Social interaction targets enhance 13-month-old infants' associative learning

Infants are attentive to third-party interactions, but the underlying mechanisms of this preference remain understudied. This study examined whether 13-month-old infants (N = 32) selectively learn cue–target associations guiding them to videos depicting a social interaction scene. In a visual learning task, two geometrical shapes were repeatedly paired with two kinds of target videos: two adults interacting with one another (social interaction) or the same adults acting individually (non-interactive control). Infants performed faster saccadic latencies and more predictive gaze shifts toward the cued target region during social interaction trials. These findings suggest that social interaction targets can serve as primary reinforcers in an associative learning task, supporting the view that infants find it intrinsically valuable to observe others’ interactions.     

Leading Practice Improvement in Front Line Child Protection

Front line child protection managers are a vital conduit foreffective outcomes for children, young people and their families.However, little is known about the change processes that theyneed to implement to effectively intervene in such a complexcontext to support improved practice. This article describeshow organizational action research and Organizational LinkageTheory were used to establish an in-depth understanding of theinhibitors and facilitators of the implementation of an outcome-focusedmanagement model in three child protection offices. This analysisidentified that five interrelated compensatory processes actedto offset the impact of the implementation inhibitors. This,in turn, enabled direct service staff to experience an increasedcapacity to undertake effective service activities. This articleexplores each of these compensatory processes and makes a numberof suggestions for how child protection managers and their organizationsmight seek to embed them.     

BAYESIAN MODEL SEARCH AND MULTILEVEL INFERENCE FOR SNP ASSOCIATION STUDIES

Technological advances in genotyping have given rise to hypothesis-based association studies of increasing scope. As a result, the scientific hypotheses addressed by these studies have become more complex and more difficult to address using existing analytic methodologies. Obstacles to analysis include inference in the face of multiple comparisons, complications arising from correlations among the SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms), choice of their genetic parametrization and missing data. In this paper we present an efficient Bayesian model search strategy that searches over the space of genetic markers and their genetic parametrization. The resulting method for Multilevel Inference of SNP Associations, MISA, allows computation of multilevel posterior probabilities and Bayes factors at the global, gene and SNP level, with the prior distribution on SNP inclusion in the model providing an intrinsic multiplicity correction. We use simulated data sets to characterize MISA's statistical power, and show that MISA has higher power to detect association than standard procedures. Using data from the North Carolina Ovarian Cancer Study (NCOCS), MISA identifies variants that were not identified by standard methods and have been externally "validated" in independent studies. We examine sensitivity of the NCOCS results to prior choice and method for imputing missing data. MISA is available in an R package on CRAN.     

Changing Signs: The Political Pragmatism of Poststructuralism

In a recent issue of The New Republic, Martha Nussbaum singled out Judith Butler for a particularly venomous attack. Nussbaum's criticism was very simple: good theory leads to practical political action, and Butler's theories do not. Nussbaum's criticism of Butler echoes a general criticism leveled against the emerging field of queer theory. Many advocates of sexual rights have suggested that poststructuralist approaches do not have practical political application. In this essay, the authors argue that Butler's work points to a new political pragmatism. In the past, many advocates of sexual rights have focused on essentialized notions of sexual identity. A politically pragmatic approach, informed by Butler's theories, can shift the debate so that the issue of homophobic discrimination, rather than sexual identity, becomes a primary focus of the sexual rights movement.     

The Salience of Multimodal Sensory Stimulation in Early Development: Implications for the Issue of Ecological Validity

Studies of infant development concerned with the emergence of specific perceptual or cognitive abilities have typically focused on responsiveness in only one sensory modality. Research on infant perception, learning, and memory often attempts to reduce multimodal stimulation to “noise” and to control or omit stimulation from other sensory modalities in experimental designs. This type of unimodal research, although important, may not generalize well to the behavior of infants in the multimodal context of the everyday world. Research from animal and human development is reviewed that documents that significant differences in infants' perceptual skills and abilities can be observed under conditions of unimodal versus multimodal stimulation. These studies provide converging evidence for a functional distinction between unimodal and multimodal stimulation during early development and suggest that ecological validity can be enhanced when research findings are generalized appropriately to the natural environment and are not overgeneralized across stimulus properties, tasks, or contexts.     

Building a statistical model to predict reactor temperatures

This paper describes the various stages in building a statistical model to predict temperatures in the core of a reactor, and compares the benefits of this model with those of a physical model. We give a brief background to this study and the applications of the model to rapid online monitoring and safe operation of the reactor. We describe the methods, of correlation and two dimensional spectral analysis, which we use to identify the effects that are incorporated in a spatial regression model for the measured temperatures. These effects are related to the age of the reactor fuel and the spatial geometry of the reactor. A remaining component of the temperature variation is a slowly varying temperature surface modelled by smooth functions with constrained coefficients. We assess the accuracy of the model for interpolating temperatures throughout the reactor, when measurements are available only at a reduced set of spatial locations, as is the case in most reactors. Further possible improvements to the model are discussed.     

DENSITY ESTIMATION FOR CLUSTERED DATA

The commonly used survey technique of clustering introduces dependence into sample data. Such data is frequently used in economic analysis, though the dependence induced by the sample structure of the data is often ignored. In this paper, the effect of clustering on the non-parametric, kernel estimate of the density, f(x), is examined. The window width commonly used for density estimation for the case of i.i.d. data is shown to no longer be optimal. A new optimal bandwidth using a higher-order kernel is proposed and is shown to give a smaller integrated mean squared error than two window widths which are widely used for the case of i.i.d. data. Several illustrations from simulation are provided.     

Autobiographical Occasions: Introduction to the Special Issue

Qualitative Sociology -     

Why Did Adorno 'Hate' Jazz?

Adorno's jazz essays have attracted considerable notoriety not only for their negative and dismissive evaluation of jazz as music but for their outright dismissal of all the claims made on behalf of jazz by its exponents and admirers, even of claims concerning the black origins of jazz music. This paper offers a critical exposition of Adorno's views on jazz and outlines an alternative theory of the culture industry as the basis of a critique of Adorno's critical theory. Adorno's arguments are discussed in the context of his wider theoretical commitment to a model of structuration—in both musical and social relations—that establishes a dividing line between a moral aesthetic praxis that can be approved as having 'truth-value' and one that betrays and subverts the truth. In Adorno's analysis, jazz finds itself positioned on the wrong side of that line and, accordingly, is condemned. It is argued that it is Adorno's commitment to a formalist model of art works that has been superseded by modern aesthetic practice in both so-called 'serious' art as well as in the works of the culture industries that binds him to a regressive model of aesthetic praxis. An alternative theory of the culture industry is outlined that explores its positive functions in enhancing the resources available for culture creation through its transmission of aesthetic codes, and in mediating relations between so-called high and low art.