Toddlers’ Duration of Attention Toward Putative Threat

Although individual differences in reactions to novelty in the toddler years have been consistently linked to risk of developing anxious behavior, toddlers’ attention toward a novel, putatively threatening stimulus while in the presence of other enjoyable activities has rarely been examined as a precursor to such risk. The current study examined how attention toward an angry‐looking gorilla mask in a room with alternative opportunities for play in 24‐month‐old toddlers predicted social inhibition when children entered kindergarten. Analyses examined attention to threat above and beyond and in interaction with both proximity to the mask and fear of novelty observed in other situations. Attention to threat interacted with proximity to the mask to predict social inhibition, such that attention to threat most strongly predicted social inhibition when toddlers stayed furthest from the mask. This relation occurred above and beyond the predictive relation between fear of novelty and social inhibition. Results are discussed within the broader literature of anxiety development and attentional processes in young children.     

Research note: The consequences of different methods for handling missing network data in stochastic actor based models

Although stochastic actor-based models (e.g., as implemented in the SIENA software program) are growing in popularity as a technique for estimating longitudinal network data, a relatively understudied issue is the consequence of missing network data for longitudinal analysis. We explore this issue in our research note by utilizing data from four schools in an existing dataset (the AddHealth dataset) over three time points, assessing the substantive consequences of using four different strategies for addressing missing network data. The results indicate that whereas some measures in such models are estimated relatively robustly regardless of the strategy chosen for addressing missing network data, some of the substantive conclusions will differ based on the missing data strategy chosen. These results have important implications for this burgeoning applied research area, implying that researchers should more carefully consider how they address missing data when estimating such models.     

Play in Mexican‐American mothers and toddlers is frequent,multimodal, and rich in symbolic content

Play offers rich opportunities for toddlers to develop motor, social, cognitive, and language skills, particularly during interactions with adult caregivers who may scaffold toddlers to higher levels of play than toddlers achieve on their own. However, research on play has narrowly focused on children from White, middle‐income backgrounds, leaving a dearth of knowledge about dyadic play in diverse cultural communities. We videorecorded 222 Mexican‐American mothers playing with their 2‐year‐old toddlers with a standard set of toys. Play behaviors were coded as nonsymbolic or symbolic (play type) and as expressed through manual, verbal, or multiple channels (play modality). Play between toddlers and mothers was frequent, high in symbolic content, and toddler play closely corresponded with mother play in type and modality: Toddlers’ nonsymbolic play related to mothers’ nonsymbolic play; toddlers’ symbolic play related to mothers’ symbolic play; toddlers’ manual play related to mothers’ manual play; and toddlers’ multimodal play related to mothers’ multimodal play. Play in Mexican‐American mothers and toddlers is frequent, multimodal, and symbolically rich, offering new directions for future research and practice.     

Tablet assessment of word comprehension reveals coarse word representations in 18–⁠20-month-old toddlers

The present study explores the viability of using tablets in assessing early word comprehension by means of a two-alternative forced-choice task. Forty-nine 18–20-month-old Norwegian toddlers performed a touch-based word recognition task, in which they were prompted to identify the labeled target out of two displayed items on a touchscreen tablet. In each trial, the distractor item was either semantically related (e.g., dog–cat) or unrelated (e.g., dog–airplane) to the target. Our results show that toddlers as young as 18 months can engage meaningfully with a tablet-based assessment, with minimal verbal instruction and child–administrator interaction. Toddlers performed better in the semantically unrelated condition than in the related condition, suggesting that their word representations are still semantically coarse at this age. Furthermore, parental reports of comprehension, using the Norwegian version of the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories, predicted toddlers’ performance, with parent–child agreement stronger in the semantically unrelated condition, indicating that parents declare a word to be known by their child if it is understood at a coarse representational level. This study provides among the earliest evidence that remote data collection in 18-20 month-old toddlers is viable, as comparable results were observed from both in-laboratory and online administration of the touchscreen recognition task.     

The contribution of E.C. consumer surveys in forecasting consumer expenditures: An econometric analysis for four major countries

In this article we investigate the forecasting performance of alternative models of private consumption using the EEC consumer surveys. Two basic conclusions emerge from the study:(1) in absolute as well as in comparison with a standard economic model, consumption functions incorporating opinion variables perform surprisingly well given the important measurement problems (missing data, qualitative character of the responses, strong collinearity among responses), and(2) consumers' opinions are helpful guides only in very short-term forecasting (between 0 and 3 quarters).The article extends previous investigations both on the basic characteristics of opinion variables and on their relation with actual economic variables.     

