Foundational Tuning: How Infants' Attention to Speech Predicts Language Development

Orienting biases for speech may provide a foundation for language development. Although human infants show a bias for listening to speech from birth, the relation of a speech bias to later language development has not been established. Here, we examine whether infants' attention to speech directly predicts expressive vocabulary. Infants listened to speech or non‐speech in a preferential listening procedure. Results show that infants' attention to speech at 12 months significantly predicted expressive vocabulary at 18 months, while indices of general development did not. No predictive relationships were found for infants' attention to non‐speech, or overall attention to sounds, suggesting that the relationship between speech and expressive vocabulary was not a function of infants' general attentiveness. Potentially ancient evolutionary perceptual capacities such as biases for conspecific vocalizations may provide a foundation for proficiency in formal systems such language, much like the approximate number sense may provide a foundation for formal mathematics.     

Parenting Interventions for Refugees and Forcibly Displaced Families: A Systematic Review

Globally, an estimated 79.5 million individuals have been displaced, nearly 40% of whom are children. Parenting interventions may have the potential to improve outcomes for displaced families. To investigate this, we conducted a systematic review to identify the types of caregiver or parenting interventions that have been evaluated among displaced families, to assess their efficacy across a range of contexts, and to describe their cultural and contextual adaptations. The review followed PRISMA guidelines. At stage one, all articles describing caregiver/parenting interventions for forcibly displaced families were included to provide a scoping review of the state of the literature. At stage two, only randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and quasi-experimental designs were included, allowing for quantitative analysis of program effects. A total of 30 articles (24 studies) were identified in stage one. 95.8% of these articles were published in the past 10 years. Of these, 14 articles (10 studies) used an RCT or quasi-experimental design to assess program efficacy or effectiveness. Relative to control groups, those assigned to caregiving programs showed significant, beneficial effects across the domains of parenting behaviors and attitudes, child psychosocial and developmental outcomes, and parent mental health. Cultural adaptations and recruitment and engagement strategies are described. The evidence base for caregiving programs for displaced families has expanded in recent years but remains limited. Caregiving/parenting programs show promise for reducing the negative effects of forced displacement on families, but future studies are needed to understand which programs show the greatest potential for scalability.

     

Exploring the lived experiences of infertility treatment and care by involuntarily childless women

This study explored the lived experiences of fertility treatment and care by South African women with infertility. A total of 21 women from different age and ethnic groups (age range = 26 to 41; whites = 53%, coloured = 47%) were interviewed for the study. The women responded to semi-structured interviews on their lived experiences of fertility treatment and care whilst undergoing treatment. The data were analysed using thematic analysis. Four main themes were identified in the study; including: lack of compassionate care from treatment care providers, the need for infertility clinics to integrate psychosocial support care, a need for continuing education for fertility staff, as well as financial support resourcing. Participants expressed a need for health care staff at fertility clinics to be more attentive to their emotional and psychological needs. In addition, participants perceived a need for psychosocial care as a result of the distressing nature of the treatment process. The women also felt that some health care staff lacked technical knowledge about the fertility treatments and this left them deprived of crucial information. The costly nature of fertility treatment presented as an added burden for participants. Overall, participants seemed to require a more individualised and patient centred form of fertility care.     

Commitment profiles: The configural effect of the forms and foci of commitment on work outcomes

This study is based upon the conceptual linking of the multidimensional and multi-focal nature of work-related commitment. The main aims of our study were to create, through K-means cluster analysis, commitment profiles based on the three components of organizational and occupational commitment, and to examine their joint effect on key work outcomes. One hundred and fifty seven working adults completed questionnaires measuring the three components of organizational and occupational commitment, and work outcomes. Our findings show (a) the incremental validity of occupational commitment in the prediction of work-related variables, (b) the compatibility of occupational and organizational commitment as reflected in the four form-oriented commitment profiles that emerged (highly committed, affective–normative dominant, continuance dominant, and non-committed), and (c) the positive effect of the highly committed profile (dually foci-committed employees with high AC, CC, and NC) on focal and discretionary behaviors. On a practical level, our results can foster the practice of management concerning control of withdrawal behaviors and development of desirable discretionary behaviors.     

Parent-carer awareness and understanding of dyspraxia: Implications for child development support practices

Dyspraxia manifests as difficulty in thinking, planning, and executing planned movements or tasks. Dyspraxia affects roughly 5–6% of school aged children. This study aimed to explore parent-carer’s awareness and understanding of dyspraxia and the resources they self-perceived to need to manage their children with dyspraxia. Informants were 15 parents from the Cape Peninsula, South Africa. They completed semi-structured interviews on their knowledge of and indicators of dyspraxia in their children and resources they presently utilised or could seek to use. Thematic analysis of the data suggested the parent-carers to be aware of motor rather than cognition oriented limitations. Additionally, parent-carers accessed or sought educator assistance from the school system. Health professionals and educators working with parents of children with dyspraxia can expect them to report reliably on behavioural characteristics of their children’s abilities important for treatment support interventions.     

From semantics to syntax and back again: argument structure in the third year of life

An essential part of the human capacity for language is the ability to link conceptual or semantic representations with syntactic representations. On the basis of data from spontaneous production, suggested that young children acquire such links on a verb-by-verb basis, with little in the way of a general understanding of linguistic argument structure. Here, we suggest that a receptive understanding of argument structure--including principles linking syntax and conceptual/semantic structure--appears earlier. In a forced-choice pointing task we have shown that toddlers in the third year of life can map a single scene (involving a novel causative action paired with a novel verb) onto two distinct syntactic frames (transitive and intransitive). This suggests that even before toddlers begin generalizing argument structure in their own speech, they have some representation of conceptual/semantic categories, syntactic categories, and a system that links the two.     

From armchair to wheelchair: how patients with a locked-in syndrome integrate bodily changes in experienced identity

Different sort of people are interested in personal identity. Philosophers frequently ask what it takes to remain oneself. Caregivers imagine their patients' experience. But both philosophers and caregivers think from the armchair: they can only make assumptions about what it would be like to wake up with massive bodily changes. Patients with a locked-in syndrome (LIS) suffer a full body paralysis without cognitive impairment. They can tell us what it is like. Forty-four chronic LIS patients and 20 age-matched healthy medical professionals answered a 15-items questionnaire targeting: (A) global evaluation of identity, (B) body representation and (C) experienced meaning in life. In patients, self-reported identity was correlated with B and C. Patients differed with controls in C. These results suggest that the paralyzed body remains a strong component of patients' experienced identity, that patients can adjust to objectives changes perceived as meaningful and that caregivers fail in predicting patients' experience.     

The interactive effect of positive and negative occupational attributional styles on job motivation

Research on attributional style in the work setting has generated inconsistent results concerning the effect attributional styles for positive and negative events have on job motivation and performance. This study set out to examine whether attributional style for positive and for negative work-related events, and their interaction, are related to job motivation. One hundred and sixteen working adults completed questionnaires measuring positive and negative attributional styles, and job motivation. The findings showed that both positive and negative attributional styles, as well as their interaction, were predictors of job motivation. The interactive effect suggests that a negative attributional style is negatively related to job motivation in the absence, but not in the presence, of a positive attributional style. It was also found that employees who have stayed for a reasonably long time with an organization (more than 4 years) are particularly vulnerable to negative attributional style. These findings are discussed in terms of the theoretical framework of positive?–?negative asymmetry in evaluations. Implications concerning the measurement of occupational attributional style are presented, as well as practical applications for organizations.