Association of Sexual Abstinence in Adolescence with Mental Health in Adulthood

We examined whether adolescent sexual abstinence predicts better adult mental health. A total of 1,917 adolescents, recruited from middle schools at age 13, were surveyed at ages 13, 18, 23, and 29. In bivariate analyses, adolescent sexual abstinence was associated with better mental health at age 29 for females, but not for males; three adolescent factors, educational prospects, family bonding, and unconventionality, were investigated as explanatory variables of this relationship. The abstinence–mental health relationship was nonsignificant when educational prospects were included in multivariate models, and was marginally significant when family bonding and unconventionality were included; all three explanatory factors accounted for significant proportions of the variance in adult mental health. Girls who are uninvolved in school, have weak family backgrounds, and exhibit unconventionality may have poor adult mental health, whether or not they abstain from sex in adolescence. Interventions that strengthen adolescents' connections to families and schools may reduce risk for long-term mental health problems.     

‘To be Free is Very Sweet’

Subject to Others: British Women Writers and Colonial Slavery, 1670–1834. MOIRA FERGUSON. New York & London: Routledge, 1992. xiii, 465pp. £12.99. ISBN O‐415–90476–5.

The Hart Sisters: Early African Caribbean Writers, Evangelicals, and Radicals. MOIRA FERGUSON. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993. ix, 214pp. £38.00. ISBN O‐8032–1984–9.     

Anti-Homophobia Education in Public Schooling: A Canadian Case Study of Policy Implementation

SUMMARY

An 18-month study investigating the implementation of a Canadian anti-homophobia school policy found that such policies need to address homophobic ideas, institutional forms of homophobia and heterosexism, and individual expressions of homophobia. Teacher development is identical as an area in which Canadian policy implementation can be improved. More resources are needed to support the complex negotiations that educators must undertake when their professional and personal commitments to equity and human rights education collide with their own and others' personal and community religious beliefs about homosexuality.     

Using Social Work Theory for the Facilitation of Friendships

Positive friendships are essential to human development and resilience. In spite of the importance of friendships, few social work models have been developed to help clients establish or maintain friendships. This article explores how clinical theories of social work, and their associated practice interventions, can guide social workers in helping their clients improve their friendship relationships.     

Allowances: Incidence in the US and Relationship to Financial Capability in Young Adulthood

This study describes the use of allowance payments by parents to children in the United States (US) and documents the association between receiving an allowance as a child and financial capability as a young adult. Based on the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the majority of children in the US ages 6 to 15 receive an allowance in childhood. Allowances are a commonly used strategy by parents across many demographic and socioeconomic groups, with no strong relationship between parental income or education and parents offering an allowance. Young adults who received an allowance as children reported modestly higher levels of financial responsibility, suggesting that allowances for children and teenagers may be a useful complement to other financial development strategies for young people.

     

A Longitudinal Study of Belief and Desire State Discourse During Mother–Child Play and Later False Belief Understanding

There is considerable interest in the role of mental state language in theory of mind development. This study examines cognitive and desire state discourse of 43 mothers during play interactions with their two‐year‐old children and theory of mind as indicated by a battery of false belief tasks around the age of five. Desire state comments of mothers during free play which were appropriate to the conversational context were significantly related to children's later theory of mind, and this relation was independent of other confounding variables, including a home‐based measure of maternal sensitivity, and socio‐economic status, and an estimate of child language. The child's desire state language was concurrently related to the mother's desire state language used appropriately, and the child's cognitive state language was related to the mother's appropriate cognitive state language. Although cognitive state language was not predictive of later theory of mind, this may be because this kind of language plays a later role in theory of mind development.     

Using a Biopsychosocial Paradigm in Social Work Practice with Children who have Tourette Syndrome

Tourette Syndrome (TS) is a neuropsychiatric disorder that is often under-diagnosed and misdiagnosed in children because of the lack of education and awareness of the wide range of indicators and symptoms of the disorder. Through the use of a case study and review of the empirically based literature, this article aims to describe the etiology and symptomatology of the disorder using a biopsychosocial paradigm that informs clinical practice with children who have TS and their families.     

Adaptive Tactical Pricing in Multi‐Agent Supply Chain Markets Using Economic Regimes

In today's complex and dynamic supply chain markets, information systems are essential for effective supply chain management. Complex decision making processes on strategic, tactical, and operational levels require substantial timely support in order to contribute to organizations' agility. Consequently, there is a need for sophisticated dynamic product pricing mechanisms that can adapt quickly to changing market conditions and competitors' strategies. We propose a two‐layered machine learning approach to compute tactical pricing decisions in real time. The first layer estimates prevailing economic conditions—economic regimes—identifying and predicting current and future market conditions. In the second layer, we train a neural network for each regime to estimate price distributions in real time using available information. The neural networks compute offer acceptance probabilities from a tactical perspective to meet desired sales quotas. We validate our approach in the trading agent competition for supply chain management. When competing against the world's leading agents, the performance of our system significantly improves compared to using only economic regimes to predict prices. Profits increase significantly even though the prices and sales volume do not change significantly. Instead, tactical pricing results in a more efficient sales strategy by reducing both finished goods and components inventory costs.