The purpose of this study is to explain how shame can be experienced by women with the stigmatizing illness of alcoholism. Another aim is to illustrate how this shame can be affected in social interaction with others and by other circumstances. The following questions will be highlighted in this essay: How can shame be experienced by female alcoholics? What can affect shame in interaction with other people, from the view of female alcoholics? What other circumstances can affect the shame, from the view of female alcoholics?This study features interviews with women who have successfully gone through the process of rehabilitation from the illness of alcoholism, have a long going and stable sobriety and arecurrently part of the work force. The study also features interviews with therapists specializing in the field of addiction recovery and have considerable experience in their fieldof working with women suffering from alcoholism.The subject matters shame and stigma form the theoretical/analytical tools for this research. Various researchers’ views and explanations concerning stigma are from Erving Goffman and Howard Becker, and concerning shame the views and explanations are from Tomas J. Scheff and Suzanne M. Retzinger. However, the theoretical standpoint of this study is Brené Brown’s Shame Resilience Theory.The results that can be drawn from this study are that shame is experienced as deep and difficult during the time when the alcoholic is active, but shame can decrease considerably with recovery. Interactions with other people were shown to be essential in affecting shame. The response of other people decided whether shame decreased or increased.

Despite numerous studies of the development of theory of mind, how children express their understanding of mind in less structured, play settings has gone largely unstudied. Many developmental accounts, regardless of disagreement on other theoretical issues, agree that the child’s engagement within social contexts is crucial to the development of understanding of mind. Our goals were to collect a detailed account of how children use their understanding of mind and how mothers align their support to the child’s capabilities within social interactions. In this longitudinal study, typically developing preschoolers (N = 52) engaged in a hiding game with their mothers in a semi-structured play setting when the children were 42-, 54-, and 66-months old. Aspects of children’s understanding of mind were rated including understanding of knowledge access, deception, false belief, and emotional response to false belief, as well as, affective charge and engagement with the task. Mothers’ utterances were coded for various characteristics, particularly role and content. Children’s understanding of mind increased across visits and positively correlated with false belief task performance at the 42- and 54-month visits, rs = .35 and .39, p < .05, but not the 66-month visit, rs = –.25, p = .10. Children’s enthusiasm was positively related to their understanding of mind at the first and second visits, but not the last. Mothers tailored the content of their utterances to the child’s growing expertise, but whether mothers adjusted the role of their utterances to children’s understanding of mind remains unclear. Observing children’s playful use of their emerging understanding of mind in social interactions allowed for the capture of subtle variations in how children express and caregivers support their understanding.

The core of sociality and one of the key forces behind the transition to multicellularity is cooperation. The study of social behavior in microorganisms has gained considerable attention in the last decade as researchers have discovered that many of the cooperative social interactions found in higher organisms can also be found in microbes. The dictyostelids are particularly amenable to the study of social evolution because of the potential for conflict and cooperation during multicellular formation. The formation of the multicellular fruiting body may lead to conflict because all nearby cells aggregate together, which may be distinct clones, each trying to increase its own fitness. I first explored how D. discoideum and D. purpureum interact and if either species looks to cheat the other when they interact. I found that both species prefer being clonal but cooperate with each other when it seems the benefits outweigh the costs. Cooperating amoebae are able to make larger fruiting bodies, which are advantageous for migration and dispersal, but both species suffer a cost in producing fewer spores per fruiting body. I next examined short-range social dispersal in the social amoebae, D. discoideum and D. purpureum. It appears that the evolutionary loss of stalked migration gives D. discoideum cells the advantage of delaying specialization and the ability to colonize more distant locations, but has significant costs due to migration distance, such as the fraction of cells that become fertile spores. In my final study, we examine the interaction of different clones of D. discoideum before and after migration. We show that chimerism and migration interact to produce fruiting bodies that have a proportionally higher spore allocation compared to clonal fruiting bodies after migration but were unable to determine whether the results that we see are an indication of clones defecting in a tragedy of the commons or more cooperation. With further study will be able to better explain the affects of cooperation on group dispersal and whether it can be used as a mechanism to reduce local competition.

