IMPACT OF JOINT ATTENTION ON SOCIAL‐COMMUNICATION SKILLS IN INTERNATIONALLY ADOPTED CHILDREN

Internationally adopted (IA) children have often experienced early adversity and are at risk for long‐term deficiencies in multiple developmental domains. This study examined the association between IA children's joint attention (JA) soon after arrival and later cognitive, communicative, and socioemotional competency 6 months’ postadoption. We expected a child's initial JA would positively predict later cognitive, communication, and social ability. IA children (n = 63) adopted from Eastern Europe were seen soon after their arrival into the United States to assess their JA. Their socioemotional competency, social communication, and cognitive abilities were measured at a follow‐up session 6 months’ postadoption. We found that higher order JA was positively associated with measures of social relatedness. Furthermore, individual hierarchical regressions of each measure of JA (higher order JA, initiating JA, responding to JA, and initiating behavior requests [BR]) considered with age‐at‐adoption showed that each measure was an independent and positive predictor of Mullen outcomes in the receptive and expressive language domains. These results suggest that JA may be a sensitive predictor of subsequent functioning in the social, communicative, and cognitive domains. Thus, assessing JA soon after arrival has the potential to identify at‐risk IA children, and interventions targeting JA may support those children in overcoming the negative impacts of early adversity.     

MOTHER–CHILD AND FATHER–CHILD PLAY INTERACTION: THE IMPORTANCE OF PARENTAL PLAYFULNESS AS A MODERATOR OF THE LINKS BETWEEN PARENTAL BEHAVIOR AND CHILD NEGATIVITY

Based on the premise that father–child play is an important context for children's development and that fathers “specialize” in play, similarities and differences in the role of playfulness in the father–child and mother–child relationship were examined. Participants in this study included 111 families (children's age: 1–3 years). Father–child and mother–child play interactions were videotaped and coded for parental playfulness, sensitivity, structuring, and nonintrusiveness as well as child negativity. Results indicated that mothers and fathers did not differ in playfulness and that mothers and fathers who were higher in playfulness had children with lower levels of negativity. However, playfulness differently moderated the links between parents’ and children's behaviors for mothers and fathers. A double‐risk pattern was found for mothers, such that the links between child negativity and maternal sensitivity, structuring, and nonintrusiveness were significant only for the subgroup of mothers with low levels of playfulness. When mothers had high levels of playfulness, these effects were negligible. For fathers, a double‐buffer pattern was revealed, indicating that the links between child negativity and paternal sensitivity and structuring were significant only for fathers with high levels of playfulness. When fathers had low levels of playfulness, these effects were negligible. These findings demonstrate the important role that parental playfulness has on parent–child interaction as well as the need to examine moderation patterns separately for fathers and mothers.     

Support for Self‐Censorship Among Israelis as a Barrier to Resolving the Israeli‐Palestinian Conflict

Self‐censorship, defined as an “act of intentionally and voluntarily withholding information from others in the absence of formal obstacles” often serves as a barrier to resolving intractable conflicts. Specifically, in order to protect the group, and in absence of objective constraints such as institutionalized censorship, individuals practice self‐censorship and support its practice by other society members. This prevents free flow and transparency of information, within a society, regarding the conflict and the adversary. In an attempt to investigate the factors that contribute to the functioning of self‐censorship as a sociopsychological barrier to conflict resolution, a longitudinal study was conducted among a large sample of Jews in Israel. The survey was administered in three waves: a few months before, during, and a few months after Israel's Operation Pillar of Defense in the Gaza Strip. The findings showed that armed confrontation can increase support for self‐censorship. In addition, the findings revealed that personal characteristics (e.g., authoritarianism, ethnocentrism, siege mentality) predicted support for self‐censorship, which, in turn, mediated the effect of personal characteristics on support for negotiations and for providing humanitarian aid. The theoretical as well as the applied implications of the findings are discussed.     

THE WORLDWIDE BURDEN OF INFANT MENTAL AND EMOTIONAL DISORDER: REPORT OF THE TASK FORCE OF THE WORLD ASSOCIATION FOR INFANT MENTAL HEALTH

Children worldwide experience mental and emotional disorders. Mental disorders occurring among young children, especially infants (birth –3 years), often go unrecognized. Prevalence rates are difficult to determine because of lack of awareness and difficulty assessing and diagnosing young children. Existing data, however, suggest that rates of disorders in young children are comparable to those of older children and adolescents (von Klitzing, Dohnert, Kroll, & Grube, 2015 ). The lack of widespread recognition of disorders of infancy is particularly concerning due to the unique positioning of infancy as foundational in the developmental process. Both the brain and behavior are in vulnerable states of development across the first 3 years of life, with potential for enduring deviations to occur in response to early trauma and deprivation. Intervention approaches for young children require sensitivity to their developmental needs within their families. The primacy of infancy as a time of unique foundational risks for disorder, the impact of trauma and violence on young children's development, the impact of family disruption on children's attachment, and existing literature on prevalence rates of early disorders are discussed. Finally, global priorities for addressing these disorders of infancy are highlighted to support prevention and intervention actions that may alleviate suffering among our youngest world citizens.     

