特迪

她是汤普森夫人,第一天上课站在五年级学生面前时,她对孩子们撒了一个谎。像大多数老师一样,她看着学生说,她爱他们每一个人。但是那是不可能的,因为在前排的一个名叫特迪的小男孩,老是趴在桌子上。汤普森夫人前一年就注意到特迪和其他小孩相处不好,衣服很乱,经常不洗澡。可以说他很不讨人喜欢。这样说正好讲到正题了。汤普森夫人实际上很高兴用粗红笔改他的试卷,只需打上粗粗的红叉,然后在试卷上方大大地写上“F”。汤普森夫人所在的学校要求老师查看每个小孩过去的记录。她最后才看特迪的,然而当她看他的档案时,大吃了一惊。特迪一年级的…     

Aspiration levels and educational choices: An experimental study

The explanation of social inequalities in education is still a debated issue in economics. Recent empirical studies tend to downplay the potential role of credit constraint. This article tests a different potential explanation of social inequalities in education, specifically that social differences in aspiration level result in different educational choices. Having existed for a long time in the sociology of education, this explanation can be justified if aspiration levels are seen as reference points in a prospect theory framework. In order to test this explanation, this article applies the method of experimental economics to the issue of education choice and behaviour. One hundred and twenty-nine individuals participated in an experiment in which they had to perform a task over 15 stages grouped in three blocks or levels. In order to continue through the experiment, a minimum level of success was required at the end of each level. Rewards were dependent on the final level successfully reached. At the end of each level, participants could either choose to stop and take their reward or to pay a cost to continue further in order to possibly receive higher rewards. To test the impact of aspiration levels, outcomes were either presented as gains or losses relative to an initial sum. In accordance with the theoretical predictions, participants in the loss framing group choose to go further in the experiment. There was also a significant and interesting gender effect in the loss framing treatment, such that males performed better and reached higher levels.     

Retardation of conditioned excitation following operational inhibitory blocking

Water-deprived adult rats were used in a conditioned-suppression-of-licking procedure to determine the effect of inhibitory training with a novel stimulus trained in simultaneous compound with a previously established conditioned inhibitor. This procedure constitutes an inhibitory analogue to the excitatory blocking procedure in classical conditioning. The conditioned-inhibition training consisted of either explicitly unpaired CS and US presentations or negative contingency training, in which the likelihood of the US was greater in the absence than in the presence of the CS, but the CS and the US were occasionally paired. To assess conditioned inhibition, a retardation test was used, and comparable retardation was obtained for subjects that were administered the blocking treatment and control subjects given similar conditioned-inhibition training with a compound stimulus in which the nontarget element was not previously established as a conditioned inhibitor.     

Research into the Social Purposes of Schooling: Personal and Social Education in Secondary Schools in England and Wales

Though the term 'PSE' is used in most secondary schools, it refers to a wide variety of programmes and practices. This is in part inevitable but the situation has been exacerbated by PSE's diverse origins and lack of clarity regarding its relationship to the National Curriculum. Having discussed the expectations of PSE in relation to social issues and the 'anxieties, sensitivities and controversy' that underlie this, the writer goes on to describe a piece of research which sought to survey a number of aspects of PSE nationally. The picture of existing practice, issues and problems of PSE in secondary schools is an illuminating one and provides a clear picture of current practice.     

SOCIAL WORKERS’ ACCEPTABILITY RATINGS OF BEHAVIORAL TREATMENTS AND PHARMACOTHERAPY FOR THE MANAGEMENT OF GERIATRIC BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS

The purpose of the present study was to obtain treatment acceptability ratings from social workers whose client contacts include a high percentage of persons age 60 or older. Social workers were presented with written scenarios depicting a 75‐year‐old woman with a behavior problem. The client in the case varied by cognitive capacity (nondemented or experiencing dementia), living situation (living with a family caregiver or in a nursing home), and presenting problem (aggression, verbal abuse, or noncompliance). Using Kazdin's (1980) Treatment Evaluation Inventory, participants rated three treatments: positive reinforcement, time out from positive reinforcement, and haloperidol. Although ratings for time out varied by presenting problem, the highest acceptability for each type of behavior problem was assigned to the positive reinforcement condition, followed by time out, with the lowest ratings associated with haloperidol.