The aging woman in popular film: Underrepresented, unattractive, unfriendly, and unintelligent

The present study examined 100 top-grossing motion pictures spanning from the 1940s through the 1980s (20 movies from each decade). Eight hundred and twenty-nine characters were rated on attractiveness, character goodness, intelligence, friendliness, socioeconomic status, romantic activity, and movie outcome. It was hypothesized that ageist and sexist stereotypes would interact such that (a) older female characters would be more underrepresented, and (b) more negatively portrayed, than their male contemporaries. Both hypotheses were supported. Implications regarding double standards for age, and the media’s propagation of beauty-related standards for females were discussed. We would like to express our appreciation to David Shaffer and Mary Ballard for comments on an earlier version of this article. We would also like to thank Colin Crothers, Jennifer Lund Smith, and Debbie Sabia for their assistance in the collection of this data.     

Normalisation Versus Medicalisation of Sexual Disturbances During Menopause: A Qualitative Research in the Italian Context

Past research has found consistent correlations between menopause and increase in sexual disturbances, but very little research has inquired into the attribution of meanings to this change from the womens’ own perspectives and the role of the negotiating between sexes in the social-construction of the problem. This study aims to investigate how professionals, women diagnosed with hypoactive sexual desire disorder and ordinary people, both men and women, signify this phenomenon in the Italian context. Interviews were conducted by asking participants whether or not they considered the decrease in sexual desire to be a problem, and what this was dependent on. The analysis of the 146 participants’ answers revealed that women with sexual deficit emphasized the need for treating the biological changes of menopause; specialists considered both the gynecological and the psychological components, while ordinary people seemed to ‘normalise’ the problem, encoding it as the effect of menopause; they did not seem to be inclined to turn the situation into a call for help, suggesting the importance of sharing the problem within the relationship and underestimating the organic level of the question. The negotiation between sexes seems to transform a sexual problem into normality.     

Child physical punishment,parenting, and school readiness

This study explored how physical punishment (PP) and other parenting approaches may predict school readiness outcomes. By using the Canada‐wide representative data, 5,513 children were followed over a 2‐year period. Caregivers reported on their use of PP and other parenting approaches (i.e., literacy and learning activities and other disciplinary practices) when children were 2–3 years old, whereas school readiness was measured at 4–5 years using interviewer‐administered tests of number competence and receptive vocabulary skills. Analyses controlled for PP use at 4–5 years, child externalizing behaviours, and various sociodemographics. Results indicated that PP does not directly predict school readiness; however, the effect of PP was moderated by other parenting approaches. Children's receptive vocabulary was weaker if caregivers used PP together with less frequent explaining/teaching regarding problem behaviour, or PP with less frequent engagement in literacy and learning activities. Children had weaker number competence when PP co‐occurred with more frequent psychological aggression (e.g., yelling/scolding). Results suggest that PP hinders children's school readiness when used alongside other parenting approaches, which reflects the reality of parenting (i.e., PP does not occur in isolation). Findings support early education efforts aimed at promoting early learning and literacy opportunities, as well as positive disciplinary strategies that do not involve PP.

Highlights

• We explored how physical punishment and other parenting approaches may predict school readiness outcomes using Canada‐wide data.
• Results provided little evidence of positive effects of physical punishment on school readiness across a range of parenting and disciplinary contexts.
• To promote school readiness, early education efforts should promote early learning opportunities and positive disciplinary strategies that do not involve physical punishment.

     

Multiple Audiences as Text Stakeholders: A Conceptual Framework for Analyzing Complex Rhetorical Situations

In public communication contexts, such as when a company announces the proposal for an important organizational change, argumentation typically involves multiple audiences, rather than a single and homogenous group, let alone an individual interlocutor. In such cases, an exhaustive and precise characterization of the audience structure is crucial both for the arguer, who needs to design an effective argumentative strategy, and for the external analyst, who aims at reconstructing such a strategic discourse. While the peculiar relevance of multiple audience is often emphasized in the argumentation literature and in rhetorical studies, proposals for modelling multi-audience argumentative situations remain scarce and unsystematic. To address this gap, we propose an analytical framework which integrates three conceptual constructs: (1) Rigotti and Rocci’s notion of communicative activity type, understood as the implementation of an interaction scheme into a piece of institutional reality, named interaction field; (2) the stakeholder concept, originally developed in strategic management and public relations studies to refer to any actor who affects and/or is affected by the organizational actions and who, accordingly, carries an interest in them; (3) the concept of participant role as it emerges from Goffman’s theory of conversation analysis and related linguistic and media studies. From this integration, we derive the notion of text stakeholder for referring to any organizational actor whose interest (stake) becomes an argumentative issue which the organizational text must account for in order to effectively achieve its communicative aim. The text stakeholder notion enables a more comprehensive reconstruction and characterization of multiple audience by eliciting the relevant participants staged in a text and identifying, for each of them, the interactional role they have, the peculiar interest they bear and the related argumentative issue they create. Considering as an illustrative case the defense document issued by a corporation against a hostile takeover attempt made by another corporation, we show how this framework can support the analysis of strategic maneuvering by better defining the audience demand and, so, better explaining how real arguers design and adapt their topical and presentational choices.     

Tablet Use in Young Children is Associated with Advanced Fine Motor Skills

Abstract

To evaluate whether frequent interactive tablet-use at preschool age is associated with improved fine motor skills and to describe tablet-use in young children. Cross-sectional study with 78 children, aged 24–42?months: group 1 with previous frequent tablet-use exposure (n?=?26), group 2 without previous tablet-use exposure (n?=?52). Fine motor skills were evaluated with the Bayley-III. Socioeconomic data and home environment quality were similar in both groups. Fine motor skills of group 1 were better than those of group 2 (p?=?0.013). Most participating children carried out passive and active tablet activities, usually accompanied by parents, not exceeding time recommendations for young age. We observed a difference in fine motor skills in young children slightly favoring those with tablet-use experience.