Toddlers Assert and Acknowledge Ownership Rights

Two studies compared toddler owners and non‐owners of toys. Children of 24 and 30 months were supplied with toys and told that they were owners. In play with friends, owners were more likely than non‐owners to maintain possession, claim toys verbally (‘mine’), and non‐verbally, by attempting to regain their own toys in their friends' possession. Children communicated their ownership early in each episode and in preference to other information about the toys. Toddlers in both studies identified toys belonging to their friends and acknowledged their friends' ownership with possessive statements (‘yours’), and in Study 2, recognized the relationship between owners and their property by offering toys that their friends owned. In these ways, toddlers' actions were consistent with accepted ownership rights.     

The relationship between children's social concerns and their social interaction strategies: differences between rejected and accepted boys

In this study involving 55 fourth and fifth grade boys, children's concerns in their peer interactions, their social interaction strategies, and the relationship between their concerns and strategies were examined. Compared to peer accepted boys, submissive rejected boys cared less about sustaining interactions with peers and aggressive rejected boys cared less about peers' feelings. Aggressive rejected boys, and rejected boys who were neither highly aggressive nor highly submissive, also suggested more aversive strategies for handling conflictual interpersonal situations than did accepted boys. Of particular interest is that this was true even when their concerns in those situations were similar to those of accepted boys. The implications of these findings for children's social competence are discussed.     

欧盟反社会排斥的社会政策发展研究——以劳动力市场问题为例

建立解决劳动力市场问题的反社会排斥的社会政策,一直是欧盟促进社会融合与一体化发展的主要手段。本文首先从社会排斥概念的诠释入手,分别从学术层面与欧盟层面进行社会排斥概念解析和社会排斥概念政策应用解析。其次分析了欧盟目前解决劳动力市场问题的社会政策发展现状:鼓励更多的社会成员更有效地参与劳动力市场,提高社会融入程度;增强工人和企业的适应性,减少潜在的社会排斥;发展人力资本政策,打破社会排斥的恶性循环。本文最后对欧盟反社会排斥的社会政策面临的挑战进行简要分析,并讨论了欧盟反社会排斥的社会政策发展对中国社会政策发展的借鉴意义。     

Popular and Rejected Children's Reasoning Regarding Negative Emotions in Social Situations: The Role of Gender

Two studies compared popular and rejected children's reasoning regarding social interactions involving negative emotions. The first study, with 23 rejected and 23 popular 10‐ to 11‐year‐olds, involved hypothetical social scenarios where a classmate ‘victim’ was likely to experience a negative emotion. Although popular and rejected children both recognized negative emotions and were equally likely to suggest helping behaviour to aid the victim, there were gender effects on the type of helping behaviour suggested. Specifically, popular girls were significantly more likely to offer comforting behaviour than advice whereas popular boys offered advice more than comfort; no such preferences were exhibited by the rejected children. Furthermore, popular girls were significantly more likely than other children to refer to emotional states when justifying their helping response. In the second study, 30 popular and 30 rejected eight‐ to 10‐year‐olds identified the motives behind story characters' efforts to mask negative emotions. Popular girls were more likely to identify the target motives than rejected girls, but no such difference was apparent for the boys. The results are discussed in the light of evidence regarding gender differences in peer interaction patterns.     

Actors in Processes of Inclusion and Exclusion: Towards a Dynamic Approach

The terminological substitution of the poor/rich distinction by the exclusion/inclusion distinction marks an important innovation within social research, because it provides a multidimensional approach for the analysis of disadvantaged groups within society. The multidimensionality also implies that interactions between different dimensions of exclusion and inclusion become visible, hence offering a dynamic approach. Thus, research on exclusion/inclusion might be linked with longitudinal-data analyses. The dynamic aspect of the exclusion/inclusion research analytically upvalues the people involved in the processes of exclusion and inclusion. Social sciences no longer see them as nothing but victims, rather as actors coping with given circumstances. Thus, actors' own strategies become of crucial importance. As a consequence the notions of exclusion as 'bad' and inclusion as 'good' become unclear. Thus one has to take into account that actors perceive both inclusion and exclusion as 'good' or 'bad'.     

Group Problem-Solving Processes: Social Interactions andIndividual Actions

To help consider why some groups solve problems successfully but others do not, this article introduces a framework for analyzing sequences of group members' actions. The dimensions of evaluation of the previous action (supportive, critical, unresponsive), knowledge content (contribution, repetition, null), and invitational form (command, question, statement) organize twenty-seven individual actions, each with specific functions and conditions of use. Evaluations, repetitions and invitational forms link actions together to create coherent social interactions, and thereby serve as possible quantitative measures of collaboration quality. Specific individual action also helps constitute specific social interactions. Six types of social interactions that occur during group problem-solving are organized by problem knowledge distribution (no one knows a problem approach, some know, or everyone knows) and degree of cooperation (independent or cooperative). This framework's mutually exclusive categories and multi-function individual actions allow statistical analyses of many group interactions both in their entirety and infine detail.     

