Content-masking methods as determinants of results of studies of nonverbal communication

The present study was designed to determine whether the technique used to control the semantic content of emotional communications might influence the results of research on the effects of gender, age, and particular affects on accuracy of decoding tone of voice. Male and female college and elementary school students decoded a 48-item audio tape-recording of emotional expressions encoded by two children and two college students. Six emotions — anger, fear, happiness, jealousy, pride and sadness — were expressed in two types of content-standard messages, namely letters of the alphabet and an affectively neutral sentence. The results of the study indicate that different methods for controlling content can indeed influence the results of studies of determinants of decoding performance. Overall, subjects demonstrated greater accuracy when decoding emotions expressed in the standard sentence than when decoding emotions embedded in letters of the alphabet. A technique by emotion interaction, however, revealed that this was especially true for the purer emotions of anger, fear, happiness and sadness. Subjects identified the less pure emotions of jealousy and pride relatively more accurately when these emotions were embedded in the alphabet technique. The implications of these results for research concerning the vocal communication of affect are briefly discussed.Preparation of this article was supported in part by the National Science Foundation.     

A Comprehensive Employment Model for Low-Income Mothers

Recognizing that mothers continue to bear the primary responsibility for household production, comprehensive logit models are developed to predict employment for low-income mothers. The models include a wide array of possible employment impediments, including individual, family environment, and community variables. Lack of family resource management, a variable not previously investigated in employment prediction, is found to be a significant impediment to employment. Under welfare reform, low-income mothers must balance family and work demands under severe resource constraints. Family resource management appears to play a crucial role in this balancing process. In addition, the local unemployment rate is found to be a significant predictor of employment.     

Sociology and High School Teaching

Teaching opportunities for sociolgy majors have traditionally been oriented to the college or university. There is, however, a clear need for qualified sociolgy teachers at the high school level. Such teachers could generate interest in the sociological imagination among precollege students. By doing so these teachers could provide skills for those students entering the workforce and encourage enrollments among those students opting to attend college. The American Sociological Association is aware of this opportunity and has addressed it in a variety of ways over the past thirty years. There has been renewed commitment by the ASA in the 1900s to develop programs that can enhance high school sociolgy. This article suggest that the state sociological association may be in a strategic position to assess the needs of high school sociolgy teachers, to address their resource needs as well as the concerns of teacher certification and competency. Jan Rienerth, teaching interests are in women's issues, applied sociology, and experiential learning. Her research has focused on women and the elderly in prison. Paul Lindsay, most recent teaching and research interests are in the areas of the sociology of education, educational policy and conflict resolution. Michael Wise, recent teaching and research is in the area of deviant behavior.     

Efficient bias-Robust M-Estimators of location in Kolmogorov normal neighbourhoods

We consider minimax-bias M-estimation of a location parameter in a Kolmogorov neighbourhood K() of a normal distribution. The maximum asymptotic bias of M-estimators for the Kolmogorov normal neighbourhood is derived, and its relation with the gross-error sensitivity of the estimator at the nominal model (the Gaussian case) is found. In addition, efficient bias-robust M-estimators T_i are constructed. Numerical results are also obtained to show the percentage of increase in maximum asymptotic bias and the efficiency we can achieve for some well-known -functions.     

Beyond Authenticity? Humanism,Posthumanism and New Organization Development

In recent debates, the relevance of traditional objectivist organization development (OD) approaches has been questioned in terms of their appropriateness for contemporary organizations. A new OD has emerged wherein change is viewed as a socially constructed process and where there are multiple rather than singular authentic possibilities. We explore these possibilities by drawing on employees' discussions of how they manage conflicting interpretations of organizational change. Using the example of emotional labour, we compare traditional and new OD approaches in terms of how they view authenticity and then discuss posthumanist analysis, in which authenticity (or lack thereof) is no longer of focal concern. In particular, under traditional OD, where authenticity can be ‘discovered’, the need to negotiate multiplicity and to downplay ‘negative’ responses is a problem to be addressed. Under new OD such multiplicity becomes data for dialogue and discussion of future potentials. In contrast, a posthumanist analysis, while relational, neither reframes nor tempers authenticity but decentres the very notion of autonomy on which authenticity is based. The social constructionism of new OD is recast and implications for theory and intervention are discussed.     

The pen,the receiver and the pump: Exploring young children's experiences of having a parent with type 1 diabetes

In this article, we explore young children's experiences of having a parent with type 1 diabetes (T1D). In our research we found that the children's knowledge about T1D was not age related, and that some had more in-depth knowledge than others. This seemed related to how and what the parents taught them about diabetes, the individual child's curiosity and interest, and the parent's history with fluctuating blood sugar levels. Several children were affected by their parents' diabetes in their daily life. Our research contributes to knowledge about how children's lives can be affected by having a parent with chronic illness.     

