Evaluation of a finger prompt variation in the treatment of pediatric feeding disorders

Children with feeding disorders often engage in refusal behavior to escape or avoid eating. Escape extinction combined with reinforcement is a well-established intervention to treat food refusal. Physical guidance procedures (e.g., jaw prompt, finger prompt) have been shown to increase food acceptance and decrease inappropriate mealtime behavior when more commonly employed escape extinction (e.g., nonremoval of the spoon) procedures are ineffective. The finger prompt, however, has not been extensively evaluated as a treatment adjunct to target food refusal, thus necessitating further examination. The purpose of this prospective study was to assess a variation of a finger prompt procedure to treat food refusal and to assess caregivers' acceptability of the procedure. Three children age 1 to 4 years admitted to an intensive feeding disorders program and their caregivers participated. The finger prompt was effective in increasing bite acceptance across all participants and decreasing or maintaining low levels of inappropriate behavior for 2 participants. The procedure was also acceptable to all caregivers.     

Multilevel Heterogeneous Factor Analysis and Application to Ecological Momentary Assessment

Psychometrika - Ansari et al. (Psychometrika 67:49–77, 2002) applied a multilevel heterogeneous model for confirmatory factor analysis to repeated measurements on individuals. While the mean...     

Effect of autonomy support and dialogic learning on school children’s physical activity and sport

This study applies an intervention based on autonomy support through dialogic learning to examine effects on motivation and the promotion of physical activity and sport involvement during schoolchildren’s leisure time. One hundred and two primary school students, aged 11–13 years, participated (M = 10.93, SD = 0.75). The sample was divided into two groups: an experimental group (49 students) and a control group (53 students). A quasi-experimental study was conducted in physical education classes over the course of 9 months. Assessments of autonomy support from teachers, family, and peers; basic psychological needs; self-determined motivation in physical education and during leisure time; planned behavior variables; physical activity intention; and estimated and actual physical exercise behavior time were included in the model. Following the intervention, the results revealed that greater autonomy support by the teacher, the family and peers, satisfaction of the basic psychological needs, self-determined motivation during physical education class and during free time, greater perceived control, favorable attitude and intention to engage in physical activity contributed to the explanation of student physical activity involvement. These results suggest that when students receive extensive social support from diverse social agents that essential precursors to physical activity are strengthened and contribute to increased motivation and actual physical activity involvement. Efforts to promote effective communications with students and other pedagogical efforts, such as providing dialogic learning opportunities, should be considered in order to strengthen physical activity motivation and involvement in students.     

If you want to be one of us,then become like us: The evaluation of naturalization applicants by host nationals

Immigrant naturalization is a rite of passage, making assimilationist attitudes particularly pronounced among host nationals. Three experimental studies investigate whether heritage culture maintenance violates expectations that citizenship should be deserved by proving strong attachment to the host nation (i.e., neoliberal communitarianism). Study 1 (N = 293) demonstrates that naturalization applicants’ high degree of heritage culture maintenance impairs application evaluations. Perceived attachment to the host nation and citizenship deservingness mediated this effect. Study 2 (N = 220) replicates results across two national contexts and reveals that heritage culture maintenance impairs evaluations only among naturalization applicants from devalued countries. Study 3 (N = 117) manipulates attachment to the host nation and shows that perceived citizenship deservingness mediates the negative effects of naturalization applicants' low attachment to the host nation on application evaluations. Overall, assimilationist attitudes among host nationals are best explained by the combination of neoliberal and communitarian criteria of evaluation.     

Some New Infinity Puzzles

Philosophia - Salmon (1970) was the first to speak explicitly of paradoxes of kinematics. In this short note I introduce a new class of infinity puzzles. Following natural terminology, they should...     

Parents’ Beliefs about High School Students’ Spatial Abilities: Gender Differences and Associations with Parent Encouragement to Pursue a STEM Career and Students’ STEM Career Intentions

In the present study, we investigated whether parents’ beliefs about their high school aged adolescents’ spatial abilities (i.e., spatial visualization, mental manipulation, and navigation abilities) differed based on their child’s gender. We also examined whether these beliefs related to parents’ encouragement of their child to pursue a Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics (STEM) career as well as students’ actual STEM major and career intentions. Data were collected from 117 pairs of U.S. high school students and one of their parents. We found that parents of young men thought their child had higher mental manipulation and navigation abilities than did parents of young women, even after statistically controlling for adolescents’ actual spatial abilities. Parents who perceived that their child had higher mental manipulation ability were more likely to encourage their child to pursue a STEM career, and those students were more likely to report that they intended to pursue a STEM career. These findings suggest that parents’ beliefs about how good their child is at spatial tasks may be based more strongly on gender stereotypes than on their child’s actual spatial abilities. Helping to make parents aware of these beliefs could be a potential lever of intervention to increase women’s participation in STEM careers.

     

Prior Allegations of Harassment Impact Mock Jurors’ Perceptions of Sexual Harassment in a Criminal Trial

The current study examined factors that may influence jurors’ judgments in a criminal sexual harassment case with Canadian undergraduate students. Undergraduate students (n?=?268) examined whether defendant’s gender, victim’s gender, and whether the victim had made similar accusations in the past were influential in mock jurors’ judgments. Participants read a case summary describing an alleged sexual harassment and answered questions concerning defendant’s guilt, defendant’s culpability, and perceptions of the victim. Additionally, attitudes concerning sexual harassment and sexism were measured. The presence of prior allegations was a driving force in mock juror decisions, with mock jurors providing more guilty verdicts, more favorable perceptions of the victim, and less favorable perceptions of the defendant when no prior allegations of harassment had been made by the victim. The results of the current study suggest that the presence of prior allegations have a large impact on mock jurors’ decisions, suggesting that prior allegations may need to be considered more closely in court before they can be used as evidence.

     

Four Dimensions of Criticism Against Gender-Fair Language

Sex Roles - The gender-neutral third-person pronoun singular hen was recently introduced in Swedish as a complement to she (hon) and he (han). The initiative to add hen initially received strong...     

Speaking like a Man: Women’s Pitch as a Cue for Gender Stereotyping

Sex Roles - Women’s average voice pitch has decreased in recent years, reducing the gap between men on this vocal dimension. The present study examined whether a woman speaking at a lower...     

Relations between forms and functions of aggression and moral judgments of aggressive transgressions

The present study sought to examine the influence of aggressive behavior, psychopathy, and gender on moral judgments of aggressive transgressions. A two-dimensional conceptualization of aggression was used, such that proactive relational aggression, reactive relational aggression, proactive physical aggression, and reactive physical aggression were treated as distinct subtypes of aggression and also as distinct subtypes of moral judgments of aggression. Participants were 421 emerging adults (215 women). Self-report measures of aggression, psychopathy, and moral judgments were collected. Peer-reports of aggression and psychopathy were obtained from a randomly assigned subsample of 73 participants (46 women) for validity purposes. Unique associations were found between subtypes of aggression and corresponding moral judgments of the same subtypes.