bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Family of Friends
Authors: Dore Martha Morrison , Feldman Nancy , Gelles Amy Winnick
Published: April 2010

This chapter discusses the Family of Friends program. Family of Friends is an innovative program model designed to be implemented in day care centers and other preschool programs to create nurturing and supportive communities among participating families in order to ameliorate factors associated with child abuse and neglect. Its focus is based on the primary prevention concept of building the capacity of parents to cope with the factors in their lives that present risks to adequate parenting.
Developing a Community-Based Model for Integrated Family Center Practice
Authors: Warren-Adamson Chris , Lightburn Anita
Published: April 2010

This chapter describes integrated family center practice that offers protection, nurturance, and avenues for development for parents and their children. The focus is the integrated family center (or family resource center) as a community-based single-site system of care, which arguably has an important role in the development of safe communities and new visions for children's services. As an alternative to existing child welfare services, they address fragmentation, defensive practice, and the disconnection from community that are serious problems in protective services. As stable community-based programs, integrated family centers provide a therapeutic milieu with a complex array of services to meet child welfare's primary goal: child well-being and family support. These integrated centers have the advantage of being a community, a place to belong to that grows with the family.
Social Work and the “Community of Concern” in an Urban American Public Elementary School
Authors: Schotz E. Martin , Dean Ruth Grossman , Crosby Jane
Published: April 2010

This chapter reviews the work of a community mental health team in an urban public elementary school. It provides examples of the work with administrators, teachers, parents, and students. In recounting the work of the team over 4 years, the reader is only provided with an early interim report. A great deal remains to be done. Over the next 5 to 10 years, with the principal's help, the team hopes to extend these concepts to build a school-wide culture involving everyone: students, teachers, administrators, and parents.
School-Based Psychoeducational Groups on Trauma Designed to Decrease Reenactment
Authors: Glodich Ann Marie , Allen Jon G. , Fultz Jim , Thompson George , Arnold-Whitney Cindy , Varvil Cheri , Moody Chris
Published: April 2010

Over the course of several years, a protocol for psychoeducational intervention has been implemented, evaluated, and continually refined. The protocol aims to increase adolescents' awareness of the impact of trauma on their functioning, thereby setting the stage for helping them cope more effectively with stress; all in the service of diminishing the likelihood of re-enactment and risk-taking behaviors. This chapter describes the current status of the protocol, its evolution through the process of evaluation, and its potential for wider applications in the community. First, it presents the latest version of the protocol. Second, it traces the course of its evaluation, from a quantitative to a qualitative approach, the latter developed to better validate clinical impressions. Third, it presents a framework to conceptualize the role of this intervention in violence prevention. Finally, some of the implications for future community applications are discussed.
Recovery Guides
Authors: Davidson Larry , Tondora Janis , Staeheli Martha , O’Connell Maria , Frey Jennifer , Chinman Matthew J.
Published: April 2010

This chapter argues that continued use of inherited models of case management limits the progress that otherwise could be made in actualizing this shift from a deficit- and institution-based framework to a recovery and community integration paradigm. This paradigm calls for new models of community-based practice that move beyond the management of cases and beyond merely semantic changes that introduce new terms for old practices. One such model that appears to be emerging in the field is that of tour guide, community guide, or, “recovery guide.” Prior to introducing this model, the chapter first reviews existing models of case management that have underlain the last 40 years of community-based practice. It then outlines the principles of care that ground a recovery-oriented alternative; describes the key components of the recovery guide model; and considers some of the broader implications of this model for community-based practice.
Child Protection From the Colonial Period to 1875
Authors: Myers John E. B.
Published: April 2010

This chapter describes the era before organized child protection, which began in 1875. Prior to that date, many abused and neglected children went without protection, although there was never a time when children were completely bereft of help. Criminal law always punished brutal physical abuse and sexual assault. Early in American history, a clear distinction was not observed between child maltreatment and poverty. Local officials had authority to apprentice dependent children, some of whom were maltreated and others who were simply poor. America's first institution to care for large numbers of poor and maltreated children was the almshouses or poor house. Beginning in 1729, an alternative to the almshouse emerged, the orphanage. During the 19th century, orphanages grew in number and spread across the nation. Beginning in the middle of the 19th century, reformers argued that dependent children should not live in orphanages, but should live instead in foster homes.
Societies For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Children
Authors: Myers John E. B.
Published: April 2010

