Attitudes Toward Autism

Many studies have been conducted to observe the effect of contact on attitudes toward people with mental illnesses, but few studies have observed the effect of contact on attitudes toward individuals on the autism spectrum specifically. This study investigates the correlation between the amount of contact with an individual on the autism spectrum and attitudes toward individuals on the autism spectrum. In addition, this study attempts to prove that negative symptoms (such as not talking) encourage positive attitudes more than positive symptoms (such as fits of anger). Over a period of approximately 3 months, 218 Ball State University students were asked to complete an online survey which included several scales testing attitudes toward the autism spectrum. They also read vignettes displaying individuals on the autism spectrum with positive and negative symptoms in both a frustrating situation and an everyday social situation. They then completed more attitudinal questions based on the characters in the vignettes. Results showed a significant positive correlation between the amounts of contact a participant has had with an autistic individual and their willingness to spend time with them (social distance). Results also suggested that participants would be more willing to spend time with vignette subjects displaying negative symptoms rather than positive symptoms. The implications of these results and their applications to working with autistic individuals, as well as further possible research, are discussed

Big Data and Changing Concepts of the Human

Big Data has the potential to enable unprecedentedly rigorous quantitative modeling of complex human social relationships and social structures. When such models are extended to nonhuman domains, they can undermine anthropocentric assumptions about the extent to which these relationships and structures are specifically human. Discoveries of relevant commonalities with nonhumans may not make us less human, but they promise to challenge fundamental views of what it is to be human

Improving the Lives of Young Children: Opportunities for Care Coordination and Case Management for Children Receiving Services for Developmental Delay

Summarizes new opportunities for states to develop a coordinated system of care for children receiving early childhood intervention and services and how providers can support effective care coordination and case management policies

The Mental Lives of Sheep and the Quest for a Psychological Taxonomy

In this commentary on Marino and Merskin's "Intelligence, complexity, and individuality in sheep", I argue that their literature review provides further evidence of the fundamental theoretical shift in psychology towards a non-anthropocentric psychological taxonomy, in which cognitive capacities are classified in a structure that provides an overall understanding of the place of mind (including human minds) throughout nature

Effects of outbreeding depression on meristics and bilateral asymmetry in hybrids of spatially separated populations of pink salmon (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha)

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2005Different populations of a species distributed over diverse conditions adapt to their local environments to improve their ability to survive or reproduce. Intraspecific hybridization can alter the locally adapted population, resulting in reduced fitness, causing outbreeding depression. Manifestations of outbreeding depression in Pacific salmon include decreases in survival, fitness, and/or fitness-related traits. Many animals have paired morphological structures, resulting from canalization during development, which promote the animal's fitness; more symmetrical individuals often have faster growth, higher fecundity, or better survival. Meristic traits, such as the number of gill rakers in fish, can be easily determined. This study examined the potential effects of outbreeding depression on morphological meristic characteristics. Variation in fish size and meristic counts of returning F₁ and F₂ hybrids of spatially separated populations of pink salmon was compared to those of controls. There was no evidence for increased fluctuating asymmetry in hybrids. Directional asymmetry was significant for branchiostegals and pectoral fin ray counts. No single character consistently had sire or interaction effects except gill rakers; the few significant effects probably result from maternal environment effects. Canalization of bilateral asymmetry seems to be relatively unaffected by outbreeding depression

What Trina Taught Me: Reflections on Mediation, Inequality, Teaching and Life

Trina Grillo and I trained together as mediators, met together as law teachers, commiserated together as women and civil rights activists, and laughed and cried together as friends. I shall miss her wise counsel, her sensible judgment, her measured indignation, her gentleness and her razor sharp perceptions about the world, across, through and with her gender, race, class, and human identities. I shall miss her words, her presence, her body, her corporeal essence, but she will always be with me and my students in her spirit and through her contributions to our work. In this Essay I want to reflect on some of what Trina gave me over the years in the hope that her contributions will continue to be heard, considered and listened to

Ethics in Alternative Dispute Resolution: New Issues, No Answers from the Adversary Conception of Lawyers’ Responsibilities

The romantic days of ADR appear to be over. To the extent that proponents of ADR, like myself, were attracted to it because of its promise of flexibility, adaptability, and creativity, we now see the need for ethics, standards of practice and rules as potentially limiting and containing the promise of alternatives to rigid adversarial modes of dispute resolution. It is almost as if we thought that anyone who would engage in ADR must of necessity be a moral, good, creative, and, of course, ethical person. That we are here today is deeply ironic and yet, also necessary, as appropriate dispute resolution struggles to define itself and insure its legitimacy against a variety of theoretical and practical challenges