Couples’ Work Schedules and Child-Care Use in the Netherlands

Various aspects of parental work schedules affect the opportunities and constraints that parents encounter when arranging care for their children. This study examined the extent to which the combination of couples’ work schedules was associated with their use of different types of child care, focusing on parental, formal, and informal child care. We considered multiple dimensions of couples’ work schedules, namely, the timing of work, schedule flexibility, and home-based telework. Data from a recent Dutch survey were used, including information about 1599 dual-earner couples with children aged 0–6 years. The results indicated that paid work during nonstandard hours increased the amount of parental child care that was provided by one parent while the other parent was working, whereas work during evenings, nights, and weekends decreased the likelihood of using both formal and informal child care. Results further revealed gender differences for nonstandard hours and schedule flexibility. We found stronger effects of mothers’ work schedules, indicating that a gender-neutral approach to parental work is not justified. These results indicate that the timing of parental work is important to consider when examining not only parental child care but also formal and informal child-care use. We provide recommendations for future research, specifically regarding the possible consequences for parental well-being.     

Tscope: A C library for programming cognitive experiments on the MS Windows platform

Tscope is a C/C11 programming library designed for programming experiments that run on Windows 2000/XP. It is intended for a public of experimental psychologists with moderate programming skills, who are accustomed to writing their own experimental programs for DOS but have not made the step to Windows-based programming yet. It provides molecular functions for graphics, sound, timing, randomization, and response registration. Together with ANSI-C standard library functions and the powerful C syntax, this set of functions gives the experimenter the opportunity to program virtually any experiment one can come up with. Tscope is completely based on free software, is distributed under the GNU General Public License, and is available at expsy.ugent.be/tscope. An integrated development environment for compiling and running Tscope programs is also freely available.     

eXpTools: A C++ class library for animation, tachistoscopic presentation, and response timing

The eXpTools Library is a general-purpose tool for developing psychological experiments that combine animation with tachistoscopic presentation. The library’s C++ classes and assembly language functions are specialized for the creation of visual response time experiments. Its use is limited to variants of standard, 16-color, VGA high-graphics modes. However, it extends the capabilities of these modes through bit-plane animation techniques and a new, nonstandard, high-resolution graphics mode that will work with standard VGA cards and register-compatible cards. These techniques make possible a powerful animation class for managing complex animation or tachistoscopic presentations consisting of hundreds or thousands of frames. The library also combines such features as page flipping, screen blanking, video-refresh synchronization, interrupt-driven millisecond timing, interrupt-driven keyboard response collection, graphics primitives, bitmaps, and screen fonts. Utilities allow for the conversion of PCX graphics files and the creation of new screen fonts from monochrome bitmap files. The technologies and techniques underlying the library are presented along with an example program.     

Evaluation strategies for some nonstandard conditionals during adolescence.

380 adolescents and young adults between the ages of 11 and 29 years participated in three experiments in which they were asked to evaluate both universally quantified nonstandard and standard conditionals using items of information bearing upon them. Subjects found it much easier to avoid a biconditional interpretation with the nonstandard than with the standard conditionals, which throws doubt on the explanation of desire for symmetry of biconditional conversion. It was argued, from data of other studies, that a modified version of the Piagetian view that biconditional conversion occurs as a result of a desire to avoid the complications of dealing with three factors explains most cases of such conversion in adolescence. Results also confirmed that it is more profitable to analyse performance on tasks of this kind using a two-stage model of interpretation and information use previously developed to explain performance with standard universally quantified conditionals than to view such tasks as providing truth-table values. Such an analysis was extended to the nonstandard conditionals studied in the present paper. The origins of the dramatic differences in information-use strategies adopted by adolescents for standard and nonstandard conditionals remain unclear.     