The year 1875 gave birth to organized child protection. The previous year, Etta Wheeler, a religious missionary to the poor in New York City, discovered a little girl named Mary Ellen who was cruelly beaten and neglected by her guardians. Wheeler decided to rescue Mary Ellen, but there was no agency responsible for child protection. Wheeler convinced Henry Bergh, founder of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, to assist Mary Ellen. With Bergh's assistance, Mary Ellen was rescued. The next year, Bergh and his attorney, Elbridge Gerry, founded the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the world's first organization dedicated specifically to protecting children from maltreatment. Non-governmental child protection societies spread across America.
Causes Of Child Abuse And Neglect
Authors: Myers John E. B.
Published: April 2010

Drawing on the work of leading scholars, this chapter discusses the causes of abuse and neglect. It asks, “Is child abuse in our genes? Is maltreatment an immutable part of human nature?” The chapter discusses intergenerational transmission of maltreatment and asks how to break the cycle. Poverty and substance abuse are major contributors to neglect and abuse, and the chapter grapples with this unpleasant reality. The role of the following issues in abuse and neglect are addressed: corporal punishment and its relationship to child abuse, sexual deviance, domestic violence, mental illness, and deliberate, that is, intentional abuse of children. The chapter ends with analysis of major roadblocks to reducing child abuse and neglect.
Finding the Verbs: Distributional Cues to Categories Available to Young Learners
Authors: Mintz Toben H.
Published: April 2010

This chapter discusses a kind of information inherent in the structure of children's linguistic input that they could use to categorize verbs together. The information is a type of distributional information involving the patterning of words in sentences. The general hypothesis is that words of the same grammatical form-class category (e.g. noun, verb, adjective, etc.) occur in similar distributional patterns across utterances and that this information could be a basis for learners to identify verbs as well as other categories. The chapter presents a two-part examination of the degree to which the category of words can accurately be derived from distributional information. The first part motivates and discusses in detail a recent approach involving frequent frames as a distributional context, and along the way provides a comparison to other recent distributional approaches. The second part presents preliminary behavioral evidence that infants, indeed, categorize novel words based on distributional information, and perhaps based on frequent frames.
Finding Verb Forms Within the Continuous Speech Stream
Authors: Nazzi Thierry , Houston Derek
Published: April 2010

This chapter reviews how babies segment speech into nouns using prosodic and phonological cues, with a frank admission that the work on verbs is just beginning. It traces infants' transformation from language generalist to language specialist as infants discover the properties of their native language. In particular, it discusses research on how infants might zero in on the acoustic correlates of the word classes of noun and verb. The chapter describes how verbs are at a disadvantage (at least in English) from the start because of their “shorter durations, lower frequency of appearing in syntactic/prosodic constituent-final positions, and predominant stress pattern being the opposite of that of the majority of English words.” It is argued that verbs are isolated from the speech stream by 13.5 months, about 6 months later than when babies isolate nouns.
Actions Organize the Infant’s World
Authors: Mandler Jean M.
Published: April 2010

This chapter begins by discussing how infants begin to interpret events and how they represent different kinds of actions. These interpretations tend to be global in nature, with details only gradually added. It then considers the implications of this organization of conceptual life for the first stage of language learning. In particular, the goal is to characterize the conceptual system which 1-year-olds have available to learn relational terms that deal with motion along paths through space. Finally, the chapter summarizes recent data showing how a common underlying conception of various containment actions in infancy becomes linguistically expressed in quite different ways in Korean and English. This work leads to the conclusion that the proportion of verbs in early speech may neither accurately reflect the knowledge that infants have of actions nor, as has sometimes been speculated, difficulty in parsing actions into their component parts.
Preverbal Spatial Cognition and Language-Specific Input: Categories of Containment and Support
Authors: Choi Soonja
Published: April 2010

This chapter examines how preverbal infants may be ready to acquire the language-specific semantics on the containment and support relations. Specifically, the study is directed at understanding the kinds of spatial categories that are formed preverbally and how these interact with the language-specific semantic categories which will later be expressed as either verbs (in Korean) or prepositions (in English). It shows that infants analyze the containment and support relations in different ways. Whereas infants categorically distinguished the containment relation on the basis of the tight-fit feature, they did not do so for the support relation. One explanation is proposed: that the two relations differ in the degree of homogeneity of the spatial configuration, and perhaps that is why subdivision of the relation by tight-fit feature is easier for the containment relation than for the support relation.
Verbs at the Very Beginning: Parallels Between Comprehension and Input
Authors: Naigles Letitia R. , Hoff Erika
Published: April 2010

