Preverbal children with autism understand the intentions of others

There is a ‘theory of mind’ theory of autism. Meltzoff has recently developed a procedure that gives a nonverbal assessment of ‘theory of mind’. A group of children with autism and a matched control group of normally developing infants were given three of Meltzoff’s tasks and three conventional, gestural imitation tasks. The children with autism showed the expected deficits on gestural imitation, but were significantly better than the normally developing infants on the Meltzoff tasks. The implications of these results for a number of theoretical issues are discussed.     

Active vision in passive locomotion: real‐world free viewing in infants and adults

Visual exploration in infants and adults has been studied using two very different paradigms: free viewing of flat screen displays in desk‐mounted eye‐tracking studies and real‐world visual guidance of action in head‐mounted eye‐tracking studies. To test whether classic findings from screen‐based studies generalize to real‐world visual exploration and to compare natural visual exploration in infants and adults, we tested observers in a new paradigm that combines critical aspects of both previous techniques: free viewing during real‐world visual exploration. Mothers and their 9‐month‐old infants wore head‐mounted eye trackers while mothers carried their infants in a forward‐facing infant carrier through a series of indoor hallways. Demands for visual guidance of action were minimal in mothers and absent for infants, so both engaged in free viewing while moving through the environment. Similar to screen‐based studies, during free viewing in the real world low‐level saliency was related to gaze direction. In contrast to screen‐based studies, only infants – not adults – were biased to look at people, participants of both ages did not show a classic center bias, and mothers and infants did not display high levels of inter‐observer consistency. Results indicate that several aspects of visual exploration of a flat screen display do not generalize to visual exploration in the real world.     

“Looking Up” and “Looking Down”: On the Dual Character of Mechanistic Explanations

Mechanistic explanation is at present the received view of scientific explanation. One of its central features is the idea that mechanistic explanations are both “downward looking” and “upward looking”: they explain by offering information about the internal constitution of the mechanism as well as the larger environment in which the mechanism is situated. That is, they offer both constitutive and contextual explanatory information. Adequate mechanistic explanations, on this view, accommodate the full range of explanatory factors both “above” and “below” the target phenomenon. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that mechanistic explanation cannot furnish both constitutive and contextual information simultaneously, because these are different types of explanation with distinctly different aims. Claims that they can, I argue, depend on several intertwined confusions concerning the nature of explanation. Particularly, such claims tend to conflate mechanistic and functional explanation, which I argue ought to be understood as distinct. Conflating them threatens to oversell the explanatory power of mechanisms and obscures the means by which they explain. I offer two broad reasons in favor of distinguishing mechanistic and functional explanation: the first concerns the direction of explanation of each, and the second concerns the type of questions to which these explanations offer answers. I suggest an alternative picture on which mechanistic explanation is understood as fundamentally constitutive, and according to which an adequate understanding of a phenomenon typically requires supplementing the mechanistic explanation with a functional explanation.     

Migration in Missiological Research

The phenomenon of migration has received a considerable amount of scholarly attention in recent years. This article presents and elaborates on how contemporary missiological research addresses and discusses migration processes. It approached the theme of migration from various perspectives, including how migration phenomena influence individual and communal expressions of faith; how migration experiences are and can be reflected on theologically; and challenges and opportunities of migration to mission thinking and practice. Further, based on the presentation of themes and approaches in the field, the article discusses how migration might challenge and develop the research agenda within missiology. It is argued that migration and migration processes do not only challenge the idea of easily identifiable contexts, but that they also blur and destabilize the whole idea of fixed borders. This challenges missiology to rethink its basic theories related to contextualization and inter‐religious encounters, as well as the understanding of mission thinking and practice.     

