Does the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption Adequately Protect Orphaned and Vulnerable Children and Their Families?

The Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption, designed to protect the best interests of the child in intercountry adoption, has been signed by 83 nations. We evaluate both the strengths and the weaknesses of the Convention in achieving this purpose and also in protecting a second vulnerable population, birth families. A case study example of the United States’ implementation of the Hague requirements reveals several weaknesses with respect to non-Convention countries as sending nations, financial oversight, and oversight of foreign collaborators. International birth families, especially birth mothers giving consent to an adoption, are often vulnerable because of a lack of power and resources, as well as different cultural understandings of the nature of family and adoption. We conclude that in order to protect vulnerable children and birth families, individual sending and receiving countries need to supplement the Hague Convention with specific, contextually appropriate laws and regulations.     

Successful adaptation of gait in healthy older adults during dual-task treadmill walking

Dual-task methods have been used to demonstrate increased prioritization of walking performance over cognition in healthy aging. This is expressed as greater dual-task costs in cognitive performance than in walking. However, other research shows that older adults can prioritize cognitive performance over walking when instructed to do so. We asked whether age-related cognitive prioritization would emerge by experimentally manipulating cognitive difficulty. Young and older adults performed mental arithmetic at two levels of difficulty, alone or while walking. Electromyography and footswitches were used to measure muscle activity and stride parameters. Under high cognitive load, older adults increased their stride time, stride length, and hamstring activity, while maintaining their cognitive performance. Young adults showed negligible dual-task costs in each domain. The older adults appeared to successfully adapt their stride in response to high cognitive demands. The results have implications for neural models of gait regulation, and age differences in task emphasis.     

A fresh look at the predictors of naming accuracy and errors in Alzheimer's disease

In recent years, a considerable number of studies have tried to establish which characteristics of objects and their names predict the responses of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) in the picture-naming task. The frequency of use of words and their age of acquisition (AoA) have been implicated as two of the most influential variables, with naming being best preserved for objects with high-frequency, early-acquired names. The present study takes a fresh look at the predictors of naming success in Spanish and English AD patients using a range of measures of word frequency and AoA along with visual complexity, imageability, and word length as predictors. Analyses using generalized linear mixed modelling found that naming accuracy was better predicted by AoA ratings taken from older adults than conventional ratings from young adults. Older frequency measures based on written language samples predicted accuracy better than more modern measures based on the frequencies of words in film subtitles. Replacing adult frequency with an estimate of cumulative (lifespan) frequency did not reduce the impact of AoA. Semantic error rates were predicted by both written word frequency and senior AoA while null response errors were only predicted by frequency. Visual complexity, imageability, and word length did not predict naming accuracy or errors.     

Resting EEG in alpha and beta bands predicts individual differences in attentional blink magnitude

Accuracy for a second target (T2) is reduced when it is presented within 500 ms of a first target (T1) in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) - an attentional blink (AB). There are reliable individual differences in the magnitude of the AB. Recent evidence has shown that the attentional approach that an individual typically adopts during a task or in anticipation of a task, as indicated by various measures, predicts individual differences in the AB deficit. It has yet to be observed whether indices of attentional approach when not engaged in a goal-directed task are also relevant to individual differences in the AB. The current studies investigated individual differences in the AB by examining their relationship with attention at rest using quantitative measures of EEG. Greater levels of alpha at rest were associated with larger AB magnitudes, where greater levels of beta at rest were associated with smaller AB magnitudes. Furthermore, individuals with more beta than alpha demonstrated a smaller AB effect than individuals with more alpha than beta. Our results suggest that greater attentional engagement at rest, when not engaged in a goal-directed task, is associated with smaller AB magnitudes.     

From Maternal Impressions to Eugenics: Pregnancy and Inheritance in the Nineteenth-Century U.S.

This essay examines the theory of maternal impressions, the belief that a woman’s experiences or emotions during pregnancy could explain congenital disability or emotional/ behavior differences in her child and asks why this theory circulated as an explanation for disability seen at birth by both medical doctors and in literature for far longer than it did across the Atlantic. By presenting examples from nineteenth-century medical literature, popular fiction, maternal handbooks, and two canonical works of literature, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave, I argue that maternal impressions worked to maintain anxiety for women, and particular white women, to ensure they felt responsible if anything was “wrong” with their child. Ultimately, I show how maternal impressions was both an ableist and racialized understanding of inheritance that wouldn’t be discarded until the emergence of eugenics in the early twentieth century.

