Perception of Multisensory Gender Coherence in 6‐ and 9‐Month‐Old Infants

One of the most salient social categories conveyed by human faces and voices is gender. We investigated the developmental emergence of the ability to perceive the coherence of auditory and visual attributes of gender in 6‐ and 9‐month‐old infants. Infants viewed two side‐by‐side video clips of a man and a woman singing a nursery rhyme and heard a synchronous male or female sound track. Results showed that 6‐month‐old infants did not match the audible and visible attributes of gender, and 9‐month‐old infants matched only female faces and voices. These findings indicate that the ability to perceive the multisensory coherence of gender emerges relatively late in infancy and that it reflects the greater experience that most infants have with female faces and voices.     

Exploring Cultural Issues for Constellation Work in South Africa

Constellation work is a therapeutic and counselling intervention recognised in Germany and other European countries since the 1970s. Various scientists and practitioners have contributed to its theoretical and practical development, and research on the subject has increased over the past few years. However culture in constellation work has received little research attention and has not been empirically studied in African contexts. The aim of this article is to reflect on culture and its influence on constellation work in multicultural, post‐apartheid South Africa. An empirical qualitative research approach within the phenomenological paradigm was adopted. Six constellation facilitators were interviewed with in‐depth and field notes taken during participative observations of constellation workshops. The findings provide insight into culture in constellation work in the South African context. Theoretical and practical recommendations for scientists and therapy practitioners working with systemic interventions like constellation work are provided.     

The analytic construction of D-optimal designs for the two-variable binary logistic regression model without interaction

Candidate locally D-optimal designs for the binary two-variable logistic model with no interaction, which comprise 3 and 4 support points lying in the first quadrant of the two-dimensional Euclidean space, were introduced by Haines et al. (D-optimal designs for logistic regression in two variables. In: Lopez-Fidalgo J, Rodrigez-Diaz JM, Torsney B, editors. MODA8 – advances in model-oriented designs and analysis. Heidelberg: Physica-Verlag; 2007. p. 91–98). The authors proved algebraically the global D-optimality of the 3-point design for the special case in which the intercept parameter is equal to?1.5434. However for other selected values of the intercept parameter, the global D-optimality of the proposed 3- and 4-point designs was only demonstrated numerically. In this paper, we provide analytical proofs of the D-optimality of these 3- and 4-point designs for all negative and zero intercept parameters of the binary two-variable logistic model with no interaction. The results are extended to the construction of D-optimal designs on a rectangular design space and illustrated by means of two examples of which one is a real example taken from the literature.     

Measuring the drivers of gender inequality and their impact on development: the role of discriminatory social institutions

This paper highlights the key role of discriminatory social institutions – formal and informal laws, social norms, and practices – as the underlying drivers of gender inequality. Using the Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) from the OECD Development Centre, this paper assesses the cost of gender-based discrimination in social institutions for economic and human development. Quantifying such complex issues is a powerful lever for advocacy, where rights-based arguments have tended to gain less traction. The paper provides evidence that measuring the invisible is feasible and critical to position social norms on the policy radar. It demonstrates that any truly transformative post-2015 development agenda must take into account how such inequalities impact the development pathways of women and girls across their entire life course, limiting their rights and empowerment opportunities.     

Using repeated-prevalence data in multi-state modeling of renal replacement therapy

Multi-state models help predict future numbers of patients requiring specific treatments but these models require exhaustive incidence data. Deriving reliable predictions from repeated-prevalence data would be helpful. A new method to model the number of patients that switch between therapeutic modalities using repeated-prevalence data is presented and illustrated. The parameters and goodness of fit obtained with the new method and repeated-prevalence data were compared to those obtained with the classical method and incidence data. The multi-state model parameters’ confidence intervals obtained with annually collected repeated-prevalence data were wider than those obtained with incidence data and six out of nine pairs of confidence intervals did not overlap. However, most parameters were of the same order of magnitude and the predicted patient distributions among various renal replacement therapies were similar regardless of the type of data used. In the absence of incidence data, a multi-state model can still be successfully built with annually collected repeated-prevalence data to predict the numbers of patients requiring specific treatments. This modeling technique can be extended to other chronic diseases.     

Adaptive Warped Kernel Estimators

In this work, we develop a method of adaptive non‐parametric estimation, based on ‘warped’ kernels. The aim is to estimate a real‐valued function s from a sample of random couples (X,Y). We deal with transformed data (Φ(X),Y), with Φ a one‐to‐one function, to build a collection of kernel estimators. The data‐driven bandwidth selection is performed with a method inspired by Goldenshluger and Lepski (Ann. Statist., 39, 2011, 1608). The method permits to handle various problems such as additive and multiplicative regression, conditional density estimation, hazard rate estimation based on randomly right‐censored data, and cumulative distribution function estimation from current‐status data. The interest is threefold. First, the squared‐bias/variance trade‐off is automatically realized. Next, non‐asymptotic risk bounds are derived. Lastly, the estimator is easily computed, thanks to its simple expression: a short simulation study is presented.     

Death and schooling decisions over the short and long run in rural Madagascar

This paper provides strong evidence that adult mortality has a negative impact on children educational outcomes, both over the short and the long run, in rural Madagascar. The underlying longitudinal data and the difference-in-differences strategy used overcome most of the previous cross-sectional study limitations, such as failure to control for child and household pre-death characteristics and unobserved heterogeneity. This paper also pays special attention to the heterogeneity, robustness, and long-run persistence of effects. Results show that orphans are on average 10 pp less likely to attend school than their nonorphaned counterparts, this effect being even more pronounced for girls and young children from poorer households. Results on adults further show that those orphaned during childhood eventually completed less education. These findings suggest that not only do households suffering unexpected shocks resort to schooling adjustments as an immediate risk-coping strategy, but also that adversity has long-lasting effects on human capital accumulation.     

A copula‐graphic estimator for the conditional survival function under dependent censoring

Rivest Wells (2001) showed that in situations where the dependence between a lifetime and a censoring variable can be modeled by a given Archimedean copula, the copula‐graphic estimator of Zheng Klein (1995) has an explicit form. The authors extend this work to the fixed design regression case. They show that the copula‐graphic estimator then has an asymptotic representation and a Gaussian limit. They also assess the influence of a misspecified copula function on the performance of the estimator. Their developments are illustrated with data on the survival of the Atlantic halibut.