This chapter addresses two questions concerning the ability to extend verb meanings past their attested instances. First, when in the course of verb learning do verb meanings become extendable? It presents new data concerning 1-year-olds' ability (as well as the lack thereof) to extend familiar verbs to new instances. Second, given that limits to extendability are observable early in verb acquisition, what are the causes of these limits in children's input? The chapter presents new data on the nature of children's verb input which suggests that children's early conservatism may indeed have its roots in how verbs are used by adults, but that these roots are neither direct nor transparent. Finally, data on children's early verb comprehension and experience are presented as an exploration which probes the limits of current methodology to answer these questions.
Influences of Object Knowledge on the Acquisition of Verbs in English and Japanese
Authors: Kersten Alan W. , Smith Linda B. , Yoshida Hanako
Published: April 2010

This chapter reviews the evidence for an influence of object knowledge on verb learning. It discusses whether object knowledge influences the learning of all verbs, or only certain types of verbs. In particular, attention to object structure during verb learning is compared in children learning English, a language which most frequently employs intrinsic manner of motion verbs, and in children learning Japanese, a language which most frequently employs extrinsic paths of motion verbs.
East and West: A Role for Culture in the Acquisition of Nouns and Verbs
Authors: Lavin Tracy A. , Hall D. Geoffrey , Waxman Sandra R.
Published: April 2010

This chapter presents a multifactor view of word learning, opting for a social explanation based in cultural factors. Using a modification of Gillette and Gleitman's human simulation paradigm, researchers asked adult subjects (Western students, Japanese students, and second-generation Japanese students) to guess the words an American mother was saying to her child in the play scenes. They did not specify the form class of the word to be supplied. The general prediction was that Japanese students would focus on actions more than nouns and vice versa for the Western students. They found that all three groups identified more nouns than verbs but that this effect was more pronounced with the Western students. However, there were no differences in the number of correct matches for nouns between the three groups or for the accuracy of the verbs guessed. These results suggest that cultural factors may indeed influence the English-speaking child to learn more nouns than verbs.
Older Adults With Orthopedic and Mobility Limitations
Authors: Miltiades Helen , Kaye Lenard W.
Published: April 2010

This chapter considers the major orthopedic diseases and associated conditions that older adults face, and the challenges they pose for them, their families, and the social workers and other health care professionals that work with them. It offers recommendations for social work practitioners who are likely to work with older adults with orthopedic diseases and who are at risk of falls, fractures, and joint replacements.
Aging and Functional Disability
Authors: Putnam Michelle , Stark Susan
Published: April 2010

For most older adults, being able to do the things they want to do at home and in the community is a significant component of healthy aging. This is true for older adults with and without functional impairments. This chapter highlights individual factors, programs, and policies that contribute to achieving goals of healthy aging for adults experiencing functional impairment. The primary goal is to present a range of elements that influence opportunities older adults have, to meet their individual healthy aging objectives and remain active members of their communities. The secondary goal is to encourage professional social workers to learn more about these elements by providing brief examples of interventions, including theoretical models, assessment tools, model programs, and policy initiatives.
Older Adults Suffering From Significant Dementia
Authors: Toseland Ronald W. , Parker Michael
Published: April 2010

Dementia is very difficult to cope with because it affects both mental and physical functioning progressively, until death. Dementing illnesses have been called “the most feared and devastating disorder of later life”. This chapter provides an overview of the social work role in the care of persons with dementia. The social work role is to provide services and support to persons with dementia in order to help them cope with the disease. These services also extend to family members and to those who care for persons with dementia.
Older Adults at Risk for Suicide
Authors: Adamek Margaret E. , Slater Greta Yoder
Published: April 2010

This chapter focuses on suicide among older adults. Adults age 65 and over have the highest suicide rate of any age group in the United States. Suicide among older adults is a complex phenomenon, with many risk factors and seemingly few protective factors. A variety of risk factors, including age, gender, race, physical and mental health, multiple losses (e.g. retirement, widowhood, functional ability), and access to lethal means, have been associated with increased suicide risk in late life. Older men have a suicide rate about 5.5 times that of older women. Social workers need to be aware of the risk factors for suicide among older adults: age, race, gender, physical and mental health, cumulative loss, and access to lethal means. They need a better understanding of how multiple risk factors interact to increase the suicide risk among this population.
Older Asian Americans
Authors: Min Jong Won , Moon Ailee
Published: April 2010

This chapter presents central cultural and social issues important to social work practice with Asian American elders, and suggests a set of practice guidelines intended to enhance cross-cultural understanding and culturally sensitive social work practice with these populations. It begins with a review of the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of selected Asian American elderly groups and is followed by discussion of major issues and challenges confronting them. Finally, practice guidelines for communication, assessment, and intervention with Asian American elders are presented.
Older Latinos: A Mental Health Perspective
Authors: Aranda Maria P.
Published: April 2010

