Psychosocial Predictors of Young Adolescent Cigarette Smoking: A Sixteen-Month,Three-Wave Longitudinal Study1

Understanding the psychosocial factors that predict cigarette smoking onset in young people is of crucial importance for prevention efforts. The present study examined prospective psychosocial predictors of smoking in a three-wave longitudinal data set. Similar in design to an earlier study by Chassin, Presson, Sherman, Corty, and Olshavsky (1984), the present study replicated their work, and extended it by (a) using composite predictors derived from exploratory factor analysis, (b) including prior behavior as a predictor, (c) using a design extended over three waves of data collection, and (d) using a sample composed primarily of urban teenagers. Subjects were 3295 7th-grade students at the beginning of the study. The subjects completed a questionnaire containing items tapping cigarette smoking behavior and psychosocial items that have previously been shown to predict smoking behavior. Forty-one psychosocial items on the Wave 1 (initial) questionnaire were factor analyzed, and five factors were retained. Subscale scores were constructed based on these factors and were used as predictors. Regression analyses were performed using the subscales and pretest smoking frequency to predict a continuous measure of smoking, and discriminant analyses were performed to predict transitions between qualitative levels of smoking. Prior smoking behavior was the most important predictor of future smoking. Four of the subscales, Social Disapproval, Risk Taking/Rebelliousness, Perceived Smoking Prevalence, and Motivation to Comply, were significant predictors. One subscale, Physical Consequences from Smoking, was not predictive of smoking in any of the analyses. The effect sizes cross-validated well. It is suggested that an integrative model of smoking initiation developed by Flay, d'Avernas, Best, Kersell, and Ryan (1983) best summarizes the results of the present study.     

Catching up with wonderful women: The women‐are‐wonderful effect is smaller in more gender egalitarian societies

Inequalities between men and women are common and well‐documented. Objective indexes show that men are better positioned than women in societal hierarchies—there is no single country in the world without a gender gap. In contrast, researchers have found that the women‐are‐wonderful effect—that women are evaluated more positively than men overall—is also common. Cross‐cultural studies on gender equality reveal that the more gender egalitarian the society is, the less prevalent explicit gender stereotypes are. Yet, because self‐reported gender stereotypes may differ from implicit attitudes towards each gender, we reanalysed data collected across 44 cultures, and (a) confirmed that societal gender egalitarianism reduces the women‐are‐wonderful effect when it is measured more implicitly (i.e. rating the personality of men and women presented in images) and (b) documented that the social perception of men benefits more from gender egalitarianism than that of women.     

Video installation as a creative means of representing temporality in visual data

This paper describes the use of video installation as a creative means of engaging audiences in visual research. A detailed image-based overview of the project, 1247 Days on Whymark Avenue, is also presented. This interactive video installation offered viewers a level of phenomenological immersion in the compressed temporality and asynchronous dialogue captured by this visual research project. This film is part of a larger research project on the longitudinal photo-documentation of urban life (Hansen & Flynn 2015a). The project uses repeat photography to study street art and graffiti as visual dialogue.     

Use of the mutual exclusivity assumption by young word learners

A critical question about early word learning is whether word learning constraints such as mutual exclusivity exist and foster early language acquisition. It is well established that children will map a novel label to a novel rather than a familiar object. Evidence for the role of mutual exclusivity in such indirect word learning has been questioned because: (1) it comes mostly from 2 and 3-year-olds and (2) the findings might be accounted for, not by children avoiding second labels, but by the novel object which creates a lexical gap children are motivated to fill. Three studies addressed these concerns by having only a familiar object visible. Fifteen to seventeen and 18-20-month-olds were selected to straddle the vocabulary spurt. In Study 1, babies saw a familiar object and an opaque bucket as a location to search. Study 2 handed babies the familiar object to play with. Study 3 eliminated an obvious location to search. On the whole, babies at both ages resisted second labels for objects and, with some qualifications, tended to search for a better referent for the novel label. Thus mutual exclusivity is in place before the onset of the naming explosion. The findings demonstrate that lexical constraints enable babies to learn words even under non-optimal conditions--when speakers are not clear and referents are not visible. The results are discussed in relation to an alternative social-pragmatic account.