The Determination of Normal Extravert-Introvert Interest Differences

The authors conducted a survey of 1,758 elementary school children (6-14 years old) from December 2001, to March 2002, in 3 Chinese cities with different levels of television advertising. The authors used D. R. John's (1999) model of consumer socialization as the theoretical framework for their study. More than half of the children whom the authors interviewed were able to understand that television stations broadcast commercials to earn money. Their understanding of the purposes of television commercials and the persuasive intention of television commercials developed with age. The authors examined the influence of gender, level of advertising, and level of television viewing on children's understanding of television advertising by using 3-way factorial models.     

Next Steps in Validation

No abstract available for this article.     

Understanding the properties of interactive televised characters

Children's television programming frequently uses interactive characters that appear to directly engage the viewers. These characters encourage children to answer questions and perform actions to help the characters solve problems in the televised world. Children readily engage in these interactions; however, it is unclear why they do so. To investigate this issue, 53 5-, 7-, and 9-year-olds made decisions about events occurring in the real world based on information provided by a live individual and by a televised interactive computer-generated character. Five-year-olds followed the advice of both the live individual and the televised computer-generated character, whereas 7- and 9-year-olds only followed the advice of the live individual. Results are discussed in terms of a transition from children believing that interactive televised characters can engage in a real communicative interaction to children understanding that this apparent interaction is an illusion.     

Emotion understanding,pictorial representations of friendship and reciprocity in school-aged children

This study examined the relationship between emotional understanding, friendship representation and reciprocity in school-aged children. Two hundred and fifty-one Caucasian 6-year-old children (111 males and 140 females) took part in the study. The Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC) and the Pictorial Assessment of Interpersonal Relationships (PAIR) were used. Children having a reciprocal friendship and children having a unilateral friendship with a child named as their “best friend” were compared on the emotional understanding task and on their pictorial representations of friendship. Multilevel analyses indicated that friendship status effects were not influenced by classroom-level differences. Results showed that children with reciprocal friendships drew themselves as more similar to and more cohesive with their best friends, and they showed better understanding of emotions, than children having a unilateral friendship. Finally, the implications of these findings for theoretical and empirical research development on friendship are discussed.     

Awakening Resilience: Recovery Within Intimate Female Friendships

A multi-ethnic female creates her own definition of self with the help of strong female role models—women of strength. The author uses a storytelling method, characteristic Native American way of relating, as a vehicle for her narration. It is a story of transitions with challenges in relationships and new beginnings that define the woman as well as the therapist.     

Who,What, When,Where, How,and Mostly Why?

SUMMARY

The death of a client by suicide was very emotionally destabilizing to this therapist. She worked hard to distance herself personally from the pain at first and at the same time she found herself overfocused on the “psychological autopsy.” She had difficulty accepting new clients and wanted to withdraw from a meaningful appointment to a state advisory committee. Only when she was able to identify with the client's pain and realize how that pain touched her own history of loss was she able to grieve productively. She realized that gender was relevant in her identification with the victim and in sorting out each of their histories of loss.     

The contribution of executive function and social understanding to preschoolers’ letter and math skills

The influence of executive function and social understanding on letter and math skills was examined in 129 3–5-year-olds. Tasks were administered to measure working memory, inhibition, social understanding, letter and math skills, and vocabulary. Using latent variable analyses, multiple models were compared in order to examine the influence of executive function and social understanding on participants’ emerging academic skills. In the best-fitting model, working memory contributed to letter and math skills, over and above inhibition, social understanding, age, and vocabulary. Inhibition and social understanding did not uniquely contribute to letter and math skills, but significant relations were found among working memory, inhibition, and social understanding. Findings are discussed with respect to improving ways to examine the complex relations among preschoolers’ executive function, social understanding, and school readiness skills.     

Between a Rock and a Hard Place: The Deficit Model,the Diffusion Model and Publics in STS

The start of the twenty-first century witnessed the flourishing of both the biosciences (particularly genomics) and initiatives around public engagement in science, particularly in the UK and USA. STS researchers have both followed and fuelled this latter trend. Hence, it may be helpful to review the genealogy of these recent developments and of STS concern for the publics of science. This provides a way of assessing whether STS activities have been contributing to making the sciences more open and accountable to their publics. One trail returns to the institutionalisation of Public Understanding of Science (PUS) in the mid-1980s. The critique of this movement by STS scholars through reference to the deficit model (of public understanding of science) also figures here. However, less attention has been given to other modes of conceptualising science and publics, including what Cooter and Pumfrey label as the ‘diffusionist’ or ‘diffusion’ model (of scientific knowledge), which they contend entrenched traditional views of scientific knowledge and of publics as receivers of such knowledge. More recently, investigations of the making of science in diverse locations, attention to multiplicity and co-production have taken STS in new directions. Nevertheless, the legacies of both the deficit and diffusion models of science and publics continue to influence STS and its ‘regimes of truth’. Questions remain around STS researchers' persistent failure to acknowledge the diffusion model, in particular, and the consequent retrenchment of traditional views of how science works, limiting prospects for substantial public engagement and more open, democratic modes of science.     

Paradox lost: Understanding vague predicates

Abstract

The paper is concerned with the status of vague predicates. It is argued that they are for the most part ‘classifiers’, which are covertly comparatives and name not monadic properties but relations. The Sorites Paradox, it is claimed, is thus defused and a verdict theory of vague predicates is presented. Our practice in using vague words is described and it is contended that in our use of these predicates we always have a permanent possibility of independent demarcation. Wittgenstein's picture of the wall and the swamp is deployed to avoid the Transition Problem and it is argued against Fregeans that we need vague language for the advancement of knowledge and understanding.     

Greed 1

Abstract

This paper discusses the supervisor's responsibility in addressing the vulnerability or wounds of the therapist. Supervisors have much to keep in mind as they conduct their work, not least the client for whose benefit supervision is deemed to be an essential aspect of good practice. Their responsibility towards the client often entails careful exploration of the experience of the counsellor, both through their counter-transferential response to the client and their own personal circumstances. The extent to which the supervisor has a mandate to discuss the psychological well-being, personal difficulties, or organizational conflicts of their supervisee depends on both contractual agreements and the working alliance. The need to recognize counter-transference responses is generic but when they highlight the internal conflicts of the counsellor, the supervisor must decide how far they can or should pursue the unravelling of such conflicts. Therapist difficulties (Schroder & Davis, 2004 Schröder, T. and Davis, J. 2004. Therapists' experience of difficulty in practice. Psychotherapy Research, 14: 328–345. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) provide a framework for understanding ways in which therapeutic practice is affected by the emotional response of the therapist.