Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Harmful To Whom? Panelists Consider The Conservative Backlash Against Judith Levine's New Book, Patrick Mccreery

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Judith Levine jokingly says that at least she's in good company: Margaret Sanger, Alfred Kinsey, and Jocelyn Elders all were vilified for allegedly promoting sex between adults and children (though of course none of them did any such thing). Levine, a journalist and founder of the National Writers Union, has been vilified and worse because of her new book, Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex (University of Minnesota Press). In it, she argues that sex is not inherently harmful to teenagers, but can be healthy and empowering. Furthermore, she claims that society's responses to fears of …

Urban Youth Reimagine Trauma: Making Meaning Of Experiences With Chronic Community Violence Through The Arts, Stephanie Urso Spina

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The impact of participation in the "Creating Original Opera" (COO) program was investigated among two consecutive (1999 and 2000) cohorts of eighth grade inner-city students living in a context of chronic community violence. Four research questions were posed: (1) What are these students' experiences of violence? (2) What strategies, if any, do they employ to cope with violent events? (3) What, if any, of the above change over the duration of the project? (4) How might those changes relate (or not) to participation in the opera program?

Data collection included a series of three semi-structured interviews with randomly chosen students …

Vigilance Or Tolerance?: Ambivalence And Attitude Accessibility In Response To Terrorist Threats, Julie Tison

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research explored the cognitive processes underlying the Response Amplification Effect (RAE), which is ambivalent people's tendency to judge the object of their ambivalence (typically, a stigmatized other) more extremely than a comparable control target. Being in a state of ambivalence is known to be uncomfortable. This discomfort may be dealt with by implementing changes in the accessibility level of attitudinal elements. It is suggested that cognitions compatible with the side of the ambivalence made salient by the current situation will be super-activated and that incompatible elements will be sub-activated, thus leading to amplified reactions congruent with the current context. …

Queer Feelings, Ann Cvetkovich

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

As people have mobilized in response to the September 11 attacks, I have found myself uncharacteristically dissatisfied by analysis of foreign policy and by teach-ins that consist of supplying information. They're absolutely crucial, and I applaud all of those who have coordinated their energies in this way. But I also want to see, as AIDS activist and theorist Douglas Crimp has argued, mourning and militancy brought together. Crimp has suggested that activism ignores mourning at its own peril, that it cannot simply displace mourning with militancy or fail to address the ways that anger is also motivated by loss.

The State Goes Home: Local Hyper-Vigilance Of Children And The Global Retreat From Social Reproduction, Cindi Katz

Publications and Research

In an early scene in The Terminator, the Cyborgian Arnold Schwarzenegger walks into an L.A. gun shop and asks to see the wares. The shopkeeper lays out Uzis, submachine guns, rocket launchers, and other sophisticated means of overkill, nervously understating, "Any one of these will suit you for home defense purposes." The situation is likewise in the growing child protection industry. In keeping with the shopkeeper's sly comment, these businesses feast on an all-pervasive culture of fear, while creating a mockery, alibi, and distraction out of what they are really about - to remake the home as a citadel through …

Stress In 1st-Year Women Teachers: The Context Of Social Support And Coping, Irvin Sam Schonfeld

Publications and Research

The effects of adverse work environments were examined in the context of other risk/protective factors in this extension of a short-term longitudinal study involving 184 newly appointed women teachers. Regression analyses revealed that, adjusting for preemployment levels of the outcomes and negative affectivity, social support and adversity in the fall work environment were among the factors that affected spring depressive symptoms, self-esteem, job satisfaction, and motivation to teach. Support from nonwork sources was directly related to future improved symptom levels and self-esteem; supervisor and colleague support were directly related to future job satisfaction. Effects of occupational coping, professional …

A Space For Co-Constructing Counter Stories Under Surveillance, María Elena Torre, Michelle Fine, Kathy Boudin, Iris Bowen, Judith Clark, Donna Hylton, Migdalia Martinez, 'Missy', Rosemarie A. Roberts, Pamela Smart, Debora Upegui

Publications and Research

Using our experiences as members of a participatory action research committee (from the City University of New York Graduate Center and the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility) documenting the impact of college in a maximum security prison, this essay illustrates the power of Participatory Action Research in the construction of counter stories. We raise for discussion a set of theoretical, methodological and ethical challenges that emerged from the co-production of counter stories under surveillance: the creation of a critical space for producing 'counter knowledge'; the co-mingling of counter and dominant discourses, the negotiation of power over and within research in prison, …

Clinical Process Related To Outcome In Psychodynamic Psychotherapy For Panic Disorder, Cara F. Klein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study identified psychotherapeutic processes that relate meaningfully to psychotherapeutic outcome for patients with panic disorder undergoing Panic-Focused Psychodynamic Psychotherapy ([PFPP]; Milrod, Busch, Cooper, & Shapiro, 1997). Subjects were 21 patients who participated in an open clinical trial of PFPP (Milrod et al., in press; Milrod et al., 2000). Patients received 24 sessions over approximately 12 weeks. Each patient was diagnostically screened by an independent evaluator and completed a battery of outcome assessments at baseline, termination and 6-month follow up.

