Behavior and Social Issues最新文献

Restorative justice (RJ) corresponds to a set of actions, programs, and practices to promote a more autonomous conflict resolution process. RJ includes involving all individuals who have interest in a particular conflict, seeking reparation for the harm caused to the victim and accountability by the offender, and identifying antecedent or consequent conditions that could be related to such conflicts. This practice is being implemented in Brazil’s justice system as part of a national public policy in an attempt to solve conflicts in a more autonomous fashion, which in turn could reduce the time and cost produced by traditional justice procedures. The main objective of this article is to analyze a Brazilian public organization that works with restorative practices according to the perspective of Behavioral Systems Analysis (BSA). Toward this objective, tools such as Total Performance System (TPS) and metacontingency, and intervention models such as the Behavioral Systems Engineering Model (BSEM) were combined with a literature review to analyze organizational practices. Results suggested gaps between the prescribed public policy and its actual implementation. Some aspects of the analysis are highlighted, including the lack of operationalization of monitoring criteria by the control agencies of the judiciary system and the absence of feedback regarding the service (both by the users of the service and those interested in its delivery). Recommendations such as implementation of a data control system, are provided with the aim of ensuring the success of this organization and the effective implementation of the public policy.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fear of needles affects one in four adults and two in three children. However, for some individuals, including those diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), needle phobia can present behavioral challenges that interfere with ongoing medical care. Although treatments for needle phobia have been widely evaluated in the literature, the overall patient characteristics and symptom severity of participants in these studies are unknown. The purpose of the present study was to systematically review the literature on treatments for needle phobia to determine if high-needs populations are being included in published studies. The literature review showed that participants with ASD, those with challenging behavior such as aggression, and those with a history of restraint make up a very small percentage of the participant pool. These results suggest that future research should be conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of treatments for needle phobia in this underserved population.

Mizael et al. (The Psychological Record 66:451–462, 2016) successfully reduced negative evaluations of Black faces and minimized the valence differences between ratings of Black and White faces by establishing equivalent relations that conflicted with racial bias. We replicated this procedure in a repeated measures design and included the doll test and an implicit test to investigate generalization. Nine children who demonstrated negative evaluations of Black faces were trained to relate a positive symbol (A1) to an abstract stimulus (B1) and B1 to images of Black faces (C1) over the course of 2 days. Baselines of racial bias measures were conducted three times before the intervention and then twice after. A follow-up assessment, including a test of equivalence-class maintenance and readministration of baseline measures, was conducted 15 days after the last baseline assessment. Eight participants formed an equivalence relation between Black faces and the positive symbol that was maintained 2 weeks after the intervention. Before the intervention, there was a significant difference between the evaluations of White and Black faces; after the intervention, there was no significant difference. Two out of three participants with implicit racial bias showed reduced bias postintervention, and one of the four participants with racial bias in the doll test displayed intervention generalization. Overall, our findings replicated the results of Mizael et al. The Psychological Record, 66, 451–462, (Mizael et al., The Psychological Record 66:451–462, 2016). However, the high level of disparity between stimuli used in the initial participant screening bias test and those employed in the tests for function change generalization pose challenges for interpreting the results. Further research is necessary to more firmly establish reliable function transformation and generalization procedures.

Issues related to racism and prejudice have been investigated in the field of behavior analysis through stimulus equivalence and relational responding. In addition to this, racism discussed in social and cultural studies considers the problem to have a larger structural basis and is related to decision making involving unequal income distributions. The experimental analysis of fairness and inequity aversion has shown the influence of social and cultural characteristics on the acceptance or rejection of unequal distributions of resources among different individuals and groups. Race is an important aspect that may influence inequity aversion. This work aims to present some studies conducted on the phenomenon of inequity aversion and relate it to the discussion of structural racism, offering a new approach to solving and investigating this social problem. We explore the role of studies about inequity aversion, how fairness may be modulated by cooperative experiences, and their implications to antiracist practices in the context of behavioral sciences.

Recent literature addressing the development of cultural competencies and antiracism in behavior-analytic graduate training programs has focused primarily on the perspectives of faculty and current practitioners. The present study reports survey data on the perceptions of graduate students actively enrolled in those programs with respect to their racial equity and inclusion practices, as one important dimension of establishing cultural competency. Verified course sequence coordinators in the United States were asked to forward an invitation with an electronic survey link to the students in their programs. Survey questions asked about perceived: (1) racial diversity of fellow students and faculty; (2) race-related experiences during recruitment; (3) inclusion of race-related topics and materials in program curricula and course content; (4) availability and adequacy of resources to support racially diverse graduate students and other diversity efforts; and (5) composition and climate of the campus, department, and program with respect to racial equity and inclusion. Overall, the survey results indicate that there is work still to be done if behavior-analytic training programs are to reflect recommended practices in equity and inclusion for our students and contribute maximally to creating antiracist graduate programs. These findings may stand as a source of some concern in our efforts to prepare developing professionals as culturally competent and antiracist researchers and practitioners.

