Enhanced handling and positioning in early infancy advances development throughout the first year

Behaviors emerge, in part, from the interplay of infant abilities and caregiver–infant interactions. Cross‐cultural and developmental studies suggest caregiver handling and positioning influence infant development. In this prospective, longitudinal study, the effects of 3 weeks of enhanced handling and positioning experiences provided to 14 infants versus control experiences provided to 14 infants at 2 months of age were assessed with follow‐up through 15 months of age. Behaviors in prone were immediately advanced. Short‐term advancements occurred in multiple behaviors, including prone, head control, reaching, and sitting behaviors. Longer term advancements, up to 12 months after the experience period, occurred in object transfer, crawling and walking behaviors. This suggests broad and long‐lasting changes can arise via brief periods of change in caregiver–infant interactions.     

Supervision Experiences of Professional Counselors Providing Crisis Counseling

In this phenomenological study, the authors explored supervision experiences of 13 licensed professional counselors in situations requiring crisis counseling. Five themes concerning crisis and supervision were identified from individual interviews. Findings support intensive, immediate crisis supervision and postlicensure clinical supervision.     

Turn‐taking resources employed by congenitally blind conversers

It has been suggested that blind persons lack appropriate communicative social skills. One aspect of social skills is the ability to regulate interaction smoothly. The study examined turn‐taking resources utilized by congenitally blind persons. Conversational Analysis was employed to discover the turn‐taking resources used by six congenitally blind individuals in three dyads (i.e., one male, one female and one mixed dyad). The results were compared with past research on turn‐taking resources utilized by sighted conversers. Overall, the participants utilized the majority of focal resources reported in research on sighted individuals. However, non‐vocal resources deviated from those found in previous research on sighted conversers. Specifically, tactile resources were not used; self‐adaptors, gestures and posture shifts were seldom used; mechanistic movements of the head and atypical use of facial orientation were discovered. Possible implications of these finding are discussed.     

Advancing Critical Thinking and Information Literacy Skills in First Year College Students

ABSTRACT

This article provides a case study of recent curriculum development in a freshman skills program which integrates critical thinking and English composition as linked courses at Gonzaga University. Known as “thought and expression” courses, this block of courses, which also includes speech communication, can be taken by students separately or in a linked cohort with the same twenty students in each class. In linked courses, faculty are generally aware of each others' course topics and assignments, and they meet to discuss student progress and look for opportunities for curriculum integration. In this case study, library faculty were included in the instructional team, and information literacy skills that relate to critical thinking were integrated into the goals of the critical thinking and English composition courses. Faculty involved in the courses believe that integrating library skills into course goals adds coherence to the curriculum; it also helps students to achieve the developmental goals of the learning community created by this course model.     

Being-Together: Thinking through Technologically Mediated Sociality and Community

Our sociality is increasingly enacted through technology. This essay argues that the relationship between the technological mediation of social relations and the ways in which these practices are understood conceptually needs to be critiqued, rethought, and extended. Current approaches tend to accentuate the individual to the detriment of the social and often to understand technology instrumentally. Jean-Luc Nancy's notion of being singular plural and his understanding of the relations between singular beings and of ecotechnics are discussed briefly to illustrate an alternate direction for considering ways of being-together in Western techno-society.