The present study utilized two process measures: the Interactive Process Assessment ([IPA]; Klein, Milrod, Busch, 1999), developed specifically to identify …

Violence In Schools: Expanding The Dialogue, Stephanie Urso Spina

Publications and Research

Introductory chapter to Smoke and Mirrors: The Hidden Context of Violence in Schools and Society, edited by Stephanie Urso Spina, Ph.D., published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2000 and is, unfortunately, still timely today.

Disappearing Acts: The State And Violence Against Women In The Twentieth Century, Michelle Fine, Lois Weis

Publications and Research

As children we held our breath, our senses filled with the musty smells of elephants, the staccato flashes of twirling plastic flashlights, the terrors of trapeze. With mystery, moustache, and elegance, the magician waved a wand, invited a woman, usually White, seemingly working class, into a box. She disappeared or was cut in half. Applause. Our early introduction to the notion of the sponsored disappearing act. So, too, at the end of the twentieth century, we witness poor and working-class women shoved into spaces too small for human form, no elegance, no wand. And they too disappear. Disappearing from welfare …

Where Lies The Wisdom To Distinguish One From The Other: The Question Of Moral Creativity At 2000, Donna Chirico

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Development Of The Meanings Of Think And Know Through Conversation, Lea Kessler Shaw

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

An apparent discrepancy in the literature on mental verbs between findings of experimental studies (young children fail to contrast terms) and observational studies (children use terms correctly in conversation) can be reconciled using Nelson and Lucariello's (1985) theory of word meaning development. According to their analysis, three aspects of word meaning develop in order: reference, denotation, and sense. For success at experimental tasks, children must have attained a system of interrelated word meanings (sense). However, children's initial uses of think and know take their meanings from the roles in the language games in which they occur (Wittgenstein, 1953).

In this …

Mechanism Of Triazolo-Benzodiazepine And Benzodiazepine Action In Anxiety And Depression: Behavioral Studies With Concomitant In Vivo Ca1 Hippocampal Norepinephrine And Serotonin Release Detection In The Behaving Animal, Patricia A. Broderick, Omotola Hope, Pierrot Jeannot

Publications and Research

1. Real time, in vivo microvoltammetric studies were performed, using miniature carbon-based sensors, to concurrently detect norepinephrine (NE) release and serotonin (5-HT) release, in 2 separate electrochemical signals, within CA₁ region of hippocampus in the freely moving and behaving, male, Sprague Dawley laboratory rat.

2. Concurrently, four parameters of open-field Behavior I.E. Ambulations, Rearing, Fine Movements and Central Ambulatory behavior (a measure of anxiety reduction behavior), were assayed by infrared photobeam detection.

3. Time course studies showed that the mechanism of action of the triazolobenzodiazepine (TBZD), adinazolam, (Deracyn®) is dramatically different from that of the classical benzodiazepine (BZD), diazepam …

Adult Attachment And Maternal Representations Of Gender During Pregnancy: Their Impact On The Child's Subsequent Gender Role Development, Leslie A. Gibson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study investigated the relationship between attachment, maternal gender representations of the child formed during pregnancy, and the development of sex-typed play at 28 months in 34 mother-infant pairs. Mothers were interviewed during their third trimester using the Pregnancy Interview (PI), a semi-structured interview that assesses women's representations of their babies and their overall experience of pregnancy, and the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), which assesses adults' working models of attachment. Maternal gender representations were scored using the Maternal Gender Representation Codes which assess subjects' overall narratives regarding the issue of gender with respect to their children during the Pregnancy Interview. …

Ackerman Lecture, Suzanne Iasenza

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

The First Annual Dr. John Patten Memorial Lecture was held November 14 at the Hunter College of Social Work. CLAGS agreed to cosponsor the lecture, developed to honor the life and work of Dr. John Patten, faculty member of the Ackerman Institute for Family Therapy, Medical Director of the Institute's AIDS Project, and co-founder and co-director f the Institute's Gay and Lesbian Family Study Project. Dr. Patten was also co-founder and senior editor of In The Family Magazine, a family therapy-oriented magazine for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and their relations. He died of AIDS on October 4, 1995.

