Paternal Caregivers’ Parenting Practices and Psychological Functioning among African American Youth Living in Urban Public Housing

Structural factors associated with public housing contribute to living environments that expose families to adverse life events that may in turn directly impact parenting and youth outcomes. However, despite the growth in research on fathers, research on families in public housing has practically excluded fathers and the role fathers play in the well‐being of their adolescents. Using a sample of 660 African American adolescents recruited from public housing, we examined the relationship between paternal caregivers’ (i.e., fathers’ and father figures’) parenting practices and adolescents’ depressive symptoms, attitudes toward deviance, and self‐efficacy. Using a latent profile analysis (LPA), we confirmed a four‐class model of paternal parenting practices ranging from high to low levels of monitoring and encouragement. Results from a one‐way ANOVA indicated that paternal caregivers with high (compared to moderate) levels of encouragement and monitoring were associated with youth who reported less depressive symptoms, higher levels of self‐efficacy, and less favorable attitudes toward deviance. Discriminant analysis results indicated that approximately half of the sample were correctly classified into two paternal caregiver classes. The findings provide evidence that some of these caregivers engage in parenting practices that support youths’ psychological functioning. More research is needed to determine what accounts for the variability in levels of paternal encouragement and supervision, including environmental influences, particularly for paternal caregivers exhibiting moderate‐to‐low levels of paternal encouragement and monitoring.     

Bidirectional Influences of Violence Exposure and Adjustment in Early Adolescence: Externalizing Behaviors and School Connectedness

This study utilized cross-lagged longitudinal models to examine prospective, bidirectional relationships between witnessing violence and victimization and three adjustment variables—delinquency, conduct problems, and school connectedness. Participants included 603 early adolescent boys and girls (78% African American, 20% Caucasian). Witnessing violence was related to subsequent lower levels of school connectedness and more conduct problems. For Caucasian but not African American adolescents, witnessing violence also predicted later delinquency. Victimization was linked with lower school connectedness over time, and for boys but not girls also with more conduct problems. Only adolescent delinquency was associated with subsequent witnessing violence and victimization. This research was partially supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Grant No. R49–CCR418569.     

Aesthetic interaction as fit between interaction attributes and experiential qualities

Designing an aesthetic interaction is an important issue for Interaction Design (ID) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). While a number of frameworks exist, the experimental study of potential underlying principles remains rare. In this paper, we suggest that particular interaction attributes (e.g., “fast”) are systematically related to particular experiential qualities (e.g., “feeling competent”) and that interaction “feels better” if interaction matches the intended experience. A laboratory study (N = 32) explores this notion by testing two different ways of interacting within the same activity (opening a wine bottle) in two different experiential scenarios (focusing on relatedness, focusing on competence). Two corkscrews with different interaction profiles were used: one assumed to support a feeling of competence and the other to support relatedness. As expected, we found systematic shifts in preferences for specific corkscrews, differences in affective experience and in the relationships between interaction attributes and experiential qualities depending on the fit of interaction to the experience.     

Creating a qualitative typology of electric vehicle driving: EV journey-making mapped in a chronological framework

‘Range anxiety’ is considered a barrier to market acceptance of electric vehicles (EVs), but perceptions of inadequate recharging infrastructure and limited battery range may be part of a more complex set of consumer concerns; experiences and practices of existing EV drivers – with reference to wider transport and energy systems – need to be understood in greater detail. Qualitative material from semi-structured interviews [n = 88] is used to formulate a chronological Typology of Electric Vehicle Driving which synthesises drivers’ decisions, actions and dynamic considerations before, during and after a journey. The typology outlines and tabulates spatio-temporal elements specific to driving an EV; describes adaptations and compromises in household routines and travel habits; draws out how or when drivers engage with external digital information sources – i.e. smartphone apps, social media – during journey-making; plots their intervention in behavioural changes; and could inform development of infrastructure, tools or services, policy or interventions to support EV uptake.     

