The Multidimensionality of Presbycusis: Hearing Losses on the Content and Relational Dimensions of Speech

Presbycusis, the age associated decline in hearing and listening, has been traditionally conceptualized as the progressive inability to distinguish phonemes and hence to apprehend the content of spoken communication. Based on the distinction between the content and relational dimensions of communication, this study posed the possibility that presbycusis also involves a loss of listening ability along the relational dimension of communication. Using five measures of speech discrimination and listening, the study confirmed that aging is significantly associated with losses on the content and relational dimensions of listening. Furthermore, there are different rates of aging for these two dimensions. Whereas the loss on the content dimension is linearly related to age, the loss on the relational dimension is curvilinearly related to age with little decline in ability until a relatively drastic loss occurs in the early to mid-70s. These results indicate that the communicative impact of presbycusis is considerably greater for the old elderly than for the young elderly. Thus, this study constitutes initial evidence for a multidimensional conception of presbycusis.     

Couple Relationship Status and Patterns in Early Parenting Practices

Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 3,003), we examine the role of parental relationship status at birth on maternal adherence to current recommendations regarding breastfeeding, corporal punishment, and well‐child visits. At the bivariate level, parents’ union status is almost linearly related to adherence to recommendations. Multivariate models, however, reveal that much of the association stems from the selection of more advantaged individuals into more serious relationships. The results suggest that, although relationship status may be an accurate indicator of parents who are at risk of not adhering to recommended parenting behaviors, the underlying causes of nonadherence are more complex.     

Looking After Children: assessing outcomes in child care. The experience of implementation

A Department of Health initiative has supported the implementation of Looking After Children in over 90 per cent of local authorities in England. The process has required major organisational change and new values and attitudes towards children looked after away from home. Difficulties arise where management and monitoring systems are not available to support these wider changes and to assess the quality of practice. Nevertheless clear benefits to using the system can be identified. Pilot projects in Sweden, Canada and Australia provide an opportunity to compare experiences internationally; strong parallels are evident in some of the current issues facing child welfare.     

Dirichlet process mixture models for unsupervised clustering of symptoms in Parkinson's disease

In this paper, the goal of identifying disease subgroups based on differences in observed symptom profile is considered. Commonly referred to as phenotype identification, solutions to this task often involve the application of unsupervised clustering techniques. In this paper, we investigate the application of a Dirichlet process mixture model for this task. This model is defined by the placement of the Dirichlet process on the unknown components of a mixture model, allowing for the expression of uncertainty about the partitioning of observed data into homogeneous subgroups. To exemplify this approach, an application to phenotype identification in Parkinson's disease is considered, with symptom profiles collected using the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale.     

Not-so-distant cousins: Family benefits in the United Kingdom and Australia

Abstract   Recent trends in tax transfers have seen an increasing interdependence of tax and welfare systems in determining access to and the quantum of benefits, particularly in relation to in-work benefits, such as family support. Both the United Kingdom and Australia have adopted family support mechanisms that appear to operate in a similar way, but closer examination of the detail reflects the differences in underlying policy in the two jurisdictions. This article examines, first, the institutional and policy basis for the design of the family tax transfer system in each jurisdiction and, second, the issues raised by the interdependence of tax and social security concepts in the design of in-work benefits.