LITERATURE, KNOWLEDGE, AND THE AESTHETIC ATTITUDE

An attitude which hopes to derive aesthetic pleasure from an object is often thought to be in tension with an attitude which hopes to derive knowledge from it. The current article argues that this alleged conflict only makes sense when the aesthetic attitude and knowledge are construed unnaturally narrowly, and that when both are correctly understood there is no tension between them. To do this, the article first proposes a broad and satisfying account of the aesthetic attitude, and then considers and rejects twelve reasons for thinking that deriving knowledge from something is incompatible with maintaining an aesthetic attitude towards it. Two main conclusions are drawn. 1) That the representational arts are often in a good position to communicate non-propositional knowledge about human beings. 2) That while our desire to obtain pleasure from a work's manifest properties, and our desire to obtain knowledge from it, are not the same motive, the formal similarities between them are sufficiently impressive to warrant both being seen as elements of the aesthetic attitude.     

Early gesture selectively predicts later language learning

The gestures children produce predict the early stages of spoken language development. Here we ask whether gesture is a global predictor of language learning, or whether particular gestures predict particular language outcomes. We observed 52 children interacting with their caregivers at home, and found that gesture use at 18 months selectively predicted lexical versus syntactic skills at 42 months, even with early child speech controlled. Specifically, number of different meanings conveyed in gesture at 18 months predicted vocabulary at 42 months, but number of gesture+speech combinations did not. In contrast, number of gesture+speech combinations, particularly those conveying sentence‐like ideas, produced at 18 months predicted sentence complexity at 42 months, but meanings conveyed in gesture did not. We can thus predict particular milestones in vocabulary and sentence complexity at age by watching how children move their hands two years earlier.     

Mothers,fathers, and the crisis of newborn intensive care

At hospital discharge of their infant from a newborn intensive care unit, 50 mothers and fathers were interviewed and completed questionnaires. There were significant within-couple correlations for appraisals of the harm that ensued from this crisis, perceptions of personal control over the infant's recovery, and expectations about the infant's future health and development. Mothers perceived more personal control, mobilized more social support, and used more escapist coping strategies than did fathers. Mothers and fathers exhibited different patterns of relations between their own coping strategies and emotional well-being. But, neither the coping strategies used by one's spouse nor differences between spouses in the use of individual coping strategies correlated with emotional well-being. Analysis of parents' perceived differences between their own and their partner's coping strategies suggested the possibility of mutually helpful, complementary strategies of coping with this problem.     

Familial influences on television viewing and aggression: A sibling study

Familial influences on aggressive behavior and TV viewing were investigated in a survey of adolescent siblings. Same-sex siblings resembled one another in aggression (brothers, r = 0.59; sisters, r = 0.52) and in their exposure to violent TV programs; opposite-sex siblings were dissimilar. Within individuals, the frequency of watching crime and action programs correlated nonsignificantly with aggression. Two other variables, however, were associated with aggression: identification with aggression and aggression consequences. These relationships also held up between families (BF, covariance of sibling' averages) and within families (WF, covariance of sibling' differences). The latter WF relationship indicated that one sibling was typically the more extreme on both aggression and its correlate than a brother or sister. These results were interpreted in light of behavioral genetic data that suggest substantial genetic influences, few common environmental influences, and large within-family environmental influences on personality development.     

The influence of sex and empathy on putting oneself in the shoes of others

We tested whether putting oneself in the shoes of others is easier for women, possibly as a function of individuals' empathy levels, and whether any sex difference might be modulated by the sex of presented figures. Participants (N=100, 50 women) imagined (a) being in the spatial position of front‐facing and back‐facing female and male figures (third person perspective (3PP) task) and (b) that the figures were their own mirror reflections (first person perspective (1PP) task). After mentally taking the figure's position, individuals decided whether the indicated hand of the figure would be their own left or right hand. Contrary to our hypothesis, results from the 3PP‐task showed higher rotational costs for women than men, suggesting that mental rotation rather than social strategies had been employed. However, faster responding by women with higher empathy scores would appear to indicate that some women engaged social perspective taking strategies irrespective of the figures' position. Figures' sex was relevant to task performance as higher rotational costs were observed for male figures in the 3PP‐task for both sexes and for female figures in the 1PP‐task for women. We argue that these latter findings indicate that performance was facilitated and/or inhibited towards figures associated with specific social and emotional implications.     

Developmental pathways in oppositional defiant disorder and conduct disorder

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) specifies a developmental relationship between oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) and conduct disorder (CD). Evidence for this link is mixed, however, and recent studies suggest that different symptom dimensions in ODD may have different outcomes. The authors examined links between ODD, CD, and their young adult outcomes in the Great Smoky Mountains Study (E. J. Costello et al., 1996), a longitudinal data set with over 8,000 observations of 1,420 individuals (56% male) covering ages 9-21 years. ODD was a significant predictor of later CD in boys but not in girls after control for comorbid CD and subthreshold CD symptomatology. Transitions between ODD and CD were less common than anticipated, however, particularly during adolescence. The authors examined characteristics and outcomes of children with pure ODD, pure CD, and combined CD/ODD. Alongside many similarities in childhood and adolescent correlates, key differences were also identified: CD largely predicted behavioral outcomes, whereas ODD showed stronger prediction to emotional disorders in early adult life. Factor analysis identified irritable and headstrong dimensions in ODD symptoms that showed differential prediction to later behavioral and emotional disorders. Overall, the results underscore the utility of retaining separate ODD and CD diagnoses in DSM-V.     

ETHNIC AND RACIAL SIMILARITY IN DEVELOPMENTAL PROCESS:

Abstract— Correlation matrices were computed on academic achievement and family environment measures using longitudinal data on siblings The 8 × 8 correlation matrices were computed on Hispanics, blacks, and whites separately When compared employing a LISREL method, the matrices were equal across these ethnic-racial groups Hence, developmental processes influencing academic achievement may be similar in Hispanics, blacks, and whites A structural equation model with four free parameters was fitted successfully to a correlation matrix pooled across groups As a single structural equation model fitted all groups, the existence of minority-specific developmental processes was not supported