Latino parents’ science beliefs and support of high school students’ motivational beliefs: Do the relations vary across gender and familism values?

Based on the Eccles’ expectancy-value theory, the objectives of this study were (1) to examine the longitudinal relations between Latino parents’ science beliefs, parents’ science support, and high school students’ science motivational beliefs, and (2) to test whether these relations varied by familism values and adolescent gender. Multi-informant longitudinal survey data were collected from 104 Latino parents and adolescents during 9th and 10th grade. Parents’ perceptions of their adolescents’ science ability and value of science in 9th grade predicted higher parent science support at home in 10th grade if they were parents of boys. In contrast, these relations were not statistically significant for parents of daughters. Parent support in 9th grade predicted higher adolescent motivational beliefs one year later. This work provides evidence that parent support is important for high school student success in this understudied population.     

An Affordance-Based Approach to Visually Guided Overtaking

When an automobile driver overtakes a lead vehicle while avoiding oncoming traffic, does he or she do so with reference to the limits of his or her car? We investigated overtaking from the perspective of the theory of affordances. We define the overtake-ability affordance as a ratio of the minimum satisfying velocity required for safe overtaking (MSV) to the maximum velocity of the driver's car (V_max). Two groups of participants performed overtaking maneuvers, if deemed possible, by driving either a slow (V_max = 25 m/s) or a fast (V_max = 32.5 m/s) virtual car in overtaking situations constrained by 14 values of MSV. For any given MSV condition, participants in the fast car group were more likely to attempt an overtaking maneuver. However, when MSV was expressed in intrinsic units as a ratio of V_max for both groups, the frequency of overtaking was not significantly different across groups. Furthermore, overtaking frequency dropped to near 0% for both groups when MSV exceeded V_max. In accordance with the affordance-based framework (Fajen, 2007), our results suggest that participants select their overtaking maneuvers by perceiving an overtake-ability affordance.