two-tiered, response-to-intervention instructional model for delivering phonological awareness instruction and intervention to kindergartners. Fifty-seven kindergartners from 3 classrooms participated in a supplemental phonological awareness program, and 56 kindergartners from 3 classrooms received the prevailing school-adopted literacy curriculum. All children in the supplemental condition received supplemental classroom-based phonological awareness instruction in addition to the adopted literacy curriculum. At mid-year, 6 low literacy achievers were identified in each supplemental classroom (n = 18) to participate in an additional 12-week small-group intervention. The classroom-based supplemental curriculum did not produce statistically significant gains for typically achieving children on measures of letter–sound knowledge, word recognition, or developmental spelling. However, an add-on tier of supplemental instruction exerted a substantial advantage for low-achieving children on a measure of developmental spelling. Practice or Policy: Results suggest that a 2-tiered intervention model provides an effective means for improving the literacy outcomes of low-achieving kindergarten children.     

Case-based learning in virtual groups – collaborative problem solving activities and learning outcomes in a virtual professional training course

This article analyzes the collaborative problem solving activities and learning outcomes of five groups that worked on two different complex cases in a virtual professional training course. In this asynchronous virtual learning environment, all knowledge management content was delivered virtually and collaboration took place through forums. To measure the effects of the problem solving activities, learners' contributions were analyzed with respect to four different problem solving activities: Two content-specific problem solving activities, namely gathering information and developing a solution, and two coordination-specific problem solving activities, namely planning the common approach and steering the interaction process. Results indicated that the learning process was dominated by two central activities: developing a solution and steering the interaction process. Furthermore, the results indicated that the groups with the more complex case used more overall problem solving activities than the groups with the less complex case. There was also a greater range of learning outcomes for learners with the more complex case than for learners with the less complex case. Finally, the number of overall problem solving activities for most of the successful groups was higher than for the less successful groups. Additionally, the more successful groups used more coordination-specific activities than content-specific activities during the problem solving process.     

Cosmopolitans or Locals: Who Will Lead the Next Generation of Community Colleges?

The impact of cosmopolitan and local latent social roles on different professional occupations and organizational behavior has been studied since Gouldner’s seminal study was published in 1957. This study was conducted to understand the relationship between the latent social role of the public community college chief academic officer and his or her intent to pursue a community college presidency.     

The Split-Ballot Multitrait-Multimethod Approach: Implementation and Problems

Saris, Satorra, and Coenders (2004) proposed a new approach to estimate the quality of survey questions, combining the advantages of 2 existing approaches: the multitrait–multimethod (MTMM) and the split-ballot (SB) ones. Implemented in practice, this new approach led to frequent problems of nonconvergence and improper solutions. This article uses Monte Carlo simulations to understand why the SB-MTMM is working well in some cases but not in others. The number of SB groups is a crucial element: The 3-group design is performing better. However, the 2-group design can also perform well: The analyses suggest that the interaction between the absolute values of the correlations between the traits and the relative values of the different correlations between traits plays an important role.