Interview: Cindi Katz. Creating Safe Space And The Materiality Of The Margins, Cindi Katz

Publications and Research

Cindi Katz, associate professor and chair of the environmental psychology program at the Graduate School of the City University of New York, visited the University of Kentucky in February of 1996 to deliver the keynote address at the 5 1/2 Annual Geography Graduate Student Conference. In her address, entitled "Power, Space and Terror: Social Reproduction and the Public Environment," Professor Katz discussed how changes jn urban built environments, particularly the privatization of urban public space, negatively affected New York City children. Privatization, she argued, not only serves a 'child hating' mentality prevalent in our society, but fosters, among other things, …

Relation Of Negative Affectivity To Self-Reports Of Job Stressors And Psychological Outcomes, Irvin Sam Schonfeld

Publications and Research

A total of 250 new women teachers participated in a longitudinal study of the influence of negative affectivity (NA) on the relation of self-report work-environment measures to psychological outcomes. Three "neutrally worded" work-environment measures were specially constructed to minimize confounding with NA. The work-environment measures were moderately related to postemployment depressive symptoms, job satisfaction, and, among Whites but not among a principally Black and Hispanic subsample, motivation. Correlation and regression coefficients were largely unchanged when the preemployment psychophysiologic symptoms scale and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression Scale (L. S. Radloff, 1977), factors that tap NA, were controlled. Findings suggest NA …

Methodological Issues In Occupational-Stress Research: Research In One Occupational Group And Its Wider Applications, Irvin Sam Schonfeld, Jaesoon Rhee, Fang Xia

Publications and Research

The chapter addresses a number of important methodologic issues that are relevant to occupational-stress researchers. The issues addressed have arisen in the context of an ongoing research program involving cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of stress in teachers; the issues, however, apply to occupational research in general. The first issue involves measurement strategies required in operationalizing the stress process. The focal concern is the reduction of confounding in measures of the work environment. The second issue encompasses the question of whether to sample new or veteran workers. The third issue applies to types of job stressors. The chapter describes a …

Working Conditions And Psychological Distress In First-Year Women Teachers: Qualitative Findings, Irvin Sam Schonfeld, Elizabeth A. Santiago

Publications and Research

With few exceptions (e.g., Blase, 1986), most of the research on the effects of teachers' working conditions has been quantitative in design. The power of qualitative research inheres in its struggle to get under the teacher's skin and see the world as the teacher sees it. The study described in this paper examines the writings of newly appointed teachers who, as part of a quantitative study, were asked to write anything they wanted about their jobs. Four themes that characterized the working lives of teachers emerged: (a) being happy with one's job, (b) interpersonal tensions and lack of support among …

The Child's Understanding Of Functional Relations In The Domain Of Liquid Quantity, Irvin Sam Schonfeld

Publications and Research

Four liquid comparison tasks were designed to assess children's knowledge of functional relations, one-directional compositions of functional relations (greater + greater yield greater) and countervailing compositions (greater + lesser yield ?) in 4- to 7-year-olds. On one task, in which height indexed quantity, children of every age group performed well. Success on the other comparison tasks was related to operative level, as mdexed by conservation performance, and age. More advanced pre-operational children evidenced a degree of success on the one-directional composition task. Consistent with Schonfeld (1990), the results suggested that at more advanced operative levels: (1) the understanding of increasingly …

Psychoanalysis And Constructionalism: Clinical And Metapsychological Implications, Richard H. Loewus

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Attempts to reconceptualize the epistemological basis of psychoanalytic metapsychology and clinical praxis from constructionalist perspectives are reviewed and critiqued. The constructionalist epistemology of the American philosopher, Nelson Goodman, is absent in these discussions. Goodman offers a relativism with restraints, a constructionalist epistemology that asserts no one given reality to which our constructions must answer, but does not accept that therefore all constructions are equally valid. Instead, constructions, or what Goodman calls world versions must answer to standards of "Rightness". Goodman's reconception of philosophy subsumes the concept of truth as a special class of rightness, and replaces the concept of knowledge …

International Student Design Competition Of Two Community Elementary Schoolyards, Roger Hart, Cindi Katz, Selim Iltus, Maria Rosario Mora

Publications and Research

As part of the project for the Participatory Design of Two Community Elementary Schoolyards in Harlem, P.S. 185 and P.S. 208 (The Schoolyards Project), the Children's Environments Research Group of the City University of New York held an International Student Design Competition for the design of these schoolyards. The competition drew sixty entries from various countries. The jury met on October 10, 1990 and awarded one First Prize and five Honorable Mentions. A landscape architect was then hired to utilize the best ideas, together with the architectural program which had been produced with the school and the surrounding community.

