The Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management Programme in Kindergartens: Effects of a Universal Preventive Effort

The purpose of this study was to identify preventive effects of the Incredible Years (IY) teacher classroom management (TCM) programme, which is employed in Norwegian kindergartens for 3-year-old to 6-year-old children. IY TCM is a universal preventive intervention intended to reduce the frequency of inappropriate types of behaviour and support children’s social- and emotional competence in kindergartens and schools. IY TCM was implemented in 46 kindergartens and compared to 46 matched kindergartens that did not receive the intervention. A total of 1049 children took part in the trial, 511 from the IY TCM group and 538 from the comparison group. Children’s behaviours were measured using well-validated instruments at the beginning and end of a school-year cycle, approximately 9 months later. Findings showed promising reductions in aggression, internalising and attention problems, and increases in social competence in the IY TCM kindergartens. In a sub-sample comprising children who scored equal to or above the 90th percentile on aggressive behaviour before the intervention, promising developments were found in social competence among the children in IY TCM kindergartens. The IY TCM lead to promising preventive effects in young children’s aggressive behaviours, internalisation, attention problems, and social competence in kindergartens in Norway. However, even if the changes were statistically significant, effect sizes were small. For children with severe behaviour problems, few positive results were found.     

Mindfulness meditation is associated with decreases in partner negative affect in daily life

To date, very little research has examined the extrapersonal effects of mindfulness meditation practice. In this study, we investigated whether individual meditation practice exerted an influence on friends or romantic partners. Thirty-five dyads completed an 8-week single-subject protocol using an A-B-A-B design to compare non-meditation phases with meditation phases. One member of each pair was randomly assigned to meditate daily for 15 min during the B-phases of the study; the other dyad member did not meditate in either the A or B phases. Daily diaries for each participant assessed negative affect, positive affect, and facets of mindfulness. For participants in the intermittent meditation condition, meditation was associated with decreased negative affect, increased positive affect, and higher scores on the mindfulness facets of observing, describing, and nonreactivity to inner experience. Results further demonstrated that the negative affect of non-meditating partners decreased during the weeks that their partner meditated and was lower on days that their partner meditated. We did not find similar results for positive affect or mindfulness at the group level. Exploratory analyses suggested that the extrapersonal effects of meditation days on a partner's negative affect might be stronger in romantic couples. This study indicates that 15 min of daily meditation in novice meditators can decrease the negative affect of relationship partners.     

Gendered Appearances among Young Children and in the Media: An East-West Cultural Comparison

Sex Roles - Many young children often exhibit a strong desire to wear extremely gender-typed clothing (appearance rigidity), reflecting their emerging gender identities. However, research on...     

Factors influencing failure on stressful army training courses

A set of ability tests from the Kit of Factor Referenced Cognitive Tests (Ekstrom, French and Harman, 1976, 1979), the EPQ, a Type A scale and a measure of Obsessionality were administered to 135 non-commissioned officers in the British Army at the beginning of an arduous ten-week training course in the Brecon Beacons. It was found that the 25 men (19%) who were unable to complete the training course did not differ from the others in any of the abilities measured, but were significantly more neurotic, and tended to be more extraverted, impatient and emotionally unrepressed. Personality factors are thus seen to contribute more to success or failure on such courses than simple cognitive abilities.     

Ethics, pandemics, and the duty to treat

Numerous grounds have been offered for the view that healthcare workers have a duty to treat, including expressed consent, implied consent, special training, reciprocity (also called the social contract view), and professional oaths and codes. Quite often, however, these grounds are simply asserted without being adequately defended or without the defenses being critically evaluated. This essay aims to help remedy that problem by providing a critical examination of the strengths and weaknesses of each of these five grounds for asserting that healthcare workers have a duty to treat, especially as that duty would arise in the context of an infectious disease pandemic. Ultimately, it argues that none of the defenses is currently sufficient to ground the kind of duty that would be needed in a pandemic. It concludes by sketching some practical recommendations in that regard.     

Moral Individualism,Moral Relationalism,and Obligations to Non‐human Animals

Moral individualists like Jeff McMahan and Peter Singer argue that our moral obligations to animals, both human and non‐human, are grounded in the morally salient capacities of those animals. By contrast, what might be called moral relationalists argue that our obligations to non‐human animals are grounded in our relationship to them. Moral relationalists are of various kinds, from relationalists regarding assistance to animals, such as Clare Palmer and Elizabeth Anderson, to relationalists grounded in a Wittgensteinian view of human practice, such as Cora Diamond and Alice Crary. This article argues that there are, in fact, two distinct types of moral reasons, those based on salient capacities and those based on relationships. Neither type of reason is reducible to the other, and there is no third type to which to reduce them both. Any attempt at reduction would run counter to deep intuitions about our moral relation to non‐human animals as well as to other humans. Among the implications of this is that certain kinds of arguments, such as the argument from marginal cases, seem to be incomplete precisely because they do not capture the complexity of our moral relations to non‐human animals.     

Insensitivity of visual short-term memory to irrelevant visual information

Several authors have hypothesized that visuo-spatial working memory is functionally analogous to verbal working memory. Irrelevant background speech impairs verbal short-term memory. We investigated whether irrelevant visual information has an analogous effect on visual short-term memory, using a dynamic visual noise (DVN) technique known to disrupt visual imagery (Quinn & McConnell, 1996b). Experiment 1 replicated the effect of DVN on pegword imagery. Experiments 2 and 3 showed no effect of DVN on recall of static matrix patterns, despite a significant effect of a concurrent spatial tapping task. Experiment 4 showed no effect of DVN on encoding or maintenance of arrays of matrix patterns, despite testing memory by a recognition procedure to encourage visual rather than spatial processing. Serial position curves showed a one-item recency effect typical of visual short-term memory. Experiment 5 showed no effect of DVN on short-term recognition of Chinese characters, despite effects of visual similarity and a concurrent colour memory task that confirmed visual processing of the characters. We conclude that irrelevant visual noise does not impair visual short-term memory. Visual working memory may not be functionally analogous to verbal working memory, and different cognitive processes may underlie visual short-term memory and visual imagery.     

The FLOSS alternative: TRIPs, non-proprietary software and development

In this article I examine the relationship between the global governance of intellectual property rights and the deployment of FLOSS in both the public and private sectors of developing economies. I suggest that the support for non-proprietary software (collectively FLOSS) allows developing countries to comply with their multi-lateral commitments and support the potential development of local software development. Because of the General Public License’s dependence on copyright law, the deployment of FLOSS allows compliance with the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) agreement, while at the same time facilitating the development of a local software ‘community’. Linux has propelled the development of computer science and engineering in the poorer nations. Linux is the only way most developing nations have to legally access modern and sophisticated software tools, compilers, and programming environments (Bokhari and Rehman, 1999, p. 63). He is the co-editor of the IPE Yearbook series, and has published widely on intellectual property rights, and the information society. His publications include Intellectual Property Rights: A Critical History (co-authored with Susan Sell) (Lynne Rienner 2005) and The Information Society: A Sceptical View (Polity Press 2002).