The population aged 65 and older of Latino/Hispanic descent numbered 2 million in 2002 and is expected to grow to 13.4 million by the year 2050. Older Latinos/Hispanics will comprise the largest racial/ethnic minority group in this age group by the year 2028. This chapter discusses a selected group of sociodemographic and cultural indicators in the service of showing how these indicators are relevant to social work practice in the mental health arena. Alternatively stated, what role do income, education, living arrangements, physical illness and disability, culture and language play in the development of culturally competent mental health practice with older persons of Latino descent? The information presented goes beyond describing the contextual realities of older Latinos, to offer a bridge to the next stage of developing mental health services related to older adults living with psychiatric disabilities. In order to provide a more tangible discussion, the material is applied to the case of late-life depressive illness.
Psychosocial Services at the End of Life
Authors: Gutheil Irene , Souza Margaret
Published: April 2010

The role of the social worker in end-of-life care starts before illness or crisis strikes and continues after death occurs. Social workers may enter this continuum at various points, depending on the practice setting. This chapter provides an overview of social work practice in end-of-life care. In highlighting psychosocial components, as well as the concrete needs, it underscores the valuable and diverse roles that social workers perform in working with dying persons and their families.
Grandparents Raising Grandchildren: Who Are They?
Authors: Kropf Nancy P. , Yoon Eunkyung
Published: April 2010

This chapter addresses the phenomenon of grandparent caregiving. Fully 2.4 million grandparents in the United States have primary responsibility for taking care of their grandchildren, and 6 million children in the United States live in grandparent-headed households. This rate has doubled over the past 30 years. Grandparent caregivers have elevated rates of physical and mental health problems as compared with their age peers, and there is evidence that these difficulties get worse after the entry into the caregiving role. Grandparent caregivers also experience elevated rates of financial and legal difficulties. The circumstances leading to grandparent caregiving derive from challenges experienced by the adult children of the grandparents; death, drug abuse, incarceration, and HIV/AIDS are among the most prominent. The chapter also includes suggestions for social work interventions and policy considerations relevant to grandparent caregiving.
Social Service and Health Planning Agencies
Authors: Hudson Robert B.
Published: April 2010

This chapter examines the role of planning agencies at state and substate levels in improving the quality of life for older adults. It outlines the history of the aging network, with careful focus on the planning challenges professionals have confronted in these settings. It emphasizes the emerging role of these agencies in the planning and delivery of long-term care, predicting that this will define the identity of the network in coming decades.
Substance Abuse Networks
Authors: Corley Connie , Gray Muriel , Yakimo Richard
Published: April 2010

This chapter summarizes epidemiological studies on the prevalence of alcoholism in older adults, as well as the diagnostic challenges presented by this population. It describes the service delivery network, and considers the role of Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs). It argues that the service delivery system is ill-equipped to meet the needs of older adults who suffer from substance use disorders and calls for professional education to alert social workers in all settings to the signs of these problems.
A Social Worker’s Historical and Future Perspective on Residential Care
Authors: Kane Rosalie A.
Published: April 2010

This chapter reviews a century or so of developments related to older people receiving care in settings other than their own homes, and presents a somewhat idiosyncratic view of current challenges and opportunities. Topics discussed include historical perspectives on nursing homes, assisted living, critiques of residential care for seniors, and social work and residential care.
Nursing Homes
Authors: Vourlekis Betsy , Simons Kelsey
Published: April 2010

More than 3 million people are cared for in nursing homes each year. Nursing homes are often the least preferred alternative of older Americans and their loved ones and, unfortunately, more frequently make news and headlines because of poor care and concerns about quality than for their exemplary service. Nonetheless, nursing homes are an essential component of the health care continuum and an important arena for social work practice. Social work's focus on overall quality of life and its professional obligation to advocate for those who may lack capacity to defend themselves, are especially relevant to the nursing home setting. To introduce the practice domain, this chapter (a) briefly examines the nursing home context and regulatory environment; (b) discusses the needs and strengths of nursing home “clients” and the home as a system in its own right; (c) describes key features of the social work role and functions, including the monitoring and quality improvement of social work services; and (d) identifies key research needs to support practice.
Residential Care Settings for Veterans
Authors: Guihan Marylou
Published: April 2010

This chapter discusses residential care within the Veterans Administration (VA), a setting where social workers are very much in evidence. It considers nursing homes on the campuses of VA medical centers, the contract program for veterans in community care, and some new residential settings under consideration by the VA.
The Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program
Authors: Huber Ruth , Netting F. Ellen , Borders Kevin W. , Nelson H. W.
Published: April 2010