Associations between Positive Parenting Practices and Child Externalizing Behavior in Underserved Latino Immigrant Families

This study examined whether five specific parenting practices (i.e., monitoring, discipline, skill encouragement, problem solving, and positive involvement) were associated with reduced child externalizing behaviors among a sample of Latino immigrant families. It utilized baseline data from 83 Latino couples with children participating in a larger randomized controlled trial of a culturally adapted parenting intervention. Results reveal that monitoring, discipline, skill encouragement, and problem solving each made independent contributions to the prediction of child externalizing behavior, although not all in the expected direction. Further analyses examining mothers and fathers separately suggest that mother‐reported monitoring and father‐reported discipline practices uniquely contributed to these findings. These results may have important implications for prevention and clinical intervention efforts with Latino immigrant families, including the cultural adaptation and implementation of parenting interventions with this underserved population.     

Bribery: the concept

The aim of this paper is to clarify the concept of bribery, and to do this in a way that reveals its underlying normative features. Bribery, like lying is not a value neutral concept. It has a negative connotation and is regarded by most as generally, although not necessarily universally, wrong. At the very least, those who resort to bribery bear a burden of justification for what they do. This is no small point, as no such burden must be borne for the vast majority of human activities, such as engaging in conversation or taking a walk, which normally do not. As Sissela Bok says of lying, we might say that a negative moral weight attaches to every act of bribery; it may be possible to counter this negative weight in some instances, but not without an argument (the provision of good reasons).¹ Why should a negative moral weight be attached to every act of bribery? It might be thought that, even if most instances of bribery are morally objectionable, the concept of bribery itself is morally neutral.² However, enticing people to violate what they take to be their positional duties does seem to call for some sort of moral justification. This seems to be so even in extreme cases, for example, when bribing a Nazi guard to allow concentration camp prisoners to escape. The ready availability of a moral justification in such circumstances does not eliminate the need for one.     

The cultural ecosystem of human cognition

Everybody knows that humans are cultural animals. Although this fact is universally acknowledged, many opportunities to exploit it are overlooked. In this article, I propose shifting our attention from local examples of extended mind to the cultural-cognitive ecosystems within which human cognition is embedded. I conclude by offering a set of conjectures about the features of cultural-cognitive ecosystems.     

Reasonable Hope: Construct, Clinical Applications, and Supports

To read this article's abstract in both Spanish and Mandarin Chinese, please visit the article's full-text page on Wiley InterScience ( http://interscience.wiley.com/journal/famp ).
Hope may be the most laden shorthand term of all time. Everyone wants it; few know how to articulate what it is. Although family therapists frequently work to restore hope with hopeless families, they have contributed little to the abundant literature on hope. I present a new conceptualization of hope—reasonable hope—that reflects how family therapists think and practice. By subscribing to reasonable hope, clinicians enhance their ability to offer accompaniment and bear witness to clients. I describe clinical practices that, informed by reasonable hope, also facilitate its cocreation. Finally, I suggest supports for clinicians who practice reasonable hope.     

心灵观念的祛魅

通过一项疫苗临床试验国际合作项目的实施,讨论了如何在科学研究中贯彻落实GCP。结果表明,ICH提出的13项GCP指导原则在疫苗临床试验中得到了充分的实施。GCP不仅是临床试验的管理和指导原则,同时也保护研究对象的权利、保证资料的可信和自觉遵守标准操作程序（SOP）的意识。     

“Theology of Presence” in African Christianity: A Transforming Missiological Factor for Women in Contemporary Pentecostal Churches in Africa

Following the independence of many African countries, Christianity has been gaining freedom through indigenizing the church. Christian churches in Africa are self‐indigenizing, self‐innovating, and self‐criticizing their practices and theologies. However, women in African churches remain in an uncomfortable zone. African, biblical, and missionary cultures have been named as sources of discrimination of women in the church. This paper deploys a “theology of presence” to claim that contemporary Pentecostal Christianity (CPC) in Africa, with some continuity in African worldview and biblical cultures, has touched upon and answered women's complex and challenging questions that for a long time have been denied by Christian missionaries. The paper shows how theology of presence, in the “witnessing” and “healing” practised by CPC, has been transforming the missiological factor for women. The paper suggests learning from other models for transformation than policies and gender mainstreaming tools, since these have had little impact. The paper recommends research on hermeneutical reading of the Bible and providing more innovative skills to help women break the silence of being violated.