COGNITIVE AND SOCIOEMOTIONAL FUNCTIONING AT 4½ YEARS IN CHILDREN BORN TO MOTHERS WHO HAVE RECEIVED TREATMENT FOR SUBSTANCE‐ABUSE PROBLEMS WHILE PREGNANT

Cognitive and socioemotional functioning at 4½ years of age were examined in children born to mothers with substance‐abuse problems (n = 22) recruited from residential treatment institutions while pregnant, and then compared to children born to mothers with mental health problems (n = 18) and children from a low‐risk group (n = 26). No significant group differences in cognitive functioning were found, but the children born to mothers with substance‐abuse problems showed more caregiver‐reported socioemotional problems than did the low‐risk children, like the children born to mothers with mental health problems. Birth weight had an effect on internalizing problems at 4½ years and mediated the relation between group and socioemotional problems, although not when controlling for caregiver education, single parenthood, and anxiety and depression. At 4½ years, 7 children born to mothers with substance‐abuse problems were placed in foster care. These children had lower birth weight and higher caregiver‐rated internalizing problems. In addition to emphasizing the importance of the quality of the prenatal environment, this study suggests that families with previous substance abuse are in need of long‐term follow‐up to address socioemotional problems and enhance further positive child cognitive development. The foster‐placed children may be in particular need of long‐term follow‐up.     

Children's responses to entry failure: attention deployment patterns and self-regulation skills

In this study the authors investigated associations among children's observed responses to failure in an analogue entry situation, their attention deployment patterns, and skills and processes associated with self-regulation. Participants were 54 kindergarten and first-grade students who were either aggressive-rejected or low aggressive-popular based on peer nominations. Inhibitory control predicted the tendency to respond to entry failure by stopping and watching the group's activity. Baseline vagal tone and other-directed attention predicted children's tendency to change entry strategies after failure. Parent-rated attention skills moderated the relation between children's attention deployment patterns during the entry task and their responses to entry failure. Children who engaged in more other-directed attention were less likely to turn to solitary play after entry failure but only if they had high or moderate levels of attentional control. Other-directed attention was related to repeating previous entry bids without modification after entry failure but only when children had high levels of attention problems.     

Exotic Dance Research: A Review of the Literature from 1970 to 2008

This article presents the process and findings of a review of the empirical research literature on exotic dance/dancers in the United States and Canada from 1970 to 2008. We present research methods represented in this sample, as well as the main purposes of these studies, the deployment of theory in exotic dance research, and the visibility of researcher subjectivities. Over time researchers have gradually moved from micro-level analysis with singular explanations toward multi-dimensional and contextual understandings of exotic dance/dancers. Contemporary researchers are less grounded in deviance, pathology, or victimization. We conclude with a discussion and a series of recommendations for future research.     

Complexity-based Theories of Emergence: Criticisms and Constraints

In recent years, many philosophers of science have attempted to articulate a theory of non-epistemic emergence that is compatible with mechanistic explanation and incompatible with reductionism. The 2005 account of Fred C. Boogerd et al. has been particularly influential. They argued that a systemic property was emergent if it could not be predicted from the behaviour of less complex systems. Here, I argue that Boogerd et al.'s attempt to ground emergence in complexity guarantees that we will see emergence, but at the cost of rendering it either trivial or epistemic. There are three basic problems. First, neither the measures of complexity explicitly mentioned by Boogerd et al. nor the most popular measures in the literature can do the practical and theoretical work that they assign to complexity. Second, I argue that while the success of their view depends on restricting the base of information available to the reductionist, this cannot be done in a way that is metaphysically neutral with respect to emergence. Thus, their account renders emergence trivial. Third, I argue that grounding emergence in complexity can support only epistemic emergence. I conclude by considering the methodological import of their account.     

The Motivations of Islamic Martyrs: Applying the Collective Effort Model

This paper examines the motivations of Islamic martyrs through the Collective Effort Model (CEM). The CEM postulates that individuals work hard in a group only if they believe their work, input, or efforts will help attain their individually valued outcomes. In addition, people will work even harder as a group if they have close affinities with that group or if they are persuaded that their effort will be recognized (Karau & Williams, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 65(4):681–706, 1993). In the context of this analysis, it seems appropriate to apply the CEM to the motivations of Islamic martyrs to engage in suicide bombing as one can easily see the effects of their own efforts on their group’s organizational goals. Determining the motivations of Islamic martyrs may also help us identify the specific recruiting strategies used by terrorist organizations looking to acquire followers for their cause.