The importance of play in child development and the barriers that individuals with autism face regarding play skills requires us to identify specific interventions which can assist in the development of such skills. Stimulus pairing, which has been documented as a procedure by which an event comes to elicit a response by being paired with an event…

For at least 90 years there have been contributions to onomastics from the fields of social psychology and personality. These contributions have included work on various types of names, such as ambiguous, alias, hypocoristic, junior, nickname, surname, and unique name. Other research has focused on the structure of names, style of usage, and style…

Traces the development of the suicide prevention movement since the 1897 publication of Emile Durkheim's book "Suicide." Durkheim's theory of suicide is outlined, and implications for contemporary suicide prevention efforts are identified and discussed. Future trends in the development of suicide prevention centers are outlined.…

Interest in social construction has coincided with a widespread movement to situate the composing process in a social-cognitive paradigm. Because social and emotional themes overlap, writing specialists assume that the emotional components of writing have been taken care of. However, by being absorbed into social themes, the emotional experience…

Current social psychological analysis of the self is characterized by three principles: the self is bounded and concrete; the opinions of others are valued for self-definition, self-evaluation and the maintenance of self-esteem; and the road to fame is paved with one's own actions. Attributions of causality for one's actions traditionally have…

This study investigated the willingness of persons to ask others for help. It examined the effect of modes of interaction (asking for help by letter, phone, or in person) and the size of the request (whether they asked for a small or large favor). The sample consisted of 96 male and female undergraduates in introductory sociology classes. The…

The divisions between social psychology, naive psychology, and folklore are fundamentally artifical ones. It is argued that all three have many of the same goals--that is, the prediction and control of behavior and the comprehension of the orderly processes of everyday life. Each attempts to understand how social intercourse is to proceed.…

This paper examines the concept of time in multimedia, World Wide Web-based courseware development. The biological concept of entrainment (the alignment of rhythms within and between systems) to accelerate courseware development is explored. The discussion begins with the foundational concepts of entrainment from biological systems and social…

This paper discusses self-assessment--i.e., the act of evaluating or monitoring one's own level of knowledge, performance, and understanding--in a metacognitive framework, taking into account the contexts in which self-assessment occurs. It begins with a brief review of metacognitive and social psychology theories that pertain to self-assessment.…

Scientific researchers traditionally have held that the use of data represents a test of hypotheses or theories. Social psychologist William McGuire has developed a contrary position, arguing that instead of testing hypotheses and theories, research merely specifies their limitations, generality, and assumptions. McGuire's contextualism suggests…

The field of second language acquisition (SLA) developed from the study of second language teaching, and includes the study of the learning setting, learner variables, the nature of the target language and the learner native language, and the reasons for language learning. Much SLA research to date focuses on one or another of these dimensions…

Within the area of attribution theory, an overjustification effect is inferred if, following reward for an intrinsically interesting activity, individuals subsequently show less interest in that activity than comparable individuals who receive no reward. In an attempt to isolate the overjustification effect, 60 college students (30 male, 30…

Ten introductory psychology textbooks and five social psychology textbooks were examined for accuracy in their treatment of human aggression. Attention was focused on the treatment of the concept of emotional catharsis, and specifically to two frequent usages of catharsis (behavioral and emotional catharsis) and the social learning involved in…

The reason that people think women and men differ in their general qualities may be that the two sexes tend to be observed in different social roles. To explore the sources of stereotypes about men and women several experiments were conducted. Most of the studies involved randomly selected college students who were presented with a description of…

Although attitudes toward people who have sought psychological counseling have been characterized as negative and stigmatizing, research suggests the public holds no prejudice toward the mentally ill. To examine whether the apparent decrease in negative attitudes toward people involved in psychological treatment is more superficial than real, two…