Strategies and cues adolescents use to assess the age of an online stranger

A common risk among adolescents is sexual solicitation, in which an adolescent is asked to provide sexual information, engage in sexual talk, or in sexual activities. Although scholars increasingly address this topic from an intrapersonal perspective, there is little attention to factors of language use and message content. In two focus group studies, we investigated whether adolescent girls consider themselves capable of assessing whether an online stranger is an adult or a peer, the extent to which adolescent girls actually succeed in making this assessment, the strategies they apply to do so, and the content- and language-related cues focused on. Our findings suggest that most of the adolescent girls are confident in their ability to assess whether the stranger is a peer or an adult with possible sexual intentions. However, we also found that only 43% were able to correctly make this assessment. Most of the adolescents seem to apply the passive strategy of uncertainty reduction: They scan the profile page of the stranger, check contact information, and the profile picture. They may choose to apply the interactive strategy to find out more about the online stranger. Important content-related cues that alarm adolescent girls are: ignoring personal questions, showing an exaggerated amount of interest, acting as a friend, and being sexually oriented. Language cues mentioned related to word usage, abbreviations, sentence length, and tone.     

Emancipated foster youth’s experiences and perceptions of the transition to adulthood

Using a grounded theory approach, this study evaluated narratives from a sample of 170 emancipated foster youth (66.5% female; 84.6% non-white) as they reflected on their experiences between the ages of 18 and 25 across three data waves. Corbin and Strauss’ (1990) three-phase coding process revealed five overarching themes: adult values and characteristics, nature of the transition process, material needs and resources, relationship concerns, and affective experiences. Although some elements of Arnett’s (2000) model of emerging adulthood were evident in this sample of emancipated foster youth, such as individualistic qualities and instability, other core features were rarely discussed, such as self-focus and optimism, or were expressed in unique ways, such as exploration and feeling in-between. There were significant age-related changes, but not gender differences, in youth’s discussion of varied themes. These findings suggest promising avenues for intervention during the sensitive period of developmental reorganization that characterizes the transition from adolescence to young adulthood.     

From smiling to smirking? 3D printing,upgrading and the restructuring of global value chains

3D printing (3DP) has been heralded as a revolutionary technology that can alter the way production is organized across time and space – with important redistributive effects on geography and size of production activities. In this article, we examine the impacts that a widespread adoption of 3DP could have on restructuring, upgrading and distributing value added along manufacturing global value chains (GVC) – with brief examples from the aerospace and automotive industries. We highlight two possible scenarios for GVCs – a complementarity scenario of 3DP and traditional manufacturing overlapping, which would reproduce power relations in GVCs and the current distribution of value added in a ‘smiling curve’; and a substitution scenario of 3DP partly or fully superseding traditional manufacturing, which would have more transformational effects in terms of ‘rebundling’ activities, regionalizing or localizing GVCs, and flattening the smiling curve into a ‘smirk’.     

Rules Infants Look By: Testing the Assumption of Transitivity in Visual Salience

What drives infants’ attention in complex visual scenes? Early models of infant attention suggested that the degree to which different visual features were detectable determines their attentional priority. Here, we tested this by asking whether two targets—defined by different features, but each equally salient when evaluated independently—would drive attention equally when pitted head‐to‐head. In Experiment 1, we presented 6‐month‐old infants with an array of Gabor patches in which a target region varied either in color or spatial frequency from the background. Using a forced‐choice preferential‐looking method, we measured how readily infants fixated the target as its featural difference from the background was parametrically increased. Then, in Experiment 2, we used these psychometric preference functions to choose values for color and spatial frequency targets that were equally salient (preferred), and pitted them against each other within the same display. We reasoned that if salience is transitive, then the stimuli should be iso‐salient and infants should therefore show no systematic preference for either stimulus. On the contrary, we found that infants consistently preferred the color‐defined stimulus. This suggests that computing visual salience in more complex scenes needs to include factors above and beyond local salience values.     