The long-term care ombudsman program (LTCOP) is federally mandated to investigate complaints about the care that people receive in LTC facilities. This chapter provides a brief history of the program's origins and legislative authority, and the program' s mission and functions. It then describes the structure of the LTCOP, how complaints are handled, and the roles that social workers play in and with the ombudsman program. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the quality of life and care that elders experience in the nation's long-term care facilities.
Continuing Care Retirement Communities
Authors: Netting F. Ellen , Wilson Cindy C.
Published: April 2010

As the older population increases in the United States, more and more congregate living options are emerging, particularly for persons who may need some combination of housing with social support and health care services readily accessible. Continuing care retirement communities (CCRCs) are one such option. This chapter focuses on CCRCs in the U.S., which typically offer escalating levels of care on a single campus, from independent housing, through residential care facilities, to nursing homes.
Congregate Housing
Authors: Sheehan Nancy W. , Klein Waldo C.
Published: April 2010

This chapter discusses congregate housing programs, which refer to housing-service arrangements that combine an apartment-like independent living unit with services that do not fall under the medical model. Topics covered include: legal authority of congregate housing programs; prevalence and, structure of congregate living arrangements; resident population and special needs; funding, quality of care and quality of life; and social work roles.
Policies Affecting Health, Mental Health, and Caregiving: Medicaid
Authors: Galambos Colleen
Published: April 2010

This chapter describes the historical context for the establishment of Medicaid, and explains basic standards and guidelines. It then examines programs and services available under Medicaid for older adults. In particular, dual eligibility, managed care, the freedom of choice and home and community-based waiver programs, and long-term care financing issues are discussed.
Policies Related to Competency and Proxy Issues
Authors: Wilber Kathleen , Alkema Gretchen E.
Published: April 2010

This chapter discusses the complicated but fragmented legal policies governing protective services, and supportive and surrogate decision-making interventions for vulnerable older adults. Using a case example, it illustrates the ethics and realities of guardianship and guardianship alternatives, legal procedures, and the role of social workers in surrogate decision making.
World Population Aging
Authors: Lubben James , Damron-Rodriguez Joann
Published: April 2010

This chapter highlights the major demographic changes taking place in aging societies. It cites the tripling of the world's population 65 years of age and older over the next 50 years, and argues that the implications of this rapid aging will profoundly shape the 21st century.
Older Adults in Europe
Authors: Phillips Judith
Published: April 2010

This chapter provides an overview of social work practice with older adults and families in Europe. It compares and contrasts countries that share common cultural and political histories but have adopted slightly different forms of care.
Using Large Datasets for Research on Older Adults and Families
Authors: Lum Terry
Published: April 2010

This chapter introduces geriatric social work researchers to the rapidly expanding resource of public-use large data sets and describes the steps that geriatric social work researchers should take to benefit from these resources. Throughout, the Study of Assets and Health Dynamics Among the Oldest Old (AHEAD) is used as an example to illustrate the discussion.
Measuring Client Satisfaction Among Older Adults and Families
Authors: Hsieh Chang-Ming , Essex Elizabeth
Published: April 2010

This chapter proposes a method of measuring client satisfaction designed to overcome the limitations of past client satisfaction studies. By asking the clients to rate their satisfaction with all major service aspects within a specific care or service setting, the approach addresses the issues of contextual relevance and the multidimensional nature of client satisfaction. In addition, this measurement approach addresses the possibility of unequal weights among the different service aspects by incorporating perceived importance into the measurement of client satisfaction. That is, the measure takes into account the potential interpersonal differences in perceived importance of various service elements. It is, therefore, a true client-centered satisfaction measure.
Current Status of Social Work Research in Aging and Future Directions
Authors: Burnette Denise , Morrow-Howell Nancy
Published: April 2010

This chapter provides an overview of the state of social work research in aging and offers directions for the future. Social work researchers in aging are beginning to establish a national presence in social work schools, but the extent to which they are conducting research is not yet clear. Furthermore, social work researchers are contributing to the multidisciplinary knowledge base in aging but “barely have a foothold in federally funded research.” However, social work is well positioned to assume a true leadership role in research on aging.
Strategies for Implementing and Sustaining Gerontological Curricular Change in Social Work Education
Authors: Reinardy James R. , Zoff Sara
Published: April 2010