边缘与中心共舞：社会安全视野下的全球艾滋生命治理——以中国边城为例

本文以艾滋病为例探讨社会应对风险的可能路径,分析了“中心”与“边缘”两种治理模式的互动过程,进而挖掘社会创新的可能性。“中心”逻辑以保卫社会之名推行规范性教育话语,并在实际运作中固化秩序,追求成本效益;“边缘”逻辑则在特定善的理念引导下进行探索性社会行动。二者是当代世界应对风险的体制性道德驱力。随着边缘与中心的互动,艾滋病病毒感染者的境况从被排除翻转为例外性纳入,由此体现了当代世界生命治理的元结构。中国边城的感染者同伴小组内嵌到中心体制之中,促使感染者人口更加平稳地进入医学体系,同时也开启了全新的社会行动领域,激发了生命活力的涌现。艾滋病作为社会实验所彰显的边缘能量,对探索社会本身的包容性和开放性潜能有着深远意义。     

Italian Preschoolers' Peer‐status Linkages with Sociability and Subtypes of Aggression and Victimization

Little is known about the behavior of preschool children belonging to peer sociometric status groups (popular, average, rejected, neglected, and controversial) in cultural contexts outside North America. This study examined the social interactions of Italian preschoolers. The sample consisted of 266 Italian preschoolers (mean age of 64 months). Physical and relational subtypes of aggression and victimization, as well as sociable behavior, were measured by peer nominations and teacher ratings. Peer nominations of acceptance and rejection (like and dislike nominations) were also collected in order to form the sociometric status groups. Results of confirmatory factor analyses showed that items developed with US preschoolers appeared to work fairly well in identifying behavioral constructs in Italian preschoolers. Findings generally supported previous research with American preschoolers. Sociometrically popular children were highest in sociability, and lowest in physical and relational aggression and victimization. The opposite pattern emerged for rejected status children. Neglected status children were generally not distinguished from average status children. Results also suggested that the enactment of relational aggression promotes greater social impact for some Italian children (controversial children), and this aggression also invites more conflict and victimization. However, the sociability of controversial children appears to buffer them from rejected group status.     

Social Competence with Peers in Third Grade: Associations with Earlier Peer Experiences in Childcare1

The early developmental antecedents of individual differences in children's social functioning with peers in third grade were examined using longitudinal data from the large‐scale National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) study of early child care. In a sample of 1,364 children, with family and child factors controlled, the frequency of positive and negative peer interactions in childcare between 24 and 54 months and the number of hours spent in childcare peer groups of different sizes (alone, dyad, small, medium, large) predicted third graders' peer competence at three levels of analysis: individual social skills, dyadic friendships, and peer‐group acceptance. Children who had more positive experiences with peers in childcare had better social and communicative skills with peers in third grade, were more sociable and co‐operative and less aggressive, had more close friends, and were more accepted and popular. Children with more frequent negative experiences with peers in childcare were more aggressive in third grade, had lower social and communicative skills, and reported having fewer friends. When children spent more time in small‐sized peer groups in childcare (four or fewer children at 24 months of age up to seven or fewer at 54 months), they were more sociable and co‐operative in third grade, but their teachers rated them as more aggressive, suggesting that such children may be more socially outgoing and active both positively and negatively. Like those who spent more time in small peer groups, children who spent more hours in medium‐sized groups received higher ratings for peer aggression by their third‐grade teachers. Children who spent more time with one other child in childcare or in small peer groups had fewer classroom friends in third grade as reported by the teacher but not according to maternal report or self‐report. There were no significant associations between the amount of time children spent in large childcare‐based peer groups and third‐grade peer social competence.     

The people or the place? An analysis of the protective factors of hate crime in multiethnic neighbourhoods in Australia

Hate crime creates significant problems for individual victims and the social fabric of a community more broadly. Victimisation is most likely to occur around the victim's own neighbourhood, yet few studies examine how the neighbourhood context influences hate crime. This study uses data from the Australian Community Capacity Study involving 4,400 participants in 148 neighbourhoods in Brisbane. It examines whether it is characteristics of place (such as attitudes toward diversity, place attachment and social cohesion) that reduce hate crime, or whether it is interactions with fellow residents (such as frequency of neighbourly exchanges, number of friends, and number of acquaintances in the neighbourhood) that shelter residents from hate crime. Results demonstrate that characteristics of a place provide important protective factors against hate crime in the neighbourhood, rather than the number of social‐interactions between residents.     