Det är viktigt att personalgrupper inom behandlings- och stödverksamheter präglas av positiva sociala interaktioner och lyckade ritualer för att uppfylla funktionalitet och effektivitet. Brist på positiva sociala interaktioner och lyckade ritualer riskerar att skapa en personalgrupp som präglas av oenighet och konflikter. Studien syftar således till att undersöka hur sociala interaktioner i en personalgrupp inom en stödverksamhet inverkar på det dagliga arbetet. Studien syftar även till att undersöka hur en positiv och funktionell personalgrupp skapas genom samspel mellan gruppmedlemmarna. Vidare diskuteras relationen mellan personalgruppens funktion och klienterna. Studien baseras på en kvalitativ forskningsmetod som omfattar fem intervjuer med personal inom en stödverksamhet. De teoretiska utgångspunkterna som används vid analys är Collins teori om sociala interaktioner och Bions gruppteori. Studiens resultat visar att personalen benämner olika faktorer som viktiga för en funktionell personalgrupp och att de även har delade meningar och känslor för personalgruppens funktion. Vidare visar studien att personalgruppen inom den studerade verksamheten inte arbetar enhetligt eller utifrån någon specifik teori eller metod. Detta kan således vara ett resultat av att gruppen präglas av misslyckade ritualer och mindre bra sociala interaktioner. / It is important that staff groups within treatment and support organizations are characterized with positive social interactions and successful rituals in order to be functional and effective. A lack of these ingredients can create a group with disagreement and conflicts. This study aims to explore how the interactions and rituals affect the daily work within the staff group in a support organization. A second purpose is to explore how a positive and functional staff group is made easier through interaction between the members of the group. The relationship between the function of the staff group and the clients is also discussed. The study has a qualitative research approach and includes five interviews with staff within a support organization. The theoretical basis for the analysis is Collin’s interactions theory and Bion’s group theory. The result shows that the staff name different factors as important for the function of a staff group. The study also shows that the staff group doesn’t work uniformly or by any particular theory or method. This may be the result of that the group is characterized by failed rituals and less good interactions.

The purpose of this study was to explore foreign spouse children¡¦s mandarin capability, learning attitudes and social interactions, and analyzed the significant differences and predictors of their mandarin capability, learning attitudes and social interactions We conducted a purposive sampling selection to recruit 335 foreign spouse children who are 3rd to 6th graders in Kaohsiung city. All participants completed three scales of ¡§Mandarin Capability Scale¡¨, ¡§Learning Attitude Scale¡¨ and ¡§Interpersonal Relationships Scale¡¨ that developed by the investigator. In addition, 6 children with the highest total scores and the other 6 children with the lowest total scores on the three scales were interviewed for triangulation and consolidation of quantitative results. Descriptive statistics, independent t-test, one-way ANOVA, Pearson¡¦s product-moment correlation, and multiple stepwise regression analysis were used to assess the similarities and differences among groups. The initial findings were as follows: 1. Children came from families of higher education parents presented significantly higher Mandarin capability than these children came from families of lower education parents. 2. Children came from democratic parenting practice presented significantly higher mandarin capability scores than those children with permissive parenting practices. 3. Younger children¡¦s learning attitudes scores were significantly higher than the elder children. 4. Children came from families of higher education parents presented significantly higher learning attitudes scores than those children came from families of lower education parents. 5.Girls¡¦ interpersonal relationships scores were significantly higher than those of the boys. 6. Children came from families of higher education parents presented significantly higher interpersonal relationships scores than those children came from families of lower education parents. 7. Children came from democratic parenting practice presented significantly higher scores on the dimension of ¡§interaction with family members¡¨ than those children with authoritarian parenting practice. 8. There were significantly positive correlations among children¡¦s Mandarin capability, learning attitude and interpersonal relationships. 9. The significant predictors of children¡¦s learning attitude scores were ¡§listening comprehension¡¨, ¡§grammar rhetorical ability¡¨, ¡§language use ability¡¨ and ¡§language expression ability¡¨ . 10. The significant predictors of children¡¦s interpersonal relationships scores were ¡§listening comprehension¡¨, ¡§language use ability¡¨ and ¡§language expression ability¡¨ . Recommendation from research results were suggested to further study of foreign spouses children¡¦s Mandarin capability, learning attitudes and social interactions.

This field study of two-year-old children using art materials in a preschool setting was concerned with how children constructed meaning about the art-making process through their interactions with others. The study was theoretically grounded in the work of George Herbert Mead, Herbert Blumer and Lev Vygotsky, who share a common view that meaning is socially constructed through interpersonal interactions. The study focused on children’s early use of art media and their social interaction as a significant factor in their artistic expression. Monthly videotaped and written observations documented four 2-year-aids’ participation with art media during their attendance at weekly parent-2-year old program. Over two subsequent years, the data were expanded to include observations of additional 2- year-aids, and parent and teacher interviews. Observations in a 3 and 4-year-old classroom coupled with extensive teacher interviews provided insights into teachers’ assumptions and values which guided their interactions. Observations of the 2-year-olds were coded into art episodes, and analyzed in terms of behaviours, interactions, and values. Based on Vygotsky’s idea that children’s shift from biological development to higher cognitive functioning occurs through interpersonal interaction, children’s exploratory use of materials was described. Analysis of their explorations revealed that intentionality and visual interest were crucial components in their art experiences. Analysis suggested that children as young as 2 years possess aesthetic sensitivity. There did not appear to be any single factor that could account for children’s selection or placement of colors or marks on a piece of paper. Social interactions around art-making occurred within spatial-temporal frames which contributed to the way the art-making context was defined by the participants. Through interpretations derived from interactions with peers and adults, children constructed understanding about cultural values for work, production, ownership, and neatness. They learned little about art skills or the relationship of their art-making experiences to art in the adult world. The study concludes with presentation of an interactionist model of children’s artistic expression which describes the dialectical relationship between biological development and social interaction. The model eliminates the need to debate issues around innate or cultural origins of children’s visual expression, through its inclusion of biological and social components. Using the interactionist model and Vygotsky’s notion of scaffolding can help teachers address conflicts surrounding the definition of developmentally appropriate art education for young children.

