Role of Temperament,Parenting Behaviors,and Stress on Turkish Preschoolers’ Internalizing Symptoms

Child‐ and family‐related factors that predict internalizing symptoms are understudied in preschool years and have a negative influence on children's functioning. We examined observational assessments of preschoolers' temperamental fearfulness and exuberance, mother reports of negative control, warmth, and parenting stress in a sample of 109 Turkish preschoolers. High temperamental fearfulness and low joyful/exuberant positive affectivity in addition to low warmth and high parenting stress had significant effects on internalizing symptoms. Parenting stress had both direct and indirect relations to internalizing symptoms via lower maternal warmth. When comorbid elevations in externalizing symptoms were controlled, the results were consistent with the interpretation that poor parenting practices and stress associated with the parenting role predict maladaptation in general but that the specific form of maladaptation may be best predicted by individual differences in children's temperamental characteristics. This study contributes to our understanding of risk and protective factors that predict preschoolers' internalizing symptoms with a sample from a non‐Western population. These findings can guide early prevention and intervention programs to address internalizing problems in a culturally‐sensitive way.     

Self‐conscious Shyness: Growth during Toddlerhood,Strong Role of Genetics,and No Prediction from Fearful Shyness

Fearful and self‐conscious subtypes of shyness have received little attention in the empirical literature. Study aims included the following: (1) determining whether fearful shyness predicted self‐conscious shyness, (2) describing development of self‐conscious shyness, and (3) examining genetic and environmental contributions to fearful and self‐conscious shyness. Observed self‐conscious shyness was examined at 19, 22, 25, and 28 months in same‐sex twins (MZ = 102, DZ = 111, missing zygosity = 3 pairs). Self‐conscious shyness increased across toddlerhood, but onset was earlier than predicted by theory. Fearful shyness (observed [6 and 12 months] and parents’ reports [12 and 22 months]) was not predictive of self‐conscious shyness. Independent genetic factors made strong contributions to parent‐reported (but not observed) fearful shyness (additive genetic influence = .69 and .72 at 12 and 22 months, respectively) and self‐conscious shyness (additive genetic influence = .90 for the growth model intercept). Results encourage future investigation of patterns of change and inter‐relations in shyness subtypes.     

An online copy number variant detection method for short sequencing reads

The availability of the next generation sequencing (NGS) technology in today's biomedical research has provided new opportunities in scientific discovery of genetic information. The high-throughput NGS technology, especially DNA-seq, is particularly useful in profiling a genome for the analysis of DNA copy number variants (CNVs). The read count (RC) data resulting from NGS technology are massive and information rich. How to exploit the RC data for accurate CNV detection has become a computational and statistical challenge. We provide a statistical online change point method to help detect CNVs in the sequencing RC data in this paper. This method uses the idea of online searching for change point (or breakpoint) with a Markov chain assumption on the breakpoints loci and an iterative computing process via a Bayesian framework. We illustrate that an online change-point detection method is particularly suitable for identifying CNVs in the RC data. The algorithm is applied to the publicly available NCI-H2347 lung cancer cell line sequencing reads data for locating the breakpoints. Extensive simulation studies have been carried out and results show the good behavior of the proposed algorithm. The algorithm is implemented in R and the codes are available upon request.     

Turkish Immigrants in Sweden: Are They Integrated?

Many in Europe believe that large numbers of Turkish immigrants have failed to integrate into their host communities. How is this situation in Sweden? We found that most of the Turkish immigrants felt themselves to be Turkish and Sweden was accepted as a foreign country. Turkish‐originated media was followed frequently and strong ties with relatives in Turkey were maintained. Marriage and friendship with native Swedes were not well accepted. We concluded that despite the multicultural aspects of Swedish integration policies, Turkish immigrants in Sweden were not well integrated and they prefer to live within the boundaries of their segregated, closed, small communities.     

Childhood disease and the precautionary demand for children

The childhood disease burden depends on the prevalence of infectious diseases, their case fatalities, and long-term morbidity. We propose a quantity–quality model of fertility choice under uncertainty that emphasizes morbidity and mortality from infectious disease. The fertility response to a decline in child mortality depends on the morbidity effect of the disease, the prevalence rate, and whether the prevalence or case fatality rate declines. Fertility follows mortality and morbidity, but since mortality and morbidity do not always move in the same direction, the fertility response may be dampened or nonmonotonic. Disease-specific evidence from sub-Saharan Africa supports these theoretical predictions.     

Heterogeneity of Joy in Infancy

We examined 7‐month‐old infants' responses to 6 joy‐eliciting episodes. Three episodes included and 3 did not include a major social‐interactive component. Confirmatory factor analysis of infants' joy reactions in these episodes revealed that a 2‐factor model significantly improved the fit over a single‐factor solution. Those 2 factors represented infants' social versus nonsocial joy reactions. Different correlates of those factors supported their external validity. Only social joy was associated with the infants' positive emotional tone observed during naturalistic interactions with their mothers and fathers, and with the parents' ratings of the child's positive affect during social interactions in their daily lives. Social joy may be an early antecedent of future positive emotionality traits related to communal and interpersonal aspects of experience.     

Social Exclusion and Quality of Life: An Empirical Study from Turkey

We examine the perception of social exclusion and quality of life and their interactions among a group of Turkish citizens. For this purpose we used the social exclusion scale developed by Jehoel-Gijsbers and Vrooman and the WHOQOL-BREF scale. The study group consists of 2,493 participants who are residents of a city in Turkey. Our study was based on self reporting and voluntary participation. We used SEM (Structural Equation Modeling) for the analysis. We observed significant paths among several dimensions of quality of life and social exclusion. We found that the material deprivation dimension of social exclusion has a direct and negative impact on the environment and social relationships domains of quality of life. The material deprivation dimension explains 36% of the variation in the environment and 16% of the variation in social relationship domains of quality of life. This finding indicates that the material deprivation and social participation play an important role in the perception of environmental and psychological life quality. Physical health, social relationships, and environmental domains of life quality are important in the social participation dimension of perceived social exclusion.     

Effects of Childhood Mortality and Morbidity on the Fertility Transition in sub‐Saharan Africa

Child mortality rates have fallen substantially in developing countries since 1960. The expected fertility decline has followed only weakly in sub‐Saharan Africa compared to other recent and historic demographic transitions. Disease and anthropometric data suggest that morbidity remains prevalent in Africa despite child survival improvements. The uniquely high infectious disease burden among children in Africa reduces population health and diminishes the returns to human capital investment, thwarting the quantity–quality tradeoff for children that typically accompanies the mortality transition. Individual‐level data from the Demographic and Health Surveys are used to show that persistent morbidity has weakened the positive relationship between child mortality and total fertility rates throughout the region, slowing Africa's demographic transition.