Exploring noun bias in Filipino-English bilingual children

Researchers have suggested that there is a noun bias in children's early vocabularies brought about by features of adults' child-directed utterances, which may vary across languages (E. V. Bates et al., 1994; D. Gentner, 1982). In the present study, the authors explored noun bias in 60 Filipino-English bilingual children whose 2 languages differed in how they emphasized nouns and verbs in typical syntactic forms. The results revealed a noun bias, but only in the bilingual children's English vocabulary. The noun bias in English was associated with the frequency of nouns in the caregivers' utterances and the proportion of nouns in the initial positions of the caregivers' utterances. The authors also found different associations between salient positions in the adult utterances and children's vocabularies in English and Filipino.     

Acculturative Distress Among Hispanics: The Role of Acculturation,Coping, and Intercultural Competence

Among 96 Hispanic adults, mostly recent immigrants responding in Spanish, intercultural competence contributed to variance in acculturative distress beyond that already accounted for by general coping, acculturation, and sociodemographic variables. Intercultural competence best predicted acculturative distress. Findings suggest that Hispanics with a low sense of intercultural and intracultural proficiency may experience increased stress. Entre 96 adultos hispanos, inmigrantes en su mayor parte recientes que responden en el español, la capacidad intercultural contribuida a la variación de asimilación penosa más allá que ha sido justificada por el enfrentamiento general, asimilación, y los variables sociodemograficos. La capacidad intercultural que mejor predijo la penosa asimilación. Los hallazgos sugieren que los hispanos con un sentido bajo de nivel de competencia intercultural y intracultural pueden sufrir de un nivel alto de estrés.     

The chicken clucks defiant: Revisiting male prostitution

David Henry Sterry’s memoir, Chicken, recounts a year in the early 1970s when the author worked as a teenage prostitute in southern California. In recreating Sterry’s encounters with his manager/pimp, other young sex workers, and a primarily female clientele, the book offers a perspective that is unique among the larger genre created by the “sex worker literati.” By broadening our understanding of male prostitution in particular, and sex workers and commercial sex consumers more generally, Sterry’s memoir is important to social scientists and sex researchers as well as to devotees of pop culture.     

Logical constructivism,modal logic,and metaphysics: a reply to Professor Pruss' ``Professor Lucas' second epistemic way'

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -     

Perceptions of early relationships during the transition to motherhood: The mediating role of social support

Perceptions of the availability of social support were assumed to mediate the association between the future mother's perceptions of early relationships and positive postpartum outcomes. We explored the idea that pregnant women's perceptions of early caretaking relationships as optimal associate with the perceived availability of, and satisfaction with, social support, which in turn, were assumed to affect postpartum depressive symptomatology, the APGAR (i.e., rates of Appearance [color]; Pulse [heartbeat]; Grimace [reflex]; Activity [muscle tone]; and Respiration [breathing], Nelson, 1987) scores of the newborn, and the mother's perceptions of the infant. Using a longitudinal design, we enrolled 120 first‐time pregnant participants, who were assessed during the third trimester of pregnancy and eight weeks postpartum. Newborns were assessed immediately after birth. Findings confirmed the expected model, controlling for levels of depressive symptomatology during pregnancy. This model is discussed in the context of system and transactional models of mother–infant interactions. ©2002 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.     

Justifying Outcomes Versus Processes: Distributive and Procedural Justice Beliefs as Predictors of Positive and Negative Affectivity

System justifying beliefs can have adaptive consequences for individuals that include enhanced coping and decreased emotional distress. The present study examined whether individual differences in two kinds of system justifying beliefs uniquely predict dispositional affect. Participants from across the United States were recruited via internet to complete dispositional measures of procedural and distributive justice beliefs, and also brief measures of positive and negative affectivity. While belief in fair outcomes (distributive just world beliefs) was generally associated with greater positive affectivity, belief in fair processes (procedural just world beliefs) was modestly associated with decreased negative affectivity. In addition, positive and negative affectivity were predicted by interactions between procedural and distributive just world beliefs, with each accentuating the general emotional benefit provided by the other. Finally, an interactive effect of procedural just world beliefs and social class was obtained for positive affectivity, with greater positive affectivity occurring for disadvantaged (lower income) individuals who had strong procedural just world beliefs. In general, these results suggest the potential for unique and interactive relationships between particular system justifying beliefs and measures of emotion, especially among members of advantaged versus disadvantaged groups.     

