Dilemmas of Practice: Challenges to Program Quality Encountered by Youth Program Leaders

To create and sustain high quality youth development programs it is important to understand the challenging situations and dilemmas that emerge in program leaders’ daily work with youth. In this research the experiences of leaders in 12 programs were followed over a 2–9 month period, which led to the identification of 250 dilemma situations. Qualitative analyses identified 5 categories and 12 subcategories of dilemmas that reflected distinct types of considerations (e.g., youth’s personalities, relationships with the community). The analyses also found that the experienced leaders in the study typically responded to these dilemmas in ways that were youth-centered and that balanced multiple considerations. It is argued that researchers need to go beyond identifying features of high quality programs, and more fully examine how effective leaders create and sustain high quality in response to the challenging situations of practice.     

Adopting the Objectifying Gaze: Exposure to Sexually Objectifying Music Videos and Subsequent Gazing Behavior

We investigated the effects of exposure to sexually objectifying music videos on viewers’ subsequent gazing behavior. We exposed participants (N = 129; 68 women, 61 men) to music videos either high in sexual objectification or low in sexual objectification. Next, we measured participants’ eye movements as they viewed photographs of 36 women models with various body shapes (i.e., ideal size model, plus size model) and degree of dress (i.e., fully dressed, scantily dressed, partially clad). Results indicated that sexually objectifying music videos influenced participants’ objectifying gaze upon photographs of women with an ideal size, but not plus size, body shape. Interestingly, that effect neither differed among men and women nor depended upon the models’ degree of dress. Altogether, once primed with sexually objectifying imagery, participants looked at women’s sexual body parts more than they looked at women’s faces.     

Phonemic vowel length contrasts in cerebellar disorders

Apraxia of speech and Broca's aphasia both affect voice onset time (VOT) whereas phonemic vowel length distinctions seem to be preserved. Assuming a close cooperation of anterior perisylvian language zones and the cerebellum with respect to speech timing, a similar profile of segment durations must be expected in ataxic dysarthria. In order to test this hypothesis, patients with cerebellar atrophy or cerebellar ischemia were asked to produce sentence utterances including either one of the German lexial items "Rate" (/ra:t(h)e/, 'installment'), "Ratte" (/rat(h)e/, 'rat'), "Gram" (/gra:m/, 'grief'), "Gramm" (/gram/, 'gramm'), "Taten" (/t(h)atn/, 'actions'), or "Daten" (/datn/, 'data'). At the acoustic signal, the duration of the target vowels /a/ and /a:/ as well as the VOT of the word-initial alveolar stops /d/ and /t/ were determined. In addition, a master tape comprising the target words from patients and controls in randomized order was played to three listeners for perceptual evaluation. In accordance with a previous study, first, the cerebellar subjects presented with a reduced categorical separation of the VOT of voiced and unvoiced stop consonants. Second, vowel length distinctions were only compromised in case of the minimal pair "Gram"/"Gramm." In contrast to "Rate"/"Ratte", production of the former lexical items requires coordination of several orofacial structures. Disruption of vowel length contrasts would, thus, depend upon the complexity of the underlying articulatory pattern.     

Cerebellar contributions to the perception of temporal cues within the speech and nonspeech domain

A previous study (Ackermann, Gr?ber, Hertrich, & Daum, 1997) reported impaired phoneme identification in cerebellar disorders, provided that categorization depended on temporal cues. In order to further clarify the underlying mechanism of the observed deficit, the present study performed a discrimination and identification task in cerebellar patients using two-tone sequences of variable pause length. Cerebellar dysfunctions were found to compromise the discrimination of time intervals extending in duration from 10 to 150 ms, a range covering the length of acoustic speech segments. In contrast, categorization of the same stimuli as a "short" or "long pause" turned out to be unimpaired. These findings, along with the data of the previous investigation, indicate, first, that the cerebellum participates in the perceptual processing of speech and nonspeech stimuli and, second, that this organ might act as a back-up mechanism, extending the storage capacities of the "auditory analyzer" extracting temporal cues from acoustic signals.     

The programming of structural properties of movement sequences

Summary The present paper investigates the role of abstract structural properties in the programming and execution of movement sequences. Three experiments, using converging methods, demonstrate that the motor system represents the abstract structural properties of movement sequences. The first two experiments show that hierarchical structures over a sequence of tapping movements can be used to prepare the motor program, even if the specific elements of the sequence are still unknown. Experiment 2 also shows that the preliminary programming of structural properties of a movement sequence takes more time than the programming of specific elements ( start elements). Experiment 3 suggests that abstract structural properties can be generalized from a special sequence and that they are transferable to other sequences. Abstract structural properties are assumed to be an important component of generalized motor programs.     

