‘Disempowered by Nature’: Spinoza on The Political Capabilities of Women

This paper examines Spinoza's remarks on women in the Political Treatise in the context of his views in the Ethics about human community and similitude. Although these remarks appear to exclude women from democratic participation on the basis of essential incapacities, I aim to show that Spinoza intended these remarks not as true statements, but as prompts for critical consideration of the place of women in the progressive democratic polity. In common with other scholars, I argue that women, in Spinoza's system, are deprived of freedom and political participation not by their essential natures, but by their social and historical circumstances. I differ from other scholars, however, in basing this conclusion on the different critical functions of the Political Treatise and the Ethics. Following that critical comparison, I consider Spinoza's views on the `natural right' of women and their equal capacity for political participation in terms of his arguments for the compositional similarity of men and women. Finally, I argue that Spinoza offers an explanation for women's actual disempowerment through his account of economic dependence within marriage.     

Acquisition of a visual discrimination and reversal learning task by Labrador retrievers

Optimal cognitive ability is likely important for military working dogs (MWD) trained to detect explosives. An assessment of a dog’s ability to rapidly learn discriminations might be useful in the MWD selection process. In this study, visual discrimination and reversal tasks were used to assess cognitive performance in Labrador retrievers selected for an explosives detection program using a modified version of the Toronto General Testing Apparatus (TGTA), a system developed for assessing performance in a battery of neuropsychological tests in canines. The results of the current study revealed that, as previously found with beagles tested using the TGTA, Labrador retrievers (N = 16) readily acquired both tasks and learned the discrimination task significantly faster than the reversal task. The present study confirmed that the modified TGTA system is suitable for cognitive evaluations in Labrador retriever MWDs and can be used to further explore effects of sex, phenotype, age, and other factors in relation to canine cognition and learning, and may provide an additional screening tool for MWD selection.     

Why 8-year-olds cannot tell the difference between Steve Martin and Paul Newman: factors contributing to the slow development of sensitivity to the spacing of facial features

Children are nearly as sensitive as adults to some cues to facial identity (e.g., differences in the shape of internal features and the external contour), but children are much less sensitive to small differences in the spacing of facial features. To identify factors that contribute to this pattern, we compared 8-year-olds' sensitivity to spacing cues with that of adults under a variety of conditions. In the first two experiments, participants made same/different judgments about faces differing only in the spacing of facial features, with the variations being kept within natural limits. To measure the effect of attention, we reduced the salience of featural information by blurring faces and occluding features (Experiment 1). To measure the role of encoding speed and memory limitations, we presented pairs of faces simultaneously and for an unlimited time (Experiment 2). To determine whether participants' sensitivity would increase when spacing distortions were so extreme as to make the faces grotesque, we manipulated the spacing of features beyond normal limits and asked participants to rate each face on a "bizarreness" scale (Experiment 3). The results from the three experiments indicate that low salience, poor encoding efficiency, and limited memory can partially account for 8-year-olds' poor performance on face processing tasks that require sensitivity to the spacing of features, a kind of configural processing that underlies adults' expertise. However, even when the task is modified to compensate for these problems, children remain less sensitive than adults to the spacing of features.     

The relationship between children's self-reported recess problems, and peer acceptance and friendships

This study used three samples to investigate the nature of children's self-reported recess problems and the degree to which these were correlated with children's peer acceptance and mutual friendships. Results suggest that seven student complaints about recess can be grouped into problems with peer conflict and problems with social inclusion. Modest relations were reported between inclusion recess problems and children's mutual friendships and peer acceptance. Relations of conflict recess problems with mutual friendships and peer acceptance were less frequent. Results suggest that self-reported recess problems are a distinct construct from traditional research measures of peer acceptance and friendships.     

Skilled Immigrants and the Negotiation of Family Relations During Settlement in Calgary,Alberta

When re-establishing their lives in Canada, international migrants with dependent children regularly encounter dramatically different conditions for family life. The parents’ employment situation, the limited availability of extended kin to help with child rearing, and a multicultural and relatively more permissive social environment, all of these invite or even demand changes in newcomers’ family practices. Yet, more information is needed about the ways in which skilled immigrants negotiate the changed conditions for work and family life in this country, and the impact this has on family dynamics during settlement. Drawing on data from interviews with 30 skilled immigrants living in Calgary, Alberta, this paper explores how coming to Canada impacted participants’ situations of paid work, parenting practices, and familial gender relations. Findings suggest that strained economic and social resources often limited the extent to which mothers and fathers were able to maintain an organization of family life similar to what they had established in their country of origin. However, while in some cases, shifts in family formation caused heightened levels of stress and strain and further entrenched the doing of conventional gender roles, in others, changed conditions acted as a catalyst for positive change. The tools that eased the burdens of settlement for some are explored, and recommendations are made for how to better support newcomer families.     

Developmental changes in depressive cognitions: a longitudinal evaluation of the Cognitive Triad Inventory for Children

As part of a longitudinal study, the Cognitive Triad Inventory for Children (CTI-C; N. J. Kaslow, K. D. Stark, B. Printz, R. Livingston, & S. L. Tsai, 1992) as well as other measures of cognitive style and depressive symptoms were administered annually to 3 cohorts of children starting in Grades 2, 4, and 6. Developmentally based analyses revealed 4 things: (a) The factor structure of the CTI-C changed over the course of middle childhood and then stabilized in early adolescence; (b) the CTI-C correlated significantly with measures of depression, self-perceived competence, self-worth, perceived controllability, and perceived contingency, but not with measures of attributional style; (c) 1-year stability correlations increased substantially from Grade 2 to Grade 8; and (d) the CTI-C did not generally predict self-reported depressive symptoms 1 year later. Implications emerge regarding developmental changes in the structure of children's depressive cognitions.