This chapter addresses the comprehensive strategies that are needed to implement sustainable gerontological curricular change on a program level. It begins with a brief review of select literature on organizational and curricular change, including strategies for changing gerontological curricula. Then, after drawing from the literature on principles for change, it outlines and illustrates the major considerations that should inform the change process: planning, implementing, and institutionalizing an aging-rich curriculum.
Moving Forward: Developing Geriatric Social Work Competencies
Authors: Damron-Rodriguez Joann
Published: April 2010

This chapter begins with a discussion of gerontological social work movement. It then describes competency-based education and evaluation (CBE); an approach to producing a skilled workforce and ensuring that graduates can perform expected behaviors at a professionally acceptable level. This is followed by a discussion of the measurement of geriatric social work competencies.
Beyond Covariation
Authors: Lagnado David A. , Waldmann Michael R. , Hagmaye York , Sloman Steven A.
Published: April 2010

Causal induction has two components: learning about the structure of causal models and learning about causal strength and other quantitative parameters. This chapter argues for several interconnected theses. First, people represent causal knowledge qualitatively, in terms of causal structure; quantitative knowledge is derivative. Second, people use a variety of cues to infer causal structure aside from statistical data (e.g. temporal order, intervention, coherence with prior knowledge). Third, once a structural model is hypothesized, subsequent statistical data are used to confirm, refute, or elaborate the model. Fourth, people are limited in the number and complexity of causal models that they can hold in mind to test, but they can separately learn and then integrate simple models, and revise models by adding and removing single links. Finally, current computational models of learning need further development before they can be applied to human learning.
Essentialism as a Generative Theory of Classification
Authors: Rehder Bob
Published: April 2010

Essentialism is the view that kinds are defined by underlying properties or characteristics (an essence) that is shared by all category members and by members of no other categories and that are presumed to generate, or cause, perceptual features. Although unobservable, essential features can nonetheless affect classification by changing the evidence that observable features provide for category membership. This chapter proposes treating essentialized categories as a generative causal model and provides evidence for four phenomena that follow from this view: (a) classification as diagnostic reasoning; (b) classification as prospective reasoning; (c) boundary intensification; and (d) the effect of coherence on classification. The chapter also characterizes the development of conceptual knowledge in terms of an evolving set of causal models.
Causal Reasoning as Informed by the Early Development of Explanations
Authors: Wellman Henry M. , Liu David
Published: April 2010

Research, theory, and modeling of causal reasoning typically focus on the causal predictions and interventions that result from causal understandings. This neglects the role of explanations in causal reasoning and their role in causal learning. This chapter argues that explanations play a central role in human causal reasoning and that this is true from very early in life. It supports and elaborates this argument by showing that explanations are important to even young children, as apparent in their being frequently sought and provided by them; that explanations are sometimes strikingly easier to provide than comparable predictions, making them a powerful platform for learning; and that engaging in explanatory reasoning aids children's and adults' learning. Causal explanatory reasoning deserves a central role in our understanding of the nature and development of human causal understanding.
Statistical Jokes and Social Effects
Authors: Glymour Clark
Published: April 2010

The psychological literature on causation includes a variety of proposed analyses of causal relations: simple correlation, mental models, causal powers, etc. Each of these proposals is subject to everyday counterexamples. Correlation accounts confuse intervention with conditioning and yield statistical jokes; mental models fail to capture conditional information; races and voting present difficulties for causal power theories, as do existing philosophical accounts of causal relations among events.
Extremist Youth in Germany
Authors: Edelstein Wolfgang
Published: April 2010

This chapter offers insights into the psycho-social processes that orient right-wing culture among youth in post-unification Germany. It describes historical processes that affect political and economic structures, family patterns, and related cultural orientations, and which shape the psychological states, especially of disenfranchised fathers, and in turn their children. Focusing on contemporary interactions of family dynamics and adolescent identity formation, the chapter identifies “anomie” as a behavioral attitude that constitutes a right-wing rebellion against prevailing social, moral, and political norms. It explains the problems of modernization in Western social experiences that can cause great damage to young people and to the ongoing development of the society.
Acceptance and Rejection as a Source of Youth Conflict
Authors: Hertz-Lazarowitz Rachel
Published: April 2010

