Infants’ Discrimination of Familiar and Unfamiliar Accents in Speech

This study investigates infants’ discrimination abilities for familiar and unfamiliar regional English accents. Using a variation of the head‐turn preference procedure, 5‐month‐old infants demonstrated that they were able to distinguish between their own South‐West English accent and an unfamiliar Welsh English accent. However, this distinction was not seen when two unfamiliar accents (Welsh English and Scottish English) were presented to the infants, indicating they had not acquired the general ability to distinguish between regional varieties, but only the distinction between their home accent and unfamiliar regional variations. This ability was also confirmed with 7‐month‐olds, challenging recent claims that infants lose their sensitivity to dialects at around that age. Taken together, our results argue in favor of an early sensitivity to the intonation system of languages, and to the early learning of accent‐specific intonation and potentially segmental patterns. Implications for the development of accent normalization abilities are discussed.     

The Impact of Poverty on Children and Young People’s Use of Services

This article describes a qualitative study exploring the impact of poverty on children’s access to and use of services, which took a comparative approach to gather the views of children from more and less affluent households. Findings suggest affordability and related factors including limited mobility constrained service use for less affluent children, resulting in cumulative missed opportunities. However, extended family, friends and agencies facilitated service access, mitigating the impact of poverty on service use to some extent. Research implications include the importance of listening to and taking account of the views of children from lower income families in service planning.     

Transforming the city: The potential for urban ethnographies of PR: The case of Latin America

Framed within García Canclini's concept of cultural hybridity, this paper will argue that “the city” and, consequently, the field of urban anthropology, offers great potential for the study of public relations and its audiences. Urbanisation will be one of the twenty-first century's biggest drivers of global economic growth (Dobbs et al., 2011) and public relations efforts will need to adapt to reflect the shifting urban environment. We will propose that cities provide opportunities for exploring the meanings, confines and possibilities of public relations as a socio-cultural practice. We will consider how ethnographically-inspired research can help us to further understand how public relations is understood and practised, both formally and informally, in large metropolitan cities and how public relations is influenced by, and can contribute to, urban cultural life. We will propose an ethnographic framework for research to explore the phenomenology of everyday lived experiences of public relations (PR) in relation to the complexity of the global processes which shape today's cities and the PR practices which take place within them. To contextualise our proposed research framework, we will draw on two particular cases from our own work: one of a project now completed in Mexico City, Mexico, and the other, a project in progress, in Lima, Peru.     

Using a peer action learning approach in the implementation of communication and information technology in social work education

This paper reports on a peer group learning process developed within a School of Social Work to facilitate the implementation of intra-net sites to support all modules provided on a Masters Diploma in Social Work course. Based on principles of action learning, an exposition of the approach taken illuminates the value of using collective peer learning among a team of educators, especially when implementing teaching and learning methodologies which are relatively new and unfamiliar. Within the context of this demonstration, the importance of ongoing critical reflection about the use of C&IT resources to enhance learning and teaching is highlighted. The paper ends with a commentary on how learning from this process has enabled participants to become more advanced users of C&IT--advanced, not just in terms of the technical competence required to provide C&IT resources but also in terms of their ability to reflect critically on the pedagogical concerns. Possibilities for continuation and transferability of the learning process within social work education are considered.     

The self-prescribed use of aromatherapy oils by pregnant women

BackgroundWhile some studies have reported effectiveness of aromatherapy oils use during labour there is no reported evidence of efficacy or risks of aromatherapy oils use for pregnancy-related symptoms or conditions. A number of aromatherapy oils are unsafe for use by pregnant women yet there is currently no research examining the prevalence and characteristics of women who use aromatherapy oils during pregnancy.AimTo conduct an empirical study of the prevalence and characteristics of women who use aromatherapy oils during pregnancy.MethodsThe research was conducted as part of the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health (ALSWH), focusing on the nationally representative sample of Australian women aged 31–36 years. Data were collected via a cross-sectional questionnaire (n = 8200) conducted in 2009.ResultsSelf-prescribed aromatherapy oils were used by 15.2% of pregnant women. Pregnant women were 1.57 (95% CI: 1.01, 2.43) times more likely to self-prescribe use of aromatherapy oils if they have allergies or hayfever, and 2.26 (95% CI: 1.34, 3.79) times more likely to self-prescribe use of aromatherapy oils if they have a urinary tract infection (UTI).ConclusionOur study highlights a considerable use of aromatherapy oils by pregnant women. There is a clear need for greater communication between practitioners and patients regarding the use of aromatherapy oils during pregnancy, as well a need for health care practitioners to be mindful that pregnant women in their care may be using aromatherapy oils, some of which may be unsafe.     

Probing infants’ sensitivity to pupil size when viewing eyes

Sensitive responding to eye cues plays a key role in human social interactions. Pupil size provides subtle cues regarding a social interaction partner's arousal states. The current study assessed infants’ sensitivity to and preference for differences in pupil size. Specifically, we examined White 14-month-old infants’ pupillary responses when viewing own-race and other-race (Asian) eyes with dilating, constricting, and static medium-sized pupils. Our results show that, independent of race, infants’ pupils dilated more when viewing eyes with dynamically changing (dilating and constricting) pupils than when viewing eyes with non-changing, static, and medium-sized pupils. We also measured infants’ looking preferences, showing that, independent of race, infants preferentially attended to eyes with dilated pupils. Moreover, our results show that infants orient more quickly to pupillary changes in own-race eyes than in other-race eyes. These findings demonstrate that infants detect, but do not mimic, changes in pupil size in others and show a preference for eyes with dilated pupils.