家庭背景、班级情境与青少年的跨群体交往

通过分析“中国教育追踪调查”（CEPS）数据,本文考察了家庭背景和班级情境对流动儿童和本地儿童跨群体交往的影响。研究发现,家庭社会经济地位对流动儿童的跨群体交往具有积极作用,但本地儿童的家庭社会经济地位越高,跨群体朋友数量反而越少。总体而言,班级异质性与学生的跨群体朋友数量之间呈倒“U”型关系,但随着班级异质性的上升,流动儿童的跨群体朋友数量呈下降趋势,本地儿童则正好相反。所属群体跨群体社会交往越多,学生拥有的跨群体朋友数量越多,并且这种积极作用对本地儿童的影响更大。而外部群体的封闭性越强,学生跨群体朋友数量就越少,并且这种消极作用对流动儿童更强。最后还发现,上述班级情境影响效应的群体性差异主要存在于本地儿童数量占优势的班级。     

A Critique of the Concept of Social Exclusion and its Utility for Australian Social Housing Policy

The paper reviews the usefulness of the concept of social exclusion for Australian social housing policy. We draw on recent theoretical and empirical research from Europe and the UK to develop a critique of the concept of social exclusion. It is argued that any assessment of social exclusion needs to distinguish between its utility as an academic explanatory concept and its political deployment to justify new forms of policy intervention. Policy targeting anti‐social behaviour through increasingly more punitive means, for instance, is often justified on the basis that it ameliorates the problems of social exclusion experienced by tenants residing in public housing estates. We conclude that, in spite of the limitations of social exclusion as an analytical concept, for political and pragmatic reasons it is likely to become an important component of the emerging Australian housing policy agenda.     

Social Welfare in Vietnam: A Curse or Blessing for Poor Children?

Despite a rapid increase in economic growth accompanied by the rise of living standards over the last two decades in Vietnam, there is still a considerable proportion of the population that lives in poor and vulnerable conditions. Children in particular are disproportionately affected by poverty. The country employs a broad range of social protection programs that tend to be regressive in effect rather than supportive of the poor. The present paper evaluates the social welfare scheme in Vietnam in terms of child poverty. We use the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey (VHLSS) 2006 and identify and quantify child poverty in monetary as well as multidimensional terms. We consider the link between social welfare receipt and poverty and evaluate coverage, exclusion, and inclusion errors. Furthermore, we use benefit incidence analysis to evaluate the impact of social welfare on monetary child poverty. Findings suggest that coverage of the social welfare scheme is limited and that the scheme suffers from considerable exclusion and inclusion errors. Furthermore, we find that social welfare only slightly reduces the incidence and depth of monetary poverty.     

Spiralling up and spiralling down: implications of a long‐term study of temperament and conduct disorder for social work with children

A model of social work grounded in the integration of the social sciences is presented. In social work with children this is exemplified by the importance of difficult childhood temperament and the goodness of fit between parenting practices in the evolution of conduct disorders. A professional model in which the social worker is an equal status member of a cooperative team of professionals engaged in treatment and research is stressed. The basis for this model of social work is that of the person‐in‐environment in which loopbacks from the child’s environment reinforce or diminish the evolution of conduct disorder in the process of spiralling down or spiralling up. This process is illustrated by two extensive case histories. In one the spiralling down process has been checked through intensive social work inputs. Nevertheless, in a longitudinal study it is shown that without such interventions difficult temperament observed at age 3 has significant links to conduct disorders, and movement into care or institutional life at age 17. Severe conduct disorders which lead to permanent school exclusion are likely to be expensive.     

Social Exclusion, Inequality and Social Work

This paper sets out the environment of inequality in which social work and the poor have recently operated. It explores pragmatic and idealist arguments concerning whether or not the poor need social work. Finally, policy solutions developed in consultation with social service users and carers are suggested in relation to poverty and social exclusion. Social exclusion can be linked to relative poverty as exclusion from economic and social norms. However, there is a wider brief in our own government’s publications and those of Europe, of examining how people are excluded from actions and policies of agencies who are there to support them. This paper will retain the concepts of poverty as lack of material income, and inequality as the gap between the rich and the poor, while being aware of the policy implications for social service users and carers of the more comprehensive process of being shut out partially or fully from social, economic, political and cultural systems. The debates around social work, social exclusion and inequality that follow establish: that some of the poor do need social work; that the poverty of social service users is related to policies that have restructured welfare in Britain; that the reason for individuals approaching or being referred to social services are complex but are likely to include financial deprivation as a key contributory factor; that if the poor do need social work, advocacy is essential rather than social work being seen as concerned only with social control—taking children into care, mentally ill people into hospitals, and advising the DSS on the suitability of claimants for benefits. Finally, the discussion turns to new policy agendas on social exclusion instigated by the Labour government. What positive difference can such policies make for social service users, their carers and social workers?.     