Perceptual information for the timing of interceptive action

Time-to-contact is an important quantity for controlling activities which involve the timing of interactions with objects and surfaces in motion relative to an observer. Two alternative means for obtaining perceptual information that might be used to obtain the time-to-contact required to correctly time an interaction have been contrasted: a method based on the perception of distance and velocity, and a method due to Lee involving a perceptual variable called tau. A monocular version of the first method is presented and shown to place a highly unrealistic and arbitrary limitation on the capabilities of the visual system. The second method is reviewed and its limitations discussed. Several means by which these limitations can be overcome are presented. Recently reported results from experiments which involved catching self-luminous balls in the dark are interpreted in terms of timing information available to the subject, and the notions of intermodal and multimodal timing information are introduced. Finally, the possibility that timing information is available to an observer which does not involve the variable tau is considered. It is concluded that many questions regarding the perception of time-to-contact remain unresolved and that much empirical research remains to be done.     

gSRT-Soft: A generic software application and some methodological guidelines to investigate implicit learning through visual-motor sequential tasks

Serial reaction time tasks and, more generally, the visual-motor sequential paradigms are increasingly popular tools in a variety of research domains, from studies on implicit learning in laboratory contexts to the assessment of residual learning capabilities of patients in clinical settings. A consequence of this success, however, is the increased variability in paradigms and the difficulty inherent in respecting the methodological principles that two decades of experimental investigations have made more and more stringent. The purpose of the present article is to address those problems. We present a user-friendly application that simplifies running classical experiments, but is flexible enough to permit a broad range of nonstandard manipulations for more specific objectives. Basic methodological guidelines are also provided, as are suggestions for using the software to explore unconventional directions of research. The most recent version of gSRT-Soft may be obtained for free by contacting the authors.     

Micromanaging time: Measuring and controlling timing errors in computer-controlled experiments

Computer-controlled experiments present a number of potential sources of error in timing the presentation of events, including video refresh rate, keyboard scanning rate, and disk I/O times. A terminate-and-stay-resident routine implementing multiple millisecond-accuracy timers is presented. Interfaces permitting use of the timer with several higher level languages (C, FORTRAN , Pascal, and QuickBASIC) are described, as is a design for a two- to four-button response system using the computer’s printer port. A general strategy is described for using multiple timers to control and measure variation in critical experimental events. A C language program is provided to benchmark variation in the time required to perform common experimental tasks (screen refreshing, switching video pages, disk I/O, loop calculations), and results are summarized for several representative computers that use the IBM design.     

Attributions of Agency and the Construction of Moral Order: Dementia, Death, and Dignity in Nursing-home Care

Using evidence gathered during 18 months of participant-observation in 2 nursing homes and 65 interviews with staff, this article examines how nursing-home staff use agency as a rhetorical resource to construct a dignified workplace. Staff attribute agency to dying residents, saying they choose the timing and conditions of their death. Staff equally insist that aggressive residents do not have agency. These two sets of attributions are used as counterpoints. Both go well beyond the available facts of the situation and reflect unspoken assumptions and interests of nursing-care workers. Through these attributions, the staff achieves a situated moral order in which compassionate care is provided to deserving residents in caring nursing homes. Staff attributions of agency are collectively shaped by professional philosophies, training and education, and regulatory guidelines. Finally, this article shows how it is analytically and theoretically productive to recast agency as a cultural object, whose use is subject to empirical investigation, rather than as a theoretical construct.     

Weakness of will and motivational internalism

The unconditional version of motivational internalism says that if an agent sincerely judges that to φ in circumstances C is the best option available to her, then, as a matter of conceptual necessity, she will be motivated to φ in C. This position faces a powerful counterargument according to which it is possible for various cases of practical irrationality to completely defeat an agent’s moral motivation while, at the same time, leaving her appreciation of her moral reasons intact. In this paper, I will argue that weakness of will, as the paradigmatic case of practical irrationality, and all other cases of practical irrationality that feature in standard formulations of this argument do not represent genuine counterexamples to this version of motivational internalism. In this sense, the main aim of this paper is to show that proponents of this internalist position are well justified in their denial of the claim that there are people who are completely unmotivated by their judgments about what is the best option available to them.     

