The social functions of babbling: acoustic and contextual characteristics that facilitate maternal responsiveness

What is the social function of babbling? An important function of prelinguistic vocalizing may be to elicit parental behavior in ways that facilitate the infant's own learning about speech and language. Infants use parental feedback to their babbling to learn new vocal forms, but the microstructure of parental responses to babbling has not been studied. To enable precise manipulation of the proximal infant cues that may influence maternal behavior, we used a playback paradigm to assess mothers’ responsiveness to prerecorded audiovisual clips of unfamiliar infants’ noncry prelinguistic vocalizations and actions. Acoustic characteristics and directedness of vocalizations were manipulated to test their efficacy in structuring social interactions. We also compared maternal responsiveness in the playback paradigm and in free play with their own infants. Maternal patterns of reactions to babbling were stable across both tasks. In the playback task, we found specific vocal cues, such as the degree of resonance and the transition timing of consonant‐vowel syllables, predicted contingent maternal responding. Vocalizations directed at objects also facilitated increased responsiveness. The responses mothers exhibited, such as sensitive speech and vocal imitation, are known to facilitate vocal learning and development. Infants, by influencing the behavior of their caregivers with their babbling, create social interactions that facilitate their own communicative development.     

Partial establishment – Menachem Begin,Gahal and the Black Panthers

This paper aims to shed further light on the response of Israeli society to the rise of the Black Panthers in 1971 by examining the attitude adopted by Menachem Begin and Gahal to the emerging Mizrahi protest movement. After discussing in detail Begin’s response to the Black Panthers’ protest, this paper analyses the factors that contributed to the divide between the Panthers and Israel’s leading opposition party at that time, and the criticism levelled by party members against its leadership concerning its inaction regarding the Black Panthers’ protest. Whereas right-wing Zionist research has hitherto focused on Begin’s political and security-related outlook and activities, the affair being discussed may shift the limelight onto the socio-economic attitudes of Begin and his party.     

Difficulty in implementing a family intervention for bipolar disorder: the predictive role of patient and family attributes

Family affect was examined as a predictor of difficulty implementing a 9-month, manual-based, psychoeducational family therapy for recently manic bipolar patients. Prior to therapy, family members were administered measures to assess both their expressed emotion and affective behavior during a family interaction task. Following family treatment, both therapists and independent observers rated the overall difficulty of treating the family, and therapists also rated each participant's problem behaviors during treatment, in the areas of affect, communication, and resistance. Therapists regarded affective problems among relatives and resistance among patients as central in determining the overall difficulty of treating the family. Relatives' critical behavior toward patients during the pretreatment interaction task predicted both independent observers' ratings of overall treatment difficulty and therapists' perceptions of relatives' affective problems during treatment. Moreover, patients' residual symptoms predicted independent observers' ratings of overall difficulty and therapists' perceptions of patients' resistance to the family intervention. Results suggest that difficulties in conducting a manual-based family intervention can be predicted from systematic, pretreatment family and clinical assessment.     

Assessing the "evolving standards of decency:" perceptions of capital punishment for juveniles

This study examines whether public opinion parallels recent judicial and statutory changes limiting the applicability of capital sentences to offenders younger than 18 years old. Two hundred and thirty-five undergraduate students were administered a vignette of a capital case and asked to render a sentence of death or life in prison without parole. Results revealed that age of the defendant was not a significant predictor of sentence type; participants sentenced 16- and 17-year-old defendants similarly to 18- and 25-year-old defendants. Therefore, public opinion appears inconsistent with legal and legislative changes to abandon the practice of executing juveniles. Findings also suggested that perceived level of the defendant's responsibility and general opinion about capital sentences significantly predicted sentence type; perceptions of greater responsibility were associated with an increased likelihood of a death sentence. However, participants did not perceive differences in responsibility between juvenile and adult defendants. In addition, participants were more comfortable sentencing defendants to death compared with life in prison.     

Parents, peers, and problem behavior: a longitudinal investigation of the impact of relationship perceptions and characteristics on the development of adolescent problem behavior

This study examined longitudinal relations among adolescents' family relationships, peer relationships, and problem behavior. Participants were 1,357 African American and European American adolescents who were interviewed at 3 time points: 7th grade (mean age = 12.7 years), the summer after 8th grade (mean age = 14.2 years), and 11th grade (mean age = 17.1 years). For all racial and gender groups, 7th-grade family characteristics (youth perceptions of autonomy and warmth) predicted a risky peer context during 8th grade, which in turn predicted problem behavior during 11th grade. Additionally, problem behavior in the 7th grade predicted 11th-grade problem behavior, directly as well as indirectly through the peer context. Racial and gender differences are discussed, as are implications for future research.