Postpartum Food Traditions of Bhutanese Refugee Women: a Qualitative Study

Bhutanese refugees represent one of Canada’s most recent immigrant populations, and little is known about their dietary traditions and habits. The purpose of this study was to improve the wellbeing and health of re-settled refugee Bhutanese women by understanding how culturally informed postpartum food choices are practiced post-migration. As part of a larger community-based participatory research project, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 Bhutanese refugee women. The traditional dietary choices that Bhutanese women revealed to be important in the postpartum period were organized into five themes: (1) “foods consumed as part of a regular healthy diet,” (2) “foods to regain strength and heal the body,” (3) “foods to ward off back and joint pain,” (4) “foods to promote lactation,” (5) “foods avoided due to negative effects.” Traditional foods and culturally situated beliefs in the postpartum period play a significant role in the lives of Bhutanese women. Healthcare workers in countries of re-settlement should work with the traditional health and nutritional beliefs of women in this community in order to provide optimal dietary and health recommendations.     

Rhesus monkeys (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Macaca mulatta</Emphasis>) remember agency information from past events and integrate this knowledge with spatial and temporal features in working memory

The purpose of the present study was to examine whether rhesus monkeys remember information about their own agency—along with spatial, temporal and contextual properties—from a previously experienced event. In Experiment 1, rhesus monkeys (n = 4) used symbols to reliably indicate whether they had performed or observed an event on a computer screen. In Experiment 2, naïve and experienced monkeys (n = 8) reported agency information when stringent controls for perceptual and proprioceptive cues were included. In Experiment 3, five of the monkeys completed a task in which they reported agency information along with spatial and temporal features of events. Two monkeys performed this agency discrimination when they could not anticipate which memory test they would receive. There was also evidence that these features were integrated in memory. Implications of this research are discussed in relation to working memory, episodic memory and self-awareness in nonhuman animals.     

Segmented Paths? Mexican Generational Differences in the Transition to First-Time Homeownership in the United States

Homeownership represents an important indicator of immigrant incorporation and assimilation. This study is a longitudinal analysis of the transition to first-time homeownership among a cohort of youths followed from 1979 to 2009 using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY, 1979). In particular, I examine Mexican generational group differences in the transition to first-time homeownership over an observation period that spans 30 years while evaluating theories of straight-line and segmented assimilation. I find that Mexican homeownership rates do not increase in a linear fashion across generations, relative to native, non-Hispanic whites, even after controlling for various social, demographic, and economic characteristics. Furthermore, analyses limited to Mexicans reveal that first- and second-generation respondents exhibit more success in the transition to first-time homeownership than their third-generation counterparts. Contrary to observing linear gains in homeownership across generations, I find that Mexicans are experiencing segmented paths towards homeownership and achieving upward mobility across generations.     

Canadian Arab Youth at the Border: Cultural Dissociation,Fear Management,and Disciplining Practices in Securitized Spaces

In this paper, we explore what Canadian Arab youth do to navigate border and travel transit sites. Arab youth are the focus for this study because they are a neglected demographic of research in ethnic studies, compared to the more copious studies on Canadian Arabs. Our research empirically investigates the struggles that this youth demographic faces, and the efforts they undertake to manage their marginalization. Some of these efforts involve practices of cultural dissociation, fear management, and self-disciplining through behavioral self-surveillance. Drawing upon an existing body of research that recognizes the highly fraught and securitized nature of air travel and border transfer, particularly for Arab/Muslim populations, we use the findings from focus groups conducted in Kitchener-Waterloo to theoretically situate some of the real struggles of Canadian Arab youth. As prominent racialized and securitized identities in the War on Terror (WoT), Arab youth are often forced, or feel that they are forced to perform their Canadian-ness to substantiate their innocence, and in some cases, this requires minimalization, or even erasure of part of who they are.     

