Infants' Grasp of Others' Intentions

ABSTRACT— The perception of others as intentional agents is fundamental to human experience and foundational to development. Recent research reveals that this cornerstone of social perception has its roots early in infancy, and that it is influenced by the universal, early-emerging human experience of engaging in goal-directed action. Infants' own action capabilities correlate with their emerging tendency to view others' actions as organized by goals. Moreover, interventions that facilitate new goal-directed actions alter infants' perception of those same actions in others. These effects seem to depend on the first-person aspects of infants' experience. These findings open new questions about how doing leads to knowing in the social domain.     

Intimate partner violence against African American women: An examination of the socio-cultural context

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a significant public health concern that affects an alarmingly high percentage of women. There is evidence to suggest that African American women are impacted by IPV at higher rates than are Caucasian women, yet little of the IPV literature addresses the cultural and structural factors that differentially affect African American and Caucasian couples. The present paper reviews the existing literature on IPV towards African American women, including prevalence, theories, risk factors for victimization, victims' psychological sequelae, barriers to service utilization, coping strategies, and interventions for survivors and perpetrators of IPV. Recommendations for counseling, research, and policy are explored.     

Maximizing the coefficient of generalizability in multi-facet decision studies

For random-model, fully-crossed, two- and three-facet experimental designs the following two problems were considered. First, equations were developed for determining the optimal number of conditions of a facet for maximizing the coefficient of generalizability under the constraint that the total number of observations per subject is constant. Second, the problem of determining the minimum number of observations per subject for a specified generalizability coefficient is solved for the two-facet crossed design.     

Loneliness among adolescent college students at a midwestern university

The extent of loneliness of late adolescents in a midwestern university was studied in relation to selected variables and in comparison to other groups. It was found that women were lonelier than men, and that there was a relationship between loneliness and ease of making friends and loneliness and happiness during the past year. A difference also was found in loneliness scores among those with self-perceptions of loneliness. These adolescents were the sixth most lonely group out of thirteen previously studied groups.     

Application of optimal sign-vectors to reliability and cluster analysis

Expressions involving optimal sign vectors are derived so as to yield two new applications. First, coefficient alpha for the sign-weighted composite is maximized in analogy to Lord's scale-independent solution with differential weights. Second, optimal sign vectors are used to define two groups of objects that are maximally distinct in terms of a function of the squared euclidean distances between groups. An efficient computing algorithm is described along with several examples.This research was supported in part by a research grant (DA 01070) from the U. S. Public Health Service.     

Inequalities among lower bounds to reliability: With applications to test construction and factor analysis

A chain of lower-bound inequalities leading to the greatest lower bound to reliability is established for the internal consistency of a composite of unit-weighted components. The chain includes the maximum split-half coefficient, the lowest coefficient consistent with nonimaginary common factors, and the lowest coefficient consistent with nonimaginary common and unique factors. Optimization theory is utilized to determine the conditions that are requisite for the inequalities. Convergence proofs demonstrate that the coefficients can be attained. Rapid algorithms obtain estimates of the coefficients with sample data. The theory yields methods for splitting items into maximally similar sets and for exploratory factor analysis based on a theoretical solution to the communality problem.     

Pulling out the intentional structure of action: the relation between action processing and action production in infancy

Adults and children readily construct action representations organized with respect to an ultimate goal. These representations allow one to predict the consequences of action, interpret and describe actions, and categorize action sequences. In this paper, we explore the ontogeny of hierarchically organized action representations, and its relation to infants' ability to produce similar sequences. To do so, we examine infants' perception and performance of a means-end sequence: pulling a cloth to retrieve a toy. Using a visual habituation paradigm, we demonstrate that 12-month-old infants understand that the initial step of the cloth-pulling sequence is directed toward the ultimate goal of attaining the toy, and use their knowledge of the causal constraints of the sequence to make this goal attribution. Ten-month-olds, however, appear transitional with respect to this understanding: their ability to identify the goal of the cloth-pulling sequence is related to their own ability to planfully solve a similar sequence. These findings are consistent with a burgeoning body of literature suggesting an intimate link between action production and perception, and suggest that this link is in place by at least 10 months of age.