DMDX: A Windows display program with millisecond accuracy

DMDX is a Windows-based program designed primarily for language-processing experiments. It uses the features of Pentium class CPUs and the library routines provided in DirectX to provide accurate timing and synchronization of visual and audio output. A brief overview of the design of the program is provided, together with the results of tests of the accuracy of timing. The Web site for downloading the software is given, but the source code is not available.     

Decisions of timing in bipolarized conflict situations with complete information

Games of timing constitute a sub-class of two-person, constant-sum, infinite games, where the problem facing each player is not what action to take, but rather when he should take action. The theoretical structure of games of timing with complete information and equal accuracy functions is described. An experimental paradigm of such games is presented by a computer-controlled, two-person, infinite game that simulates the Western-style duel.Ten pairs of male subjects participated in three sessions each in a duel experiment. Each pair played 420 duels in which both players had the same accuracy function, but the starting number of bullets available to each player in the dyad was varied systematically. The results of this experiment are analyzed and discussed in terms of variables that relate to predictions arising from the mathematical theory of duels.     

Millisecond timing on the Apple Macintosh: Updating Drexel’s MilliTimer

In 1986, we published inBehavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers a small library of assembler code for the public domain that permitted accurate millisecond timing for Apple’s Macintosh computer. That version of MilliTimer used the Versatile Interface Adapter chip’s Timer 1 (VIA T1), which is part of the standard Macintosh hardware configuration. The VIA T1, however, is also used by the Sound Manager, and thus the use of sound and accurate millisecond timing were incompatible. We offer for the public domain a new version labeled MilliTimer 2.2, which permits psychologists and other researchers to use the full capabilities of the Macintosh. MilliTimer 2.2 is compatible with popular teaching, research, and clinical tools such as Hyper-Card and MacLaboratory. MilliTimer 2.2 employs the Macintosh Time Manager, which is a part of the Macintosh operating system and is supported by Apple for the 512KE, Plus, SE, and Macintosh II machines. MilliTimer 2.2 is hardware-independent and automatically self-corrects for other operating system activities that also use the Time Manager. The self-correcting function is limited, however, and can result in a nonaccumulating error averaging about ?3 msec. To preserve compatibility with earlier machines that do not contain the Time Manager, a simple mode parameter allows MilliTimer 2.2 to use the older, more accurate timing method.     

A multivariate reduced-rank growth curve model with unbalanced data

A multivariate reduced-rank growth curve model is proposed that extends the univariate reducedrank growth curve model to the multivariate case, in which several response variables are measured over multiple time points. The proposed model allows us to investigate the relationships among a number of response variables in a more parsimonious way than the traditional growth curve model. In addition, the method is more flexible than the traditional growth curve model. For example, response variables do not have to be measured at the same time points, nor the same number of time points. It is also possible to apply various kinds of basis function matrices with different ranks across response variables. It is not necessary to specify an entire set of basis functions in advance. Examples are given for illustration.The work reported in this paper was supported by Grant A6394 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to the second author. We thank Jennifer Stephan for her helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. We also thank Patrick Curran and Terry Duncan for kindly letting us use the NLSY and substance use data, respectively. The substance use data were provided by Grant DA09548 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.     

Brain mechanisms for predictive control by switching internal models: implications for higher-order cognitive functions

Humans can guide their actions toward the realization of their intentions. Flexible, rapid and precise realization of intentions and goals relies on the brain learning to control its actions on external objects and to predict the consequences of this control. Neural mechanisms that mimic the input–output properties of our own body and other objects can be used to support prediction and control, and such mechanisms are called internal models. We first summarize functional neuroimaging, behavioral and computational studies of the brain mechanisms related to acquisition, modular organization, and the predictive switching of internal models mainly for tool use. These mechanisms support predictive control and flexible switching of intentional actions. We then review recent studies demonstrating that internal models are crucial for the execution of not only immediate actions but also higher-order cognitive functions, including optimization of behaviors toward long-term goals, social interactions based on prediction of others’ actions and mental states, and language processing. These studies suggest that a concept of internal models can consistently explain the neural mechanisms and computational principles needed for fundamental sensorimotor functions as well as higher-order cognitive functions. Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

