Social skills of adopted Chinese girls at home and in school: Parent and teacher ratings

This study examines adopted Chinese girls' social skills at home and in school as well as the effect of pre-adoption adversity on these skills. Parent ratings of 869 girls and teacher ratings of 611 of the 869 girls were obtained using the Social Skills Rating System for parent (SSRS-P) and teacher (SSRS-T) respectively. The girls were adopted on average at 15.6 months (SD = 13.9) and were in three age groups, including preschool, elementary school, and secondary school. Data on five indicators of pre-adoption adversity (i.e., signs/symptoms, delays at adoption, initial refusal/avoidance of adoptive mothers, crying/clinging behaviors, and age at adoption) were obtained from the same adoptive parents 2 years prior. Findings suggest that both parents and teachers rated the girls as either similar to or better than US norms on the SSRS. Parent–teacher agreement on SSRS subscales was significant but modest (rs = 0.12–0.25). Two indicators of pre-adoption adversity (i.e., delays at adoption and initial refusal/avoidance of adoptive mothers) predicted poorer social skills at home; two other indicators of pre-adoption adversity (i.e., signs/symptoms and age at adoption) predicted poorer social skills in school.     

How Inventory Cost Influences Introduction Timing of Product Line Extensions

In the industry with radical technology push or rapidly changing customer preference, it is firms' common wisdom to introduce high‐end product first, and follow by low‐end product‐line extensions. A key decision in this “down‐market stretch” strategy is the introduction time. High inventory cost is pervasive in such industries, but its impact has long been ignored during the presale planning stage. This study takes a first step toward filling this gap. We propose an integrated inventory (supply) and diffusion (demand) framework and analyze how inventory cost influences the introduction timing of product‐line extensions, considering substitution effect among successive generations. We show that under low inventory cost or frequent replenishment ordering policy, the optimal introduction time indeed follows the well‐known “now or never” rule. However, sequential introduction becomes optimal as the inventory holding gets more substantial or the product life cycle gets shorter. The optimal introduction timing can increase or decrease with the inventory cost depending on the marketplace setting, requiring a careful analysis.     

The Media as spectacle: September 11 as soap opera

The concept of “spectacle” is most often associated with the writings of Guy Debord, but has also been developed and extended by later theorists, most particularly Jonathon Crary. We make use of their ideas on the “spectacle” which is the mass media to address two important sets of questions: how and why does the media find itself in a position to carry out the “immobilising” function ascribed to it by both Debord and Crary; and what are the techniques and mechanisms that facilitate this operation? We then exemplify the process of the media as spectacle with regard to coverage of recent political events such as the September 11 attacks and the so‐called “war on terror” and its relation to what we call the hysterical order of the soap opera.

The whole of life of those societies in which modern conditions of production prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacle. All that once was directly lived has become mere representation. (Debord )     

What probability should a jury address?

Probability of guilt is not the criterion on which a verdict in a criminal trial should be based, says Tony Gardner-Medwin . The courts, quite sensibly, do not even allow access to some of the background evidence on which a proper assessment of this probability should be made. He argues that a more satisfactory criterion is the probability, or degree of belief, that the evidence could have arisen without guilt.     

After the War Comes Peace? An Examination of the Impact of the Northern Ireland Conflict on Young People

When the conflict in Northern Ireland erupted over 30 years ago many voiced concern at the implications for children and young people. In the early years many looked to U.S. experience in order to frame questions, problems, and solutions. This article examines the strands of psychological research that developed and their link to the articles in the present collection. The article critiques the consensus among psychologists in the 1970s and 1980s that young people coped reasonably well in difficult circumstances. One theme of the current collection is to highlight the difficulties of dealing with the legacies of the past thirty years and hence the constraints facing the attempt to establish a peaceful and settled society.     

The Macroeconomics of Doubling Aid to Africa and the Centrality of the Supply Side

The proposed doubling of aid to Africa by 2010 is a less simple proposition, from a recipient point of view, than is commonly supposed. This article argues that it is difficult to manage large and rapidly increasing aid inflows in ways which do not disadvantage producers of tradeable goods, and the private sector generally. This difficulty can be averted if conscious efforts are made to offset it and to stimulate positive responses from the supply side. Whether such responses prevail over the shorter‐term management difficulties depends on the efficacy of state actions — and of aid — to bolster the supply side. The outcome is likely to be mixed, depending on country circumstances.     

Appreciative Inquiry and Public Dialogue: An Approach to Community Change

This paper will demonstrate the contribution of Appreciative Inquiry (AI) to whole system change in the public and non-profit sectors through elucidation of the theory, method, and examples of the successful application of this approach. Developed in the mid 1980s by David Cooperrider and his colleagues at Case Western Reserve University, AI begins with the discovery of the highest achievements, core values, and aspirations embedded in all human systems. It is a methodology that begins a dialogue between individuals, expands to groups and builds to embrace and declare community wide intentions and actions. The theory of social constructionism informs this work asserting that individuals in relationship with one another can and will co-create an effective future when a positive inquiry into the heart and soul of a system, its greatest accomplishments and deepest values, generates new meaning and inspires new possibilities. Deceptively simple, the system is based on a reversal of the expectations, practices, and limitations found in traditional problem solving methodologies and thus represents a significant shift in attitude and language.     

Adolescent Behavioral,Emotional, and Cognitive Engagement Trajectories in School and Their Differential Relations to Educational Success

The current study used a multidimensional approach to examine developmental trajectories of three dimension of school engagement (school participation, sense of school belonging, and self‐regulated learning) from grades 7 to 11 and their relationships to changes in adolescents’ academic outcomes over time. The sample includes 1,148 African American and European American adolescents (52% females, 56% black, 34% white, and 10% others). As expected, the downward trajectories of change in school participation, sense of belonging to school, and self‐regulated learning differed as did their predictive relationships with academic performance and educational aspiration, with school belonging declining most markedly, but being least predictive of changes in grade point average.