Applied Behavior Analysis as Treatment for Autism Spectrum Disorders: Topic Modeling and Linguistic Analysis of Reddit Posts

Background: It is critical for professionals to understand the discourse landscape within various online and social media outlets in order to support families of children with autism in treatment decision-making. This need is heightened when considering treatments that have garnered excitement and controversy, such as applied behavioral analysis (ABA) therapy.Method: The specific aims of this study were to identify the main themes in Reddit posts about ABA-based interventions for autism using topic modeling, to examine the linguistic aspects of Reddit conversations using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) analysis, and to examine the relationship between linguistic aspects and user category (i.e., pro- vs. anti-ABA vs. undecided, parent vs. professional vs. an individual with autism).Results: The topic modeling resulted in 11 themes that ranged across various elements, such as autism as a condition and its management, stakeholders, and consequences of autism and the support needed. The posts of individuals were focused on personal experiences and opinions as opposed to clinical and research information sharing. Linguistic analysis indicated that the posts reveal an intimate stance rather than an empirical stance.Conclusions: Results provide insight into perspectives of ABA. This type of research may help in developing and distributing appropriate and evidence-based information.

The object of inquiry and organization studies

This essay argues for reinforcing the empirical stance within organization studies by more systematically presuming non-organization. The empirical stance within organization studies thereby comes to revolve around organization as a claim made in empirical inquiries. The presumption of non-organization takes the legal principle of presumption of innocence as its paradigm. It works by placing the burden of proof on the empirical inquiries to establish, beyond a reasonable doubt, that what is inquired into is an instance of organization (where organization may be understood in terms of organizing, organization of something, formal organization etc.). Organization scholars may assume organization — and often for good reasons— when making a restaurant, a market, or something else object of inquiry. However, adopting the presumption of non-organization requires organization studies to make explicit what is understood by organization as well as what findings are mobilized to establish the claim that organization, in the sense subscribed to, is found. Hereby the presumption of non-organization reinforces the empirical stance as ‘a recurrent rebellion against the metaphysicians’ (van Fraassen). Metaphysics is not cancelled out by empirical inquiry, but it may be part and parcel of assumptions that inform empirical inquiry, and the presumption of non-organization calls for a recurrent test of such assumptions.

Happiness and the Vision of God

After an outline of the views on happiness of Aristotle and some of Aquinas’s immediate predecessors his theology of human fulfilment is outlined. Aquinas rejects both Albert’s view that philosophical contemplation on earth could possibly constitute real happiness and Bonaventure’s more affective notion of prayerful, meditative union with God. Some scholars have pointed to the tension between Aquinas’s accounts of knowing on earth and the vision of God in the afterlife. The former hinges on an Aristotelian empirical stance; the latter appears more illuminist, if not Averroist (in terms of the divine intellect becoming united with the human intellect). This chapter argues that the intuitus simplex (the climax of our intellectual contemplation on earth) resembles, and points towards, the intuitive, non-discursive beatific vision of God. This means that the acme of our mode of knowing on earth, i.e. the moment of intellective insight, has an eschatological dimension. It is one more instance of grace perfecting nature.

The Contemporary Resonances of Classical Pragmatism for Studying Organization and Organizing

The legacy of classical American Pragmatism – Peirce, James, Dewey, Addams, Mead, Follett and others – in organization theory is significant, albeit that much of its influence has come through implicit and indirect routes. In light of recent calls for an empirical stance as an alternative to the prevailing metaphysical stance in organizational research, we reread Pragmatism as a process philosophy that can profoundly inform process views of organization and organizing. Our particular reading highlights Pragmatism’s emphasis on process and emergence, its theory of knowing as fallible and experimental, its denouncing of dualisms, its future-oriented meliorism, its sensitivity to ethics and democracy, and its positioning of experience as both the start and end of inquiry, arguing that these features lay invaluable groundwork for the study of organization and organizing. We advocate a reappraisal of this legacy, mobilizing seven articles from the back catalogue of this journal in a virtual special issue that demonstrates how classical American Pragmatism can reinvigorate the field while also opening up new questions and new ways of questioning.

Modeling the Covid-19 Epidemic Using Time Series Econometrics

The classic ‘logistic’ model has provided a realistic model of the behavior of Covid-19 in China and many East Asian countries. Once these countries passed the peak, the daily case count fell back, mirroring its initial climb in a symmetric way, just as the classic model predicts. However, in Italy and Spain, and now the UK and many other Western countries, the experience has been very different. The daily count has fallen back gradually from the peak but remained stubbornly high. The reason for the divergence from the classical model remain unclear. We take an empirical stance on this issue and develop a model that is based upon the statistical characteristics of the time series. With the possible exception of China, the workhorse logistic model is decisively rejected against more flexible alternatives.

John Locke: The Philosopher as Christian Virtuoso

The purpose of this book is to present the philosophical thought of John Locke as the work of a Christian virtuoso. In his role as ‘virtuoso’, an experimental natural philosopher of the sort that flourished in England during the seventeenth century, Locke was a proponent of the so-called ‘new philosophy’, a variety of atomism that emerged in early modern Europe. But he was also a practicing Christian, and he professed confidence that the two vocations were not only compatible but mutually sustaining. Locke aspired, without compromising his empirical stance, to unite the two vocations in a single philosophical endeavor with the aim of producing a system of Christian philosophy. Although the birth of the modern secular outlook did not happen smoothly or without many conflicts of belief, Locke, in his role of Christian virtuoso, endeavored to resolve apparent contradictions. Nuovo draws attention to the often-overlooked complexities and diversity of Locke’s thought, and argues that Locke must now be counted among the creators of early modern systems of philosophy.

The bottom of the universe: Flat earth science in the Age of Encounter

This essay challenges the dominance of the spherical earth model in fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century Western European thought. It examines parallel strains of Latin and vernacular writing that cast doubt on the existence of the southern hemisphere. Three factors shaped the alternate accounts of the earth as a plane and disk put forward by these sources: (1) the unsettling effects of maritime expansion on scientific thought; (2) the revival of interest in early Christian criticism of the spherical earth; and (3) a rigid empirical stance toward entities too large to observe in their entirety, including the earth. Criticism of the spherical earth model faded in the decades after Magellan’s crew returned from circuiting the earth in 1522.