CHILD-REARING BELIEFS WITHIN DIVERSE SOCIAL STRUCTURES: MOTHERS AND DAY-CARE PROVIDERS IN MEXICO*

The child-rearing beliefs of 32 mothers and 36 day-care providers in Mexico were compared. Day-care providers expected children to master developmental skills at an earlier age than did mothers. Day-care providers more strongly valued the development of independent and cooperative behavior, and placed less importance on obedience. They also reported employing more flexible and nonauthoritarian discipline strategies than did mothers. Mothers and caregivers did not differ in the extent to which they attributed the success of their discipline strategies to their own actions rather than to external factors. Also examined was how mothers' beliefs differed in families characterized by interdependent versus individualistic social structures. In interdependent families, mothers were more likely to believe in later mastery of developmental skills and to make external attributions. These findings suggest that Mexican children experience incongruous social norms as they move between home and day care settings, and that these norms, at least within the home, are associated with the social structural features of the setting.     

Consonant recognition with two levels of decision complexity

The perceptual tuning hypothesis can be expressed as a prediction that discrimination of a particular stimulus dimension will be enhanced if it is the only dimension requiring discrimination and not one of a set of dimensions in a multidimensional discrimination task. In previous tests of the tuning hypothesis, using speech material, the size of a message set has been manipulated as an indirect means of controlling the number of dimensions an observer is required to discriminate. In the present experiments the particular items appearing in a message set have been selected in order to control precisely the number of dimensions relevant to the discrimination task, and performance is estimated in terms of the discrimination of each relevant dimension. No evidence is found for a perceptual tuning effect even though it is argued that the conditions of the present experiment represent those most favourable for its elicitation.     

Affective forecasting and ex-offender hiring decisions

Motivation and Emotion - With over 600,000 Americans released from jails and prisons each year, it is increasingly important to understand the challenges that ex-offenders face when they attempt to...     

An evaluation of parents as behavior change agents in the Preschool Life Skills program

Parental involvement in intervention can support intervention efficacy, improve generalization, and increase accessibility. The Preschool Life Skills (PLS) program is designed to teach 13 preschool life skills and prevent problem behavior. The current study explores the utility of the PLS program as delivered by parents. In Experiment 1, 6 parents were taught to use the PLS program at home with their typically developing children (3 years 3 months to 4 years 11 months). This application of the PLS program led to an increase in preschool life skills and a decrease in problem behavior and supported some generalization of the target preschool life skills from the home to preschool settings. In Experiment 2, 7 parents were taught to use the PLS program with their children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; 3 years 11 months to 6 years 9 months). Results overall supported the parent implementation of the program and highlighted modifications required to support positive outcomes for children with ASD.     

Language and tool making are similar cognitive processes

Design features for language and stone toolmaking (not tool use) involve similar if not homologous cognitive processes. Both are arbitrary transformations of internal "intrinsic" symbolization, whereas non-human tool using is mostly an iconic transformation. The major discontinuity between humans and non-humans (chimpanzees) is language. The presence of stone tools made to standardized patterns suggests communicative and social control skills that involved language.     

Cross-Age Peer Tutoring and Fluency-Based Instruction to Achieve Fluency with Mathematics Computation Skills: A Randomized Controlled Trial

The current study employed a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the use of peer tutoring and fluency-based instruction to increase mathematics fluency with addition and subtraction computation skills. Forty-one elementary school students between the ages of eight and 12 years participated in the 8-week study using cross-age peer tutoring, Say All Fast Minute Every Day Shuffled, frequency building, and the morningside math facts curriculum (Johnson in Morningside mathematics fluency: math facts (vol 1–6; curriculum program), Morningside Press, Seattle, 2008). Pre- and post-test measures of mathematics fluency and calculation were conducted with all participants. A measure of social skills and competing problem behaviors was also conducted at pre- and post-testing to evaluate any additional effects of the peer tutoring model. The results demonstrated a statistically significant difference between groups on measures of mathematics fluency, with the experimental group demonstrating significantly higher scores than the control group at post-testing. There were no significant differences between groups on measures of social skills and competing problem behaviors or calculation. The findings indicate that cross-age peer tutoring and fluency-based instruction resulted in positive outcomes for tutees in the mathematics domain, specifically mathematics fluency.     

Accidental Communities: Race,Emergency Medicine,and the Problem of PolyHeme®

This article focuses on emergency medical care in black urban populations, suggesting that the classification of a “community” within clinical trial language is problematic. The article references a cultural history of black Americans with pre-hospital emergency medical treatment as relevant to contemporary emergency medicine paradigms. Part I explores a relationship between “autonomy” and “community.” The idea of community emerges as a displacement for the ethical principle of autonomy precisely at the moment that institutionalized medicine focuses on diversity. Part II examines a clinical trial for the blood substitute PolyHeme^® (Northfield Laboratories, Inc., Evanston, IL). It illustrates the ways in which bias in research paradigms and Institutional Review Board decisions attach to the notion and utility of the language of “community.” The conclusion's contemporary anecdote makes apparent the vitality of the issues of prehospital emergency medical care and the ways in which decisions and practices fall too easily into a narrative of culturally biased treatment.     

Self‐Esteem and Suicide Ideation in Psychiatric Outpatients

Depression, hopelessness, and low self‐esteem are implicated as vulnerability factors for suicide ideation. The association of self‐esteem with suicide ideation after controlling for depressed mood and hopelessness was examined. Adult psychiatric outpatients (N = 338) completed measures of self‐esteem, suicide ideation, hopelessness, and depression. Self‐esteem was operationalized as beliefs about oneself (self‐based self‐esteem) and beliefs about how other people regard oneself (other‐based self‐esteem). Each dimension of self‐esteem was negatively associated with suicide ideation after controlling for depression and hopelessness. Of the two dimensions of self‐esteem, other‐based self‐esteem was the more robust predictor of suicide ideation. These findings suggest that even in the context of depression and hopelessness, low self‐esteem may add to the risk for suicide ideation.