Organizational network perceptions versus reality: A small world after all?

Given the complexity of organizing and keeping track of even a small organizational network, boundedly rational people may have learned to use small world principles in perceiving friendship networks: arrange people in dense clusters, and connect the clusters with short paths. Analysis of 116 perceived friendship networks from four different organizations showed that these perceived networks exhibited greater small world properties than the actual friendship networks. Further, people perceived more friendship clustering than actually existed, and attributed more popularity and brokerage to the perceivedly-popular than to the actually-popular.     

Family-level impact of the CHAMP Family Program: a community collaborative effort to support urban families and reduce youth HIV risk exposure

This article presents family-level results from an ongoing study examining the impact of the CHAMP (Chicago HIV prevention and Adolescent Mental health Project) Family Program, a family-based HIV preventative intervention meant to reduce the amount of time spent in situations of sexual possibility and delay initiation of sexual activity for urban youth in the 4th and 5th grades living in neighborhoods with high rates of HIV infection. The CHAMP Family Program has been developed, delivered, and overseen by a collaborative partnership, consisting of community parents, school staff, community-based agency representatives, and university-based researchers. Design of the program was informed by input from this collaborative partnership, child developmental theory of sexual risk, and empirical data gathered from the targeted community. This article presents findings that suggest CHAMP Family Program impact on family communication, family decision-making, and family-level influences hypothesized to be related to later adolescent HIV risk. Implications for future family-based HIV prevention research are discussed here.     

Developmental changes in the processing of hierarchical shapes continue into adolescence

The present study was designed to trace the normal development of local and global processing of hierarchical visual forms. We presented pairs of hierarchical shapes to children and adults and asked them to indicate whether the two shapes were the same or different at either the global or the local level. In Experiments 1 (6-year-olds, 10-year-olds, adults) and 2 (10-year-olds, 14-year-olds, adults), we presented stimuli centrally. All age groups responded faster on global trials than local trials (global precedence effect), but the bias was stronger in children and diminished to the adult level between 10 and 14 years of age. In Experiment 3 (10-year-olds, 14-year-olds, adults), we presented stimuli in the left or right visual field so that they were transmitted first to the contralateral hemisphere. All age groups responded faster on local trials when stimuli were presented in the right visual field (left hemisphere); reaction times on global trials were independent of visual field. The results of Experiment 3 suggest that by 10 years of age the hemispheres have adult-like specialization for the processing of hierarchical shapes, at least when attention is directed to the global versus local level. Nevertheless, their greater bias in Experiments 1 and 2 suggests that 10-year-olds are less able than adults to modulate attention to the output from local versus global channels-perhaps because they are less able to ignore distractors and perhaps because the cerebral hemispheres are less able to engage in parallel processing.     

Developmental changes in face processing skills

Expertise in processing differences among faces in the spacing among facial features (second-order relations) is slower to develop than expertise in processing the shape of individual features or the shape of the external contour. To determine the impact of the slow development of sensitivity to second-order relations on various face-processing skills, we developed five computerized tasks that require matching faces on the basis of identity (with changed facial expression or head orientation), facial expression, gaze direction, and sound being spoken. In Experiment 1, we evaluated the influence of second-order relations on performance on each task by presenting them to adults (N=48) who viewed the faces either upright or inverted. Previous studies have shown that inversion has a larger effect on tasks that require processing the spacing among features than it does on tasks that can be solved by processing the shape of individual features. Adults showed an inversion effect for only one task: matching facial identity when there was a change in head orientation. In Experiment 2, we administered the same tasks to children aged 6, 8, and 10 years (N=72). Compared to adults, 6-year-olds made more errors on every task and 8-year-olds made more errors on three of the five tasks: matching direction of gaze and the two facial identity tasks. Ten-year-olds made more errors than adults on only one task: matching facial identity when there was a change in head orientation (e.g., from frontal to tilted up). Together, the results indicate that the slow development of sensitivity to second-order relations causes children to be especially poor at recognizing the identity of a face when it is seen in a new orientation.     

Developmental changes in perceptions of attractiveness: a role of experience?

In three experiments, we traced the development of the adult pattern of judgments of attractiveness for faces that have been altered to have internal features in low, average, or high positions. Twelve-year-olds and adults demonstrated identical patterns of results: they rated faces with features in an average location as significantly more attractive than faces with either low or high features. Although both 4-year-olds and 9-year-olds rated faces with high features as least attractive, unlike adults and 12-year-olds, they rated faces with low and average features as equally attractive. Three-year-olds with high levels of peer interaction, but not those with low levels of peer interaction, chose faces with low features as significantly more attractive than those with high-placed features, possibly as a result of their increased experience with the proportions of the faces of peers. Overall, the pattern of results is consistent with the hypothesis that experience influences perceptions of attractiveness, with the proportions of the faces participants see in their everyday lives influencing their perceptions of attractiveness.     

Exposure to child care,parenting style and attachment security

The present study addressed whether security of attachment is differentiated by quality of parenting and quantity of exposure to child care. Sixty mothers participated with their 14‐month‐old infants, who by the age of 12‐months had received either exclusive maternal care, or varying degrees of exposure to child care. Levels of attachment security were assessed through maternal completion of the Attachment Q‐Set(AQS); parenting quality was assessed through observations of mother–infant interactions during structured tasks. The scores that less sensitive mothers assign their toddlers is higher when their children are in child care for more hours per week; whereas the scores that more sensitive mothers assign their toddlers is lower when their children are in child care for more hours per week. These contrasting patterns suggest that the effects of parenting style on attachment security are moderated by quantity of exposure to child care. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.