In Israel, the seven main universities are the most heterogeneous spaces for interaction between Arabs and Jews. With an Arab population of 20% attending alongside Jews, Haifa University is the most heterogeneous campus in Israel and thus has been a main stage for prolonged social coexistence on the one hand and consistent bitter conflicts on the other. This chapter explores how young undergraduates identifying as Arabs and Jews perceive their mutual rejection and acceptance, in the unique context of coexistence at a nationally and religiously heterogeneous university in Israel. The goal is to understand the factors that support peaceful coexistence, and those that explain the eruption of conflicts and violent behaviors on campus. It is argued that students' perceptions of coexistence are sources of conflict and harmony. In interviews where the research team asked students to speak about the full range of their positive and negative experiences as members of national groups on campus, both Arab and Jewish students highly valued “close relationships” and “cultural diversity,” while in terms of negative experiences, Arab students reported “discrimination” and “political tension,” more frequently than Jewish students, as the main processes of rejection in their lives on campus. On the basis of such findings, the chapter challenges the university to increase acceptance, and reduce rejection, on its heterogeneous campus.
Harassment of Gay and Lesbian Youth and School Violence in America
Authors: Horn Stacey S. , Nucci Larry
Published: April 2010

This chapter reviews literature on the rates and impact of harassment and violence against gay and lesbian youth in schools across several contexts as a foundation for proposing a new theoretical framework for understanding how high school-aged youth understand sexual identity. From the perspective of domain theory, it presents results of research on young people's reasoning about homosexuality, and their treatment of their gay and lesbian peers. This theory-based analysis reveals intriguing complexities, such as young people's prejudice and intolerance toward gay or lesbian peers when they believe that individuals have control over whether they are gay or lesbian, but more accepting and tolerant attitudes regarding homosexuality when they believe people are born gay or lesbian, thus placing sexual orientation beyond the individual's control or moral culpability. The chapter also suggests future directions for research and practice to promote tolerance and development around issues of sexual identity.
Stories of Conflict and Development in U.S. Public Schools
Authors: Daiute Colette
Published: April 2010

This chapter discusses the significance of narrating conflict in research and practice. It explains how the process of storytelling is implicated in the events of conflict and the course of development related to those events. It also argues that assessing the nature, impact, and treatments of youth conflict requires a new understanding of the role of storytelling because development occurs in social discourse. The significance of this definition of storytelling is that it offers insights about how people live their lives. The chapter shows how these processes come to life for children aged 7 through 11 and their teachers in the context of a violence prevention program in public schools in the United States. After a brief review of the social-historical nature of storytelling and a violence prevention curriculum that uses storytelling as transformative process, the chapter illustrates the intricate mosaic that foregrounds the problems of society when we read stories as social scripts, and the consequences for individuals when we read the same stories as personal. It offers examples to show how the intra- and interpersonal dimensions of conflict are intimately tied to intergroup conflicts.
Building Citizenship in the Face of Violence
Authors: Hart A. , Mojica Rocio
Published: April 2010

In many countries there has recently been a dramatic change in the way children are viewed by many of the agencies that work with them. One major change is the increasing recognition that vulnerable children actively contribute to their own survival and coping, and that protecting children does not imply that we treat them as passive victims. This orientation to children was given an enormous international boost by the passage of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which includes the rights of children to have a voice on all matters that concern them. Colombia, a country that has long faced extremely high levels of violence, has been creatively developing new ways of building a more participatory culture of citizenship, including many new ways of working with children and youth. This chapter reviews these experiences and asks what potential these initiatives may have both for individual children and more broadly for the building of civil society. Most of the literature on the participation of young people in war-affected countries concerns adolescence, but this chapter deals with the entire age range, because this is an innovative aspect of Colombia's contribution.
Globalism, America’s Ghettos, and Black Youth Development
Authors: Cross William E.
Published: April 2010

Globalism is associated with the movement of jobs and industry from one country to another, and from 1955 to the present, hundreds of thousands of industrial sector jobs were shifted from the United States to various countries across the globe. In theory, globalization works when new jobs become available to replace the old. This chapter describes what happened to inner-city black communities and their youth when promised replacement jobs never materialized. The absence of a mainstream economic presence in the ghetto has given rise to a thriving underground economy anchored by the drug trade. While the trade itself can be analyzed from a rational, business perspective, the violence and community chaos linked to the trade plays havoc with black child and youth development. The chapter reviews how clinical psychologists and psychiatrists have taken the concept of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) — once solely associated with psychological reactions to wars outside the United States — and applied it to the emotional states of inner-city black children and youth who have experienced, witnessed, or possess firsthand knowledge about the violence and chaos linked to the underground economy. In addition, the history of the social struggles of white ethnic groups in the United States is revisited, as a way of gaining insight into what worked to effectuate social mobility for white groups trapped in poverty at earlier points in U.S. history.
Youth Movements and Youth Violence in Nigeria’s Oil Delta Region
Authors: Ukeje Charles
Published: April 2010