12‐Month‐Old Infants' Perception of Attention Direction in Static Video Images

Twelve‐month‐old infants' ability to perceive gaze direction in static video images was investigated. The images showed a woman who performed attention‐directing actions by looking or pointing toward 1 of 4 objects positioned in front of her (2 on each side). When the model just pointed at the objects, she looked straight ahead, and when she just looked, her hands were hidden below the tabletop. An eye movement system (TOBII) was used to register the gaze of the participants. We found that the infants clearly discriminated the gaze directions to the objects. There was no tendency to mix up the 2 object positions, located 10° apart, on the same side of the model. The infants spent more time looking at the attended objects than the unattended ones and they shifted gaze more often from the face of the model to the attended object than to the unattended objects. Pointing did not significantly increase the infants' tendency to move gaze to the attended object, irrespective of whether the pointing gesture was accompanied by looking or not. In all conditions the infants spent most of the time looking at the model's face. This tendency was especially noticeable in the pointing‐only condition and the condition where the model just looked straight ahead.     

How do International Volunteering Characteristics Influence Outcomes? Perspectives from Partner Organizations

This study examines how different types of international volunteering influence common program outcomes such as building organizational capacity, developing international relationships, and performing manual labor. Survey responses were collected from 288 development-oriented volunteer partner organizations operating in 68 countries. Data on the duration of volunteer service, the volunteers’ skill levels, and other variables were used to develop a rough typology of international volunteering. Binary logistic regression models then assessed differences in outcomes across five volunteering types. Findings suggest that future research needs to be more precise about how the nuances and complexity of diverse forms of international volunteering influence outcomes.     

MULTIPLE IMPUTATION OF INCOMPLETE CATEGORICAL DATA USING LATENT CLASS ANALYSIS

We propose using latent class analysis as an alternative to log-linear analysis for the multiple imputation of incomplete categorical data. Similar to log-linear models, latent class models can be used to describe complex association structures between the variables used in the imputation model. However, unlike log-linear models, latent class models can be used to build large imputation models containing more than a few categorical variables. To obtain imputations reflecting uncertainty about the unknown model parameters, we use a nonparametric bootstrap procedure as an alternative to the more common full Bayesian approach. The proposed multiple imputation method, which is implemented in Latent GOLD software for latent class analysis, is illustrated with two examples. In a simulated data example, we compare the new method to well-established methods such as maximum likelihood estimation with incomplete data and multiple imputation using a saturated log-linear model. This example shows that the proposed method yields unbiased parameter estimates and standard errors. The second example concerns an application using a typical social sciences data set. It contains 79 variables that are all included in the imputation model. The proposed method is especially useful for such large data sets because standard methods for dealing with missing data in categorical variables break down when the number of variables is so large.     

Do 8‐Month‐Old Infants Consider Situational Constraints When Interpreting Others’ Gaze as Goal‐Directed Action?

Some actions of agents are ambiguous in terms of goal‐directedness to young infants. If given reasons why an agent performed these ambiguous actions, would infants then be able to perceive the actions as goal‐directed? Prior results show that infants younger than 12 months can not encode the relationship between a human agent’s looking behavior and the target of her gaze as goal‐directed. In the present experiments, 8‐month‐olds responded in ways suggesting that they interpreted an agent’s action of looking at object‐A as opposed to object‐B as evidence for her goal directed toward object‐A, if her looking action was rational given certain situational constraints: a barrier separated her from the objects or her hands were occupied. Therefore, the infants seem to consider situational constraints when attributing goals to agents’ otherwise ambiguous actions; they seem to realize that within such constraints, these actions are efficient ways for agents to achieve goals.     

Maternal dynamic respiratory sinus arrhythmia during toddlers’ interactions with novelty

Maternal psychophysiological responses to toddlers’ distress to novelty may have important implications for parenting during early childhood that are relevant to children's eventual development of social withdrawal and anxiety. Likely, these responses depend on intrapersonal, interpersonal, and contextual factors. The current study investigated the time course of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) across two laboratory novelty episodes, one low threat and one moderate threat, in 120 mothers of 2-year-old toddlers. Growth models tested context differences in and correlates of dynamic patterns of RSA. Dynamic patterns differed between tasks and according to mothers’ perceptions of and distress about toddler shyness. Thus, changes in mothers’ RSA across toddlers’ interactions with novelty seem to depend on the context as well as how mothers perceive and respond to their toddlers’ shyness.     

