Sharing Attention to Toys: Adolescent Mother–Toddler versus Adult Mother–Toddler Dyads

This study examined whether there were differences in the joint attention behaviours of adolescent mothers and toddlers and adult mothers and toddlers. The timing of mothers' attention-directing behaviours (i.e. maintaining, introducing and redirecting) as well as the specific behaviours (i.e. showing, offering and demon-strating toy) they used to direct their toddlers' attention to toys were observed. The observers also coded the specific joint attention behaviours that the toddlers used. The findings showed that the adolescent mothers redirected their toddlers' attention away from a toy they were interested in to a different toy more often and used fewer introducing behaviours than the adult mothers. Toddler age was also inversely related to mothers' redirecting behaviour. The results also indicated that the adolescent mothers demonstrated toys and interfered with their toddlers' ongoing play behaviour more frequently than the adult mothers. Toddler age was also inversely related to the frequency with which both groups of mothers demonstrated toys and positively related to the frequency with which mothers showed toys. The toddlers born to the adolescent mothers showed fewer social initiations and a higher frequency of non-verbal responses than the toddlers born to the adult mothers. Toddler age was negatively related to the frequency of non-verbal responses.     

The overlooked ubiquity of first-person experience in the cognitive sciences

Synthese - Science aims to transform the subjectivity of individual observations and ideas into more objective and universal knowledge. Yet if there is any area in which first-person experience...     

Reviews

The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion Without Religion, John D. Caputo, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1997. The Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion, xxix + 374 pp. ISBN 0–253–21112–3 (pbk.)

Religion in the Contemporary World: A Sociological Introduction, Alan Aldridge, Polity Press: Cambridge, 2000. vii, 232 pp. ISBN 0–7456–2083–3

The Anthropology of Religion, Fiona Bowie, Oxford, Blackwell. 1999. 284pp, tables & bibliogr. ISBN 0–631 20848–8 (pbk)

Theorizing about Myth, Robert Segal, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. 1999. 184pp. Cloth £45, paper £15. ISBN 1–558–49194–5 (hbk), 1–558–49191–0 (pbk)     

Longitudinal Intellectual Assessment of Children With HIV Infection

The objective of this paper was to describe the intellectual development of 39 children with HIV infection. The children received serial evaluations over a 10-year period. Thirty-nine children were assessed with age-appropriate intellectual measures at regular intervals as part of their treatment in the HIV Program of a children's hospital. Children showed an 24-point drop in mean Bayley Mental scores over the first 2 years of life. McCarthy scores remained in the low average range from ages 3–5 years. IQ scores were stable by age 6 in the low average range, and unchanged through age 12. Significant changes in memory, vocabulary, and performance subtests were noted. Children with HIV infection demonstrated a significant decline in mental functioning over the first 2 years of life, fell into the low average range by age 3, and remained in the low average range, with subtle changes in some areas.     

Principlism, medical individualism, and health promotion in resource-poor countries: can autonomy-based bioethics promote social justice and population health?

Through its adoption of the biomedical model of disease which promotes medical individualism and its reliance on the individual-based anthropology, mainstream bioethics has predominantly focused on respect for autonomy in the clinical setting and respect for person in the research site, emphasizing self-determination and freedom of choice. However, the emphasis on the individual has often led to moral vacuum, exaggeration of human agency, and a thin (liberal?) conception of justice. Applied to resource-poor countries and communities within developed countries, autonomy-based bioethics fails to address the root causes of diseases and public health crises with which individuals or communities are confronted. A sociological explanation of disease causation is needed to broaden principles of biomedical ethics and provides a renewed understanding of disease, freedom, medical practice, patient-physician relationship, risk and benefit of research and treatment, research priorities, and health policy.