Drawing from extensive ethnographic fieldwork in the Niger Delta, this chapter describes ongoing protests of the local community against the practices of the multinational oil companies, and repression and violence of the state. It illustrates how youth movements and violence in the region have been deeply embedded in the historical, economic, and political context of Nigeria by tracing Nigeria's colonial, postcolonial military, and postmilitary civilian phases in history. Analyzing the complexities of the ongoing Nigerian conflict from the perspectives of multinational oil companies, local communities, and young people, the chapter argues that youth movements are integral to relations among diverse stakeholders of national resources in conflict with the multinational companies. It offers ideas for transforming the current inequities and lack of access to social and educational mobility, and for re-engaging youth as leaders in social issues, using nonviolent methods.
The Necessity of Order in Machine Learning: Is Order in Order?
Authors: Cornuéjols A.
Published: April 2010

This chapter provides a detailed introduction to, and overview of, the theories from machine learning, and introduces some of the basic theoretical concepts and models from computational studies of learning from the machine learning area of computer science. It presents ideas and directions of research which can answer questions that arise from order effects, and shows that some of the results of how these models work may have significance for, and counterparts in, related disciplines that have an interest in learning and education. It also notes some interesting new approaches in machine learning, including the concepts of helpful teachers and active learners. The chapter concludes with a discussion of open research avenues, as well as questions designed to be used for class projects related to order-effects in machine learning.
Getting Things in Order: Collecting and Analyzing Data on Learning
Authors: Ritter Frank E. , Nerb Josef , Lehtinen Erno
Published: April 2010

This chapter provides a tutorial on the types of data that have been used to study sequence effects, some of the data collection methodologies that have been and will continue to be used because they are necessary to study order effects, and how to use model output as data. It starts by introducing the basic measurements typically used in experimental psychology, such as reaction times and errors. The chapter also examines the feasibility of using protocol data that, although used infrequently, offer a rich record to study order effects. It looks at how these data can be “cooked down” into theories, which can then be broken down into static and dynamic process models. Static descriptions, such as simple grammars and Markov models, depict the shape of the data. Process models perform the task that a person does in a manner that a person does and so provide a more dynamic description. Process models are inherently not only more powerful but also more difficult to use. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion on using model output as data.
An Example Order for Cognitive Skill Acquisition
Authors: Renkl Alexander , Atkinson Robert K.
Published: April 2010

This chapter first provides an overview of the various stages of cognitive skill acquisition in order to situate learning from worked-out examples in the course of learning a new skill. It then defines more precisely the meaning of learning from worked-out examples, provides reasons for its effectiveness, and discusses the relevance of self-explanations and instructional explanations as factors moderating the effectiveness of studying examples. It discusses the problem of structuring the transition from studying examples to problem solving. It describes a preliminary instructional model of example-based skill acquisition that currently guides our research. Finally, it outlines a set of research questions intended to guide future research, such as adapting the proposed fading procedure to individual learners.
The Effects of Order: A Constraint-Based Explanation
Authors: Ohlsson Stellan
Published: April 2010

This chapter presents a computational model that shows how information migrates from declarative to procedural knowledge and provides a powerful new learning mechanism for machine-learning algorithms. The model is used to examine the effects of learning three different counting tasks. The model predicts order effects that vary in several dimensions, including the number of times the model has to revise its knowledge and how long it will take to learn. Although some of these effects are quite large within a subtask, the overall effect is muted by other aspects of the task, including interaction. This model suggests that the complexity of a task's constraints is important for computing transfer between similar tasks. The model's behavior has been compared to human performance, and a general summary is provided.
Getting Out of Order: Avoiding Lesson Effects Through Instruction
Authors: VanLehn Kurt
Published: April 2010

This chapter describes two experiments that test the felicity-conditions hypothesis that people learn best if a task is taught one subprocedure per lesson. In these experiments, children were taught multiplication skills by a human tutor. Although there was a slight trend that presenting one topic per lesson led to fewer errors than presenting two topics, the more important finding is that there is better transfer to new problems when teaching two subprocedures per lesson: about one-third fewer errors at test. These results suggest that it is crucial to learn when to apply a particular element of knowledge. Lessons that deliberately change the element of knowledge needed from problem to problem are more difficult for learners but can enhance the learner's ability to apply different types of knowledge and to transfer their learning. This effect also suggests why textbooks have evolved to use one disjunct per lesson and is also consistent with good practice in system documentation. The study further suggests not only that teaching multiple items per lesson is safer if there is someone to help remove any confusion but also that some small amount of reordering by a teacher can help the learner to compensate for poor orders.