Black Mountain College: A Creative Art Space Where It Was Safe to Fail

Black Mountain College is remembered as an artistic utopian alternative to institutional learning. Its faculty and students included some of the most important creative thinkers of the 20th century. Its foundation was built on the philosophy of “learning by doing.” But what made Black Mountain such a dynamic educational environment? Today, the financial burden of higher education places a lasting strain on students that inhibits creative growth. Does the educational structure of the college system impede our learning? Black Mountain was a legendary educational experiment, which offers a model for contemporary art education.     

Contrastive Constraints Guide Explanation‐Based Category Learning

This paper provides evidence for a contrastive account of explanation that is motivated by pragmatic theories that recognize the contribution that context makes to the interpretation of a prompt for explanation. This study replicates the primary findings of previous work in explanation‐based category learning (Williams & Lombrozo, 2010), extending that work by illustrating the critical role of the context in this type of learning. Participants interacted with items from two categories either by describing the items or explaining their category membership. We manipulated the feature overlap between the categories and examined both the explanations generated and acquired knowledge of the categories. Explanations for membership in a given category were influenced by the unprompted contrast category, indicating an important role for contrastive processing in the generation of explanations. The influence of the contrast category was similarly seen in the transfer performance of the participants.     

Motor Imagery Shapes Abstract Concepts

The concepts of “good” and “bad” are associated with right and left space. Individuals tend to associate good things with the side of their dominant hand, where they experience greater motor fluency, and bad things with their nondominant side. This mapping has been shown to be flexible: Changing the relative fluency of the hands, or even observing a change in someone else's motor fluency, results in a reversal of the conceptual mapping, such that good things become associated with the side of the nondominant hand. Yet, based on prior studies, it is unclear whether space–valence associations were determined by the experience of fluent versus disfluent actions, or by the mere expectation of fluency. Here, we tested the role of expected fluency by removing motor execution and perceptual feedback altogether. Participants were asked to imagine themselves performing a psychomotor task with one of their hands impaired, after which their implicit space–valence mapping was measured. After imagining that their right hand was impaired, right‐handed participants showed the “good is left” association typical of left‐handers. Motor imagery can change people's implicit associations between space and emotional valence. Although asymmetric motor experience may be necessary to establish body‐specific associations between space and valence initially, neither motoric nor perceptual experience is needed to change these associations subsequently. The mere expectation of fluent versus disfluenct actions can drive fluency‐based effects on people's implicit spatialization of “good” and “bad.” These results suggest a reconsideration of the mechanisms and boundary conditions of fluency effects.     

The Impact of Life Transition on Emerging Adult Attachment,Social Support,and Well‐Being: A Multiple‐Group Comparison

Life transitions can induce distress for emerging adults. This study compared a model of the attachment, social support, and well‐being of emerging adults in transition with a model of those not in transition (N = 378). The transition sample reported less life satisfaction and environmental mastery and higher attachment avoidance than the nontransition sample. The transition sample showed weaker mediating effects of social support, suggesting that attachment accounted for additional unique variance for this group. Counseling implications are provided.     

NAMING THE HUMAN ANIMAL: GENESIS 1–3 AND OTHER ANIMALS IN HUMAN BECOMING

Recently the paleoanthropologist Pat Shipman has proposed what she calls the animal connection as the human trait that connects all other traits. Theologians and biblical scholars have proposed many relational, functional, and ontological interpretations of the image of God in humans and human nature, but have generally not included a connection with animals. Genesis 1–3, however, weaves human and animal creation in a variety of ways, and Adam's naming of other species implies they are understood as family or kin. Thus Genesis 1–3 understands a relationship with other animals as integral to human becoming and uses family or kinship as a root metaphor for human–animal relations.     

CAUSATION,DISPOSITIONS, AND PHYSICAL OCCASIONALISM

Even though theistic philosophers and scientists agree that God created, sustains, and providentially governs the physical universe and even though much has been published in general regarding divine action, what is needed is a fine‐grained, conceptually coherent account of divine action, causation, dispositions, and laws of nature consistent with divine aseity, satisfying the widely recognized adequacy conditions for any account of dispositions.¹ Such an account would be a basic part of a more comprehensive theory of divine action in relation to the fundamental concepts of science and of mathematics. Our aim in this article is simply to present such a theory.