Do Infants Recognize Engagement in Social Interactions? The Case of Face‐to‐Face Conversation

This study explores 12‐month‐olds' understanding of face‐to‐face conversation, a key contextual structure associated with engagement in a social interaction. Using a violation‐of‐expectations paradigm, we habituated infants to a “face‐to‐face” conversation, and in a test phase compared their looking times between “back‐to‐back” (conceptually novel) and “face‐to‐face” (conceptually familiar) conversations, while simultaneously manipulating perceptual familiarity in a 2 × 2 factorial design. We also analyzed dynamic changes in pupil dilation, which are considered a reliable measure of cognitive load that may index processing of social interactions. Infants looked relatively longer at perceptual changes (new speaker positions) but not at conceptual change (back‐to‐back conversation), suggesting that face‐to‐face conversation may not elicit particular expectations, and so may not carry any particular conceptual significance. Moreover, on the first test trial, larger pupil dilation was observed for familiar conditions, suggesting that familiarity with perceptual features could enhance processing of conversations. Thus, this study undermines assertions regarding infants' conceptual understanding of the social signals underlying engagement. Infants may rather recognize such signals through their perceptual familiarity and associated positive feelings. This may then increase their engagement when observing and participating in others' collaborative activities, in turn allowing for the development of knowledge regarding others' intentions.     

Scenario Discovery with Multiple Criteria: An Evaluation of the Robust Decision‐Making Framework for Climate Change Adaptation

There is increasing concern over deep uncertainty in the risk analysis field as probabilistic models of uncertainty cannot always be confidently determined or agreed upon for many of our most pressing contemporary risk challenges. This is particularly true in the climate change adaptation field, and has prompted the development of a number of frameworks aiming to characterize system vulnerabilities and identify robust alternatives. One such methodology is robust decision making (RDM), which uses simulation models to assess how strategies perform over many plausible conditions and then identifies and characterizes those where the strategy fails in a process termed scenario discovery. While many of the problems to which RDM has been applied are characterized by multiple objectives, research to date has provided little insight into how treatment of multiple criteria impacts the failure scenarios identified. In this research, we compare different methods for incorporating multiple objectives into the scenario discovery process to evaluate how they impact the resulting failure scenarios. We use the Lake Tana basin in Ethiopia as a case study, where climatic and environmental uncertainties could impact multiple planned water infrastructure projects, and find that failure scenarios may vary depending on the method used to aggregate multiple criteria. Common methods used to convert multiple attributes into a single utility score can obscure connections between failure scenarios and system performance, limiting the information provided to support decision making. Applying scenario discovery over each performance metric separately provides more nuanced information regarding the relative sensitivity of the objectives to different uncertain parameters, leading to clearer insights on measures that could be taken to improve system robustness and areas where additional research might prove useful.     

The Safety First Assessment Intervention: A Whole Family Approach for Young People with High Risk Mental Health Presentations

The following article provides a comprehensive guide to the clinical implementation of the Safety First Assessment Intervention (SFAI). The SFAI is a systemised, whole family approach for young people with high‐risk issues presenting in a mental health crisis. It is underpinned by the Safety First Model (Bickerton et al., 2007 ) and promotes community‐based care. The SFAI operationalises the foundation levels of the Safety First Model (SFM) through a highly structured clinical process. It draws on family systems theory, predominantly the work of Bowen ( 1978 ), to conceptualise distress through a multi‐generational systems lens and to prioritise the young person's natural support system (their family, friends, school and community) as their key resource. The SFAI engages this natural support system and facilitates open communication about symptoms, distress, safety and risk. This promotes a shared understanding of the key issues in a relational context and forms the basis of collaborative risk management. Thus, a system of safety emerges prioritising the family's role in optimising the young person's community‐based recovery. The need for pharmacotherapy and hospitalisation is therefore minimised. The article includes background theory, an outline of the structured assessment intervention and clinical techniques, including strategies for complex family situations. Specific strategies are illustrated with fictional vignettes. The work is based on the authors' accumulated experiences of working with young people and their families and carers in an acute Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) for over a decade.     

Effectiveness and feasibility of a 10-minute employee stress intervention: Outdoor Booster Break

There is a growing recognition that workplace environments affect employee health. Nature contact exposures in the workplace have been shown to be healthful for employees. This pilot study was designed to test the feasibility and efficacy of a daily outdoor work break (Outdoor Booster Break) compared to a daily indoor break. A census of university office staff was invited to participate (N?=?244). Phase 1 focused on feasibility—participants (n?=?119) reported that the Outdoor Booster Break was feasible (74%), practical (80%), and worthwhile (83%). During Phase II we used a single-site randomized controlled trial (RCT) to examine the effects of an Outdoor Booster Break—compared with a control indoor work break group—for 4 weeks on employee stress. Perceived stress was measured at pretest and posttest for both conditions. Mean posttest stress scores were lower for both the control group (n?=?19) and the treatment group (n?=?18). A main effects ANCOVA model controlling for baseline stress revealed posttest stress was lower for the treatment group compared to controls (p?=?.041). Taking a work break appears to have stress-reducing benefits, but the Outdoor Booster Break reduced stress significantly more than an indoor break. Implications for employers, worksite health promoters, and future research are discussed.