Sävar bibliotek ska införa meröppet, och denna studie har undersökt hur man bör gå tillväga. Intervjuer utfördes via telefon och e-mail till andra meröppna bibliotek, och en fokusgrupp utfördes med besökare och personal vid Sävar bibliotek. Vi undersökte även relevant litteratur för att hitta hur själva miljön i biblioteket ska se ut. Vi kom fram till att det är viktigt att information om förändringarna kommer ut till besökarna. Det är också viktigt att biblioteket ska vara en social miljö, så det är viktigt att arrangera det så att det uppmuntrar till social interaktion. / Sävar library will introduce self-service (“more-open”) and in this study we have researched how to carry it out. Interviews were performed through telephone and e-mail to other more-open libraries and a focus group was performed with visitors and personnel at Sävar library. We also researched relevant literature in order to find how the environment in the library should look like. We found that it is important that information about the changes reaches the visitors. It is also important that the library will continue to be a social environment, so it is important to arrange it so that it encourages social interaction.

Darbą sudaro trys pagrindinės dalys – konceptualioji, metodologinė ir tiriamoji. Konceptualioje darbo dalyje atskleidžiama NVO samprata ir vaidmuo vietos valdyme, nagrinėjami tarpinstitucinės partnerystės bruožai, pateikiamos pagrindinės savivaldybės ir NVO sąveikos modelių charakteristikos, įvardijami pagrindiniai socialinio pasitikėjimo komponentai. Metodologinėje darbo dalyje pristatoma empirinio tyrimo strategija, pateikiama kokybinio ir kiekybinio tyrimų metodika, charakterizuojama empirinio tyrimo imtis. Remiantis savivaldybės ir NVO sąveikos modelių bei pagrindinių socialinio pasitikėjimo komponentų teorinės analizės rezultatis, atliktas pusiau struktūruotas interviu su Šiaulių miesto ir Joniškio rajono savivaldybių darbuotojais bei anketinė apklausa Šiaulių mieste ir Joniškio rajone socialines paslaugas teikiančioms NVO. Interpretuojant tyrimo rezultatus, remtasi turinio analizės ir aprašomosios statistikos metodais. / The paper consists of three main parts – conceptual, methodological and investigative. The conceptual part of this paper discloses the conception of NGO and its role in the public administration, examines inter-institutional partnership features, analyses NGOs and municipalities cooperation models and creation of trust in inter-institutional networks. Methodological part of the paper presents the strategy of empirical research, also presents methods of qualitative and quantitative research, characterizes sample of empirical research. According to NGOs and municipalities cooperation models and theoretical analysis that singled out factors leading to a mutually beneficial relationship, accomplished a semi-structured interview with the municipal employees of Siauliai city and Joniskis district. Also a survey was accomplished of Siauliai city and Joniskis district NGOs providing social services in order to identify the factors leading to the emergence of social trust. The interpretation of the results was based on content analysis and descriptive statistical methods.

A lo largo de los ultimos diez años los economistas hemos reconocido que en muchos casos las decisiones individuales se ven afectadas por las decisiones, los comportamientos las preferencias de otros agentes no solamente atraves del mercado sino tambien directamente por imitacion o aprendimiento, por el desarrollo de reglas sociales compartidas, por la difusion de informacion. Muchos estudios han estudiado estos mecanismos en varios contextos. Entre otros destacan la educacion, el mercado laboral, la criminalidad, las habitudines sanitarias. La relevancia de estos efectos de neighborhood es positiva y normativa a la vez. Por un lado, su existencia contribuye a la comprension de la extrema variabilidad de algunos fenomenos economicos entre grupos de individuos aparentemente homogeneos. Por otro lado, su existencia es una componente fundamental para el desarollo de intervenciones eficientes por parte del policy maker. Los estudios de la tesis analizan estos efectos en el contexto de las decisiones esscolares y en el mercado laboral. En el primer capitulo se muestra como la decision y el exito en completar la educacion segundaria por parte de los varones adolescentes afecta positivamente la de las mujeres de la misma edad residentes en las mismas ciudades. La muestra campionaria utilizada permite conlcuir que la correlacion entre los exitos de los varones y de las mujeres corresponde de hecho a una relacion causal entre las dos variables. Se concluye que cualquier intervencion que consiga aumentar la probabilidad de completar los estudios segundarios de los varones del uno por ciento tendrà como consequencia tambien un aumento de la probabilidad de las mujeres adolescentes de completar estos estudios entre 0.6 y 0.7 por ciento. En el segundo capitulo se evaluan los efectos sobre la durada del paro de pertenecer a un grupo social mas amplio.

Thesis (DPsych in Psychology (Counselling Psychology)) -- School of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, 2003. / Submitted for the partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctorate in Psychology (Counselling Psychology), School of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, 2003. Includes bibliographical references (p. 192-200).