Looking Behavior at Test and Relational Memory in 6‐Month‐Old Infants

Small‐scale eye‐tracking research lends support to behavioral studies of relational memory by 6 months of life. Here, in the largest eye‐tracking test of relational memory to date (n = 276), we replicate these findings and examine the impact of excluding data based on looking behavior characteristics at test. Past work examining infants' preferential looking toward arbitrary‐paired objects and scenes has excluded infants from analysis based upon “insufficient looking” at test. Yet, research suggests that variation in looking behavior may be associated with looking patterns during encoding, as well as trait‐like differences in visual and cognitive processing. Similar to past research, we observed evidence for relational memory among 6‐month‐olds. In keeping with past research, when infants were excluded based on “insufficient looking,” we observed evidence for relational memory only when infants were tested immediately. However, when exclusion criteria were relaxed, infants specifically demonstrated preferential looking during a presumably more difficult delay‐plus‐interference condition. Moreover, analyses revealed that looking behavior during encoding was associated with looking behavior at test. Together, results suggest that infants do possess rudimentary relational memory capabilities, but that experimenters' ability to detect these capabilities is influenced by both experimental conditions and individual differences in looking behavior.     

Toddlers' Understanding of Iconic Models: Cross‐Task Comparison of Selection and Preferential Looking Responses

Toddlers' symbolic understanding of iconic models was assessed through 2 comprehension‐based tasks: 1 based on looking and 1 requiring manual selection of the target object. Toddlers received either iconic models or photographs of models as the symbolic referent. Overall, 18‐month‐olds performed poorly, and both 22‐and 26‐month‐olds performed relatively well across tasks. Contrary to expectations that the 2 tasks would impose different levels of attentional demands, performance was relatively consistent across tasks. Vocabulary size was significantly related to performance, even when the effects of age were controlled. Relations between model comprehension and more sophisticated manifestations of symbolic comprehension are considered.     

2‐Year‐Olds’ Speech Understanding in Multitalker Environments

Infants and toddlers are often spoken to in the presence of background sounds, including speech from other talkers. Prior work has suggested that infants 1 year of age and younger can only recognize speech when it is louder than any distracters in the environment. The present study tests 24‐month‐olds’ ability to understand speech in a multitalker environment. Children were presented with a preferential‐looking task in which a target voice told them to find one of two objects. At the same time, multitalker babble was presented as a distracter, at one of four signal‐to‐noise ratios. Children showed some ability to understand speech and look at the appropriate referent at signal‐to‐noise ratios as low as ?5 dB. These findings suggest that 24‐month‐olds are better able to selectively attend to an interesting voice in the context of competing distracter voices than are younger infants. There were significant correlations between individual children’s performance and their vocabulary size, but only at one of the four noise levels; thus, it does not appear that vocabulary size is the driving factor in children’s listening improvement, although it may be a contributing factor to performance in noisy environments.     

Selectivity in Infant Social Referencing

In laboratory studies of social referencing, infants as young as 12 months have been reported to prefer looking at the experimenter over the caregiver for clarifying information. From an expertise perspective, such behavior could be interpreted as if the infant seeks information from others and can discriminate between persons who have or do not have relevant information to provide in the laboratory. If this is the case, higher order cognitive capacities might be involved in infant selectivity in looking in social referencing situations. However, it has also been proposed that associative learning processes might account for infant preferences in such studies. To examine whether an expertise perspective or if more basic learning processes best explain infant selectivity in looking, 40 12‐month‐old infants were assigned to 1 of 2 comparable conditions. The experimenter versus the caregiver presented an ambiguous toy and delivered positive information about the toy. The infants preferred to look at the experimenter and they regulated their behavior more in accordance with information coming from the experimenter. Thus, an associative learning account cannot explain infant preferences in looking. The results are discussed in terms of an expertise perspective.     

Self-Perceived Distress and Impairment in Problem Gamblers: A Study of Pre- to Post-treatment Measurement Invariance

Gambling help services typically evaluate treatment outcomes using self-reported responses and measurements. However, gamblers’ conceptualisations and prioritisations with respect to these measurements may shift over time. Thus, changes in the self-reported responses may not always reflect true change in the individuals. This study investigated for response shift in self-report measures of psychological distress and impairment in 293 help-seeking problem gamblers. We used confirmatory factor analysis to model data structures from pre-treatment to post-treatment. The findings indicated that a response shift had occurred. Two items became less important and one item became more important in measuring psychological distress. Measurement invariance was achieved for the complete set of items for impairment. These findings provide a more in-depth understanding of the nature of self-report outcomes in otherwise routinely collected data.     

Examining the differences between the use of wearable cameras and traditional cameras in research – a research note

Abstract

Photographic images allow data to be captured from an alternative perspective. Traditional, manual cameras are the most common method of recording photographic data, however, innovative technology is changing the way in which photographs can be collected. Wearable cameras enable a vast amount of photographic images to be captured, automatically, without user interaction. It is often assumed that photographic research methods are used for a similar purpose, engage participants in a similar way and yield a similar outcome, however, there are various differences between the use of traditional, manual cameras and innovative, wearable cameras. This research note offers a unique contribution to the literature by highlighting the differences between the use of traditional, manual cameras and wearable, automatic cameras within research.     

