Boys and girls as social support theorists

Interviews were conducted with 36 children (6 girls and 6 boys at each of three age levels: 7, 10, and 13) to explore gender differences in the perceived costs and benefits of seeking social support from the social network. Each child was asked why children in five hypothetical situations would or would not turn to others. Content analysis of the interview protocols revealed that boys and girls did speak about the goals and concerns of children in distinctive ways. Girls were more likely than boys to describe children as seeking practical help from others, but were also more likely to envision children who were too overcome with emotion to confide in others or who desired to be alone to work out their own responses to the situation. The findings are discussed in light of gender role norms concerning interpersonal connection and emotional expression.     

Concepts and aims of functional interpretations: towards a functional interpretation of constructive set theory

The aim of this article is to give an introduction to functional interpretations of set theory given by the authorin Burr (2000a). The first part starts with some general remarks on Gödel's functional interpretation with a focus on aspects related to problems that arise in the context of set theory. The second part gives an insight in the techniques needed to perform a functional interpretation of systems of set theory. However, the first part of this article is not intended to be a complete survey of functional interpretations and here we recommend, for example, Avigad and Feferman (1998),Troelstra (1990) and Troelstra (1973).     

Childhood Experiences of Parenting and Causal Attributions for Criminal Behavior Among Young Offenders and Non-Offenders

This study examined the relationships between childhood experiences of parenting and causal attributions for criminal behavior among offenders against the person, property offenders, and non-offenders. Analysis showed that non-offenders perceived their fathers to be warmer and more overprotecting than did person offenders. Person offenders perceived their mothers to be less warm than did property offenders and non-offenders, and less overprotecting than non-offenders. Mothers were perceived to be more overprotecting and warmer than fathers by all 3 groups. All 3 samples viewed a range of explanations to be important in explaining criminal behavior. No significant associations were revealed between perceptions of parenting and causal attributions for crime. Group membership was predicted by home area crime level and perceived parental emotional warmth.     

Investigating looking and social looking measures as an index of infant violation of expectation

Accumulated looking time has been widely used to index violation of expectation (VoE) response in young infants. But there is controversy concerning the validity of this measure, with some interpreting infant looking behaviour in terms of perceptual preferences (Cohen & Marks, 2002 ; Haith, 1998 ). The current study aimed to compare the use of looking time with a recently used measure of social looking (Walden et al., 2007 ) in distinguishing between 6‐month‐old infants’ response to novelty/familiarity and a condition in which the object was covertly switched for a different object. Following habituation, infants showed more social looking in response to the object‐switch condition than the novel object change, whereas the more commonly used accumulated looking time measure did not distinguish between the two, showing an increase for both. Thus, social looking is a more valid measure of infant VoE than looking time.     

Development of prehension between 5 and 10 years of age: distance scaling, grip aperture, and sight of the hand

The authors investigated whether 5- to 10-year-old children (N = 75) differ from adults (N = 12) in the developmental course of distance scaling and the adaptations to the inability to see the hand during prehension movements. The children reached under a surface and grasped and lifted an object suspended through it. All children scaled velocity appropriately for movement distance, both with and without sight of the hand. However, 5- to 6-year-old children did not increase grip aperture with increased distance, whereas older children and adults did. The older children and adults spent longer after peak deceleration when they could not see the hand, and maximum grip aperture (MGA) was larger, providing an increased safety margin. Children aged 5 to 6 spent the same amount of time between peak deceleration and grasp, whether or not they could see the hand, and they failed to increase MGA when they could not see the hand. Prehension in the younger children differed from that of older children in two ways: The younger children did not integrate reach and grasp over different distances and did not use visual information about hand position to optimize accuracy.     

It looks easy! Heuristics for combinatorial optimization problems

Human performance on instances of computationally intractable optimization problems, such as the travelling salesperson problem (TSP), can be excellent. We have proposed a boundary-following heuristic to account for this finding. We report three experiments with TSPs where the capacity to employ this heuristic was varied. In Experiment 1, participants free to use the heuristic produced solutions significantly closer to optimal than did those prevented from doing so. Experiments 2 and 3 together replicated this finding in larger problems and demonstrated that a potential confound had no effect. In all three experiments, performance was closely matched by a boundary-following model. The results implicate global rather than purely local processes. Humans may have access to simple, perceptually based, heuristics that are suited to some combinatorial optimization tasks.     

Young infants' perception of unity and form in occlusion displays

Young infants have been reported to perceive the unity of a center-occluded object when the visible ends of the object are aligned and undergo common motion but not when the edges of the object are misaligned (Johnson & Aslin, 1996). Using a recognition-based paradigm, the authors investigated the possibility that past research failed to provide sufficiently sensitive assessments of infants' perception of the unity of misaligned edges in partial occlusion displays. Positive evidence was obtained in 4-month-olds for veridical perception of the motion and location of a hidden region but not its orientation, whereas 7-month-olds, in contrast to the younger infants, appeared to respond to the orientation of the hidden region. Overall, the results suggest that habituation designs tapping recognition processes may be particularly efficacious in revealing infants' perceptual organization. In addition, the findings provide corroborative evidence for the importance of both motion and orientation in young infants' object segregation and for the difficulty in achieving percepts of the global form of a partly occluded object.     

Generation to Generation: Passing on Religious and Spiritual Beliefs and Practices

Many families face difficulties in maintaining healthy relationships. Past research has identified that religious and/or spiritual beliefs and practices can enhance family well-being. Research has also shown that religious and/or beliefs and practices can shape the aging process. Yet there exists little information on the methods through which religious and/or spiritual beliefs are passed on to future generations. This study utilized Eriksonian conceptual ideas, and grounded theory methods to conduct interviews with 13 older adults on the process through which religious and/or spiritual beliefs are passed on to children and grandchildren. Ideas are discussed for practitioners based on study findings.     

Women’s Ideals for Masculinity Across Social Contexts: Patriarchal Agentic Masculinity is Valued in Work,Family, and Romance but Communal Masculinity in Friendship

The present study explores women’s ideals for masculinity in different social contexts (work, family/romance, and friendship) and compares how traditional (agentic) and non-patriarchal (communal) masculinity are valued in each context. Survey data were collected from one international (N = 159) and three South African samples (Ns = 86, 100, 161) of women. Results show that although women value patriarchal ideals for masculinity, agentic and communal versions of masculinity are valued differently across contexts. Specifically, traditional agentic versions of masculinity were most valued in the contexts most important to the long-term production of viable identity (family/romance and work). It was only in friendship that non-patriarchal communal masculinity was consistently idealized over traditional agentic masculinity. The results are discussed in relation to hegemonic masculinity (HM) and system justification theory (SJT). Congruent with SJT, women idealized versions of masculinity that may not be in their own or their group’s best interests, but in line with HM, the results emphasized the fluidity of masculinity and that the same individual can simultaneously idealize different versions of masculinity depending on the context. Because stereotypes are both explanations for the status quo and warrants for behaving in one way or another, these collective ideals for masculinity and contextual boundaries may be important obstacles to achieving gender equity.