During the end of the nineteenth century, breach of promise laws, which had protected unmarried but engaged women for centuries during their vulnerable engagement period, began to come under public scrutiny. The demonization of this legal protection coincided with increased legal agency in other areas of married life for women, but in most historical and critical discussions of this era, breach of promise, also nicknamed Heartbalm, has been overlooked, and the purpose of this dissertation is to examine canonical and non-canonical literature from this period and recontextualize these works in light of breach of promise's historical impact on courting and unmarried couples. Both men and women writers from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century picked up on the dramatic potential of these lawsuits at a time when the definition of marriage was transitioning from a relationship based on fixed economic gender roles established in the nineteenth century to a relationship of companionship and emotional connection. For many young people, the breach of promise suit insinuated that women sought marriage purely out of financial gain and stability, and as such, women were often branded gold diggers, or worse, for their emotional disconnect with their lovers. By bringing together American literature, cultural and legal histories and headlines from The New York Times, this dissertation also informs readers about the serious social activism at work in what might otherwise appear to be insignificant stories about family conflicts over marriage and family finances. The works of William Dean Howells, Edith Wharton, Anita Loos, Margaret Deland and others benefit from putting their texts alongside newspaper headlines and case studies from their era because breach of promise was often a covert force in those stories and only careful reading of the texts brings out the complexity of the characters' pre-marriage anxieties. In the films of the 1930s, however, heartbalm was demonized to the point where it now appeared ridiculous, and in 1935, the law was rescinded in a number of states across the country, and effectively dead. As a protection available for young women, however, its absence led to an increase in unmarried women without any legal tool available to hold an absconding lover responsible for his unfulfilled commitments. Though the study ends with this observation, the 1935 arguments mark a complete reversal from the ideology expressed by nineteenth century lawmakers who enforced heartbalm and defended its existence, and as such, this study traces that reversal, and the accompanying changes in social expectations for courting couples as enacted on the pages of American literature and in early American films.

Elopement is a potentially dangerous behavior that can result in accidental injury or death. Assessment and treatment of elopement in children has most frequently been examined using behavioral approaches. Most of these evaluations have typically been conducted in settings where assessment and treatment occurred over extended periods of time (such as inpatient units, residential treatment centers, or day treatment programs). As more children present for assessment and treatment of elopement in outpatient clinics, a need exists for efficient and pragmatic means of assessing and treating elopement. This study examined a novel way to assess and treat elopement behavior in young children in an outpatient setting. The purpose of the current study was to address three questions: (a) Could a brief methodological approach be used for rapidly assessing and treating elopement in young children within typical outpatient time constraints, (b) could a competing stimuli treatment including brief preference assessments, differential reinforcement of alternative behaviors, and response cost reduce elopement attempts and increase latency to elopement, and (c) could the initial treatment protocol be expanded to further clarify effective treatment strategies through component analyses? Data were collected within a brief multielement (across conditions) design combined with multiple baseline (across 2 participants). The results of this study suggested that (a) a brief methodological approach to assessing elopement can be successfully implemented within typical outpatient constraints, (b) the competing stimuli treatment can be used to reduce elopement attempts and increase latency to elopement in young children, (c) supplementing the initial protocol with a component analysis can further specify effective treatment strategies. These results extend the elopement literature by assessing and treating elopement within typical outpatient clinic setting time constraints.

This paper focuses on whether running away from adolescent residential care facilities is related to having off grounds passes with an adult resource. It was hypothesized that as off grounds passes increased in frequency and duration, runaway behavior would decrease in frequency and duration. Data were collected from two hundred closed client files. Spearman's rho correlation and linear regression were used to analyze the data. Results show a weak negative relationship exists between number of passes and both number of runaway occurrences and hours spent on the run. The data were collected from a single agency, suggesting that caution be used when attempting to generalize to the entire population. The results, however, are very useful to inform future research and guide the development of future hypotheses.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-29T13:17:58Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Efezio de Siqueira Gimenes Junior.pdf: 763293 bytes, checksum: 48eeaa8253a3627835c383c1bc471549 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-03-04 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / While there are a lot of applied researches focused in teaching different behaviors to people with autism, few of these studies have as focus safety behaviors. After identify studies that taught safety behaviors, this review had as objective, to identify variables responsible for the effectiveness in procedures to teach safety behavior for such people. Studies focused on safety behavior instruction were selected of databases Portal periódicos CAPES, ERIC, PubMed, PsycNET, Wiley Online Library and Science Direct, the main keywords used were autism and safety, were found 36 articles, and after a extensive lecture of references, were found three thesis and dissertations, which added are equal to 39 studies. The results indicated that more than a half of the studies were published between the years of 2008 and 2015 in North American institutions, indicating a tendency of interest in the topic on recent years, especially, about elopement. Of 39 studies, 34 were applied researches and in 32 of these was used single subject design, although there were limitations on the stability criteria in the baseline, even when studies were published in JABA. The main target behaviors studied were elopement, which were specially studied in the recent years, pedestrian behaviors and prevention of lures for strangers. The major participants with autism were children and adolescents from 2 to 15 years. In 36 studies were used 22 evidence-based practices, combined in various ways; the most common practices was reinforcement, prompting, discrete trail and functional analysis. In conclusion, in 36 studies where evidence-based practices were used, were changes in the behavior of the participants after the intervention, however there are limitations on the target behavior generalization planning and the extent of follow-up after completion of the intervention / Embora haja grande quantidade de pesquisas aplicadas dirigidas a ensinar diferentes comportamentos a pessoas com autismo, poucas destas pesquisas tiveram como foco o ensino de comportamentos de segurança. Na presente revisão, após a identificação de estudos que ensinavam comportamentos de segurança, teve-se como objetivo identificar variáveis responsáveis pela eficácia de procedimentos de ensino de tais comportamentos para esse público-alvo. Foram selecionados trabalhos que pretenderam ensinar comportamentos de segurança nas bases de dados Portal periódicos CAPES, ERIC, PubMed, PsycNET, Willey Online Library e Science Direct e os principais descritores utilizados foram autism e safety. Foram encontrados 36 relatos de pesquisa, e o esgotamento bibliográfico permitiu identificar três teses e dissertações, que somados, totalizaram 39 estudos. Os resultados indicaram que mais da metade dos estudos publicados o foram entre os anos de 2008 e 2015 e seus autores estavam filiados a instituições norte americanas, indicando uma tendência de interesse no tema nos últimos anos. Dos 39 trabalhos, 34 eram pesquisas aplicadas e em 32 delas foi utilizado um delineamento de sujeito único, embora houvesse limitações nos critérios de estabilidade da linha de base, mesmo quando os estudos foram publicações do periódico JABA. Os principais comportamentos-alvo estudados foram afastar-se de uma área sem supervisão de um cuidador, que foi especialmente investigado nos últimos anos, o comportamento de pedestre e de prevenção da aproximação de estranhos potencialmente perigosos, majoritariamente com participantes crianças e adolescentes dos 2 aos 15 anos. Os procedimentos de ensino utilizados combinaram diferentes práticas baseadas em evidências, derivadas da análise do comportamento e as principais foram reforçamento, hierarquia de dicas, tentativa discreta e análise funcional. Concluiu-se que em todos os 36 estudos em que foram utilizadas práticas baseadas em evidências houve mudanças substanciais no comportamento dos participantes após a intervenção, embora houvesse limitações quanto ao planejamento da generalização do comportamento-alvo e da medida de sua manutenção após o término da intervenção