The cost of health care in the United States is roughly twice as much as the average cost in comparable countries. Moreover, the United States also has the highest rate of deaths that could have been prevented by accessing health care. This is likely primarily a result of the privatized health system, which places the cost of care on the patient. Under this system, high costs create a barrier to utilization of health-care services. To better understand how health-care seeking changes as a function of cost, three experiments were conducted using crowd-sourced samples from Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). These experiments were designed to assess the likelihood of seeking care based on cost, symptom, severity, and duration of symptom experienced. Effective durations of symptoms experienced when likelihood to see or contact a health-care professional was 50% (EDur50) was used to describe in days how cost delayed health-care seeking. A cost increase from $10 to $100 increased the EDur50 for a participant would see or contact a health-care professional by 1.4 to 2.5 times, whereas a cost increase from $10 to $1,000 increased EDur50 between 5.4 to 17.6 times. Physical health was consistently inversely related to EDur50 to see a health-care professional, whereas increased delay discounting of losses and decreased probability discounting of gains were related to decreased EDur50. This set of experiments adds to the body of evidence that substantial reforms are required in the American health-care system to ensure those who need health care can access it.

LGBTQIA2S+ college students are a group at risk for a variety of mental health problems as a result of hostile environmental factors (Woodford et al. Journal of American College Health, 60, 429-434, 2012). The climate of college campuses has an important impact on the experiences of students with an LGBTQIA2S+ identity (e.g., Blumenfeld et al., 2016; Rankin, Journal of Gay & Lesbian Issues in Education, 3, 111–117, 2006). The present research explored experiences of well-being in LGBTQIA2S+ college students enrolled at a Midwestern university in the United States. This correlational procedure indicated that LGBTQIA2S+ students reported lower psychological flexibility, student well-being, self-compassion, perceived social support, and GPA when compared to non-LGBTQIA2S+ students. As expected, participants with an LGBTQIA2S+ identity also reported significantly higher reports of discrimination, harassment, and emotional distress in the context of sexuality. Finally, participant suggestions were used to create a noncomprehensive list of action items universities may consider as a start to better supporting marginalized groups of students. This research highlights a significant need for more initiatives involving support and inclusion for LGBTQIA2S+ individuals involving efforts at all levels of high-impact systems such as universities.

Poverty reduction and prosperity sharing are among the goals of international organizations for promoting sustainable development. One obstacle to achieving this goal is the spread of corruption. To decrease it, anticorruption strategies have prevailed around the world, and different practices have been implemented to eliminate or mitigate this problem. Applied behavior analysis (ABA) has also investigated small- and large-scale corruption behaviors. However, a systemic approach is required to better understand the contingencies of corruption. A complementary approach between behavior analysis’s (BA) different principles, fields, and tools is helpful in promoting the continuous and dynamic improvement of the mechanisms used in understanding anticorruption practices. This article combines BA basic principles, behavioral systems analysis (BSA), and the total performance system (TPS) conceptual tool to better understand how anticorruption agencies, described as role models, have acted in the face of corruption. In particular, it highlights how the World Bank Group’s Sanctions System and the National Disciplinary Board of the Brazilian Office of the Comptroller General offer contributions to international organizations, banks, and public institutions in developing efficient and effective systems for corruption mitigation. In addition to the practical contributions learned through the analysis of the anticorruption agencies’ behavioral systems, this research proposes adding the institutional multiplicity term to BSA's and TPS’s literature and the concept of culturo-behavioral hypercycles to the studies on corruption mitigation.

In the realm of behavioral research, significant contributions have greatly advanced reading studies, influencing educational practices. We explored the relationship between the degrees of incidental bidirectional naming (Inc-BiN) capabilities and children's derived relations for literacy responses. Inc-BiN is a repertoire whereby a child acquires listener and speaker responses from observation alone. Incidental unidirectional naming (Inc-UniN) occurs when observation of object-names produces listener, but not speaker behavior. Students who did not demonstrate listener and speaker components were classified as having No Incidental Naming (NiN). Across two studies, we evaluated how component skills involved in Inc-BiN are connected to emergent literacy responses in preschoolers with a disability. In Study 1, participants completed two conditions: (1) directly reinforcing speaker responses and testing for the emergence of listener responses, and (2) directly reinforcing listener responses and testing for the emergence of speaker responses. Results suggested that participants with Inc-BiN readily derived both speaker and listener responses, participants with Inc-UniN readily derived listener, but not speaker responses, and participants with NiN had difficulty acquiring directly reinforced responses and deriving responses. In Study 2, we established Inc-BiN with participants and readministered Study 1 tests. Our results suggest overlap between incidental bidirectional naming and derived responses and point to how one can incorporate derived relations instruction and differentiate instruction for children with varying repertoires.

Behavior analysts are becoming increasingly aware of and involved in the study of issues related to sex, gender, and racial prejudice and discrimination. In the current article, we conceptualized sexism and gender bias informed by the framework of the nested sociobehavioral model of racism developed by Belisle et al. Behavior Analysis in Practice, 15(4), 1134–1150 (2022), including implicit bias, selective gender norms, and systemic oppression, while integrating feminist and queer theories. We then conducted a model-dependent scoping review of research in major behavior analytic journals from 2000 to 2022 related to racism and sexism categorized using the nested models and the theory-to-impact framework developed by Dixon et al. Perspectives on Behavior Science, 41(1), 241–267 (2018). Of the 10 journals included for the scoping review, nine contained research related to racism or sexism and an overall increasing trend appears to be occurring in the field. Inconsistencies were evident between conceptual work that emphasized systemic oppression versus experimental work that emphasizes implicit bias and relational framing. Only three studies met the criteria for “applied” or “implementation” research, suggesting that significantly more research is needed to inform the development and dissemination of applied technologies. We conclude with a discussion of the current state of this research in multiple areas and recommendations for future research.