“Are You Interested,Baby?” Young Infants Exhibit Stable Patterns of Attention During Interaction

The degree to which infants' current actions are influenced by previous action is fundamental to our understanding of early social and cognitive competence. In this study, we found that infant gazing manifested notable temporal dependencies during interaction with mother even when controlling for mother behaviors. The durations of infant gazes at mother's face were positively predicted by the durations of the two previous gazes at mother's face. Similarly, the durations of gazes away from mother's face were positively predicted by the durations of the two previous gazes of the same type. The durations of gazes at and away from mother's face, however, were not predicted by one another. This pattern suggests that infants exhibit distinct and temporally stable levels of interest in social and nonsocial features of the environment. We discuss the implications of these results for parents, for experimental research using looking time measures, and for our understanding of infants' developing communicative abilities.     

Minority sub-state institutional completeness

The institutional completeness model holds that minority groups best ensure their vitality through their own institutions. In this case study of Acadians in Greater Moncton, we explore the difference between institutions belonging to minority groups (e.g. churches, cultural associations) and those belonging to the state (e.g. schools, hospitals). Our focus on local sub-state institutions – institutions established and funded by the state but managed by citizens at the local level (e.g. school boards, health authorities, municipal councils) – shows that sub-state institutions have become more important than civil institutions in ensuring minority vitality. It also shows that while all sub-state institutions can contribute to minority vitality, some state functions and the sub-state institutions that wield these functions can contribute more than others. The model should be revised to give as much importance to sub-state institutions as civil institutions in its attempt to describe, explain, and predict conflicts between minority and majority groups.     

Cohabitation registers and the study of slave families in Virginia

Virginia's cohabitation registers were compiled after the Civil War to legalize the unions that had formed between enslaved couples and to legitimize the children of those couples. They provide valuable demographic information about more than 13,000 couples and their children – well over 50,000 individuals – drawn from 23 counties across the state. The registers can be very useful to historians of slavery and slave families, but when using them it is essential to understand why and how they were created, what exactly they include, and what they omit.     

Dequantifying diversity: affirmative action and admissions at the University of Michigan

Theory and Society - To explore the limits of quantification as a form of rationalization, we examine a rare case of dequantification: race-based affirmative action in undergraduate admissions at...     

“Taking Back Our Country”: Tea Party Membership and Support for Punitive Crime Control Policies

The Tea Party Movement (TPM) emerged shortly after the 2008 election, with members rallying behind the call to “take back our country.” Many observers suggest that the movement represents, in part, a racialized backlash against the election of Barack Obama, the nation's first black president, motivated by perceived threats to the racial hierarchy. Racial threat theory predicts that if the TPM is motivated by and reinforces racial concerns, racialized support for punitive crime policies that disproportionately impact blacks should be higher among Tea Partiers. Drawing on recent national survey data, this study tests this prediction. The results show that TPM membership is positively associated with punitiveness and that this relationship is mediated, in part, by Tea Partiers’ animus toward blacks. We discuss the import of these findings for competing accounts of the TPM, racial threat theory, and the argument that the United States has become a “post‐racial society.”