Assessing Stress In Teachers: Depressive Symptoms Scales And Neutral Self-Reports Of The Work Environment, Irvin Sam Schonfeld

Publications and Research

The focal interest of this chapter on teacher stress is methodologic. The chapter enumerates a number of defects in existing measures of job stress in teachers and, concomitantly, other helping professionals. Alternative ways of measuring stress in teachers are suggested and evaluated. The use of depressive symptom scales in concert with more 'objective' measures of the work environment is discussed. An application of the proposed alternative measurement strategy is described. The wider utility of the measurement strategy is briefly described.

Occupational Stress And Preemployment Measures: The Case Of Teachers, Irvin Sam Schonfeld, Danqing Ruan

Publications and Research

This paper describes difficulties involved in conducting cross-sectional and longitudinal research on the effects of occupational stressors on the mental and physical health of veteran workers. The difficulties include (1) the disappearance, prior to the beginning of the investigation, of the casualties of job stress (Kasl, 1983) and (2) selection bias. The paper advances the view that an alternative design, one that (1) follows new workers longitudinally, (2) includes preemployment measures of mental and/or physical health, and (3) controls for nonoccupational stressors is warranted. The alternative design allows for (a) the assessment of the extent to which the findings are …

Pygmalion Goes To School: The Effects Of Goal Setting, The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy And Self-Efficacy On Trainee Performance, James Michael Benton

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examined the effectiveness of motivation techniques for increasing performance in a skill training program. A PC based software program provided structured training to increase subjects' typing skills. Motivation was manipulated by the use of goal setting and the self-fulfilling prophecy (SFP), alone and in combination. The moderating effects of self-efficacy on motivation, defined as a generalized "can do" personality orientation, were also examined. Two levels of goal setting were employed: (1) "do your best"; and, (2) a difficult, specific goal. The SFP was tied to the situation, not the person. It was invoked by informing subjects that the …

Dimensions Of Functional Social Support And Psychological Symptoms, Irvin Sam Schonfeld

Publications and Research

In the summer following graduation a sample of 125 female college graduates (mean age = 28) completed Cohen & Wills' ISEL (1985) which includes scales measuring four social support functions: belonging (social companionship), appraisal (availability of confidants), tangible (instrumental), and self-esteem support. In the summer and fall subject status on two outcome scales was ascertained: the Psychophysiologic Symptom Scale and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). Reliability of the difference scores suggested that the ISEL scales do not measure entirely different constructs and the ISEL Self-esteem Scale is operationally redundant with the Rosenberg Self-esteem scale and the CES-D. …

Burnout In Teachers: Is It Burnout Or Is It Depression?, Irvin Sam Schonfeld

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

A Developmental Perspective And Antisocial Behavior: Cognitive Functioning, Irvin Sam Schonfeld

Publications and Research

G. R. Patterson et al (see record 1989-26278-001) failed to sufficiently address the idea that cognitive functioning is a factor which is related to both school failure and antisocial conduct. Findings consistent with the acculturation learning view are noted.

The Child's Understanding Of Correspondence Relations, Irvin Sam Schonfeld

Publications and Research

A number of quantitative comparison tasks were designed to tap knowledge of injective and suijective correspondences, one-directiona] compositions (greater + greater yields greater), countervailing compositions (greater + lesser yields ?), and length-density relations in 4- to 7-year-olds. The results indicated that performance on the comparison tasks was related to performance on a number conservation test as well as to age. Nonconservers performed at better than chance levels on tasks that tapped an elementary knowledge of injective and surjective correspondences; concrete-operational children, however, tended perform better on all tasks. Uncorrected and disattenuated correlation coefficients revealed considerable consistency across measures. Factor analyses, …

Visual-Spatial And Set-Shifting Functions In Patients With Parkinson's Disease, Sarah A. Raskin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) (N=20) were compared to age and education-matched normal control subjects (N=20) on 18 paper-and-pencil neuropsychological measures. These tests were chosen to measure two specific functions. The first set of tests was chosen to measure spatial orientation, and these tests were divided into those that measure personal orientation, extrapersonal orientation, mental rotation, and right/left orientation. The second set of tests was chosen to measure the ability to shift mental set. Hotelling's multivariate T² tests revealed a significant difference between the PD patients and the normal control subjects on the tests chosen to measure set-shifting ability …