Negative (But Not Positive) Parenting Interacts with Infant Negative Affect to Predict Infant Approach: Evidence of Diathesis‐Stress

Temperament by parenting interactions may reflect that individuals with greater risk are more likely to experience negative outcomes in adverse contexts (diathesis‐stress) or that these individuals are more susceptible to contextual influences in a “for better or for worse” pattern (differential susceptibility). Although such interactions have been identified for a variety of child outcomes, prior research has not examined approach characteristics—excitement and approach toward pleasurable activities—in the first year of life. Therefore, this study investigated whether 6‐month maternal reported infant negative affect—a phenotypic marker of risk/susceptibility—interacted with 8‐month observed parenting behaviors (positive parenting, negative parenting) to predict 12‐month infant behavioral approach. Based on a sample of mothers and their infants (N = 150), results indicated that negative parenting was inversely associated with subsequent approach for infants with high, but not low, levels of negative affect. Similar results did not occur regarding positive parenting. These findings better fit a diathesis‐stress model rather than a differential susceptibility model. Implications and limitations of these findings are discussed.     

When Father Steps Forward and Mother Steps Back: The Moderating Role of Simultaneity in Parents' Coparenting Behaviors in the Development of Anxiety in 4‐ to 30‐Month‐Olds

Infant negative affectivity predicts child anxiety. Coparenting might influence the development of anxiety by weakening this association in the case of supportive coparenting, or by strengthening this association in the case of undermining coparenting. Parents can display coparenting behaviors simultaneously (both parents being supportive or undermining), or divergently (only one parent being supportive or undermining). In our longitudinal study, we investigated whether coparenting moderated the relation between infant negative affectivity at 4 months and child anxiety symptoms 2 years later. Hundred‐sixteen couples dressed up their firstborn infants in a clothes‐changing task. We coded cooperative, mutual, neutral, and competitive coparenting behaviors. Both parents rated infant negative affectivity and child anxiety symptoms. Infant negative affectivity significantly predicted child anxiety. This association was moderated by parents' divergent cooperative coparenting: It was stronger when mothers were cooperative while fathers were neutral, and weaker when fathers were cooperative while mothers were neutral. When fathers step forward (i.e., being cooperative) and mothers step back (i.e., leaving space), they may protect their at‐risk child from developing anxiety.     

Betting is Loving and Bettors are Predators: A Conceptual Metaphor Approach to Online Sports Betting Advertising

The legalisation of online gambling in multiple territories has caused a growth in the exposure of consumers to online sports betting (OSB) advertising. While some efforts have been made to understand the visible structure of betting promotional messages, little is known about the latent components of OSB advertisements. The present study sought to address this issue by examining the metaphorical conceptualisation of OSB advertising. A sample of Spanish and British television OSB advertisements from 2014 to 2016 was analysed (N = 133). Following Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptual metaphor theory, four main structural metaphors that shaped how OSB advertising can be understood were identified: betting as (1) an act of love, (2) a market, (3) a sport, and (4) a natural environment. In general, these metaphors, which were found widely across 29 different betting brands, facilitated the perception of bettors as active players, with an executive role in the sport events bet upon, and greater control over bet outcomes.     

Cross Validation of the Gambling Problem Severity Subscale of the Canadian Adolescent Gambling Index (CAGI/GPSS) on a Sample of Ontario High School Students

This paper reports on the cross validation of the Gambling Problem Severity Subscale of the Canadian Adolescent Gambling Index (CAGI/GPSS). The CAGI/GPSS was included in a large school based drug use and health survey conducted in 2015. Data from students in grades 9–12 (ages 13–20 years) derived from the (N = 3369 students). The CAGI/GPSS produced an alpha of 0.789. A principle component analysis revealed two eigenvalues greater than one. An oblique rotation revealed these components to represent consequences and over involvement. The CAGI/GPSS indicated that 1% of the students fell into the “red” category indicating a severe problem and an additional 3.3% scored in the “yellow” category indicating low to moderate problems. The CAGI/GPSS was shown to be significantly correlated with gambling frequency (r = 0.36), largest expenditure (r = 0.37), sex (more likely to be male) (r = ?0.19), lower school marks (r = ?0.07), hazardous drinking, (r = 0.16), problem video game play (r = 0.16), as well as substance abuse. The CAGI/GPSS was cross validated using a shorted version of the short SOGS, r = 0.48. In addition the CAGI/GPSS and short SOGS produced very similar patterns of correlations results. The results support the validity and reliability of the CAGI/GPSS as a measure of gambling problems among adolescents.