Motor timing deficits in community and clinical boys with hyperactive behavior: the effect of methylphenidate on motor timing

In a previous paper we showed that community children with hyperactive behavior were more inconsistent than controls in the temporal organization of their motor output. In this study we investigated: (1) various aspects of motor timing processes in 13 clinically diagnosed boys with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) who were compared to 11 community boys with hyperactive behavior and to a control group and (2) the effect of methylphenidate on the motor timing processes in the clinical group with ADHD in a double blind, cross-over, medication-placebo design, including 4 weeks of medication. The clinical group with ADHD, like the community group with hyperactivity, showed greater variability in sensorimotor synchronization and in sensorimotor anticipation relative to controls. The clinical group was also impaired in time perception, which was spared in the community group with hyperactivity. The persistent, but not the acute dose, of methylphenidate reduced the variability of sensorimotor synchronization and anticipation, but had no effect on time perception. This study shows that motor timing functions are impaired in both clinical and community children with hyperactivity. It is the first study to show the effectiveness of persistent administration of methylphenidate on deficits in motor timing in ADHD children and extends the use of methylphenidate from the domain of attentional and inhibitory functions to the domain of executive motor timing.     

APL functions for interactive data analysis: Principal components analysis

APL functions to support principal components analysis are presented: a general-purpose function to obtain eigen values and eigen vectors, a more specialized function to convert these into the results commonly given by principal components analysis, and a user interface function that accesses filed data, offers flexibility in data selection, and produces labeled output. A brief introduction to the logic and uses of principal components analysis is included. General-purpose support functions to simplify file use and to increase the range of options available to the user are also provided.     

When Mothers’ Work Matters for Youths’ Daily Time Use: Implications of Evening and Weekend Shifts

Drawing upon the work-home resources model, this study examined the implications of mothers’ evening and weekend shifts for youths’ time with mother, alone, and hanging out with peers unsupervised, with attention to both the amount and day-to-day consistency of time use. Data came from 173 mothers who worked in the long-term care industry and their youths who provided daily diaries. Multilevel modeling revealed that youths whose mothers worked more evening shifts on average spent less time with their mothers compared to youths whose mothers worked fewer evening shifts. Youths whose mothers worked more weekend shifts, however, spent more time with their mothers and exhibited less consistency in their time in all three activity domains compared to youths whose mothers worked fewer weekend shifts. Girls, not boys, spent less time alone on days when mothers worked weekend shifts than on days with standard shifts. Older but not younger adolescents spent more time hanging out with friends on evening and weekend shift days, and their unsupervised peer time was less consistent across days when mothers worked more evening shifts. These effects adjusted for sociodemographic and day characteristics, including school day, number of children in the household, mothers’ marital status and work hours, and time with fathers. Our results illuminate the importance of the timing and day of mothers’ work for youths’ daily activities. Future interventions should consider how to increase mothers’ resources to deal with constraints on parenting due to their work during nonstandard hours, with attention to child gender and age.     

Psychometric Assessment of the Child Surgery Worries Questionnaire Among Portuguese Children

Worries are common in surgical patients, especially in children. The present study analyzed the factor structure and the psychometric properties of a Portuguese version of the Child Surgery Worries Questionnaire (CSWQ-P) in a Portuguese sample of 490 children. Exploratory factor analysis, conducted via principal axis factoring with oblimin rotation, provided evidence for a four-factor structure of the 21 item questionnaire. A confirmatory factor analysis was also conducted, showing the good fit of this solution. The CSWQ-P proved to have one more subscale than the original Spanish version CSWQ. Correlations with the children’s trait anxiety provided evidence of convergent validity for the CSWQ-P. Females also scored higher on worries than males on all subscales. Psychometric properties of this revised version of the CSWQ provided support for use with young children, and indicate the CSWQ-P has value for use in healthcare practice and in clinical research.