Generalizability of Gottman and Colleagues' Affective Process Models of Couples' Relationship Outcomes

The generalizability of Gottman et al's. (1998) affective process models was examined using a community-based sample of 85 married or cohabiting couples with at-risk backgrounds. Predictive associations between affective processes assessed at about age 21 years and relationship status and satisfaction approximately 2.5 years later were examined. The major findings of Gottman et al. failed to replicate. In particular, men's rejection of their partners' influence, the lack of men's deescalation of partners' negative affect, and women's negative start up were not predictive of relationship status. Further, differences in affective processes were found when comparing discussion sessions of the men's versus the women's chosen topics. The findings suggested that the validity and utility of the affective process models need further investigation.     

Northern Crises

Abstract

Using feminist disability studies and intersectionality, this article draws upon the ongoing resource extractions in Labrador, Canada to argue for examining local communities and relationships as one way to understand gender and global social, economic and environmental crises. The article explores how crises in Labrador have been constituted and maintained around global agendas of economic and resource development, historical and current colonial practices and a limited and constrained international relations with local Indigenous nations. The lives of women and their communities in Labrador illustrate one wave of a global crisis that extinguishes diversity and connection to the land in a race to extract natural resources, maintain global military power and gain profit in the global economy. The actions over the past thirty years by NATO and the Canadian federal, provincial and municipal governments, coupled with transnational mining corporations such as Vale, have “normalized” crisis in the communities and reduced the capacity of these communities and Indigenous nations to respond to the issues arising as a result of the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric development project. Yet the women and their communities illustrate their agency and reject an analysis of them exclusively as victims. Together with researchers and activists, the women in Labrador have built a community of practice in the Feminist Northern Network.     

The shtetl in the museum: representing Jews in the eras of Stalin and Putin

This article considers the representation of the shtetl in two museum narratives devoted to Jews in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. The first, the state-funded 1939 exhibit “The Jews in Tsarist Russia and the USSR” was organized by the Jewish Section of the State Museum of Ethnography in Leningrad and remained on display to the Soviet public until the Nazi invasion in June 1941. The second is the privately funded Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow, which opened in 2012. Though conceived under radically different ideological and political circumstances, each exhibition conveys a significant message about the place of Jews in Soviet and post-Soviet society, respectively, and each positions the shtetl as a formative arena for Jewish civic identity vis-à-vis the Russian homeland. Across the chasm of over seventy years, these two museum projects raise strikingly similar questions about how and why cultural institutions are mobilized to define the relationship of Ashkenazi Jews and the state. In both cases, the shtetl plays a significant role in narrating this unequal relationship.     

Parents’ economic support of young-adult children: do socioeconomic circumstances matter?

We assess how the support parents provide to young adults as they leave school and begin working is related to their family’s socioeconomic circumstances. We do this using an innovative Australian data set which merges survey and administrative data. The survey data inform us about intergenerational co-residence and financial gifts and the administrative data about the family’s welfare receipt history. We find that disadvantaged young people are more likely to be economically independent of their parents than are their more advantaged peers. This disparity is larger for financial gifts than for co-residence and increases with age. Moreover, there is a complex relationship between parental support and participation in study and work. We find no evidence, however, that a lack of parental support is the source of the socioeconomic gradient in either studying or employment. These results are important in eliminating one potential pathway through which socioeconomic disadvantage limits young people’s outcomes.     

The Relationship of Adaptive and Maladaptive Behaviour to Social Outcomes for Individuals with Developmental Disabilities

The purpose of this study is to examine social outcomes including social interaction opportunities and self-expression, and how they relate to other quality of life indicators. These indicators include the overall assessment of adaptive skills, and the frequency and severity of challenging behaviour. The social interaction opportunities measured in this research include family contact, hours of habilitation, community outings, hours of employment and hours of education. Self-expression refers to the extent to which the individuals assessed indicated liking and choosing what they do in their everyday lives. The data utilised in this study were obtained from personal interviews from 3781 individuals with developmental disabilities and their caregivers. Interviewers received extensive training prior to conducting the assessments. The results indicate that people with higher adaptive ability had more contact with their families, received fewer hours of habilitation, were reported to participate in community outings more frequently, worked more hours and spent fewer hours in education. These significant correlations, however, were of marginal strength. Overall, the frequency and severity of challenging behaviour were not associated with the social interaction opportunities assessed in this study.     

Six‐Month‐Olds' Detection of Clauses Embedded in Continuous Speech: Effects of Prosodic Well‐Formedness

Three experiments investigated the role of prosodic structure for infants' recognition of embedded word sequences. Six‐month‐olds were familiarized with 2 versions of the same sequence, 1 corresponding to a well‐formed prosodic unit and the other to a prosodically ill‐formed sequence (although a successive word series). Next, infants heard 2 test passages. One included the well‐formed unit, and the other included the ill‐formed sequence. In Experiment 1, infants listened longer to the passage containing the well‐formed unit, suggesting that such units, even when they are embedded, are better recognized. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that this better recognition does not depend on an acoustic match between the familiarized sequences and their later embeddings. This suggests that the advantage of the well‐formed unit is at least partially due to infants' use of prosody to parse continuous speech.