Consequences of the American States’ Legislative Action on Immigration

Over the past decade, US states have responded to federal inaction on comprehensive immigration reform by increasing their output of immigrant policies, both beneficial and restrictive. Although there is a growing empirical literature focused on predicting such activity by states, less is known, especially on a broad scale, about the state-level consequences associated with the policy tone states adopt toward immigrants. To better understand the consequences of restrictive immigrant policies, we created a restrictive score for each state year between 2005 and 2014 and employed linear regression with panel-corrected standard errors to investigate effects on immigrant-related demographics, economic factors, and political participation. We found that states with higher restrictive policy tones do experience reductions in the number of foreign-born residents, including Hispanics and those with limited English proficiency, a goal of many state legislators who favor restrictive policies. States with restrictive policy tones showed reductions in unemployment and poverty rates as well, which are also professed goals for restrictive policy activity. Mediation analyses suggested that the effects of restrictive policy scores on economic conditions are indirect, being exerted through the percentage of a state’s population that is foreign born. Finally, though much attention is focused on the expected increase in Latino political clout, restrictive policy tone was not predictive of increased voter registration or voting in states that pass these types of policies. If anti-immigrant policies are inducing those who oppose these policies to mobilize politically, it must be in an arena outside of voting.     

Learning About Parenting Together: A Programme to Support Parents with Inter-generational Concerns in Pune,India

Rapid developments in the last few decades have brought about dramatic changes in Indian social life, particularly affecting new middle-class families. Inter-generational conflicts, high academic pressures, and modern anxieties lead to stress both in parents and in children. There is a need for parenting programmes that respond to these specific concerns, in order to reduce parenting stress and improve family well-being. This study aimed to develop and evaluate a parenting programme in Pune, India, based on a ‘theory of change’. In this pilot programme, parents were encouraged to learn in a group format about fostering autonomy in children, promoting academic potential in a stress-free manner and remaining in connection with adolescents. Facilitated by a psychologist, parents participated in four sessions involving ‘creativity and play’, ‘self-awareness and bonding’, and ‘communication’. The intervention was based on validated psychotherapeutic approaches and parenting methods to support parents in their learning. Some 16 in-depth interviews were conducted with parents before and eight interviews after the intervention to understand their learning experiences. Additional feedback was gathered from observation notes and debriefings after each session. The results show that the attention for playful quality time helped parents to (re)gain a more creative and flexible attitude towards spending time with their children. Second, parents learned to reflect on their frameworks of meaning (rooted in their own upbringing), listen attentively and communicate more mindful with their children. Furthermore, this study shows that an activity-based approach, connecting parents in co-creating new parenting paradigms, while supporting them with stress-reducing tools, is a useful way of engaging this target group. The study concludes by offering new perspectives for counsellors working with families in countries undergoing rapid change.     

Lean back and relax: Reclined seating position buffers the effect of frustration on anger and aggression

Frustration is a powerful instigator of anger‐based aggression. We hypothesized that the impact of a frustration on anger and aggressive behavior is reduced in a state of feeling relaxed, which is considered incompatible with the experience of anger. Seventy‐nine participants received frustrating feedback either when sitting upright or sitting in a reclined position and were then given a chance to act aggressively toward the frustrator. Feelings of anger and relaxation were assessed before and after the frustration. Participants in the reclined position felt more relaxed than those sitting upright, which indirectly predicted less aggressive behavior via lower anger. The results are consistent with theories of incompatible states and embodiment and have implications for using body‐related cues to mitigate anger‐based aggression.     

Association of Religious Commitment and Tobacco Use Among Muslim Adolescents

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between religious observance and tobacco use among a sample of Jordanian youth. Using multistage, random sampling, a cross-sectional survey of middle and high school students was conducted. Of the 950 Muslim students in the study, 32 % were daily tobacco users and 72 % prayed regularly. Frequency of praying was negatively associated with tobacco smoking. Religious observance was found to be strongly associated with tobacco smoking among Jordanian youth. Our results indicate that religion can be a culturally important tool in health professionals’ efforts for tobacco control.     

The Role of Orthographic Neighborhood Size Effects in Chinese Word Recognition

Previous studies about the orthographic neighborhood size (NS) in Chinese have overlooked the morphological processing, and the co-variation between the character frequency and the the NS. The present study manipulated the word frequency and the NS simultaneously, with the leading character frequency controlled, to explore their influences on word lexical decision (Experiment 1) and naming (Experiment 2). The results showed a robust effect that words with a larger NS produced shorter reaction time than those with a smaller NS, irrespective of the word frequency and the tasks. This facilitative effect may occur due to a semantic network formed by neighbor words, resulting in the semantic activation to accelerate the word recognition. Moreover, the comparison of the effect sizes of word frequency between the two tasks showed that lexical decision responses demonstrated a larger word frequency effect, indicating that the sub-word processing was involved in the multi-character word recognition.