Urban homelessness: The negotiation of public spaces

Homeless people usually live in the urban public space. Properly, public space does not belong to any peculiar social group. Public space is designed to let people circulate, and its borders change quickly. Homeless people who live in the public space break up its rules and transform it into their private environment. That is why homeless are often considered “unbearable people” by others. If homeless people want to go on living in the public space they must learn to be invisible to the others. If they want to survive in their “privatized” public space they must not intrude in everyday life routines. This article tries to visualize the symbols which flexibly define the borders between public and private space.     

Does retirement reduce familiarity with Information and Communication Technology?

Review of Economics of the Household - This paper analyses the effect of retirement on the familiarity with Information and Communication Technology (ICT) of older individuals. We argue that...     

Cognitive function in toddlers with congenital heart disease: The impact of a stimulating home environment

Infants born with congenital heart disease (CHD) are at increased risk of neurodevelopmental difficulties in childhood. The extent to which perioperative factors, cardiac physiology, brain injury severity, socioeconomic status, and home environment influence early neurodevelopment is not clear. Sixty-nine newborns with CHD were recruited from St Thomas’ Hospital. Infants underwent presurgical magnetic resonance imaging on a 3-Tesla scanner situated on the neonatal unit. At 22 months, children completed the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development-3rd edition and parents completed the cognitively stimulating parenting scale to assess cognitive stimulation at home. Level of maternal education and total annual household income were also collected. Hospital records were reviewed to calculate days on the intensive care unit post-surgery, time on bypass during surgery, and days to corrective or definitive palliative surgical intervention. In the final analysis of 56 infants, higher scores on the cognitively stimulating parenting scale were associated with higher cognitive scores at age 22 months, correcting for gestational age at birth, sex, and maternal education. There were no relationships between outcome scores and clinical factors; socioeconomic status; or brain injury severity. Supporting parents to provide a stimulating home environment for children may promote cognitive development in this high-risk population.     

Grandparenting and Childbearing in the Extended Family

The study analyzes the role of grandparents’ childcare provision on their adult children’s fertility behavior using data from the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) for eleven European countries. An important innovation is that we take into account siblings’ fertility behavior and share of grandparents’ time in terms of childcare. We show that availability of grandparents plays an important role in individuals’ decision of having children. Being helped by grandparents increases the chance of childbearing when existing grandchildren are not too young. On the other hand, the probability of having a child is lower when grandparents are already looking after a sibling’s young child. The role of grandparenting appears stronger in the South of Europe, where public childcare for young children is less prevalent.     

Newborns' Memory Processes: A Study on the Effects of Retroactive Interference and Repetition Priming

Newborns' memory abilities have been shown in a number of studies. Yet little is known about whether many of the factors that are known to affect encoding, storage, and retrieval in older children and adults are also integral to memory processes at birth. Here we tested for the presence at birth of the retroactive interference and repetition priming effects using the visual paired comparison paradigm. Newborns' memory performance on a visual recognition task was prevented by the interposition of a distractor stimulus between the habituation and the test phase (retroactive interference, Experiment 1). However, forgetting was offset by further brief exposure to the familiar stimulus (repetition priming, Experiments 2 and 3).     

Constructing indices of multivariate polarization

Multivariate indices of polarization are constructed to measure effects of non-income attributes like wealth and education. Polarization is considered as the presence of groups which are internally homogeneous, externally heterogeneous, and of similar size. We propose a class of polarization indices which is built from measures of relative groups size and from decomposable indices of socio-economic inequality. For the latter, we employ the special inequality indices of Maasoumi (Econometrica 54:991–997, 1986), Tsui (J Econ Theory 67:251–265, 1995; Soc Choice Welf 16:145–157, 1999) and Koshevoy and Mosler (J Multivar Anal 60:252–276, 1997). Then, postulates for multidimensional polarization measurement are stated and discussed. The approach is illustrated by an empirical application to the population of the East and West Germany with polarization defined on income and education.     

Contemporary Afro and two-sidedness: Black diaspora aesthetic practices and the art market

This paper examines the cases of five mid-career artists with Afro origins – Ghada Amer, Julie Mehretu, Wangechi Mutu, Yinka Shonibare, and Kara Walker – using interviews and other data provided by the artists, dealers, curators, contemporary art historians, and a collector. Such a variety of voices follows Negri [2009. Art and Multitude: Nine Letters on Art, Followed by Metamorphoses: Art and Immaterial Labour. Translated by E. Emery. Cambridge, MA: Polity], who suggests a two-sidedness of art as activity and commodity. Black diaspora aesthetic practices – double consciousness, associated with both Du Bois Du Bois, W. E. B. 1903. The Souls of Black Folk. http://www.bartleby.com/114/100.html. [Google Scholar] [1903. The Souls of Black Folk. http://www.bartleby.com/114/100.html] and Gilroy [1993. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press], and post-black, linked to Golden [2001. Freestyle. New York: Studio Museum in Harlem] – are addressed as part of an evolution of multiple identities. This is about how these artists negotiate the social structure they find themselves inhabiting and encountering to create meaning. These artistic phenomena, as commodities dictated by the circulation of capital, draw attention to the contemporary art market. The management of artistic relationships between artists and their dealers emphasizes what Granovetter [1985. “Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness.” American Journal of Sociology 91 (3): 481–510], [1992. “Economic Institutions as Social Constructions: A Framework for Analysis.” Acta Sociologica 35: 3–11] calls social embeddedness, the interdependence of economic and non-economic actions.     

Victimization in young urban adults and depressed mood: understanding the interplay of coping and gender

Violence exposure has a significant impact on victims' psychological well-being. This study examined the relationship between two types of violence exposures (threats and physical assaults), coping styles (emotion focused, avoidant, and problem focused), gender, and depression among 211 (147 females and 64 males) young urban adults (ages 18-24). Most participants (60%) endorsed being physically assaulted, whereas many (40%) endorsed being threatened. Hierarchical multiple regressions were conducted. As hypothesized, women reported using more emotion-focused coping and reported greater depression than men. Avoidant coping was a predictor for increased depression for both men and women. However, women who employed problem-focused coping after their first physical assault reported lower rates of depression. These findings have implications for designing early interventions.     

The role of prosody in infants’ preference for speech: A comparison between speech and birdsong

Speech preferences emerge very early in infancy, pointing to a special status for speech in auditory processing and a crucial role of prosody in driving infant preferences. Recent theoretical models suggest that infant auditory perception may initially encompass a broad range of human and nonhuman vocalizations, then tune in to relevant sounds for the acquisition of species‐specific communication sounds. However, little is known about sound properties eliciting infants’ tuning‐in to speech. To address this issue, we presented a group of 4‐month‐olds with segments of non‐native speech (Mandarin Chinese) and birdsong, a nonhuman vocalization that shares some prosodic components with speech. A second group of infants was presented with the same segment of birdsong paired with Mandarin played in reverse. Infants showed an overall preference for birdsong over non‐native speech. Moreover, infants in the Backward condition preferred birdsong over backward speech whereas infants in the Forward condition did not show clear preference. These results confirm the prominent role of prosody in early auditory processing and suggest that infants’ preferences may privilege communicative vocalizations featured by certain prosodic dimensions regardless of the biological source of the sound, human or nonhuman.