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circle of support

a group of people who provide support for an individual. For a person with a developmental disability, the circle often includes family members, friends, acquaintances, coworkers, and sometimes service providers or coordinators, who meet on a regular basis and help the individual accomplish personal goals. These goals are selected based on extensive and recurrent review of the person’s past and current preferences and interests; they are addressed one stage at a time.

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Psychology term of the day

January 14th 2025

Kruskal–Shepard scaling

Kruskal–Shepard scaling

a type of multidimensional scaling applied to judgments of similarity or dissimilarity for pairs of items (e.g., cities). The dissimilarities are represented by distances between items in a highly dimensional space: Larger distances indicate greater dissimilarity. [William Henry Kruskal (1919–2005), U.S. statistician; Roger N. Shepard (1929–  ), U.S. experimental and cognitive psychologist]