AN URBAN ENCOUNTER

Computing research has long been interested in location-aware mobile games, such as hybrid reality games, location-based games and urban games. With an increasingly pervasive IT infrastructure and comparatively affordable mobile devices, such games are becoming part of everyday play around the world. A study of an urban night-game called Encounter widely played in the Former Soviet Union and the Russian-speaking Diaspora is presented. The ways in which IT enables a complex interaction between the local experience of play in the urban environment and the geographically distributed nature of the player community are considered. The findings illustrate how this form of location-aware mobile game-play pulled together local engagement and global player communities into socio-technical assemblages, showing the interplay between local attachments, distant connections and the location-based communication in daily experience. The most important outcome of these games then was not the direct individual engagement with the urban environment through technology or the collaboration with strangers in the course of play (although these were the necessary prerequisites), but the social relationships that, while gained in-game, could be leveraged for civic engagement, belonging and mutual support. While the local, physical experience of the everyday and the game was important, the connections to the distributed community resulted in expanded horizons and changed the nature of the local experience as players felt they could belong to something larger than the locales they physically inhabited.     

Editorial collaborators

Editorial collaborators     

The Correlated Bivariate Noncentral F Distribution and Its Application

This article proposes the singly and doubly correlated bivariate noncentral F (BNCF) distributions. The probability density function (pdf) and the cumulative distribution function (cdf) of the distributions are derived for arbitrary values of the parameters. The pdf and cdf of the distributions for different arbitrary values of the parameters are computed, and their graphs are plotted by writing and implementing new R codes. An application of the correlated BNCF distribution is illustrated in the computations of the power function of the pre-test test for the multivariate simple regression model (MSRM).     

Family environment in Hispanic college females with a history of childhood sexual abuse

This study sought to examine the family environments of a sample of Hispanic women who reported childhood sexual abuse. Eighteen women, taken from a larger college sample, were individually interviewed and administered the Family Environment Scale (FES; Moos & Moos, 1994). Cultural values and the relationship of family characteristics to the individual's experience of sexual abuse were explored. The abused women obtained significantly higher scores on the Achievement-Orientation subscale of the FES than the normative group. Qualitative data revealed some patterns in these families regarding sexual discussions and poor conflict resolution skills. Implications for treatment of Hispanic victims are discussed.     

Engaging with diversity: the construction of policy for intercultural education in Italy 1

Italy has become a destination for immigration, and this has had an impact on the linguistic and cultural diversity of school populations. In response to this changing profile, Italy has developed a series of language‐in‐education policies for meeting the needs of immigrant children. This paper traces the development of these policies and examines the ways in which the linguistic and cultural education of immigrants has been conceptualized. It traces a movement from policies relating to language and integration to intercultural education with a focus on developing the intercultural abilities of the entire population. At the same time, Italy’s language‐in‐education policies, while responding to the changed social profile resulting from immigration, have marginalized some aspects of immigrant children’s educational needs.

L’Italia è diventata una destinazione per l’immigrazione e questo ha avuto un impatto sulla diversità linguistico‐culturale della popolazione scolastica. In risposta a questo cambiamento, l’Italia ha sviluppato una serie di politiche linguistico‐educative per soddisfare le necessità dei bambini immigrati. Quest’articolo traccia lo sviluppo di queste politiche ed esamina il modo in cui l’inserimento linguistico‐culturale dei bambini immigrati è stato concettualizzato nell’ambito scolastico. Inoltre, traccia la loro evoluzione partendo da politiche riguardanti gli aspetti linguistici e l’integrazione scolastica all’educazione interculturale, focalizzata nello sviluppo delle abilità interculturali della popolazione intera. Le politiche linguistiche italiane in materia di istruzione hanno cercato in questo modo di rispondere al nuovo profilo sociale risultato dall’immigrazione, ma hanno, allo stesso tempo, emarginato degli aspetti riguardanti i bisogni educativi dei bambini immigrati.     

Incongruent Teen Pregnancy Attitudes,Coparenting Conflict,and Support Among Mexican‐Origin Adolescent Mothers

The current longitudinal study examined whether differences between Mexican‐origin adolescent mothers and their mother figures (N = 204 dyads) in attitudes on the status attained through teen pregnancy were associated with conflict in their coparenting relationship and whether coparenting conflict was associated with adolescent mothers' perceptions of social support. Findings revealed that when adolescents held more positive attitudes than their mother figures about the status gained through teen pregnancy, they tended to report greater coparenting conflict with their mother figures. Furthermore, greater coparenting conflict was significantly associated with decreases in adolescents' perceptions of social support (i.e., emotional, instrumental, companion support) 1 year later. Findings underscore the importance of incongruent attitudes and the quality of coparenting relationships between adolescent mothers and their mother figures in relation to support processes. Findings are discussed with respect to understanding Mexican‐origin adolescent mothers' social support in the context of family subsystem attitudes and interactions.     

Ergonomics and usability of children interfaces: Spore®, the case study

This study supports itself in ergonomic concepts and usability criteria by prioritizing the identification and correction of problems found during the interaction of children with projected interfaces for them and left from the cognitive, interactional and interfacial difficulties caused by the excesses of color, elements and animation in sites and games, between them the difficulty of recognition of the information during the interaction with the elements of grid of the interface. The results of the methodology had proven that 78.38% of the 37 children got so absorbed by the game and forgot to fulfill their tasks, at least partially, and that the application of the supported ergonomic beddings in usability criteria is imperative. It is relevant to point out that the projetual activity of the game is centered in the user, the child, whose behavior is distinct and particular. Points that had been disclosed that had passed unobserved by the involved adults in this project, and that they had displayed the unappropriateness of some screens of the Spore? to the etária band due to the ambiguity of the game, besides, the children had been sensible to the clarity in some screens and had passed for unnecessary situations of stress.     

Sexual abuse of individuals with disabilities: prevention strategies for clinical practice

Sexual abuse of individuals with disabilities occurs in alarming proportions, although the prevalence and incidence of such abuse is difficult to determine. Although all states maintain statistics on child sexual abuse, the rate of victimization for individuals with disabilities is not specific. This paper reviews several studies conducted on sexual abuse of individuals with disabilities with a focus on clinical prevention strategies. Recommendations for future directions in prevention and research are provided.     

Quality of Life of Institutionalized Elderly in Brazil

When considering the increasing proportion of institutionalized elderly and the aim of better quality of life for this growing population, it is necessary to know the quality of life for residents in nursing homes in Brazil, which is the purpose of this review. This is a simple review whose research was performed in electronic databases Journal Portal CAPES, Scopus and Bireme. The latter covers information about the subject registered in the SciELO, LILACS, MEDLINE and the Cochrane Library. Identified studies were assessed according to the following inclusion criteria: (1) population (institutionalized elderly in Brazil), (2) theme (quality of life) and (3) quantitative approach. According to this review, most studies that compared the quality of life of residents and nonresidents in nursing homes revealed that the institutionalized elderly have a worse perception of quality of life, possibly due to factors that cause the institutionalization and influence this self-perception, such as age, sex, education, lifestyle, autonomy and social participation. Among the domains evaluated in the questionnaire for quality of life the perception of autonomy and environmental aspects were the least satisfied by the institutionalized elderly. To improve the quality of life it is essential that the community living in the institutional space promote the autonomy of the elderly. Public policies that make a difference to the well being of older people need to be maintained, expanded and strengthened continuously to new strategies that respond to demands arising from rapid population aging and promote quality of life improvement.