Transdisciplinary Conversations in Child and Youth Care

Beginning from the proposition that doing transdisciplinary child and youth care (CYC) entails an ethic of risk and vulnerability, four graduate students from differing social, spiritual, bodied, and academic locations trace how our research and professional projects encounter, challenge, support, and disrupt one another. Thinking through two concepts critical to the field of CYC in Canada (politics and care), we aim to (a) make visible the possibilities, tensions, and incommensurabilities that emerge when we collectively risk generous, rigorous dialogue between distinct research projects, practice orientations, and lived ontological and epistemological loyalties; and (b) imagine the practices required to enact, and the creative collaborations that might emerge through, transdisciplinary conversations in child and youth care.     

VAISHNAVISM,ANTIEVOLUTIONISM, AND AMBIGUITIES: REVISITING ISKCON'S DARWIN‐SKEPTICISM

The International Society of Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), commonly known as the Hare Krishna Movement, has disseminated a flurry of antievolutionist media since its inception in 1966. Such communications frequently co‐opt arguments employed by Christian creationists and Intelligent Design theorists. At the same time, however, there are indications that a scattering of ISKCON publications have articulated relatively ambiguous, less oppositional statements about evolutionary theory. This article reconsiders ISKCON's Darwin‐skepticism by appraising recent, largely unexamined Hare Krishna publications, as well as responses to evolutionary theory expressed by ISKCON's founder, A. C. Bhaktivedanta, and his immediate Vaishnava forerunners. The analysis reveals that, although the majority of contemporary ISKCON materials are vehemently opposed to evolution, some leading voices demonstrate less combative, cautiously accommodating stances. These cases are suggestive of complexities in ISKCON's responses to evolution, both past and present, which are not necessarily encapsulated in the terms Vedic creationism or antievolutionism.     

Associations between childhood biomedical factors,maternal smoking,personality traits,Body and Mass Index and the prevalence of asthma in adulthood

Objective: The study set out to investigate socio-economic, biomedical, health and behavioural and psychological factors in childhood and adulthood associated with the prevalence of asthma in adulthood, drawing data from The National Child Development Studies (NCDS), a birth cohort in the UK.

Design: The National Child Development Study, a nationally representative sample of 17,415 babies born in Great Britain in 1958 and followed up at 7, 11, 33 and 50 years was used.

Main Outcome Measure: The prevalence of asthma at age 50 was the outcome measure. The analytic sample consists of 5118 participants with complete data on a set of measures at birth, at ages 7, 11, 33 and 50 years.

Results: Using logistic regression analyses, results showed that childhood asthma (OR = 6.77: 4.38–10.48, p < .001) and respiratory symptoms (OR = 1.83: 1.18–2.86, p < .01), maternal smoking during pregnancy (OR = 1.26: 1.00–1.59, p < .05), Body and Mass Index (BMI) (OR = 1.03: 1.02–1.05, p < .001), traits Neuroticism (OR = 1.13: 1.01–1.21, p < .05) and Conscientiousness (OR = 0.76: 0.76–0.96, p < .01), as well as sex (OR = 1.49: 1.15–1.94, p < .001) were all significantly associated with the prevalence of asthma in adulthood.

Conclusion: The study shows that both childhood and adulthood psychological and sociological factors are significantly associated with the prevalence of asthma in adulthood, though more work need to be done in this area.     

Effects of exposure to alcohol‐related cues on racial discrimination

Prior research has shown that exposure to alcohol‐related images exacerbates expression of implicit racial biases, and that brief exposure to alcohol‐related words increases aggressive responses. However, the potential for alcohol cue exposure to elicit differential aggression against a Black (outgroup) relative to a White (ingroup) target—that is, racial discrimination—has never been investigated. Here, we found that White participants (N = 92) exposed to alcohol‐related words made harsher judgments of a Black experimenter who had frustrated them than participants who were exposed to nonalcohol words. These findings suggest that exposure to alcohol cues increases discriminatory behaviors toward Blacks.     

Category-length and category-strength effects using images of scenes

Global matching models have provided an important theoretical framework for recognition memory. Key predictions of this class of models are that (1) increasing the number of occurrences in a study list of some items affects the performance on other items (list-strength effect) and that (2) adding new items results in a deterioration of performance on the other items (list-length effect). Experimental confirmation of these predictions has been difficult, and the results have been inconsistent. A review of the existing literature, however, suggests that robust length and strength effects do occur when sufficiently similar hard-to-label items are used. In an effort to investigate this further, we had participants study lists containing one or more members of visual scene categories (bathrooms, beaches, etc.). Experiments 1 and 2 replicated and extended previous findings showing that the study of additional category members decreased accuracy, providing confirmation of the category-length effect. Experiment 3 showed that repeating some category members decreased the accuracy of nonrepeated members, providing evidence for a category-strength effect. Experiment 4 eliminated a potential challenge to these results. Taken together, these findings provide robust support for global matching models of recognition memory. The overall list lengths, the category sizes, and the number of repetitions used demonstrated that scene categories are well-suited to testing the fundamental assumptions of global matching models. These include (A) interference from memories for similar items and contexts, (B) nondestructive interference, and (C) that conjunctive information is made available through a matching operation.     

Integrating Covariates into Social Relations Models: A Plausible Values Approach for Handling Measurement Error in Perceiver and Target Effects

The Social Relations Model (SRM) is a conceptual and analytical approach to examining dyadic behaviors and interpersonal perceptions within groups. In an SRM, the perceiver effect describes a person's tendency to perceive other group members in a certain way, whereas the target effect measures the tendency to be perceived by others in certain ways. In SRM research, it is often of interest to relate these individual SRM effects to covariates. However, the estimated individual SRM effects might not provide a very reliable measure of the true, unobserved SRM effects, resulting in distorted estimates of associations with other variables. This article introduces a plausible values approach that allows users to correct for measurement error when assessing the association of individual SRM effects with other individual difference variables. In the plausible values approach, the latent, true individual SRM effects are treated as missing values and are imputed from an imputation model by applying Bayesian estimation techniques. In a simulation study, the statistical properties of the plausible values approach are compared with two approaches that have been used in previous research. A data example from educational psychology is presented to illustrate how the plausible values approach can be implemented with the software WinBUGS.     

Upward Grounding

Realists about universals face a question about grounding. Are things how they are because they instantiate the universals they do? Or do they instantiate those universals because they are how they are? Take Ebenezer Scrooge. You can say that (i) Scrooge is greedy because he instantiates greediness, or you can say that (ii) Scrooge instantiates greediness because he is greedy. I argue that there is reason to prefer the latter to the former. I develop two arguments for the view. I also respond to some concerns one might have about the view defended. I close by showing that analogous views regarding the truth of propositions (that if the proposition that p is true, then it is true because p) and the existence of facts (that if the fact that p exists, then it exists because p) are supported by analogs of one of these arguments.     

The Role of Character Strengths and Importance of Family on Mexican American College Students' Career Decision Self‐Efficacy

This study examined how character strengths and the importance of family influenced Mexican American college students' (N = 129) career decision self‐efficacy. Findings from a multiple regression analysis indicated that psychological grit and curiosity were significant predictors of career decision self‐efficacy. The authors discuss the importance of these findings and provide recommendations for future research.