The Adultcentrism Scale in the educational relationship: Instrument development and preliminary validation

The term “adultcentrism” refers to a paradigm of thought that leads adults to provide inadequate or distorted responses to children’s needs (Furioso, 2000), despite the belief of acting in children’s best interest. Our understanding of adult-child relationship could be subjected to such adultcentric bias, thus preventing the acknowledgement of the deeply reciprocal qualities of the encounter between the culture of adults and the one of children. Several authors have focused on the importance of making an effort in recognizing the partiality of such adult-centered perspective (Goode, 1986; Petr, 1992; Furioso, 2000; Mackay, 1973, 2003; Biancardi, 2002; Foti, 2004), but no research tools have been proposed so far.The Adultcentrism Scale, a questionnaire of 27 items, has been developed and administered to 326 university students during a pilot study. Three factors emerged from ML EFA (Oblimin rotation): “Child as an empty box”, “Child without agency”, and “Competent Child”. The factorial structure resulted corroborated by CFA, with the exception of one item that has been therefore excluded. The final version of the Adultcentrism Scale has been administered to a sample of 910 parents of primary school-age children. Results indicate that the Adultcentrism Scale could help in the detection of the construct of adultcentrism in caregivers, particularly in large-scale studies. The three factors extracted and the tendency of response distributions appear consistent with the reference literature. Reflecting on adultcentrism can bring positive implications in designing interventions focusing on the improvement of adult-child relationship quality.     

Passive and Active Compensability Multicriteria ANnalysis (PACMAN)

Determining intercriteria relations is an important issue in MCDA. In order to handle this problem, this paper presents a new approach to the concept of compensation in multicriteria analysis, named PACMAN (Passive and Active Compensability Multicriteria ANalysis). The notion of compensability introduced here is decision maker oriented, relying only on information provided by him. In PACMAN compensability is analysed by taking into consideration two criteria at a time and distinguishing the compensating criterion from the compensated one. Separating active and passive effects of compensation allows one to point out a possible asymmetry of the notion of compensability. A valued binary relation of compensated preference is introduced. Compensated preference can be used for a modelization of the preference structure. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Meaningfulness Beats Frequency in Multiword Chunk Processing

Whereas a growing bulk of work has demonstrated that both adults and children are sensitive to frequently occurring word sequences, little is known about the potential role of meaning in the processing of such multiword chunks. Here, we take a first step toward assessing the contribution of meaningfulness in the processing of multiword sequences, using items that varied in chunk meaningfulness. In a phrasal-decision study, we compared reaction times for triads of three-word sequences, corresponding to idiomatic expressions, compositional phrases, and phrasal fragments, while controlling for phrase and substring frequencies. Chunk meaningfulness, as assessed by a separate subjective rating study, was found to speed up decision times for all three types of strings: The more meaningful a multiword sequence was judged to be, the faster it was processed, independently of whether it was idiomatic, compositional in nature, or a phrasal fragment. These results highlight the importance of taking meaning into account when considering the processing of multiword chunks, consistent with predictions of construction-based approaches to language.     

Asian American Female College Students' Subjective Femininity Conceptualizations: Using a Mixed‐Methods Approach

This mixed‐methods study explored 184 Asian American female college students' subjective femininity conceptualizations and their associations with family conflict. A direct content analysis of responses identified 5 categories of subjective femininity conceptualizations: model minority, physical attributes, traditional femininity, subordinate roles, and modern femininity. Conceptualizations of subordinate roles were positively related to intensity of family conflict. Interdependent self‐construal moderated the relationship between subjective conceptualizations of subordinate roles, modern femininity, and intensity of family conflict. Clinical implications of these findings are discussed. Este estudio de métodos combinados exploró las conceptualizaciones subjetivas de feminidad y sus asociaciones con conflictos familiares entre 184 estudiantes universitarias asiático‐americanas. Un análisis directo del contenido de las respuestas identificó 5 categorías de conceptualizaciones subjetivas de feminidad: modelo de minoría, atributos físicos, feminidad tradicional, roles subordinados y feminidad moderna. Las conceptualizaciones de roles subordinados se relacionaron de forma positiva con la intensidad de los conflictos familiares. La autoconstrucción interdependiente moderó la relación entre las conceptualizaciones subjetivas de roles subordinados, la feminidad moderna y la intensidad de los conflictos familiares. Se discuten las implicaciones clínicas de estos hallazgos.     

Vector Semiotic Model for Visual Question Answering

In this paper, we propose a Vector Semiotic Model as a possible solution to the symbol grounding problem in the context of Visual Question Answering. The Vector Semiotic Model combines the advantages of a Semiotic Approach implemented in the Sign-Based World Model and Vector Symbolic Architectures. The Sign-Based World Model represents information about a scene depicted on an input image in a structured way and grounds abstract objects in an agent’s sensory input. We use the Vector Symbolic Architecture to represent the elements of the Sign-Based World Model on a computational level. Properties of a high-dimensional space and operations defined for high-dimensional vectors allow encoding the whole scene into a high-dimensional vector with the preservation of the structure. That leads to the ability to apply explainable reasoning to answer an input question. We conducted experiments are on a CLEVR dataset and show results comparable to the state of the art. The proposed combination of approaches, first, leads to the possible solution of the symbol-grounding problem and, second, allows expanding current results to other intelligent tasks (collaborative robotics, embodied intellectual assistance, etc.).     

From elementary school to midlife: Childhood personality predicts behavior during cognitive testing over four decades later

The current study uses a prospective, longitudinal design and lifespan perspective to understand how child personality relates to directly observed adult behavior during cognitive testing. Teacher assessments of child Big Five personality in elementary school were correlated with directly observed behaviors during a videotaped cognitive test four decades later. Past work suggested Openness and Conscientiousness may relate to task-relevant academic behaviors. Childhood Openness was associated with several behaviors, even after controlling for participant’s cognitive performance. Childhood Conscientiousness was also related to behavior, but not as expected. Other Big Five ratings were not reliably related to behavior. The study examined personality stability in a unique way and suggests a further examination of how Openness in children manifests in later behavior.