Evidence that Two‐Year‐Old Children are Sensitive to Information Presented in Arguments

Preschoolers are more likely to endorse testimony supported by strong arguments than by weak, circular ones. Two‐year‐olds exchange arguments with others, but no experiment has demonstrated that they are sensitive to information presented as argument. In the first phase of this study, 2‐year‐olds were shown ambiguous pictures—for instance a bird–fish hybrid—and asked what they thought the picture represented. An informant then contradicted them, providing either a strong argument, a circular argument, or no argument, and the children were asked what they now thought the hybrid was. The second phase was identical to the first, with new hybrids, except that the informant never provided any argument for her position. Finally, in the third phase, the informant left the room and the children were asked again to tell what the hybrids from the first two phases were. On the whole, there was an effect of the amount of information provided in the argument so that children were more likely to endorse labels provided by the informant who had supported her answer with a strong argument in the first phase. Moreover, they generalized the trust granted to informants who provided strong arguments. These results constitute the first experimental demonstration that 2‐year‐olds possess some argument evaluation skills.     

Racial Disparities in Hospital Length of Stay for Asthma: Implications for Economic Policies

Asthma is one of the most common health burdens on American families. An understanding of how the costs of asthma are distributed across communities is essential to realizing cost savings from preventative care. We model the household’s utilization of hospital services using Grossman’s health production framework. We then test for differences in asthma-related hospitalizations by race using inpatient records from the Massachusetts Division of Health Care Finance. On average black and nonwhite-Hispanic patients stayed between one-third and one-fourth of a day less than similar white patients which translates into a difference in expenditures of $8 million over 1994–2002. The difference in expenditures raises questions for market-based methodologies to value health and for policies directed at reducing inequalities in health outcomes.     

Application of commercial software to the classification of suicide cases: a brief report

Mosaic Profiler software was used to classify suicide and open verdict cases during 1996 to 1998 in England and within England, for the London and the North West regions. The classification system was based on the socioeconomic characteristics of the last place of residence of the cases at the level of postcode. The results highlighted that deprived areas and areas that contain elderly population or those areas that suffer from lack of social cohesion are overrepresented, whereas affluent areas are underrepresented. All of these, although in the larger scale, seem to support the results of other studies. Nevertheless, more studies would be required before one can fully evaluate the application of the Mosaic Profiler in the field of spatial epidemiology.     

Departmental quality ratings and visibility: The advantages of size and age

In this article I argue that quality ratings can be conceptualized as reflecting the extent to which departments are visible to outside raters. Using cross-sectional as well as panel data on sociology departments from the two latest surveys of graduate education published by the National Research Council in 1982 and 1995, I explain departmental quality ratings in terms of measures that reflect a department’s visibility, such as its faculty productivity, size, age, and location at an elite-status university. While the results of the cross-sectional and the longitudinal models tell different stories, the two are not incompatible. Specifically, both models suggest strong effects of departmental size and age. By comparison, the estimated effects of faculty productivity and location at an elite-status university are weaker and significant only in the cross-sectional model. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, New York, NY, August 1996. This research was conducted under a FLAS fellowship from the U.S. Department of Education. I wish to thank Lowell Hargens for helpful comments and advice.     

Social Support Networks of African-American Children Attending Head Start: A Longitudinal Investigation of Structural and Supportive Network Characteristics

This study examined the stability and coherence of African‐American children's social support networks. Participants included a total of 106 3‐ to 4‐year‐old children attending Head Start centers located in the southeast. Children completed a social network interview in two consecutive years at the Head Start centers. These interviews tapped multiple dimensions of the support network including social embeddedness, proportion of the network providing support, and perceived support. Analyses focused on both the rank‐order stability of children with respect to network characteristics as well as stability of network relationships (the same individuals included in the network at both time periods). Results indicated age‐related increases in network size for adult and child categories, network size across three support domains, proportion of support scores, and perceived support from adults. In addition to age‐related changes, analyses revealed considerable rank‐order stability with respect to structural network dimensions, but very little rank‐order stability in proportion of support and perceived support scores. In contrast, both structural and supportive components of the children's networks were shown to be coherent over a one‐year period when specific network member relationships were examined. Discussion highlights both continuities and discontinuities in young children's social networks, and how data obtained in this study contribute to theory building and the systematic examination of African‐American children's emerging social networks.     

Containing Violence: A Case Study Illustration of Bion's Container-Contained Model as Applied to Mother–Infant Intervention

Secure Beginnings is a program of psychotherapy for pregnant women with potential problems in the formation of the parent–child relationship including, in the extreme, infant maltreatment. The core of the therapeutic process is to help the mother recognize and think through unbearable thoughts and feelings rather than project expectations of abandonment, hate, helplessness or ridicule into her infant. Case material, from 18 months of treatment, is used to illustrate the Secure Beginnings approach. The case is a mother with psychosis and addiction who lost nine previous children to foster care.     

2-Rainbow domination number of Cartesian products: C_{n}\square C_{3} and C_{n}\square C_{5}

A function \(f:V(G)\rightarrow \mathcal P (\{1,\ldots ,k\})\) is called a \(k\) -rainbow dominating function of \(G\) (for short \(kRDF\) of \(G)\) if \( \bigcup \nolimits _{u\in N(v)}f(u)=\{1,\ldots ,k\},\) for each vertex \( v\in V(G)\) with \(f(v)=\varnothing .\) By \(w(f)\) we mean \(\sum _{v\in V(G)}\left|f(v)\right|\) and we call it the weight of \(f\) in \(G.\) The minimum weight of a \( kRDF\) of \(G\) is called the \(k\) -rainbow domination number of \(G\) and it is denoted by \(\gamma _{rk}(G).\) We investigate the \(2\) -rainbow domination number of Cartesian products of cycles. We give the exact value of the \(2\) -rainbow domination number of \(C_{n}\square C_{3}\) and we give the estimation of this number with respect to \(C_{n}\square C_{5},\) \((n\ge 3).\) Additionally, for \(n=3,4,5,6,\) we show that \(\gamma _{r2}(C_{n}\square C_{5})=2n.\)      

Comparison of Four New General Classes of Search Designs

A factor screening experiment identifies a few important factors from a large list of factors that potentially influence the response. If a list consists of m factors each at three levels, a design is a subset of all possible 3 ^m runs. This paper considers the problem of finding designs with small numbers of runs, using the search linear model introduced in Srivastava (1975). The paper presents four new general classes of these 'search designs', each with 2 m −1 runs, which permit, at most, two important factors out of m factors to be searched for and identified. The paper compares the designs for 4 ≤ m ≤ 10, using arithmetic and geometric means of the determinants, traces and maximum characteristic roots of particular matrices. Two of the designs are found to be superior in all six criteria studied. The four designs are identical for m = 3 and this design is an optimal design in the class of all search designs under the six criteria. The four designs are also identical for m = 4 under some row and column permutations.