Crossing the Line: Case Studies of Identity Development in First-Generation College Women

In this paper we present four case studies of adult women from working class backgrounds who attended Hillside College (a pseudonym for one of the seven-sister colleges) during the early 1990s. Although research on women has led, over the past few decades, to a more complex picture of the contexts in which women develop their identities, one important context that has been underexplored is social class. Drawing on data from three lengthy interviews with each of our four participants, our purpose was to explore the identity concerns of adult women from working class backgrounds in their experience getting to and attending Hillside College, which has historically been home to the middle and upper social classes. Implications for college retention are discussed.     

Science, Values and the Human Dimensions

The presented paper substantiates the principle that values are an immanent component of science and any rational cognitive activity. This principle belongs to the European cultural tradition starting from the book of Genesis of the Old Testament, the values of certainty in the antique Greek philosophy and Francis Bacon's coincidence of knowledge and power. Values in science form complicated structures inconnection with different types of knowledge including “the knowledge that”, empirical evidence, various types of generalizations or rules, methods, directions, algorithms, “the knowledge how”, “the knowledge why” or other types of knowledge. Since the assignments of different types of values are the products of a decision-making, it is useful to distinguish many types of decision-making, especially semantic decision-making, information decision-making and decision-making with distinctly pragmatic dimensions. The values assignable to scientific activities and their results also include their social recognition, respect and prestige granted to knowledge and bearers of knowledge by society and social groups or communities. Knowledge generation and the rational and justified application of the achieved and acceptable impacts are also connected with decision-making procedures, values and criteria of social acceptance. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The cortical organization of lexical knowledge: a dual lexicon model of spoken language processing

Current accounts of spoken language assume the existence of a lexicon where wordforms are stored and interact during spoken language perception, understanding and production. Despite the theoretical importance of the wordform lexicon, the exact localization and function of the lexicon in the broader context of language use is not well understood. This review draws on evidence from aphasia, functional imaging, neuroanatomy, laboratory phonology and behavioral results to argue for the existence of parallel lexica that facilitate different processes in the dorsal and ventral speech pathways. The dorsal lexicon, localized in the inferior parietal region including the supramarginal gyrus, serves as an interface between phonetic and articulatory representations. The ventral lexicon, localized in the posterior superior temporal sulcus and middle temporal gyrus, serves as an interface between phonetic and semantic representations. In addition to their interface roles, the two lexica contribute to the robustness of speech processing.     

Mood-congruent thoughts and personality disorder pathology

The primary aim of this research was to investigate associations that depression severity and trait anxiety have with reactions to specific, identifiable thoughts experienced by persons with varying levels of personality disorder (PD) pathology as they went about their day-to-day lives. Ninety-eight psychotropic medication-free persons participated in an experience sampling assessment procedure over four consecutive days, during which participants recorded specific thoughts experienced moments before a page signal was received and corresponding ratings of thought discomfort. Thought discomfort, regarded as an emotional reaction to thoughts or their evaluation, was moderately associated with several forms of PD pathology, particularly Cluster C pathology. Once depression severity and trait anxiety were controlled, however, associations between PD pathology and thought discomfort were eliminated. Findings from this research generally support the mood-congruence of negatively valenced thoughts in relation to PD pathology.     

Closing the gap between behavior and models in route choice: The role of spatiotemporal constraints and latent traits in choice set formation

A considerable gap exists between the behavioral paradigm of choice set formation in route choice and its representation in route choice modeling. While travelers form their viable choice set by retaining routes that satisfy spatiotemporal constraints, existing route generation techniques do not account for individual-related spatiotemporal constraints. This paper reduces the gap by proposing a route choice model incorporating spatiotemporal constraints and latent traits. The proposed approach combines stochastic route generation with a latent variable semi-compensatory model representing constraint-based choice set formation followed by compensatory choice. The model is applied to data focusing on habitual commuting route choice behavior in morning peak hours. Results show (i) the possibility of inferring spatiotemporal constraints from considered routes, (ii) the importance of incorporating spatiotemporal constraints and latent traits in route choice models, and (iii) the linkage between spatiotemporal constraints and time saving, spatial and mnemonic abilities.     

Cross-national differences in older adult loneliness

Loneliness concerns the subjective evaluation that the number of relationships is smaller than the individual considers desirable or that the intimacy that the individual wishes for has not been realized. The aim of this study was to assess variations in levels of late-life loneliness and its determinants across Europe. Data came from the SHARE surveys, Wave 2 (Borsch-Supan et al., 2008), encompassing adults aged 50 years and over in Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland (N = 12,248). Loneliness was measured by a single item derived from the CES-D (depression) scale. Using logistic models, the present authors tested several types of explanations for country differences: differences in demographic characteristics, wealth and health, and social networks. Older adults in the southern and central European countries were generally lonelier than their peers in the northern and western European countries. In the southern and central European countries, loneliness was largely attributable to not being married, economic deprivation, and poor health. Frequent contacts with parents and adult children, social participation, and providing support to family members were important in preventing and alleviating loneliness in almost all countries. To combat loneliness among older adults, the findings suggest both (a) generic approaches aimed at improving social embeddedness and (b) country-tailored approaches aimed at improving health and wealth.     

Using finite mixture of GLMs to explore variability in children's flexibility in a task-switching paradigm

The present study illustrates the usefulness of finite mixture of generalized linear models (GLMs) to examine variability in cognitive strategies during childhood. More precisely, it addresses this variability in set-shifting situations where task-goal updating is endogenously driven. In a task-switching paradigm 5–6-year-olds had to switch between color- and shape-matching rules as a function of a predetermined, predictable task sequence. A finite mixture of GLMs was fitted to explore individual differences in performance. The statistical model revealed five response profiles, defined by accuracy and response times. These response profiles likely correspond to different cognitive strategies with varying efficiency and differential relations to working memory capacity (assessed by backward digit span). These results illustrate the heuristic value of statistical modeling to reveal the behavioral and cognitive variability in the temporal dynamics of children's cognitive functioning.     

Enhancing Social Justice by Promoting Prosocial Values in Career Development Interventions

In career counseling, social justice is typically integrated by helping oppressed groups navigate their way around obstacles of injustice while also working to dislodge the oppressive conditions from society. The authors affirm both of these courses of action while also advocating a third strategy: inviting clients to serve as agents of change by introducing and incorporating prosocial values into career development interventions. This article makes the case that this strategy may enhance client well‐being while simultaneously promoting harmony among organizations and society. Support for this strategy comes from theory, research, and the ethical approaches for working with values in counseling.     

Humour Perception and Creation between Parents and 3‐ to 6‐month‐old Infants

Humour and laughter are universal to the human psychological experience and have serious developmental and evolutionary implications. Despite the early emergence of laughter in infancy, infants have been largely ignored in the humour research and humour has been largely ignored in the infant research. The present study describes the emergence of humour perception and creation in a sample of 20 parent–infant dyads who were followed from ages 3‐to‐ 6 months. The study examined how infants discover that absurd nonverbal behaviour, known as ‘clowning’, is amusing in the context of social engagement with caregivers. Results indicate that parents primarily use clowning when attempting to amuse their infants and pair these behavioural absurdities with affective cues like smiling and laughing. As they got older, infants were more likely to laugh and smile in response to clowning. Infants' ability to create humor via clowning also increased with age, starting with simple shrieks at 3 months to imitating absurd actions by 5 months. These increases are partly potentially explained by accompanying increases in parental smiling, laughing and clowning in response to infant clowning. Future research should employ more diverse samples and experimentally investigate the role of parental affect and social referencing in infants' interpretation of absurd behavior. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.