The role of interactions with teachers and conflict with friends in shaping school adjustment

Fifth grade children (N = 346) identified school friends and reported on levels of conflict in relationships with these friends as well as perceived stress in relationships with teachers. Teachers and children provided ratings of problem behaviors at school, and children reported on their own perceptions of stress at school. Both less conflictual school friendships and less stressful relationships with teachers were linked with fewer feelings of stress and lower levels of problem problems at school. For the problem behaviors outcome, having more positive relationships with one set of others (teachers or friends) buffered children from experiencing negative consequences of poor relationships with the other set of individuals. The interaction effect involving friendship conflicts and stressful teacher interactions in relation to school stress was more complicated, differing for boys versus girls.     

Children's Interpretations of Ambiguous Provocation From Their Siblings: Comparisons With Peers and Links to Relationship Quality

This study investigated how six‐ to eight‐year‐old children interpret ambiguous provocation from their siblings. In particular, we examined how children's attributions of their siblings' intent (1) differed from those for their peers, (2) varied as a function of the structural features of the sibling relationship, and (3) were associated with the affective qualities of the sibling relationship. A total of 121 children were presented with ambiguous provocation scenarios in which three groups of agemates were described as the perpetrators of harm (siblings, friends, and disliked peers). Scenarios were designed to assess children's attributions of hostile, instrumental, and accidental intent. Children attributed more hostile intent to disliked peers than to siblings and less hostile intent to friends than to siblings. Accidental and instrumental intent attributions were equally likely for friends and siblings but less common for disliked peers. Children attributed more hostile intent to older siblings, and more instrumental intent to laterborn siblings who were chronologically younger. Children's attributions of siblings' intent were related to both parents' and children's reports of the affective features of siblings' interactions. Results provide new insight into how children's construals of others' actions are grounded in the unique features of their relationships with particular interaction partners.     

Social inclusion,exclusion, and well‐being in Australia: meaning and measurement

This paper begins by examining the social inclusion agenda that formed the centrepiece of the social policy agenda of the Australian Government between 2007 and 2013. It discusses several features of the agenda, including its objectives (as articulated by the government) and some of the administrative and bureaucratic mechanisms that were put in place to assist with its development and implementation. Although no formal assessment of the impact of the agenda is attempted, some of the ways in which such an agenda could make a difference are identified. The paper then summarises the social inclusion indicator framework developed by the Australian Social Inclusion Unit with assistance and advice from the Australian Social Inclusion Board, and compares its structure and content with the frameworks developed by two of Australia's leading social research institutes. Finally, data from two national surveys of poverty and social exclusion are used to examine recent changes in social exclusion and the association between the severity of exclusion and levels of subjective well‐being. These latter results show clearly that subjective well‐being is consistently lower among those who experience the greatest degree of social exclusion, suggesting that exclusion as identified and measured reflects external constraints rather than internal preferences.     

The Semantically Reciprocating Robot: Adult Influences on Children's Early Conversational Skills

Two-year-old children's conversational replies were observed in two social contexts: (a) with a partner who consistently responded to each of their utterances by semantically reciprocating and commenting briefly on their topic; or (b) with a partner who also consistently replied to each of their utterances but did not semantically reciprocate their topic. Children were significantly more likely to reply to a partner who maintained their topic. Given that a child replied, the verbal responses in the semantic reciprocation group were also more likely to have a topic-comment structure characteristic of more advanced conversational skills. These experimental data confirm previous correlational evidence suggesting that children are sensitive to semantic reciprocation during the early stages of verbal communicative development, and they support recent arguments suggesting that the adult's use of expansions scaffolds the child's tendency to use predicative, topic-comment replies…and perhaps advances the child's understanding of the adult partner as an attentional/intentional mental agent.     

Depression and social networks in community dwelling elders: a descriptive study

Social isolation and inadequate social support have been identified as correlates of depression in older adults, although the relationship between depression and social isolation is not entirely understood (Dorfman et al., 1995). This study was conducted to describe the social networks of depressed older adults living in the community and to compare the social networks of depressed and nondepressed individuals, thus adding to the body of knowledge regarding social networks, older adults, and depression. The sample consisted of 91 respondents aged 65 and older who were randomly selected using the voter registry. About 27% (25) respondents reported significant levels of depressive symptomology as measured by the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression Scale (CES-D). All respondents completed semistructured interviews that included questions about social contacts with family and others during the prior week. All participants reported social contact with family and friends during this period. In this sample, depressed elders were not socially isolated. They were more likely to report contacts with friends than those who were not depressed, and equally likely to report involvement in volunteer activities. Their likelihood of seeking social support was also comparable. Results emphasize the importance of peer relationships and suggest that, in some groups of older adults, social isolation may not be a hallmark of depressive symptoms.