Mentor-shape: exploring the mentoring relationships of Black women in doctoral programs

Using a Black Feminist Thought framework, this phenomenological study focused on lived experiences with mentoring relationships among 38 Black women in doctoral programs in multiple disciplines across universities in the United States. Although emerging studies on Black women in academia acknowledge the significance of mentorship and the reality of discrimination at the intersection of race and gender, the literature lacks empirical support pertaining to the formation and outcomes of mentoring relationships, specifically for Black women in doctoral education. Findings from this study suggested four central themes in the mentoring relationships among Black women in doctoral programs: (a) organic evolvement, (b) shared identity/mutual interest, (c) personal transformation and (d) increase in access and opportunity. Implications for future research, policy, practice and education across disciplines are offered.     

Behavioral contrast and responding during multiple food-food,food-water,and water-water schedules

Five pigeons pecked lighted keys for food reinforcers delivered by several multiple variable interval 2-min variable interval 2-min schedules. At different times, the components of the multiple schedule both supplied food reinforcers, both supplied water, or one supplied food and the other supplied water. Rates of responding during the water component of the food-water schedule were lower than the rates during comparable components of the water-water schedules (negative contrast). But, the rates of responding during the food component of the food-water schedule were not greater than the rates of responding during comparable components of the food-food schedules (absence of positive contrast) at two different levels of water deprivation. These results raise questions about several theories of behavioral contrast, and they may restrict the scope of any theory that attributes positive and negative contrast to symmetrical factors.     

Mothers,fathers, and infants: the role of person familiarity and parental involvement in infants' perception of emotion expressions

The roles of person familiarity and parental involvement in 3.5-month-old infants' sensitivity to the dynamic emotion expressions of others were explored. In the home, parental facial/vocal expressions (happy, sad, angry) were videotaped, and measures of parent-infant involvement were obtained. In the laboratory, 32 infants alternately viewed their mother and father and an unfamiliar woman and man portraying expressions in an intermodal preference task. Infants looked differentially at mothers' expressions but not at those of fathers or unfamiliar adults. Examination of parent-child involvement patterns revealed significant relations with infants' sensitivity to expressions. Results suggest that person familiarity may facilitate infants' developing understanding of others' emotion expressions, and that individual differences in family dynamics may be relevant to infants' patterns of responding.     

The development of the abused child through adolescence and approaches to intensive treatment in a psychiatric hospital

Rejection, deprivation, physical pain, and an unpredictable environment are the primary determinants in the maladjustment of the abused child from infancy through adolescence.It is our conclusion that the majority of adolescents with character and personality disorders, particularly as manifested in the BORDERLINE SYNDROME, will have been subjected repeatedly and consistently to a parenting style incorporating these four determinants.The authors are involved in providing long term In-patient treatment to 40 severely emotionally disturbed adolescents. The vast majority of these youngsters are referred for uncontrollable acting out. Approximately ninety percent of these adolescents under treatment were abused and neglected as children.One of the forty adolescents under treatment will be considered. We believe her case history is typical of the abused child in adolescence.     

Transfer of control between causal predictive judgments and instrumental responding

Four experiments were conducted to explore outcome-specific transfer from causal predictive judgments to instrumental responding. A video game was designed in which participants had to defend Andalusia from navy and air force attacks. First, they learned the relationship between two instrumental responses (two keys on a standard keyboard) and two different outcomes (destruction of the ships or destruction of the planes). Then they learned to predict which of two different stimuli predicted which outcome. Finally, they had the opportunity of making either of the two instrumental responses in the presence of either stimulus. Transfer was shown as a preference for the response that shared an outcome with the current stimulus. The presentation of the stimulus during the test produced a decrease in the overall rate of response. Responding to a neutral stimulus in Experiments 2 and 3 suggested that this overall decrease in responding was due to a combination of the time needed to process the meaning of the stimulus and the activation of the representation of the outcome in the presence of the stimulus during the test. Transfer between predictive judgments and instrumental responding mirrors the outcome-specific Pavlovian instrumental transfer observed in conditioning studies with rats.     

The role of analogies in promoting conceptual change in biology

Four analogies which were used to teach biology topics by four different teachers were analysed from different theoretical perspectives to determine the key role they had to play in the process of conceptual change. A supermarket analogy for the classification of living things was described using the Posner et al. (1982) view of conceptual change as having the role of a sense maker. A car cooling system analogy for human temperature homeostasis was found to play the role of a memory aid and was best explained by considering Vosniadou's (1994) framework theory and mental models perspective of conceptual change. A fluid mosaic analogy for cell membranes was used by the teacher as a transformer and was best explained by Chi et al.'s (1994) ontological category perspective of conceptual change. Finally, a bucket and pump analogy used to teach the stucture and function of the heart was described as a motivator and was viewed through the motivational perspective of conceptual change of Pintrich et al. (1993). The paper concludes that learning in different situations can best be explained by different perspectives of conceptual change and that these perspectives have much to tell us about the normal shifts in conceptual understanding as well as radical conceptual change.     

Using genetics to understand dyslexia

This paper reviews what is currently known about the genetics of dyslexia and shows how genetic studies can help clarify which symptoms are primary and which are secondary in dyslexia. On the genetic side, current evidence supports the view that dyslexia is familial, substantially heritable, and heterogeneous in its genetic mechanisms. At least some forms of familial dyslexia appear to be autosomal dominant, with linkage studies supporting both a major locus on chromosome 15 and genetic heterogeneity. On the symptom side, current evidence supports the view that the primary symptom in dyslexia is a deficit in the phonological coding of written language. This primary symptom likewise appears to be heritable. Recent evidence suggests that the heritable precursor to this written language deficit is a spoken language deficit in the skill of phoneme segmentation and awareness.