Mechanisms of theory formation in young children

Research suggests that by the age of five, children have extensive causal knowledge, in the form of intuitive theories. The crucial question for developmental cognitive science is how young children are able to learn causal structure from evidence. Recently, researchers in computer science and statistics have developed representations (causal Bayes nets) and learning algorithms to infer causal structure from evidence. Here we explore evidence suggesting that infants and children have the prerequisites for making causal inferences consistent with causal Bayes net learning algorithms. Specifically, we look at infants and children's ability to learn from evidence in the form of conditional probabilities, interventions and combinations of the two.     

Talking about Homosexuality: The Views of Mainline Protestant Clergy

Homosexuality is one of the most divisive issues within mainline Protestantism today. In this article we portray the many sides of mainline Protestantism's debates about homosexuality through the lens of statements clergy made about the issue in early 2000. In interviews with 62 mainline Protestant clergy across the United States, 40 volunteered their views on homosexuality without being prompted. We describe the frames through which clergy understand and articulate issues related to homosexuality in the midst of contentious denominational debate about the subject. The majority of clergy who discussed homosexuality focused on the issue in their churches instead of in society at large, and in their denominations rather than in their own congregations. Moreover, virtually none of the clergy interviewed took hard and fast stands on the issue of homosexuality. Most approach the issue in a pragmatic, rather than prophetic, way. Our interviews also show that pastors who choose to speak on homosexuality tend to frame the issue in terms of the diffuse notion of "homosexuality," rather than talking about gay men and lesbians as people.     

Teasing,rejection, and violence: Case studies of the school shootings

Media commentators have suggested that recent school shootings were precipitated by social rejection, but no empirical research has examined this claim. Case studies were conducted of 15 school shootings between 1995 and 2001 to examine the possible role of social rejection in school violence. Acute or chronic rejection—in the form of ostracism, bullying, and/or romantic rejection—was present in all but two of the incidents. In addition, the shooters tended to be characterized by one or more of three other risk factors—an interest in firearms or bombs, a fascination with death or Satanism, or psychological problems involving depression, impulse control, or sadistic tendencies. Implications for understanding and preventing school violence are discussed. Aggr. Behav. 29:202–214, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

“The Grand Experiment”: Modeling Adult Learning with Adult‐Ministry Students

Abstract. Adult‐learning theory challenges faculty to adapt their teaching to certain characteristics of adult learners, including self‐direction: if adults direct the bulk of their lives outside of school, they should be permitted to direct their own educational experiences. To what extent is self‐directed learning an optimal, or even realistic, methodology for seminary teaching? Does it matter what subjects we are teaching? This essay details an experiment with self‐directed learning in a seminary ministry class: what worked, what might be improved, and how it challenges our view of ourselves as faculty to teach in this way. Student feedback from the course in question enhances our understanding of the best (and most challenging) features of the experiment.     

Development of executive attention in preschool children

The development of self-regulatory systems during the preschool years is accompanied by a dramatic increase in the ability to inhibit actions based on the directions of others. Several tasks have shown evidence of changes in self-regulation during the fourth year of life. The current cross-sectional study used a Simple Simon task, in which 33 3- to 4-year-old children were asked to respond to the command of one large toy animal but not to the command of another. Three important aspects of self-regulation were examined: the ability to inhibit action in the face of conflict, error detection/correction and the use of verbal and physical control strategies. The ability to inhibit a response in this task increased from 22% to 90% between 36 and 48 months of age. Post error slowing of Reaction Time (RT) indicative of error detection emerged at about the same age as successful inhibition. Physical rather than verbal self-regulation strategies were spontaneously employed by children to aid in the process of inhibition.     

"AND YOU'RE TELLING ME NOT TO STRESS?" A GROUNDED THEORY STUDY OF POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION SYMPTOMS AMONG LOW-INCOME MOTHERS

Low-income mothers in the U.S. are more likely to experience postpartum depression (PPD) and less likely to seek treatment than their middle-class counterparts. Despite this knowledge, prior research has not provided an in-depth understanding of PPD symptoms as they are experienced by low-income mothers. Through in-depth interviews, this study investigated low-income mothers' ( n  = 19) experiences and explanatory frameworks for their PPD symptoms. Grounded theory analysis uncovered five main categories that linked the participants' PPD symptoms to their lived experiences of mothering in poverty, including: (1) ambivalence, (2) caregiving overload, (3) juggling, (4) mothering alone, and (5) real-life worry. The analysis further located the core experience of PPD for low-income mothers as "feeling overwhelmed" due to mothering in materially and socially stressful conditions. These findings challenge the prevailing biomedical discourse surrounding PPD and situate mothers' symptoms in the context of the material hardships associated with living in poverty.     

Orthographic cues to lexical stress: Effects on naming and lexical decision

Words whose spellings represent regular phonemic patterns, such asmint, show advantages in naming and lexical decision tasks over words, such aspint, that have exceptional relations between orthographic and phonemic patterns. We have extended such phenomena to the domain of lexical stress, by showing that disyllabic words whose spellings are consistent with their stress are easier to process than words whose spellings are misleading about stress. Such words are named more quickly and are pronounced with incorrect stress less often (Experiment 1). They are also classified more quickly and accurately in lexical decision tasks (Experiments 2 and 3). These results indicate that literate speakers have learned orthographic correlates to lexical stress in English. In addition, the similarities between results in the phonemic and prosodic domains indicate that models of reading developed for the former could be extended to the latter area.