Individual ambidexterity: the duality of exploration and exploitation and its relationship with innovative performance

Organizational ambidexterity has been established as an important antecedent of organizational innovation and performance. Recently, researchers have started to argue that ambidexterity is not only essential at the organizational, but also at the individual level. Thus, to be innovative, individuals need to engage in both explorative and exploitative behaviours. However, questions remain regarding the optimal balance of explorative and exploitative behaviours and how ambidexterity can be operationalized. At the organizational level, most empirical research utilized either the difference between, or the product of, exploration and exploitation. In this article, we criticize these approaches on conceptual and methodological grounds and argue for an alternative operationalization of ambidexterity: polynomial regression and response surface methodology. In two diary studies with daily and weekly data, we demonstrate the advantages of this approach. We discuss implications for ambidexterity research and innovation practice.     

The easily learned,easily remembered heuristic in children

A previous study with adults [Koriat, A. (2008a). Easy comes, easy goes? The link between learning and remembering and its exploitation in metacognition. Memory & Cognition, 36, 416–428] established a correlation between learning and remembering: items requiring more trials to acquisition (TTA) were less likely to be recalled than those requiring fewer trials. Furthermore, learners’ judgments of learning (JOLs) seemed to rely on the easily learned, easily remembered (ELER) heuristic, that items requiring fewer TTAs are more likely to be recalled. This study extended investigation of these effects to 2nd- and 4th-grade children. When the list included hard and easy paired-associates (Experiment 1, N = 40, 7–10 years), recall and JOL decreased with increasing TTAs for both grades, supporting the validity of the ELER heuristic and its utilization in monitoring one's own learning. When presented only with hard pairs (Experiment 2, N = 60, 7–10 years), however, 4th graders’ but not 2nd graders’ JOLs evidenced reliance on this heuristic. The results suggest an early development of metacognitive heuristics that incorporate information about the links between characteristics of the encoding process and subsequent remembering.     

Maternal Modeling and the Acquisition of Fear and Avoidance in Toddlers: Influence of Stimulus Preparedness and Child Temperament

The aim of the present study was to investigate the influence of maternal modeling on the acquisition of fear and avoidance towards fear-relevant and fear-irrelevant, novel stimuli in a sample of 71 toddlers. Children were shown a rubber snake or spider (fear-relevant objects) and a rubber mushroom or flower (fear-irrelevant objects), which were alternately paired with either negative or positive expression by their mothers. Both stimuli were presented again after a 1- and a 10-min delay, while mothers maintained a neutral expression. The toddlers showed increased fear and avoidance of the objects following negative reaction from their mothers than following positive maternal expression. This was similarly true for both fear-relevant and fear-irrelevant stimuli. In addition, no association was found between child temperament and behavioral responses and a weak association emerged between child temperament and emotional responses. The results demonstrate that young children can rapidly form conditioned emotional and behavioral responses via maternal reactions regardless of stimulus preparedness or child temperament. It is suggested that early maternal modeling may be relevant to a broad spectrum of fearful reactions.     

Positive aspects of caregiving and adaptation to bereavement

This study examined how positive aspects of caregiving affect adaptation to bereavement among older adults who cared for a family member with dementia. The sample consisted of 217 caregivers who were part of the Resources for Enhancing Alzheimer's Caregiver Health Study. Using pre- and postloss data, hierarchical regressions were carried out to examine the effects of positive aspects of caregiving (caregiving benefit) on postloss depression and grief. Findings show that preloss caregiving benefit was associated with higher levels of postloss depression and grief, even after controlling for caregiver demographic characteristics, contextual factors, and caregiving burden. This effect was particularly strong for the relation between benefit and grief. Results demonstrate the importance of studying both positive and negative aspects of caregiving and their relation to bereavement outcomes.     

Predicting individual change in support over time among chronically impaired older adults

Hierarchical linear modeling was used to examine the degree of individual change in friendship and family networks and support over time as a function of sociodemographic characteristics, rehabilitation use, and disability. Participants, 449 older adults, had age-related vision loss, a common, chronic impairment that tends to worsen over time. Three interviews were conducted (baseline and 6- and 18-month follow-ups). All network and support variables showed a decrease over time. Regarding factors predicting individual variation, age (younger) and education (lower) were associated with greater baseline friendship support, rehabilitation was related to maintaining a larger friend network, and disability was positively associated with family network and support. Results supported the importance of examining rates of individual change and factors associated with variability in multiple support components by relationship type.