A PARTIAL INDEPENDENCE ITEM RESPONSE MODEL FOR SURVEYS WITH FILTER QUESTIONS

In many surveys, responses to earlier questions determine whether later questions are asked. The probability of an affirmative response to a given item is therefore nonzero only if the participant responded affirmatively to some set of logically prior items, known as "filter items." In such surveys, the usual conditional independence assumption of standard item response models fails. A weaker "partial independence" assumption may hold, however, if an individual's responses to different items are independent conditional on the item parameters, the individual's latent trait, and the participant's affirmative responses to each of a set of filter items. In this paper, we propose an item response model for such "partially independent" item response data. We model such item response patterns as a function of a person-specific latent trait and a set of item parameters. Our model can be seen as a generalized hybrid of a discrete-time hazard model and a Rasch model. The proposed procedure yields estimates of (1) person-specific, interval-scale measures of a latent trait (or traits), along with person-specific standard errors of measurement; (2) conditional and marginal item severities for each item in a protocol; (3) person-specific conditional and marginal probabilities of an affirmative response to each item in a protocol; and (4) item information and total survey information. In addition, we show here how to investigate and test alternative conceptions of the dimensionality of the latent trait(s) being measured. Finally, we compare our procedure with a simpler alternative approach to summarizing data of this type.     

Pointing to Visible and Invisible Targets

We investigated how the visibility of targets influenced the type of point used to provide directions. In Study 1, we asked 605 passersby in three localities for directions to well-known local landmarks. When that landmark was in plain view behind the requester, most respondents pointed with their index fingers, and few respondents pointed more than once. In contrast, when the landmark was not in view, respondents pointed initially with their index fingers, but often elaborated with a whole-hand point. In Study 2, we covertly filmed the responses from 157 passersby we approached for directions, capturing both verbal and gestural responses. As in Study 1, few respondents produced more than one gesture when the target was in plain view and initial points were most likely to be index finger points. Thus, in a Western geographical context in which pointing with the index finger is the dominant form of pointing, a slight change in circumstances elicited a preference for pointing with the whole hand when it was the second or third manual gesture in a sequence.     

Three Likelihood-Based Methods For Mean and Covariance Structure Analysis With Nonnormal Missing Data

Survey and longitudinal studies in the social and behavioral sciences generally contain missing data. Mean and covariance structure models play an important role in analyzing such data. Two promising methods for dealing with missing data are a direct maximum-likelihood and a two-stage approach based on the unstructured mean and covariance estimates obtained by the EM-algorithm. Typical assumptions under these two methods are ignorable nonresponse and normality of data. However, data sets in social and behavioral sciences are seldom normal, and experience with these procedures indicates that normal theory based methods for nonnormal data very often lead to incorrect model evaluations. By dropping the normal distribution assumption, we develop more accurate procedures for model inference. Based on the theory of generalized estimating equations, a way to obtain consistent standard errors of the two-stage estimates is given. The asymptotic efficiencies of different estimators are compared under various assumptions. We also propose a minimum chi-square approach and show that the estimator obtained by this approach is asymptotically at least as efficient as the two likelihood-based estimators for either normal or nonnormal data. The major contribution of this paper is that for each estimator, we give a test statistic whose asymptotic distribution is chi-square as long as the underlying sampling distribution enjoys finite fourth-order moments. We also give a characterization for each of the two likelihood ratio test statistics when the underlying distribution is nonnormal. Modifications to the likelihood ratio statistics are also given. Our working assumption is that the missing data mechanism is missing completely at random. Examples and Monte Carlo studies indicate that, for commonly encountered nonnormal distributions, the procedures developed in this paper are quite reliable even for samples with missing data that are missing at random.     

Childhood,Agency and Youth Justice

This article seeks to reframe debates in the sphere of youth justice in order to move away from narrow and one‐sided conceptualisations of young people who offend and appropriate forms of intervention with them. Whilst different positions have been adopted within the field of youth justice, largely around ‘justice’ or ‘welfare’ models of practice, the apparent polarisation of this conflict has obscured an underlying consensus, namely that the ‘problem’ is the child or young offender, and he/she needs either to be helped or coerced into becoming a conforming adult citizen. Largely absent from the field of youth justice have been other theoretical influences such as consideration of the nature of ‘agency’ and the construction of childhood. These alternative perspectives could offer us some insight into the limitations of historical debates in youth justice policy and practice, as will as pointing the way towards innovative and progressive alternative forms of practice. The strengths and shortcomings of contemporary developments, such as restorative interventions, will be discussed in this context, and the article will conclude that there is scope for developing positive, young person‐centred models of youth justice practice if we base these on a proper understanding of childhood and children’s agency.