Apparent hyperglycemic and hypoglycemic conditioned responses with exogenous insulin as the unconditioned stimulus

Rats were injected with either insulin or saline and placed in one of two distinctive environments for 25 min on each of several days. On test trials for conditioning, the animals were injected with saline in both environments and blood glucose levels were measured. Apparent conditioned changes were obtained, but the direction of the conditioned response depended upon the environment in which the animals were placed. A conditioned hyperglycemic response occurred in one environment, and a conditioned hypoglycemic response occurred in the other environment. This pattern occurred in both within-subject and between-subjects designs and was not influenced by route of insulin injection (ip or sc). The hypoglycemic, but not the hyperglycemic, response was blocked by methyl atropine. The occurrence of both CR patterns with the same low insulin dose is contrary to previous speculation that the different CR patterns are due to different dose levels of insulin.     

Family, Friend, and Neighbor Child Caregivers: Results of a Statewide Study to Determine Needs and Desires for Support

Family, friend and neighbor (FFN) child caregivers represent a significant proportion of caregivers for young children. Yet, these caregivers receive little support for their services. In 2003, the First 5 California Children and Families Commission (First 5 California) began a study to determine the work-related needs of FFN caregivers in California. This paper reports on the results of all study activities, including focus groups and interviews with caregivers and parents. It details the specific needs related to licensing, materials and equipment, education and training, and support systems that were identified by FFN caregivers, parents, and other stakeholders as being important to improve the quality and working conditions of FFN care. It also discusses needs of agencies that provide services to FFN caregivers, including awareness of and knowledge about the population, funding and other resources, and professional development topics.     

Teacher Evaluation Within a Community of Truth: Testing the Ideas of Parker Palmer

Parker Palmer, in The Courage to Teach (1997), proposed an alternative approach to traditional teaching evaluations, one deeply rooted in a holistic view of education which focuses on the potential for creating self-knowledge and relationships between colleagues. This article describes a project in which we studied these claims and tested the feasibility of an open-door evaluation process. Our main purpose was to determine whether Palmer's methods could help us to improve our teaching. In addition, we asked whether this holistic approach may influence summative evaluations that affect personnel decision-making and its potential for influencing the culture of teaching in higher education.     

Preschoolers' Emotional Control in the Disappointment Paradigm and Its Relation to Temperament, Emotional Knowledge, and Family Expressiveness

The present research evaluated a conceptual model that links temperament, emotional knowledge, and family expressiveness to preschoolers' emotion regulation ability. The emotional understanding of 82 preschoolers was assessed with 2 separate tasks. After the second emotional knowledge task, the children were presented a "disappointing" prize, and their facial displays of positive and negative affect were recorded. The children and their mothers also participated in a game designed to elicit maternal expressive behavior. Mothers provided information about the preschoolers' temperament and about the frequency of positive and negative affect expressed within their families Results indicated that children's positive displays when presented the "disappointing" prize were inversely related to the temperamental dimension of emotional intensity and positively associated with children's understanding of emotion. Maternal reports of sadness within the family were inversely related to children's positive affective displays. Children's negative emotional displays in the disappointment situation were inversely related to observed maternal positive emotion. The findings from this study give greater specification to the unique and joint contributions of temperament, emotional knowledge, and family expressiveness in predicting preschoolers' expressive control of emotion.     

Individual differences among undergraduate women in methods of coping with stressful events: the impact of cumulative childhood stressors and abuse

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of the current study was to determine if a history of greater exposure to different types of adverse and/or abusive experiences in childhood would influence coping strategies used by undergraduate women to deal with new stressful events in young adulthood. METHOD: A sample of 828 women undergraduates from a New England state university participated in this questionnaire study. Disengagement and engagement coping strategies used in response to recent stressors were compared in groups who had none, one, two, or three or more types of adverse and/or abusive childhood experiences (sexual abuse, physical abuse, witnessing domestic violence, having an alcoholic parent, and parental rejection). RESULTS: There was an increased reliance on disengagement methods of coping (wishful thinking, problem avoidance, social withdrawal, and self-criticism) as a function of more extensive child abuse histories. Engagement methods of coping (problem solving, cognitive restructuring, social support, and express-emotions), however, did not show a corresponding decrease as a function of increased exposure to different types of childhood stressors and/or abuse. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates that undergraduate women with cumulative adverse and/or abusive childhood histories are particularly at-risk of relying on maladaptive disengagement coping strategies to deal with various new stressors later in life.     

What parts of teaching do academics see as feasible to delegate?

This paper investigates Australian academics' views about teaching by asking them about the aspects of their job they could contract to other. In particular, it contrasts the views of 26 academics the Humanities with those of 26 in the Social Sciences. The results showed no differences as a function of level of appointment or gender but a significant difference by teaching area: academics from the Social Sciences were more likely to approve in general the practice of buying out time. When asked about contracting out specific aspects of teaching, the only area of difference was for marking (Social Sciences were more often in favour). In all other respects, the viewpoints expressed by academics from the Humanities and Social Sciences were very similar. Such approval was rarely given unconditionally, however. Concerns were expressed about the need to maintain some degree of supervision or responsibility for teaching. Academics agreed on their overall goals in teaching, on whether or not lecturing, tutorials and student consultation could be contracted to others and on the ideal amounts of time to spend on teaching, research, and administration. It is argued that this pattern of results is more likely to reflect a difference in implementation of goals rather than a difference in baseline ideas as a result of different cultures in the two teaching areas.     

The nature of reader ability differences in lexical access

Can good and poor readers be differentiated by their use of word-naming and lexical access codes? Poor readers experience extreme difficulty in decoding nonsense words, indicating that they cannot use the spelling to sound rules which underlie the indirect phonological route to word pronunciation. However, recent evidence suggests that poor readers do use a phonological route for lexical access in word and picture naming tasks which rely upon the production of a phonological code. Is this also true of other tasks, which are not dependent upon phonological representation? Two such tasks are described in the present study: one involving picture-word interference, and the other involving a lexical decision paradigm. Results showed that poor readers do use a phonological route to lexical access independent of task demand. A review of findings in this area to date shows several inconsistencies, and an attempt is made to resolve these by drawing on Stanovich's (1980) interactive-compensatory model of reading.     

Contemporary Scientists Discuss the Need for Openness and Open-Mindedness in Science and Society

We report on findings from a qualitative study of Australian scientists whose work brings them into contact with the public. This research sought to understand how a school science curriculum could better represent the work of scientists today. We discuss the views expressed by our participant scientists about the importance of openness and open-mindedness in their work, including their engagement with the public. They described openness as an important characteristic of science. Our participants also see open-mindedness on the part of both scientists and members of the public as important for productive relationships. They see the development of such relationships as an essential facet of their work. The views expressed by these scientists provide a provocative insight into the ways in which contemporary scientists see their work and relationships with their communities. Their perspectives have important implications for approaches to teaching science in schools.     

The Value-Added Nature of Service-Learning

This research explores the benefits of service-learning among a group of Midwestern college students. Students enrolled in a section of a Juvenile Delinquency course served as volunteers at a juvenile detention facility and were studied using a pre-test/post-test survey design. This pilot project also included a comparison group of students in a section of the course which did not involve service-learning. The study compared service-learning to non-service-learning students in terms of attitudes regarding juvenile delinquency, punishment, and attributions of criminal behavior. We also examined any possible effects of service-learning on student academic skills, career goals, and comfort level with delinquents. Overall, we found that the service-learning project was a valuable educational tool having a positive impact on a number of student outcomes. We discuss the implications of these findings for service-learning research and practice.