Retirement as a Learning Process

This article draws upon a major qualitative empirical research investigation in Great Britain to explore the relationships between retirement and learning. Though retirement is frequently viewed as an event leading to a life stage, our data show that it can perhaps be best understood as a lengthy process. This process begins well before actual retirement in most cases, and it continues well after any symbolic retirement event. Through this process of change, it is common for persons to be retired by one definition but not by another. The article shows that if we adopt recent understandings of learning as a process of becoming—incorporating informal as well as formal learning—then retirement is a process and learning is an inevitable, integral part of that process. We conclude by suggesting some implications that follow from understanding retirement in this way.     

A qualitative comparison of perceived stress and coping in adolescents with and without autistic spectrum disorders as they approach leaving school

During the research reported in this article, differences in perceived stress and coping between adolescents with and without autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) were examined by a series of interviews. Emphasis was placed on examining the issue with regard to the prospective transition at the point of leaving secondary education. Ten pupils with autism and seven without any identified disorder were interviewed. The participants with ASD indicated worry about specific objects and social relations; demonstrated a lack of external expression of their stress; and indicated a reliance on self, rather than others, for help. Those with ASD also indicated more concerns regarding items not affecting their education and were self-admittedly poor at dealing with both current and future stress. Participants without a disorder were far more concerned with their education and outlined different methods of stress management. James Browning, an Educational Psychologist in training, Dr Lisa A. Osborne, a Research Fellow in the Learning and Adaptive Behaviour Group, in the Department of Psychology at Swansea University, and Professor Phil Reed, the Director of the Learning and Adaptive Behaviour Group, in the Department of Psychology at Swansea University, suggest that these differences should be addressed and argue that the further incorporation of techniques to improve coping with stress may ease the transition from school for students with ASD.     

Living with imperfect comparisons: The challenges and limitations of comparative paralympic sport policy research

In this article, the authors explores the challenges and limitations of conducting cross-comparative management/policy research in the Paralympic sporting domain. The comparative sport policy debate in able-bodied sport has emerged, in part, due to the increasing complexity, uncertainty, and competitive nature of high performance sport environments and a desire to understand why some countries are more successful than others at international sporting competition. The same issues and questions have also emerged within the Paralympic context. As a precursor to establishing a research agenda in this area, however, it was deemed important to begin to address the epistemological, methodological, and practical issues in comparative sport research. The analysis draws upon the broader sociological literature and examples from the Paralympic sporting context to identify and discuss the challenges and limitations of the comparative approach as well as recommendations for mitigating against them.     

Extinction of enhanced latent inhibition

Hungry rats were used in a classical conditioning procedure in which visual stimuli were paired with food. Conditions in which nonreinforced exposure to a nontarget stimulus was followed by exposure to a simultaneous compound nontarget/target stimulus (a blocking procedure) resulted in enhanced latent inhibition to the target relative to exposure to the nontarget, followed by exposure to the target stimulus alone. A third phase of nonreinforced exposure training, in which the target was exposed alone following the compound, reduced levels of latent inhibition relative to results obtained with the blocking procedure. Experiments also suggested that this was not the result of restoration of associability by the omission of an expected presentation of the nontarget stimulus in the final preexposure phase. These results suggest that enhanced latent inhibition is due to summation of a direct-target-no-event association and a second-order association of these elements via target-nontarget and nontarget-no-event association. Exposure to the target after compound exposure extinguished the target-nontarget association and reduced the sources of no-event learning for the target.     

Priced Out?

While the literature on postsecondary student success identifies important academic and social factors associated with student outcomes, one question that persists concerns the influence of financial aid. We use the National Student Clearinghouse’s StudentTracker service to develop a more complete model of student success that accommodates opportunities for students to choose to either graduate from the university of first-entry, graduate from a transfer university, or depart from college without a degree. The multinomial regression model reveals differential effects of financial aid. Results suggest that loan aid appears to encourage students to search out alternative institutions or drop out of college entirely, and merit aid appears to increase the likelihood of students persisting and graduating from the university of first-entry.     

Caregiving and Social Support: A Twenty-first Century Challenge for College Students

This study adopted a caregiving perspective to analyze college students’ supportive relationships (N=266). With respect to the provision of care, female caregivers engaged in more difficult types of hands-on support than male caregivers, and data suggested that college caregivers are differently challenged by the life stage of the person for whom they provide care. With respect to students’ reception of social support, both main and interaction effects were found for sex, care giving status, and locus of control. Discussion focuses on the developmental nature of caregiving skills, social support reciprocity, and implications of these findings for public policy and human communication research.     

Towards a Foucauldian Methodology in the Study of Autism: Issues of Archaeology,Genealogy, and Subjectification

The remarkable increase in diagnoses of autism has paralleled an increase in scientific research and turned the syndrome into a kind of a new ‘trend’ within psychiatric and developmental conditions of childhood. At the same time, discursive technologies, such as DSM‐IV, autobiographies, movies, fiction, etc., together with ‘educational’ interventions, such as TEACCH, PECS, Makaton, etc., seem to anticipate a form of an apparatus built around the condition named autism. Starting from this premise, the article proposes a new approach within autism studies, which treats the condition in Foucauldian terms and focuses on the emergence of the autistic subjectivity following Foucault's methodology of archaeology, genealogy, and modes of subjectification.     

Food aversion learning in kangaroo rats: A specialist-generalist comparison

Two species of kangaroo rat (Dipodomys), varying in their degree of dietary specialization, were compared in a series of food aversion learning experiments to test the hypothesis that rapid aversion learning is an adaptation of relatively generalist feeders. The more generalist species indeed learned better or more rapidly in certain experiments, but species differences were at least partly a function of the specific test foods. Interpretation of results is complicated by differences between the two species in their initial reactions to particular foods, in the relative efficacy of different foods in supporting learned aversions, and perhaps even in their physiological responses to illness-inducing and control procedures.