Romantic relationships of young people with childhood and adolescent onset antisocial behavior problems

Using prospective longitudinal data from the Christchurch Health and Development Study, this paper examines the extent to which early onset, life course persistent and adolescent limited antisocial behavior problems place young people at risk of violent and unsatisfactory romantic relationships in early adulthood. Results revealed the presence of clear linear associations between the developmental timing of antisocial behavior and later partnership risks, with these risks including partner violence perpetration and victimization, interpartner conflict, and increased ambivalence about the relationship. Young people with childhood onset antisocial behavior problems reported higher rates of partnership difficulties than young people with adolescent limited antisocial behavior problems, while those with adolescent limited antisocial behavior reported higher levels of partnership difficulties than young people without a history of antisocial behavior problems. These associations persisted even after extensive control for a range of social, family, and individual factors that were correlated with the timing of antisocial behavior. Results highlight the importance of distinguishing between early and late onset antisocial behavior, and provide further support for existing life course models of the development of antisocial behavior problems in children and adolescents.     

Explanatory autonomy: the role of proportionality,stability, and conditional irrelevance

Synthese - This paper responds to recent criticisms of the idea that true causal claims, satisfying a minimal “interventionist” criterion for causation, can differ in the extent to...     

Relations between infants’ emerging reach‐grasp competence and event‐related desynchronization in EEG

Recent reports of similar patterns of brain electrical activity (electroencephalogram: EEG) during action execution and observation, recorded from scalp locations over motor‐related regions in infants and adults, have raised the possibility that two foundational abilities – controlling one's own intentional actions and perceiving others’ actions – may be integrally related during ontogeny. However, to our knowledge, there are no published reports of the relations between developments in motor skill (i.e. recording actual motor skill performance) and EEG during both action execution and action observation. In the present study we collected EEG from 21 9‐month‐olds who were given opportunities to reach for toys and who also observed an experimenter reach for toys. Event‐related desynchronization (ERD) was computed from the EEG during the reaching events. We assessed infants’ reaching‐grasping competence, including reach latency, errors, preshaping of the hand, and bimanual reaches, and found that desynchronization recorded in scalp electrodes over motor‐related regions during action observation was associated with action competence during execution. Infants who were more competent reachers, compared to less competent reachers, exhibited greater ERD while observing reaching‐grasping. These results provide initial evidence for an early emerging neural system integrating one's own actions with the perception of others’ actions.     

Infants track action goals within and across agents

The ability to understand that goals and other intentional relations are attributes of individual people is of fundamental importance to social life. It enables us to predict and interpret actions on-line by relating a person's prior and current behaviors, and distinguishing them from the behaviors of other persons. In this paper, we consider the origins of the ability to mark goals as attributes of individual people. Using a visual habituation paradigm to assess infants' tracking of goals, we tested whether infants represented goals are specific to particular agents. Thirteen-month-old infants restricted reaching goals to particular agents, but generalized a conventional linguistic action, labeling, across agents. Nine-month-old showed the former pattern but not the latter. We discuss these findings in the context of developing understandings of person specific and person general action knowledge.     

Diffusion,Decolonializing, and Participatory Action Research

Miki Takasuna describes knowledge transfer between elite communities of scientists, a process by which ideas become structurally transformed in the host culture. By contrast, a process that we have termed knowledge transfer by de-elitization occurs when (a) participatory action researchers work with a community to identify a problem involving oppression or exploitation. Then (b) community members suggest solutions and acquire the tools of analysis and action to pursue social actions. (c) Disadvantaged persons thereby become more aware of their own abilities and resources, and persons with special expertise become more effective. (d) Rather than detachment and value neutrality, this joint process involves advocacy and structural transformation. In the examples of participatory action research documented here, Third World social scientists collaborated with indigenous populations to solve problems of literacy, community-building, land ownership, and political voice. Western social scientists, inspired by these non-Western scientists, then joined in promoting PAR both in the Third World and in Europe and the Americas, e.g., adapting it for solving problems of people with disabilities or disenfranchised women. Emancipatory goals such as these may even help North American psychologists to break free of some methodological chains and to bring about social and political change.