     

The Life Satisfaction of Owner-Manager Entrepreneurs When the Business of Business is not only Business

This paper studies the anatomy of entrepreneurs’ satisfaction with life, which refers to the relationship between life satisfaction, satisfaction in domains of life, and affective, evaluative, and sensory experiences of being well. The paper focuses on owner-manager entrepreneurs, who, as managers, lead their firms and take major business decisions and, as owners, have room to deviate from the exclusive procurement of profits to pursue their happiness. The study of entrepreneurs’ anatomy of life satisfaction provides insight on how they lead their firms and how they weight the well-being repercussions of their business decisions. The paper distinguishes between family-firm and nonfamily-firm entrepreneurs, and it shows that there is heterogeneity in entrepreneurs’ anatomy of life satisfaction; with the life satisfaction of family-firm entrepreneurs being strongly driven by family satisfaction and by negative affect, while the life satisfaction of nonfamily-firm entrepreneurs is strongly driven by work satisfaction. These differences in the anatomy of entrepreneurs’ life satisfaction do correspond with observed differences in the organization and behavior of family and nonfamily firms, which suggests that the anatomy of life satisfaction provides insight on how entrepreneurs weight their business decisions and lead their firms. The empirical exercise is based on an original survey applied to Spanish entrepreneurs in 2019.

     

Issues in Professional Training to Implement Evidence‐based Parenting Programs: The Preferences of Indigenous Practitioners

Indigenous children have elevated risk for poor health, behavioural, emotional, and social outcomes. Significant evidence exists that parenting programs can reduce family risk factors and improve outcomes for children and families; however, mainstream programs have had slower uptake in Indigenous communities than other communities. Culturally sensitive delivery of evidence‐based programs can enhance engagement of parents, yet the development of a workforce to deliver programs to Indigenous parents faces many obstacles. This project seeks to identify professional training processes that enhance Indigenous practitioners’ skills and confidence in delivering an evidence‐based parenting program. A survey of trained parenting practitioners via an online practitioner network assessed their views of the training and post‐training support processes they had experienced. Respondents were 57 Indigenous and 720 non‐Indigenous practitioners from 15 countries. Most training processes were rated equally helpful by Indigenous and non‐Indigenous practitioners. However, several training processes were identified as important for the delivery of culturally competent training, such as tailoring the pace of training and simplifying the language in teaching resources. Practitioners with higher ratings of the helpfulness of peer support following training reported higher program uptake and implementation. Qualitative themes also focused on the helpfulness of program resources, and having a peer support network and mentoring. Increasing access to appropriate, flexibly delivered training and post‐training support for Indigenous professionals will support the development of a skilled workforce with local knowledge and connections, and further increase the reach of evidence‐based services in Indigenous communities.     

Gender and Theory of Mind in Preschoolers’ Group Effort: Evidence for Timing Differences Behind Children’s Earliest Social Loafing

This study explored mental state reasoning within the context of group effort and possible differences in development between boys and girls. Preschool children (59 girls, 47 boys) were assessed for theory of mind (ToM) ability using classic false belief tests. Children participated in group effort conditions that alternated from one condition, where individual effort was transparent and obvious, to one where individual effort remained anonymous. The aim was to investigate if emergent mental state reasoning, after controlling for age, was associated with the well-known phenomenon of reduced effort in group tasks (“social loafing”). Girls had slightly higher ToM scores and social loafing than boys. Hierarchical regression, controlling for age, indicated that understanding of others’ false beliefs uniquely predicted social loafing and interacted weakly with gender status.     

Comparing the Characteristics of Homeless Adults in Poland and the United States

This study compared the characteristics of probability samples of homeless adults in Poland (N = 200 from two cities) and the United States (N = 219 from one city), using measures with established reliability and validity in homeless populations. The same measures were used across nations and a systemic translation procedure assured comparability of measurement. The two samples were similar on some measures: In both nations, most homeless adults were male, many reported having dependent children and experiencing out-of-home placements when they themselves were children, and high levels of physical health problems were observed. Significant national differences were also found: Those in Poland were older, had been homeless for longer, showed lower rates on all psychiatric diagnoses assessed (including severe mental and substance abuse disorders), reported less contact with family and supportive network members, were less satisfied when they sought support from their networks, and reported fewer recent stressful life events and fewer risky sexual behaviors. Culturally-informed interpretations of these findings and their implications are presented.