Do Visually Salient Stimuli Reduce Children’s Risky Decisions?

Children tend to overestimate their physical abilities, and that tendency is related to risk for unintentional injury. This study tested whether or not children estimate their physical ability differently when exposed to stimuli that were highly visually salient due to fluorescent coloring. Sixty-nine 6-year-olds judged physical ability to complete laboratory-based physical tasks. Half judged ability using tasks that were painted black; the other half judged the same tasks, but the stimuli were striped black and fluorescent lime-green. Results suggest the two groups judged similarly, but children took longer to judge perceptually ambiguous tasks when those tasks were visually salient. In other words, visual salience increased decision-making time but not accuracy of judgment. These findings held true after controlling for demographic and temperament characteristics.     

Similar Processes Despite Divergent Behavior in Two Commonly Used Measures of Risky Decision Making

Performance on complex decision-making tasks may depend on a multitude of processes. Two such tasks, the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and Balloon Analog Risk Task (BART), are of particular interest because they are associated with real world risky behavior, including illegal drug use. We used cognitive models to disentangle underlying processes in both tasks. Whereas behavioral measures from the IGT and BART were uncorrelated, cognitive models revealed two reliable cross-task associations. Results suggest that the tasks similarly measure loss aversion and decision-consistency processes, but not necessarily the same learning process. Additionally, substance-using individuals (and especially stimulant users) performed worse on the IGT than healthy controls did, and this pattern could be explained by reduced decision consistency.     

Distributive Justice for Others,Collective Angst,and Support for Exclusion of Immigrants

Harsh treatment of others can reflect an underlying motivation to view the world as fair and just and also a dispositional tendency to believe in justice. However, there is a critical need to refine and expand existing knowledge, not only to identify underlying psychological processes but also to better understand how justice may be implicated in support for exclusionary policies. Across two studies, we show that support for policies that restrict immigrants is exclusively associated with thoughts about fair outcomes for other people (distributive justice for others). In Study 1, Americans' dispositional tendency to believe in distributive justice for others was associated with greater support for a policy proposing to further restrict immigrant job seekers' capacity to gain employment in the United States. In Study 2, we experimentally primed thoughts about justice in a sample of U.S. police officers. Support for a policy that mandated stricter policing of illegal immigration was strongest among officers who first thought about fair outcomes for other people, relative to other unique justice primes. Across both studies, distributive justice for others was associated with greater collective angst—perceived threat towards the future existence of Americans. Moreover, collective angst mediated the link between distributive justice for others and support for restrictive policies. Overall, this research suggests that thoughts about distributive justice for others can especially diminish compassion towards immigrants and other underprivileged groups via support for exclusionary policies. In addition, merely thinking about distributive justice for others may be sufficient to amplify social callousness.     

Effects of serotonin-mimetic drugs on mouse-killing behavior

Muricidal behavior induced in rats by social isolation or by olfactory bulb ablation was blocked following IP administration of serotonin (5–HT) agonist 8-OH-DPAT and 5-MeODM and by 5-HT uptake inhibitors, fluoxetine and indalpine. Among uptake inhibitors, although fluoxetine has a higher IC₅₀ and a higher Ki, it is apparently more efficient than indalpine. The 5-HT agonist, 8-OH-DPAT, acting at a putative 5-HT_1A receptor, appears more efficient on muricidal inhibition than 5-MeODM, at a much lower dosage. It is highly probable that 5-HT_1A receptor rather than 5-HT_1B is involved in the antimuricidal effect of serotonin-mimetic drugs. Since 5-HT mimetic drugs blocked mouse-killing behavior of bulbectomized rats, we suggest that in the sequence of events in muricidal inhibition 5-HT circuits participate after gabaergic modulation from olfactory bulbs.