SCHOLARS AWARD: Belief and Communication in the Social Worlds of Adolescents with Severe and Profound Intellectual Disabilities

沟通永远是一种信仰的飞跃。 但对于那些与患有严重和深度智力残疾的青少年一起工作的人来说，情况尤其如此。他们与他人的互动挑战了我们对社会关系是什么和可能是什么的理解。 对于发育正常的儿童来说，语言始于研究人员所说的“基本亲和需求”--对联系的情感需求--这迫使婴儿模仿他人，并以越来越有效的方式解释他们的意图。 当涉及到既不模仿也不使用传统符号的个体的互动时，这一观察提出了有趣的问题。 与严重和深度智力残疾青少年生活和工作在一起的家庭成员、艾滋病患者、治疗师和教师所感受到的“基本亲和需要”的影响是什么？ 文化规范和制度约束如何影响他们对待身边的青少年？ 他们如何学会与他们的亲人，客户和学生跨越什么似乎是一个不可逾越的鸿沟连接？ 由此产生了哪些新的社会世界？这个文化人类学学者奖支持研究特定的培训，以准备文化人类学家Danilyn Rutherford博士来解决这些问题。 在加州大学圣克鲁斯心理学系的同事的指导下，卢瑟福将掌握适合收集残疾青少年和与他们一起工作的人之间的互动数据的方法。 她还将在圣何塞州立大学学习言语和语言病理学以及特殊教育方面的课程，以学习与具有复杂交际需求的个人一起使用的方法和技术。 这不是文化人类学家通常的培训，但它将使卢瑟福能够将人类学的民族志实地考察和参与观察的传统方法应用于全新的领域：残疾青少年的语言治疗课程以及学校和家庭的非正式互动。通过这笔赠款进行的培训将为跨学科合作提供一个模式。 卢瑟福的工作将通过展示人类学家可以从对人类发展做出一般性声明的领域中学到什么来加强人类学。 与此同时，她的工作将展示文化人类学的密集方法如何扩大对人类发展和人际交往的理解。 这项培训所促成的研究结果也将使有特殊需要的人口受益，帮助决策者和从业人员更密切地根据学生的能力和需要提供服务;它将展示长期受到歧视的人口成员和与他们一起工作的人的创造力。

Communication is always a leap of faith. But this is particularly the case for people who work with adolescents with severe and profound intellectual disabilities. Their interactions with others challenge our understanding of what a social relationship is and could be. For typically developing children, language begins with what researchers call the "basic affiliative need" -- the emotional need for connection -- that compels infants to imitate others and interpret their intentions in increasingly effective ways. This observation raises intriguing questions when it comes to interactions involving individuals who neither imitate nor use conventional signs. What are the effects of the "basic affiliative need" felt by the family members, aids, therapists, and teachers who live and work in close proximity with adolescents with severe and profound intellectual disabilities? How do cultural norms and institutional constraints influence how they treat adolescents in their midst? How do they learn to connect with their loved ones, clients, and students across what might appear to be an unbridgeable gulf? What new social worlds emerge as a result?This Cultural Anthropology Scholars award supports research-specific training to prepare cultural anthropologist Dr. Danilyn Rutherford to address these questions. With guidance from colleagues in the University of California Santa Cruz Department of Psychology, Rutherford will master methods suited to the collection of data on the interactions that occur between disabled adolescents and those who work with them. She will also undertake coursework in speech and language pathology and special education at San Jose State University to learn the methods and techniques used with individuals with complex communicative needs. This is not usual training for cultural anthropologists but it will allow Rutherford to to carry apply anthropology's traditional methods of ethnographic fieldwork and participant observation to entirely new domains: speech therapy sessions with disabled adolescents and informal interactions at school and at home. The training undertaken through this grant will provide a model for interdisciplinary collaboration. Rutherford's work will enhance anthropology by demonstrating what anthropologists can can learn from fields that make general claims about human development. At the same time, her work will demonstrate how the intensive methods of cultural anthropology enlarge understanding of human development and inter-personal communication. Findings from the research enabled by this training also will benefit members of the special needs population by helping policy makers and practitioners tailor services more closely to students' abilities and needs; and it will showcase the creativity of members of a long stigmatized population and of those who work with them.